After some thought, I was considering the choice of reality. I loved her a lot at the time, and desperately wanted our marriage to work... .so instead of seeing signs of a terrible relationship, I went deep into denial and told myself that she was 100% trustworthy... .When she did sketchy things I told myself that I was the crazy, insecure one (though she told me that too). Then tried my best to ignore glaring signs of her complete lack of respect/love for me. She wanted to be caught, I'm sure, and she tried harder and harder to paint the picture for me until one day I really had to accept that I was living in a fantasy bubble. Anyway, having been in denial for so long probably has something to do with my unresolved feelings... .Do you think you felt something similar? Going down their rabbit hole, then abruptly coming back to the real world?
Absolutely felt very much the same. When my relationship started I saw her for who she wanted me to see her as and who I wanted her to be. In many ways she was that person. Almost right from the beginning of our relationship she gave me several very good reasons to question if I could trust her. After discussing these issues with her I did decide to overlook them and give her the benefit of the doubt.
This was the birth of the illusion. I chose to give her my trust and to believe in her, but that gnawing seed of doubt was always there in the back of my mind and for good reason.
Over time things she did/said would lead me to challenge the illusion. Gut instincts told me something was off, that she was hiding something or not being completely honest with me. While I have learned over my life to trust in my "gut" I also have learned that I need to question my "gut" just as much as I trust it. I struggled with these feelings on my own, thinking maybe I was just being paranoid and insecure, eventually dismissing almost all of them. I spent a lot of time and energy convincing myself my perceptions were wrong because I
wanted needed to believe in the illusion. This came at a cost though, emotionally speaking, and I withdrew little by little the more emotionally compromised I became due to her behavior. Some of that behavior, as with you, showed a complete lack of respect, love and caring for me. The net result of all this was I did such a good job at convincing myself the illusion was real (in totality), when she shattered it (7 months or so before the end) my sense of reality was also shattered.
So here I am now, 14+ months post trash bin I still struggle with this illusion vs. reality, emotionally speaking. I think what has made it measurably harder is many parts of her reinforced the illusion, they were real. However as with lies/deception, the most convincing and believable are those built around a truth. This was the case with her and the illusion I built around her. The truth of her is that she is in many ways the illusion, she was real in part. Underneath it all though was her "dark side" (as she calls it), insidious and pervasive. This is what I have come to believe is BPD.
As much as she wanted to believe she could hide this "darkside" from me (and herself), that side of her was always there impacting her behavior at every level. She literally said to me on several occasions, "you will never see my darkside". I really don't know what she meant by that, kinda wish now I had pressed her to explain.
What I couldn't see then, or didn't want to see/admit due to the FOG and my own self donned blinders, has now become clear(er). Yet I still question it because I don't believe I have emotionally let go of the illusion even though logically I can now see her true self.
