Hi Nolisan,
Was she a sadist? I don't know, probably not. But the reason why she did what she did is because she suffers from borderline personality disorder (BPD). I'll elaborate:
This is a snap shot of the week. All was well. She told me what a great man I was. We slept together but the sex had stopped. She was telling me what a wonderful lover I was and how patient and understanding I was with her sexual anorexia (she was a recovering sex and love addict now "acting in". She told me how she was feeling she was ready to reengage in love making again. We cuddled and I reassured her.
She talked about growing old together. Would I still love her when she had wrinkles?
My understanding of BPD is that people with BPD (pwBPD) are ruled by their fear of abandonment to the point where they will see it even if that abandonment is unlikely or impossible. Moreover, as I see it, this disordered fear of abandonment they experience, seems to be particularly triggered by feelings of intimacy and familiarity.
The closer your BPD loved one felt towards you, the more she became overwhelmed by her (imagined and disordered) fear of abandonment.
She told me a story of her grandmother that really grabbed my heart and confirmed her commitment. Her GM had made a choice to marry one man instead of another. The man she truly loved had TB but told her to marry the other interested man who was healthy. She did and her choice turned out bad. He was a terrible man - an abusive gambler and drinker. The moral of the story was to "go with love" despite health concerns.
I have some serious chronic ailments. She said these were not important - she was going to stick with me despite my problems, She was going to follow her GM.s advice. I can not tell you how deeply this effected me: a woman over looking my problems in the name of love.
I can see why she told you this story because it suggested that she would choose to stay with the person she loves in spite of his ailments. But to me, I can see why this story appeals to her because the moral of this story is to follow your heart or more specifically your feelings. And what is hard for non-disorder people to accept is that for pwBPD, their feelings change mercurially. To me, this story is her license to be an untethered kite in the thick of a windstorm.
While she was feeling her attachment towards you, while she was idealizing you, she wanted to be with you. But even then she was dealing with her disordered fear of abandonment. Why else would she insist on fortifying your attachment to her? Insisting that you move in together, merge households, etc? She was growing insecure and she thought these measures would mitigate her insecurity, her fear of abandonment.
Day 6 - she told me that she wanted to make love the next night. Wow I thought ... . I was melting and so full of gratitude and joy ... . my greatest dreams were coming true.
Day 7: We were watching a movie that I chose, an interesting happy movie about a man struggles and success. Half way through she stood up and said "this is a creepy movie ... . I am leaving". She went home to her house with no electricity or heat. I was in free fall but thought she'll be back.
But by moving in with you, she actually intensified her feelings of intimacy and familiarity towards you, which subsequently also intensified her disordered fear of abandonment. And when you are afraid of being abandoned and you feel that abandonment imminently approaching, what do you do? You leave first. If you become the abandoner, you can avoid being the abandoned.
She did come back the next day ... . to move all her stuff out. I sat paralyzed with confusion, pain and fear. The next week she ran away, back to her husband (abusive and an active sex and substance addict).
So she followed her capricious heart, and she left you.
Here is the question that is vexing me: Was this week all a set up? Was she building up my love and hope so that her abandonment and betrayal would inflict MAXIMUM hurt on me? She really could not have done a better job at hurting me. Was she a sadist? This was just the final in a series of escalating infliction of pain. Did inflicting pain on me relieve her anger at the pain she felt from sexual abuse as a child?
This was a set-up, only in the sense that this is the exact same pattern that all unrecovered pwBPD go through in their efforts to find an attachment partner. They want to find a "family" for themselves, but the very way in which they experience "family" is poisoned by past traumas they choose to run away from.
They are afraid of abandonment because of an abandonment trauma they refuse to face, and subsequently inflict abandonment traumas upon those who deign to be their dance partners.
Her inflicting pain upon you might have relieved some of her anger. But I think it is more accurate to say, she inflicted pain upon you because she was *reliving* her past trauma as a child with you only as the surrogate parent/authority figure.
Best wishes, Schwing
