What happened here? Did things get better with her husband? Did she out grow the need? Is there someone else? Did you push too hard? Did she start questioning her purpose in life or her legacy?
How would I know? She spent 14 years avoiding telling me what was going on in her head. I can guess what happened. I always pushed too hard for her fragile sensibilities and she spent 14 years running away. She was always questioning her purpose in life. The idea that there was some kind of long term logic attached to her decision is laughable. This is a woman who one day told me she loved me and everything was fine and then the next day started drinking and abusing me. Where do I look for the logic in that? She is not a fully fledged BPD in my opinion, but she still had traits. The following things she complained of all the time: Feeling empty, lack of purpose in life, she was depressed, suicidal ideation (she threatened to jump off a multi-storey car park one night and laughed when I cried), everybody in her life constantly criticising her, she was bored, she thought she as ugly, she hated herself, she wasn't doing what she wanted to in life.
I asked her once what the five most important things in her life were: 1. her daughter 2. Wine 3. Cats 4. Her garden 5. Music... .Does that sound like a woman who is logical?
If you want to be make an educated guess, I think AA and her work at the suicide prevention charity has had some kind of impact on her. I think her son being at home and suffering from addiction and by the sound of it BPD symptoms (complains of feeling empty and is suicidal) and her husband discovering whatever it was he discovered on her phone. It could also all be total rubbish and she has just met someone else. I like to think that she was more honourable than that. I like to think that when she told me she was exclusive to me it was true. But who knows? When she came out of rehab she let it slip that she had gone to a gig in London with another man. When I said how hurt I was she got out of my car. That is how much responsibility she was willing to take for anything.
The answer in there - the hard part about seeing it is that we have to get past out own emotions and bias. It's a hard thing to do.
The most logical answer is that she got fed up with my demands and expectations. However, after 14 years of an on and off r/s during which time she told me if I ever left her she would be lost and got me to call her in Vegas where she was on holiday with her husband, for fear she was losing me, kind of suggests that this meant something to her. The fact that she is able to walk away and show absolutely no emotion whatsoever about the loss or make any kind of statements about regret or sadness, tells me that we shouldn't perhaps judge anything on what she says, but rather on what she does... .and what she did for 14 years was run away from me.
You mention multiple periods of disconnect. What was that all about?
Not sure what you are referring to.
How many years ago did each of these events occur? 14 years? 6 years?
14 years ago we first met and saw each other rarely over a 2 year period. Then there was a gap of 6 years. And then our current r/s has lasted 6 years. Hence 14 years. It was during the recycle that things got more serious between us.
Outside of he ebbs and flows of pillow talk, was there ever a prolonged period (6 months or so) in the 14 years where you two explicitly and seriously talked about leaving your partners so that you could start a life together and live together?
I always told her I would leave my marriage. To be fair to her, she never once said she would do likewise. She cited her business tis with her husband and her son being at home as reasons why she couldn't leave. She said to me once, 'Where would we live?' But she sure kept me on the hook with her declarations of love at times when I was moving away from her because I could see I was in for a life of heartache.
RM, for what you have posted in the last few weeks, I don't think your relationship problems were about a double standard. What I get from your posts is that you two had a long term affair that had no serious expectation of leaving your partners and that you were tending to be somewhat engulfing toward the end - generally wanting/pushing for more than she was able/willing to give.
I'm not saying that someone was wrong here. I'm more saying that this was a long term sexual fling (meaning no plans to ever be more than a fling) and that in recent times, the two of you had different expectations of the "fling".
I might suggest going down that path and exploring that if you want to truly understand what happened? Flings like this are fantasies and they are fragile. You all went on and off for 14 years so it became a way of life - but what was that way of life? What was the reality and what was the fantasy? You have to get to the bottom of that to find peace.
As bad story tellers say, you had to be there. Sure on the outside with an objective eye, it looks like I deluded myself into thinking it was more than just an affair and I would even say that I upped the ante on the language to begin with by saying she was the love of my life.
However, all of that notwithstanding, she told me I was her soulmate, that without me she would be lost, that I am the only person that makes her life worth living, that if it wasn't for me she would never have got sober, that I was the only thing stopping her killing herself. That she loved me, that I was hers, that we belonged together. Does that sound like it was all in my head?
Then she started drinking. That's when it all changed. I thought things would go back to how they had been once she got sober but they never did. I was traumatised by how she had treated me during her drinking and I became more suspicious of her and less attentive. Finding out that she had gone to a gig with another man killed my trust and I stopped believing anything she told me. Perhaps if I'd been more empathic as we have discussed, things would have been easier. But she was suffering financial issues (rehab for her and her son cost a fortune), stress with her husband, depression and I was more engulfing towards the end because I was calling her out on her disappearances and what i suspected were lies.
When she told me that her husband had discovered the affair through texts which he had downloaded from her phone, she then followed that up by reassuring me that he didn't know it was me. I asked her what exactly her husband had said about the text messages, she replied, 'He won't tell me.' I didn't know what the hell was going on in the end and I thought it was more dignified for us both to walk away. I never believed I would ever do that but things just got crazy/silly.
