Jerry777
Fewer than 3 Posts
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 2
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« on: May 26, 2015, 04:35:29 PM » |
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I had an affair with a woman who I now believe exhibits textbook moderately severe BPD. I am writing this to help me work through what happened, and looking for advice.
I have been with my wife for 12 years, married for the last five. Two years ago I would have described the marriage as good, not perfect, but good: stable, mutually supportive, happy, albeit lacking passion. My wife is a kind, intelligent, and attractive woman, and I am deeply ashamed of having treated her so badly. I have never before even seriously considered cheating on her.
How did it happen? Almost a decade ago I was supervisor for a woman at my workplace, let's call her Debra. At the time I was in my mid-thirties and she in her early twenties. We worked closely together for about six months. Debra was very talented and very likable---warm, very smart, and funny. And strikingly physically attractive. But very, very anxious, she would cry in my office very frequently over the slightest problem. I thought she was just uptight and as she gained confidence in her abilities that would go away. She was transferred to another city and we didn't really keep in contact for the next seven years.
About two years ago Debra and I wound up in the same city again, now at the same level in the workplace. We had both married in the interval. Debra and I started working together closely and socializing after work most days with the same small crowd, often just the two of us. Over about six months we became closer and closer. I had become infatuated with her, but I wasn't seeking a relationship: we were both married, we work together, she is 15 years younger than me, and I thought that even if none of that were the case there was no way she'd be interested in me: she is drop-dead gorgeous, and I, well, am not. I thought having a crush on her was no more dangerous than having a crush on Jennifer Aniston.
Until one night I drove her home after a work dinner and she propositioned me. I turned her down, pretending it was a joke. It then happened three more times over the next two weeks, with increasing assertiveness. I told her I couldn't do that, but admitted, unwisely in retrospect, that I had feelings for her. She told me she loved me and had been in love with me since we'd known each other years prior, and she was extremely sexually aggressive. We kissed one night, and within another week a sexual relationship had started. I felt both exhilarated and deeply ashamed.
The level of emotional intimacy increased extremely rapidly as the affair progressed. Between non-structured "work" days and both our spouses traveling frequently we had ample opportunity to spend lots of time together. We had incredible sex, as often as possible. She would text me dozens of times a day telling me how much she loved me, how perfect I was in every way, how much she longed to be with me. It felt wonderful. I thought I had found my soulmate. She said she wanted to marry me and have children, and we planned out a timeline for those events, and discussed what we would name the kids. I was in distress over having to leave my wife but at the same time very much looking forward to the life Debra and I planned together.
I'll note here a number of things I overlooked at the time but which should have been red flags. Debra confessed that she'd had other, but minor, affairs. She told me she's bulimic, and that she's had problems with alcohol. She revealed some fairly involved lies she'd told me; for example, we would commonly discuss our shared interest in video games, and she confessed one day she actually never plays games and was only sort of able to hold up her side of the conversation because she sometimes looked over her husband's shoulder. She exhibited extreme mood swings, often repeatedly during a given day. She told me about their marriage, which she said went in "hot and cold" streaks, meaning that for extended periods she outright hated her husband, but then things would be good again for while, and that cycle would repeat. She characterized him as controlling and emotionally abusive---I felt like her knight in shining armor, rescuing her from that awful man. She confessed that during our time together she'd made out with another coworker and a couple of almost-strangers (but not had sex with them, or so she said). She said she has no likes or interests of her own, all her hobbies and tastes were her husband's hobbies and tastes. She also told me in detail about her childhood, which in short consisted of her alcoholic father abandoning the family when Debra was two, leaving her with her flaky and emotionally distant mother who had a sequence of relationships with abusive men. I wrote all this off. I didn't recognize warning signs, I was in love, and I was happy to blame her problems on her husband.
The affair progressed even deeper. Debra told her husband that she wanted a separation, but he reacted very badly and, she told me, it just seemed too cruel to end it so suddenly. He wanted to spend a "couple more months" together to see if things would get better. I should have put this together with the "hot and cold" streaks to understand where he was coming from, but in her telling and in my mind at the time he was a villain just exerting control over her again. After about three more months, Debra left her husband. Not long after I told my wife I was leaving her. She reacted extremely badly. She became hysterical. She was very upset in part because she would have to spend the holidays alone. I felt extreme guilt. I told her I hadn't changed my mind but I was experiencing a lot of ambivalence. I said I would stay in the house over the holidays if she wanted, that we could talk, and we could see a therapist to help both of us deal with separation if she wanted. She agreed.
I told Debra that I was committed to being with her, but that for my wife's sake I wouldn't be leaving the house until January. I thought she would understand, having done something similar herself. Debra said, sure enough, that she understood. But she became cold and distant and a few days later she told me her "feelings had changed" and she didn't want to be with me. She couldn't explain why, exactly. She said she thought she "just wanted me until she could have me" and then she didn't want me any more. She said perhaps she'd just been infatuated with me. She said she didn't understand herself how her feelings could change so quickly. She said she was afraid that I would become "her world" like her husband had years before. She said she was no longer in love with me and I should go back to my wife. She said all of this without crying or otherwise displaying emotion. I was utterly devastated. I couldn't believe this woman who a few days earlier had been texting me 50 times a day to tell me how much she loved me and wanted to marry me suddenly felt nothing for me. When I expressed that Debra said she "needed time to think" and maybe she did want the relationship.
Thus began months of push and pull. I kept affirming to Debra that I loved her and wanted to be with her. But on any given day I wouldn't know if Debra was going to be sweet and romantic, or cold and distant, or overtly contemptuous. On some days she would refuse to talk to me. On others she'd initiate sex and tell me how much she missed me and loved me. She said she was constantly very angry with me but she didn't know why, it was anger for no apparent reason. She had chosen not to go back to her husband, she told me, although I later learned she'd tried and he wouldn't take her back. A few times she said she "wanted to slash her ******* wrists," but not in a way that I took as serious suicidal intention. She would claim not to remember things she had done or said, and describe previous events in a distorted or simply revisionist manner. She said days would go by where she didn't feel anything at all.
All during this time I was also, shamefully, telling my wife I wanted the marriage to work, even though I would have left her for Debra. I thought I was doing right by wife in that if things didn't work out with Debra I didn't want to put both of us through a divorce, but the duplicity was killing me. I kept thinking for those months that the situation with Debra was always just about to be resolved because any day she'd come back to me and we'd start our life together, but it just kept dragging on. I thought that deep down Debra really loved me and wanted to be with me, that she had just panicked, that she was upset over the end of her marriage and just needed a little time to get her bearings. I thought that if I just kept assuring her that I loved her and wanted to be with her, she'd of course want the life we planned together, because she loves me. Things did seem to be getting slowly better, more good days, fewer bad days. I started spending more effort looking for apartments we could rent together.
Then one day out of the blue Debra sent me an email very clearly ending things. It was cold and clinical and left little (but: some) ambiguity. It said in essence that she couldn't be with me because of the "hard feelings" she had towards me, the source of which she couldn't quite pinpoint, and because she couldn't be with anyone at all for the indefinite future, she needed a period to be alone and discover who she was. I recognized the latter as "it's not you, it's me" breakup boilerplate, but I nonetheless also believed it. I subsequently found out she'd already initiated another relationship.
Distraught, I confided what had happened to a mutual close work friend. The mutual friend was shocked, to say the least: it turned out Debra had already confided in this friend, except in Debra's version she and I had made out drunkenly a couple of times and then suddenly and to Debra's great surprise I'd announced one day that I wanted to leave my wife for her, and Debra hadn't known how to deal with my unwanted and ridiculously over-the-top advances. It turned out she'd also told several other coworkers that I'd made inappropriate advances. She had also asked people not to invite both of us to social events because of my inappropriate behavior. In essence, she told vicious lies to mutual friends and colleagues which could have (and could still) destroyed my social and professional lives.
Following the breakup email Debra and I have had almost no contact. The mutual friend suggested after I told her much of what I describe above that Debra may have "borderline personality disorder," which I'd never heard of. I studied up and was stunned to find almost perfect descriptions of Debra and of the pattern of our relationship, and it was some comfort to read story and after story which played out like my own.
Now, after a couple of months of almost no contact, I struggle every day with my love for her. I mourn the life I envisioned we'd have, even though I know that was a chimera. I know, intellectually, that she would have devalued me regardless of what I had done, that she isn't the person I thought I knew. And yet I want her all the same, I still suffer from almost constant intrusive thoughts about her. I am grateful my wife has stood by me despite my horrible actions and I am trying hard to recommit. I hope that I can prevent Debra from further sabotaging my reputation at work, and that this mess doesn't eventually result in someone getting fired or legal complications. I wish I could take it all back. I wish I'd never even met Debra.
And, finally, there's this. Her office is three doors down from mine, and I will likely have to interact with her almost every day until I retire in roughly the year 2040.
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