Insight On Potential Replacement

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Backstory... .I ended my relationship with my ex right around the holidays.   We lived together, so it's been a process in getting to the point of no contact.  She's basically been living back with her parents since December, but she was stalling on moving all of her clothes and stuff out of my place.  She was also on my cell phone plan and I have been trying to get her to switch plans.  She told me she didn't know how to and had been stalling with that also.   I didn't just cancel her plan because I didn't want to leave her without a cell phone or have her lose her phone number, but we are no contact for some days at this point.

Finally she calls me two weeks ago looking for her credit card and checkbook.  I found them at the house and told her I will leave them on the kitchen table and that she can come by to get them when I was at work (she still has the keys to my place since she wasn't fully moved out).  Well she comes over and I happened to come home while she is here.  She stayed a while and I was cordial as I am so sick of all the ugliness that has gone on.  She finally leaves, but before she does she repeats how much she misses and loves me and my dog and says maybe I will see you tomorrow.  I stood my ground and made it clear that I was done.  The next I was feeling a little guilty for being cold, so I text her and say that I am sorry and sad that things worked out the way they did and that this hasn't been an easy decision for me.  She texts back, "yeah, me too" and I don't hear from her for the rest of the week.

Fast forward to this past Monday, I get a text at work saying she came by and got most of her stuff out of my place and she will be back soon to get the rest and leave the keys.  On Wednesday I get a call from T-Mobile asking for my account number, so she can switch plans.  I log into my Sprint account from my laptop to retrieve it and notice an unusual amount of minutes and texts used by her in the last two days, so I check and the calls and texts are all to the same number.  Since I am on my laptop, I go to log into my Gmail account to check my mail and she is logged in on there.  She must have been on my computer when she was here Monday. 

I know it was wrong, but I started to look through her emails.   She's been sending incessant emails to another woman for the last two days.  They consist of, "I miss you sexy lady."  "I miss you."  "Hi, beautiful!"  "I can't wait to wrap my arms around you."  "I'm so hard for you."  "I stalked you on your blog, ____.com."  etc... .etc... .It was the validation I needed, so I don't regret snooping.  Besides she must have wanted me to see it.  After that, I text her and ask if she can come by at the end of the week to get the rest of her stuff and to just leave her set of keys on the table afterwards.  I make no mention of what I have discovered.  I hear nothing in return since... .

Out of curiosity and a bit of anger, I search this woman's blog and there tons of pictures of her.  The woman is at least 55-60 years old and unattractive, which made me laugh.  She looks old enough to be my ex's mother.  My ex is 33 and I am also in my 30's.  Anyway, I find it odd that she is love bombing this woman.  Is she looking for a mother figure?  Someone vulnerable to her good looks and youthfulness?  Someone to use?

I probably deserve a lecture right now on how it is unhealthy to snoop and read her emails and I probably need to hear it!  The last couple of days I've been alternating from feeling sorry for my ex to being angry.  Sorry because it is sad that she would resort to this to fill a void I left and angry because shouldn't she be missing me instead?  I mean we spent 5 years together.  I made her part of my close family, did everything for her, took her on vacations and she is missing someone else?  Someone she has know for approximately 3 days?

Any thoughts or feedback will be greatly appreciated... .

[lost_in_translation]

Backstory... .I ended my relationship with my ex right around the holidays.   We lived together, so it's been a process in getting to the point of no contact.  She's basically been living back with her parents since December, but she was stalling on moving all of her clothes and stuff out of my place.  She was also on my cell phone plan and I have been trying to get her to switch plans.  She told me she didn't know how to and had been stalling with that also.   I didn't just cancel her plan because I didn't want to leave her without a cell phone or have her lose her phone number, but we are no contact for some days at this point.

Finally she calls me two weeks ago looking for her credit card and checkbook.  I found them at the house and told her I will leave them on the kitchen table and that she can come by to get them when I was at work (she still has the keys to my place since she wasn't fully moved out).  Well she comes over and I happened to come home while she is here.  She stayed a while and I was cordial as I am so sick of all the ugliness that has gone on.  She finally leaves, but before she does she repeats how much she misses and loves me and my dog and says maybe I will see you tomorrow.  I stood my ground and made it clear that I was done.  The next I was feeling a little guilty for being cold, so I text her and say that I am sorry and sad that things worked out the way they did and that this hasn't been an easy decision for me.  She texts back, "yeah, me too" and I don't hear from her for the rest of the week.

Fast forward to this past Monday, I get a text at work saying she came by and got most of her stuff out of my place and she will be back soon to get the rest and leave the keys.  On Wednesday I get a call from T-Mobile asking for my account number, so she can switch plans.  I log into my Sprint account from my laptop to retrieve it and notice an unusual amount of minutes and texts used by her in the last two days, so I check and the calls and texts are all to the same number.  Since I am on my laptop, I go to log into my Gmail account to check my mail and she is logged in on there.  She must have been on my computer when she was here Monday. 

I know it was wrong, but I started to look through her emails.   She's been sending incessant emails to another woman for the last two days.  They consist of, "I miss you sexy lady."  "I miss you."  "Hi, beautiful!"  "I can't wait to wrap my arms around you."  "I'm so hard for you."  "I stalked you on your blog, ____.com."  etc... .etc... .It was the validation I needed, so I don't regret snooping.  Besides she must have wanted me to see it.  After that, I text her and ask if she can come by at the end of the week to get the rest of her stuff and to just leave her set of keys on the table afterwards.  I make no mention of what I have discovered.  I hear nothing in return since... .

Out of curiosity and a bit of anger, I search this woman's blog and there tons of pictures of her.  The woman is at least 55-60 years old and unattractive, which made me laugh.  She looks old enough to be my ex's mother.  My ex is 33 and I am also in my 30's.  Anyway, I find it odd that she is love bombing this woman.  Is she looking for a mother figure?  Someone vulnerable to her good looks and youthfulness?  Someone to use?

I probably deserve a lecture right now on how it is unhealthy to snoop and read her emails and I probably need to hear it!  The last couple of days I've been alternating from feeling sorry for my ex to being angry.  Sorry because it is sad that she would resort to this to fill a void I left and angry because shouldn't she be missing me instead?  I mean we spent 5 years together.  I made her part of my close family, did everything for her, took her on vacations and she is missing someone else?  Someone she has know for approximately 3 days?

Any thoughts or feedback will be greatly appreciated... .

[balletomane]

I'm sorry you're hurting so much right now.   

Trying to figure out your ex's feelings and motives where the replacement is concerned isn't a good idea, because ultimately you can't control how she thinks and acts. You can't do anything about her way of dealing with the world. You only hold power over your own life, and while looking at her e-mails might have given you a temporary sensation of power (because at least you know the truth now), in the long term it could just make you more preoccupied with her behaviour when you need to be breaking free of it.

In answer to your questions about why your ex would go for a woman old enough to be her mother, I noticed that my own ex would date almost anyone who showed an interest in him. He did this because he wanted constant reassurance that he was loved, but his paranoia and suspicion meant that no one person could ever give him that reassurance for long, so he would end the relationship. He couldn't repair breaches in existing friendships or relationships (meaning he just plunged into new ones), and he was impulsive - he once told me that he'd slept with two different ex-girlfriends in the same day without really wanting to or even knowing why he'd done it. In one of the rare moments when he saw his behaviour as harmful, he burst into tears and said, "If it weren't for you I'd just end up in anybody's bed." This sort of behaviour is not personal to you. I can't stress that enough. It's part of a destructive pattern that would play out with anyone.

[lost_in_translation]

Thanks for your reply, balletomane.  You are 100% correct when you say I should not be preoccupied with her behavior.  I was for 5 years and I think in a sense I stayed for so long because I thought just maybe I can control her thoughts and actions with my actions.  But, there is no rhyme or reason to their behaviors and trying to get them to see your point of view is next to impossible.

 I now regret reading the emails.  She won.  I think she wanted to get a reaction out of me and she did.  I was content with letting her go before that and my anger towards her for all the things she did over the years was waning.  And, those emails did provoke negative feelings on my behalf.  I will try hard to refrain from wondering what she is up to from now on.