No Contact For Nearly 3 Weeks - Feels Different This Time

[RomanticFool]

So, my exuBPD married lover and I have not spoken for nearly 3 weeks. There was a half hearted attempt on her part to berate me for cutting her off FB. All I said to her accusations of malice were that I didn't think she was interested as she hadn't spoken to me for five days. I told her we both know what the reality of the situation is and left it at that. It is my belief that she also wanted the r/s to end. Whatever attachment she wanted to keep was somewhat undermined by the fact that I hadn't been giving her the same kind of attention I used to. In other words my rhetoric about her beauty and the quality of my love for her was replaced by a more sober and heartfelt concern for her well being following her reported suicide attempt in the summer. I say reported because I have no knowledge of her condition other than what she told me - and that was very little. To this day I don't know how she did it. When I asked her at the time why she did it, she said because she felt alone. I had tried to detach myself from her around March time after she came back from a cruise and announced that she could no longer see me as her husband had discovered our affair. I knew then that was effectively the end of our r/s.

What I have been thinking about and I am pleased to report that I haven't really been ruminating, rather just occasionally thinking about how things were between us. (I do hope an emotional Tsunami isn't waiting in the wings). The overriding emotion I feel at the moment is one of relief that the dance is all over. It did untold damage to my peace of mind and was threatening my own mental health. The most surprising aspect of this whole situation is that I feel no resentment towards her. Surprising because every time we have broken up in the past I have felt a seething rancour towards her for the many times she hurt me. I suppose now I know too much about the condition and have taken into account my own behaviour when I have been empathy impaired through extreme emotional instability. This cannot be discounted.

However, I do want to say out loud that I consider much of her behaviour towards me abusive. The ST which has been a factor over the years of knowing her and her insistence that I put her on my FB in order to see what I'm up to despite having no intention of making any kind of commitment to me. I always hoped for a r/s with this woman but she never really gave me any hope of that nor did she ever really treat me with any kind of love. What she did was accepted everything I had to give her and sometimes copy my words and mirror my intensity. However, there was never a time when she considered me as a potential partner or showed me any kind of care, love or deep respect. Everything was played at her convenience at her pace on her agenda. I went along with it because I had a strong sexual attraction to her and fell in love with her. That was the worst possible thing I could have done. Not because she is a nasty person but because I was on a hiding to nothing from the start. She suffers from severe depression and the personality disorder on top of that means she is a very unstable and deeply erratic and unreliable person. I still feel love and compassion for her but I am glad to be free from the shackles of an attachment which was causing me harm.

I do wonder how many lies she told me over the years. I have no proof that she ever lied to me about anything to be honest but because she did not behave in a way that I consider a woman who professes to love me would behave, it made me deeply suspicious of her. I think there are many things she withheld from me and it would not surprise me if she had other intrigues during the time I knew her. She told me that she went to a gig with an older male friend of hers and that nothing happened between, but this was during the time that she was heavily drinking and frankly, I don't believe anything she reports around that period because she was literally out of her mind for large periods of time. However, to be fair to her, I have no proof that she lied but she proved herself very capable of cutting me off for long periods of time on a whim (probably when I had been painted black) and I absorbed so much of this awful emotional pain because I wanted her more than anything. It is that intensity of love/attachment/obsession/codependency, that I am glad to be freeing myself from.

When all is said and done, I see her as a wounded butterfly who loved me as much as she was capable of loving anybody. I cannot expect a woman with her pathology and fragility to be concerned with anything outside of her own mental health and her close family ties. I had no business even being involved with her since we are both married. However, I did have a deep love for her and we shared some wonderful times together. I try to hold those close to my heart and let go of the abuse. I am also working hard to making it up to my wife for the years of deceit and emotional unavailability due to my preoccupation with this deeply vulnerable but emotionally dangerous (for me) femme fatale.

RF