This piece is a personal reflection on my own experience of connection, disillusionment, and self-discovery. It is not intended as an accusation or psychological diagnosis of anyone.

I write about patterns to release my own; because understanding those patterns is how I will reclaim my power, my voice, and my trust in my strength and intuition.

A Story About Truth, Illusion, and What It Means to Heal.

He wrote about covert narcissists, about the way they twist truth, hide behind charm, and fear exposure. He wrote about how their victims awaken, reclaim their voice, and speak anyway.

And for seven weeks, I believed I'd met the man behind the insight, someone self-aware, gentle, reflective, maybe even safe.

He pursued me with intensity that felt like destiny. Every message, every long conversation was charged with a sense of recognition. He looked at me like he could see straight inside me…and for someone who had been invisible for years inside a life of betrayal, that kind of attention felt like sunlight. The kind that awakens you, warm on your face on a fresh morning after a long winter.

I knew he had been hurt. He told me so. Two divorces. A relationship that ended in cheating. He spoke about trauma with eloquence and precision, about therapy, self-awareness, and emotional truth. His vulnerability felt real. I told myself it was. We are not young, you don't take this many trips around the sun without a few burns, bruises, and some significant UV damage.

But the truth was quieter than his words. It was buried under the pace, the intensity, the way he seemed to need connection as much as he feared it. Looking back, I thought I was being 'seen'. It's uncomfortable to admit… I think I was being studied. He was an ex-SAS commander, trained to control, to anticipate threats, to survive. And perhaps that's what our connection triggered in him, a mission he couldn't win, because intimacy is not something you conquer. It is a vulnerability that requires surrender.

Then one night, after seven weeks of constant contact, long calls, a combination of chemistry and connection that was pure blazing fire, and promises of plans to come, came the message.

A breakup via text, written with the same literary flourish as his blog posts: He owed me an apology, he said. He'd realised he wasn't ready. He needed to process his 'disastrous relationship history.' I was a 'vibrant, beautiful soul,' but he was terrified of getting close to anyone. To me.

And then… Silence.

When someone disappears like that, after intensity so deliberate, it's not confusion you feel first; it's disbelief. Had I imagined it? Did I mistake performance, for sincerity? Was it something I had said, I had done, some unknowing and deeply hurtful mistake?

I reached out once, twice. Not to beg, but to seek honesty. I asked him to delete my photos, which he said he did. He replied with poetic grief… Metaphors about wooden stakes and splinters, about fear and ghosts. And then he was gone again.

Days later, his next blog post appeared. I won't share the title because this is not about exposing or embarrassing anyone.

It was a piece about being victimised, about finding courage to expose manipulation, about speaking one's truth. It even included a blurred screenshot of a text message… Not from me, but from someone else, and at once I was relieved, and deflated.

Reading it, I realised that I wasn't his muse. I was not special. At best, I was his pattern. More likely, a pleasant distraction.

He wrote about narcissists hiding behind masks, but he had built an identity out of describing the very behaviours he enacted. His essays were not acts of healing. They were acts of control, ways to frame the story so he could always be the wounded hero.

He analysed love the way a soldier analyses terrain, naming every feature while staying far from the field. His words gave the illusion of intimacy without the risk of it. He could speak deeply of emotion, in his words, in his writing, but feeling it, truly sitting alongside that depth, when it became uncomfortable, was beyond him.

I used to think closure came from answers. Now I know it comes from understanding the pattern, and sitting with that discomfort.

He needed to be admired for his honesty, not held accountable for his actions. He needed to narrate pain, not heal it. And when I stopped playing my part, when I asked for (and offered) truth, reciprocity, true intimacy, the story ended.

It took me time to stop replaying the moments that felt real. The dinner he cooked. The warmth of his arms. The conversations where it seemed we were two people finally safe. The synergy of the soldier and the rebel, the opposite yet parallel passions and missions. But I've learned that moments can be genuine, yet ultimately, not consistent. My feelings were real; his capacity was not.

He told me that getting close to someone, (namely me), scared him 'more than the Taliban ever could.' And that, I think, was the truest thing he ever said.

Because emotional intimacy, real, unguarded closeness, demands something he hasn't yet learned to give… Surrender. And you can't command surrender. You can only offer it. With inherent risk, that to some, is unbearable.

So I release the story. I release the need to make sense of why someone who spoke so beautifully about truth could vanish so quietly from it.

He writes about "speaking your truth anyway." So here is mine:

I showed up fully. I risked vulnerability after years of betrayal. I allowed myself to feel again. I found myself at the precipice, willing to release the pain, and jump. And while he may write about light and darkness, I am the one who actually stepped into it.

He can keep writing about narcissists. I'll keep living. Openly, honestly, without pretence. With fire, and passion, and truth. My own spirit is free, when I dance, when I speak, when I sing, when I live.

Because I was not his reflection. I am my own reality. And he wasn't ready for it.