First off, thank you!!! You're a gem to me and I always feel better reading your responses. I specifically look for them since I know it will help me get through a hard moment.
Also he and I are from the same culture but he's from India and I'm a citizen here in Canada. Nearly everyone here warns us about people from his parts because of the difference in mindset. Not caring about causing issues if it means they get they want. Not being racist here, it's just how it is with people over there.
I just got done with a 2 hr victim services meeting which calmed me down a bit. I mentioned to her how all I wanted was acknowledgment from him and she's like "you got yours when he hired a criminal defence lawyer." "He feels screwed and guilty and needed the help." Before then, I never threatened him with taking action or even thought about making a report. I kept putting it off and just didn't do one. She kept reminding me that he's the one that's scared and I'm not at fault. That he committed a crime, I didn't.
Out of panic I did respond to his lawyer and I shouldn't have. I didn't care too much since I wasn't going to go through a trial process anyways but I felt belittled. The way he spoke down to me, telling me that it was only regret and that he WILL win any sort of case against him.....The woman at victim services told me to leave him guessing for my next move, and then have no move. He can live in anxiety with no contact as he claimed he wanted despite hiring a lawyer and I can carry on as an innocent citizen.
I just fucking hate seeing shitty people get what they want. It's my pride and it's sucks. I'm calmer now, but admittedly a bit stressed. I need to change my mindset about the whole thing so it doesn't give me this panic feeling that just shows up every few hours.
It's hard and it's annoying because it's ruining my peace.
I'm glad to be here for you. It never feels like wasted or unappreciated effort.
I really like that advice about leaving him guessing for your next move and then having no move. I figured that either you threatened outing him or reporting him, or that he preemptively got a successful defense attorney to scare you. That defense attorney is a clear statement that he knows he committed a crime, though he didn't admit it to you as you wanted, it's still an admission. You won. He didn't say it to you directly, but you got your victory. I hope your pride can hear that and feel some wanted vindication.
I'd like to make the suggestion that instead of posting after you do something, post before.
I get your feelings, I get the pride, and I get having such strong emotions that they push to do
something. That's part of the mindset change to me, having experienced it, that there's the goal and then there are the actions that support it, and to keep doing them until it gets through that the mindset and the correlating actions are much more rewarding, in fact deeply satisfying. For instance, the journaling I did to keep me from writing to my parents. Every time I had that urge, I wrote a draft to my parents to get it out, I posted and reminded myself of what they're really like and that it would not be rewarding, I got support from other members for pursuing and achieving my goal, and I read my Stoic and Buddhist quotes that applied. The urge comes up less and less now. I write fewer drafts to them, I have the reminders of what they're really like, I don't even post, I have the quotes, and I get through it much faster. I am not going to go to that slot machine, it will not pay off. When it comes up, I give it attention, but it do not give it the gratification, I replace that with gratification that is self-beneficial. It's a process, and it's been working.
Here are some quotes that help me keep in check when I'm feeling the urge to act on impulse, maybe you'll find some value in them:
This quote is at the front of my journal where I have quotes and tools like the ones I've shared on the forum: "For as savage dogs are excited at every sound, and are only soothed by a familiar voice, so also it is not easy to quiet the wild passions of the soul, unless familiar and well-known arguments be at hand to check its excitement." - Plutarch
"Control your passions, lest they take vengeance on you." - Epictetus (I add to this, or someone uses them to their advantage against you.)
"Things seen through a mist of rage appear greater than they are." - Plutarch
"The best corrective of anger lies in delay. Ask this concession from anger at the outset, not in order that it may pardon, but in order that it may judge. Its first assaults are heavy; it will leave off if it waits." - Seneca (I like to say that anger is a friend and a guide, but it belongs in the back seat and should speak from there. Letting anger take over means it climbs into the front seat and takes over the steering and the gas, and anger has limited vision, drives too fast, and gets into otherwise avoidable accidents, like driving full speed into a wall or running someone over. Whatever emotions like anger take over and get you to act out of passion rather than thoughtful consideration are driving the car and can cause regrettable and avoidable damage.)
"Beings have their actions as their refuge and their shelter." - Buddha
"When in the grip of passionate emotions, we run the risk of being blind to the best course of action." - from a university website page on Epictetus
"You need not be a sage to take insults lightly, but merely someone of sense--one who might say: 'Do I deserve these things that happen to me? If I deserve them, there is no insult; it is justice. If I don't deserve them, let the one who does the injustice blush." - Seneca
"Is a little oil spilled, a little wine stolen? Say 'this is the price of equanimity, this is the price of peace of mind' -- for nothting comes free." - Epictetus
"This is why I lost my lamp: because a thief was better than I at staying awake. But he bought the lamp at a high price. In return he became a thief, he became untrustworthy...This seemed to him a good bargain!" - Epictetus
"So in all our plans and activities, let us do just what we are accustomed to do when we approach a sidewalk vendor who is selling some merchandise or other: let's see what it will cost to get this thing we have our hearts set on....I can show you many things whose pursuit and acquistion has cost us our freedom. We would belong to ourselves if these things did not belong to us." - Seneca
"Imagine the following scene: Fortune is holding games, and over this mob of humanity she is shaking out honors, riches, influence. Some of these trinkets have been torn in the hands of people trying to grab them, some shared by a treacherous partnership, some caught with great injury to those who get them. Some fell to people doing other things entirely; some were dropped because people were trying too hard to catch them, and knocked away from those snatching at them greedily. But even among those to whom this booty has luckily fallen, there is no one whose joy in it has lasted until the next day. So it is that the wise run from the theater as soon as they see the trinkets being brought in. They know that these small things [are small and that they] come at a high price." - Seneca
P.S. What I really like about this wisdom is that if I don't go to it before I act, then after I act I recognize how it was applicable. I don't feel shamed by this. Instead, it solidifies the lesson for me, and the next time something similar comes up, I'm more likely to remember the wisdom and to act based on the wisdom, rather than act on the impulse as I'd done before. In time, the wisdom builds and internalizes, over and over again, while the impulses calm and either stay in the backseat, or jump in the front seat and then quickly climb back before they ever get near the steering wheel.
"It would be foolish to regard small improvements with contempt when it is so rare to find any other kind. So if Stoics seek great things but get only part way there, the discrepancy should not cause them to be thought of as hypocrites. They aimed high, fell short, and did well." - Ward Farnsworth,
The Practicing Stoic
