My First Assignment Here: His Ex-Wife.

[FallenCrest81]

Hello,

I am new to this site.  And quite honestly, I don't even know if I belong here, either.  I am struggling to find a place that I can "fit in", so to speak.  The places I have posted previous to this, just link me "The Good Wife" article, and tell me to ignore it, and that I can't control "Her" behavior.  Her, as in my fiance's ex.  But I don't want to control her behavior.  I don't want anything from her.

What I do want, is to understand. To heal myself. To be told if I am being paranoid in thinking she watches us, or not. I have never dated a person, or been related to a person with BPD.  I have never gone through the traumas any of you have experienced.  I am simply a woman, who loves a man, who once was married to a woman I think had BPD.  That ended up being collateral damage, from a charm episode from his ex-wife years ago.  That realizes now, with our wedding around the corner, isn't 100% fine as she thought she was all this time.  That she is terrified that his ex-wife is waiting in the wings to sabotage her moment again.

Which led me to this site.  But what right do I even have to post and ask for any advice or empathy, when I wasn't the directly with a person with BPD?  And maybe I don't belong here either, but I am hoping, that someone, somewhere, or some place will  welcome me.  So with that, I start my story, and hope I have found a place here for insight, advice, and working out some of my anxieties I didn't know I had.
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I am not sure where to start so I guess I will start with My Fiance (Peter), and his ex-wife (Julie)'s relationship.  I am sorry for the very long post.  But I appreciate everyone that reads it all, and responds.

Julie and Peter Met while both stationed in Idaho Air Force Base in first quarter of 2012.  Both are part of a group consisting of 3 guys and her that are all best friends. Party, work, and go to gym together everyday. Both dating other people. Peter dating another female Airman on base. Julie has a boyfriend in her hometown in WA state.

Julie proceeds to tell the entire group that her boyfriend has been mentally and physically abusive. Also steals money from her. Controlling as well. But anytime boyfriend comes to visit her on base, she refuses to allow the group to meet and confront the boyfriend. All 3 men in the group, are becoming increasingly angry at boyfriend, as Julie always tells them something abusive he did while visiting her on base. Her father was abusive mentally and physically. Story of being locked in a closet. Her relationship with older sister was bad. Sister was given everything, and she was not. Sister was verbally abusive. Stated she was raped in her teen years.

Peter becomes single sometime late June 2012. Group plans vacation trip to Virginia Beach in mid July 2012. During trip Julie invites Peter to hang out in her hotel room alone. Answer door clothed in towel only. She is still in a relationship. Peter leaves room after several minutes. Uncomfortable that she does not get dressed, and she is not single. Does not want to be inappropriate.

Julie and Peter begin hanging out individually outside of group more often. They become best friends. Mid August Julie tells Peter she has started having feelings for him. Peter feels the same. End of August 2012, Julie ends relationship with hometown boyfriend. Peter and Julie begin dating first week of September 2012. They are inseparable at this point. All the same hobbies, relationship goals, and lifestyle. Both want a large number of children and marriage. Sex is mindblowing.

Saying I love you to one another by Nov 2012. Peter introduces Julie to his family via Skype.  Julie begins actively participating in communicating with Peter's close knit family on social media.

Julie and Peter deploy together March 2013 for 6 months. Peter asks Julie to marry him while deployed mid July of 2013. Peter contacts his mom and dad back home to plan wedding in 5 weeks when they get back from deployment. Peter gets hurt during drill on deployment end of July 2013.

Peter and Julie arrive back in home station in Idaho first week of September 2013. Travel back to Peter's home state in IA second week of September. First time family is meeting Julie in person. But they have been communicating with her through facebook. Julie and Peter marry Sept 16, 2013, on 1 year anniversary of first date. None of Julie's family attended, as Julie had told everyone same stories of abuse by father, older sister conflict, and mom allowing it.

Peter and Julie return to Idaho shortly after marriage. December 2013, Julie becomes pregnant. Tells Peter she is not prepared for motherhood yet, terminates pregnancy. They do not go back to ID for holidays, as Julie starts exhibiting signs of depression. States abortion is cause.

January - April 2014: Julie is drinking is getting worse. There is some arguing, but it is more Julie being sad about abortion. Emptiness, crying, and unhappy more often than not. Peter arranges for them to live off base per Julie's request to make her happy. She doesn't want co-workers to see her drinking and depression as she has been formally diagnosed with Bipolar by a private doctor (Air Force will discharge if they know). Peter is paying all bills, including Julie's with his income. (rent, utilities, internet, cell phone bill, pet upkeep, car insurance for both) Julie pays nothing. Peter's injury is worse. Sex life is not impacted, and still happens frequently.

May 2014 to July 2014, the arguing is almost daily now. Julie is constantly berating Peter for everything. Julie now drinks a 5th of Vodka a day.

September 2014, Peter is medically discharged from Air Force from the injury to his leg while deployed in 2013. Receives 25,000 and $1100/mo for disability. Peter is still paying all household bills, Julie is not contributing. Peter asks Julie to move back on base for free housing. Julie refuses, and calls him selfish for asking.

December 2014, Julie refuses to go back to IA for holidays. Fighting has now become physical with Julie throwing items at Peter during arguments. Julie is now actively emasculating Peter during fights.. Peter is now sleeping on couch most nights. Occasional days Julie is happy, and they act like bestfriends. Sex is still occurring on a near daily basis.

January to April 2015, fighting is daily. Julie is now drinking while at work as well. Julie is angry that Peter gets to focus on college degree and she has to wait to get her MBA because she has to perform work duties on base. Julie hates everything about her life. Tells Peter he is never there for her, and all he cares about is sex. Divorce brought up once a month.

April 2015, Julie to be deployed for 6 months starting end of June 2015. Julie is isolating herself in bedroom. Full blown alcoholism. Julie announces to Peter she is going to Europe before being deployed. Doesn't care if he comes or doesn't. Peter in an effort to fix marriage decides to use remaining 6K from discharge payout to go. Peter is still paying all household bills himself. Julie has been saving all of her income. Divorce talk is weekly.

May 2015, Peter and Julie go on European tour for two weeks. No fighting occurs during trip. Julie is back to being very loving and affectionate during trip. Relationship feels renewed. They return back to Idaho, arguments begin day after return. Julie is angry that Peter asks that she provide financial assistance during deployment with her increase pay she will receive for separation. Julie believes that is her money, and he is trying to take it. Divorce talk from Julie every other day.

June to July 2015, Julie deployed overseas. Julie complains about being miserable to Peter. Hates the people there, hates the country. Peter is struggling to pay bills. Drops out of college to pick up a job to cover costs.

Aug to Nov 2015, Julie has ceased communication with Peter all together after a fight. Has slowly removed and began limiting access to her facebook to Peter and his family members. Removes Peter's last name from profile, uses first and middle name. Julie is irate that Peter used her checkbook for $100 for groceries without permission. Peter can no longer work, due to the severity of his injury. Needs a full hip replacement Financial situation is beyond dire for Peter at this point. Stops making payments on his car, and his car insurance during this time. Peter has only $50 a month for food. Sells any valuables he owns. Cuts off internet, and anything else not needed. Loses more than 50 lbs.

Mid Dec 2015, Julie returns from deployment. Julie comes back saying she wants marriage to work, and missed him while gone. Hated it the whole time, and miserable without him. Easier to ignore him, then to face that she was lonely. She asks they not go back to IA for holidays, to work on marriage and focus on the two of them. Sex daily since the day she returns home. Dec 28 2015, Peter sees text message from "Fluffy" saying I love you squishy on Julie's phone in middle of night. Wakes Julie up to ask about it. Julie becomes angry and can't believe he is snooping in her phone. Says it was her gay friend she was deployed with that she told Peter about. Julie has now changed her mind because of his snooping. She doesn't want to work on marriage. Wants a divorce, now. Cannot stand Peter, or their life. Cannot believe faithfulness was questioned. Dec 29, 2015 to January 3, 2016, massive fights happening daily. Julie wants Peter out of the house. Calls him a thief for writing check. Still irate that he would believe she would cheat on him. Demands a divorce. Fighting so bad that Peter has destroyed a bedroom door, and Julie has made several holes in the wall from throwing things at Peter. Peter has had enough, and agrees to divorce. Packs up some belongings and drives back to IA.

February 26, 2016, Peter returns to Idaho to sign final divorce papers. Packs up all the remaining belongings he left, and leaves Idaho for the final time. Julie has immediately reverted all social media to her maiden name.

Now this is where Peter and my story picks up. Julie is apart of it, as you will see. We met inconveniently.  Peter and I join an online group of about 20 members that play a game together sometime Mid year in 2014. We are not close to each other. We just play games with each other and other members of the group. I am married and he is married.

Peter disappears from group in Aug 2015. Resurfaces in January of 2016. I have been separated from my husband for last 3 months and living in separate rooms of our house, and waiting for divorce to finalize. I am also actively looking for an apartment to relocate to.

Peter and I begin communicating solely as friends, as we are both going through the same ordeal at the same time. No intentions of dating.

February 2016, I into my apartment. Peter driving to Idaho to sign divorce papers. Peter decides he wants to visit members of our group during trip. He visits one member in CA for a few days, and then heads over to me. I invited another member that lives 30 minutes away, so that there is 3 of us. I do not want Peter thinking I am interested. I just got out of a 13 year relationship. However, I find I enjoy Peter's company during his week visit with myself and the other member.

March to July 2016, Peter and I have progressed into dating. Julie has called Peter 3-4 times asking about bills and small talk.

July 17 2016, I am coming in to visit Peter in IA for his birthday and to formally meet his parents and siblings for 9 days. I am to arrive on July 18. I receive a frantic phone call from Peter. Julie and he had a 4 hour conversation just now. Peter is confused about me coming to visit. He officially breaks up with me. Julie called Peter crying, and saying she made a mistake. She loves him. Wants to work on their marriage. She never filed divorce papers with court. Marriage is still legal. She does want kids, she knows all the problems were her fault. She will get help for her depression and drinking. Peter is now confused. He doesn't want to jump back in with Julie, but being legally married means he cannot have a girlfriend. Also, he feels if he has any confusion, then it would not be fair to me.

Peter and I get off phone with the agreement that I will still come the next day. I suspect Julie has only contacted Peter because she found out about my visit somehow. I do not have much time, as I am getting on a plane in a few hours. I do some light looking into Julie's facebook.

I arrive the next day. For the first 6 days of my trip, minimum interaction with Peter. Julie keeps Peter on the phone for 10-12 hours straight every night on facetime, and he sleeps during the day. I ease drop on their conversations. Lots of love bombing from Julie to Peter and wanting him to move back ASAP. I hear Julie bring up abortion. "Our baby would have been beautiful. I can't believe I killed it." I spend most my time talking to Peter's mom. She shares same suspicion and fills me in on more details on Julie. I recognize the manipulative behavior of Julie. Usage of traumatic stories, victimizing herself, making herself appear weak all to illicit a specific response from men in which they feel the need to become her savior and white knight.

On the 7th day of my trip, I notice a shift from Julie. She now thinks Peter should only visit for a week or two, and they should go slow. It would be better. I suspected Julie would do this the closer I got to leaving. This confirms it for me. So now my goal is to prove she didn't want Peter back, she just didn't want him to move on.

I start snooping around facebook heavily. Julie blocked Peter and his family members from facebook. However, she unknowingly left some post settings wrong, and I am able to see tags and who has liked the post. These posts are from the time she was deployed. I follow the information trail to other people. Which leads me to a guy named Nick and his IG account. Where I find he posted up a selfie of Julie, and captions it with "She is forever and always my #wcw #mygirl" posted in May 2016. I have now caught her in a blatant lie, as Julie has repeatedly told Peter over the last week, she couldn't get over Peter and wouldn't. She's been alone since he left. I find her new IG handle from looking at who Nick is following on IG. She had created a secret secondary IG account while deployed.

I immediately go and tell Peter. Julie is at work and will not be reachable for hours. As soon as I say the name Nick, Peter becomes enraged. Nick is the name  of the "gay bff" she had on deployment that had texted her I love you. He finds Nick on facebook, and messages him. He receives a response an hour later. Nick is stationed in Germany. Nick tells him everything. Julie and him have been together since June 2015. Had sex daily. Nick is coming to Idaho in 2 weeks time to stay with Julie for a month while on leave. Screenshots of texts from Julie from this week, and early that day regurgitating the same things she had told Peter. I love you, can't wait to have kids, can't want to be with him, can't wait to feel his arms around her again during visit, I miss you. Nick adds Peter to facebook so he can view his wall. Filled with nothing but Julie posting and communicating back and forth with Nick's grandmother, parent, and siblings. Lots of his family being excited he found such a great girl. This all stems back to June 2015. Pictures of Julie partying, having fun, selfies with Nick, during deployment.

TO BE CONTINUED...

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

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[FallenCrest81]

Peter is irate. Julie calls, he confronts her about Nick. She confirms it is all true. He asks Julie who she wants, Nick or him. She says Nick. He asks what the point of this week was, and she just says I don't know. He hangs up, and goes ballistic on facebook. He feels like an idiot, because even after split he defended her to his family and said she wasn't a cheater, just a sad alcoholic. She calls him an hour after his facebook blow up, and I hear her say "Well now we can never get back together ever, because your family will hate me forever." to Peter. I am almost speechless hearing her say that. Over the next several hours, guys from the base begin reaching out to Peter when they see his postings. He finds out that Julie had been telling everyone on base, that Peter was abusive before deployment. And after he had left to IA, she had told them he hit her, stole from her, etc... same lines as she used with her ex hometown boyfriend.

When I get home, I reach out to Nick, as he has blocked Peter as his blow up could impact Nick's military career. I think he should know what happened during that week. Nick tells me thank you for telling him, and that he knows she messed up. But says he has put way too much work into their relationship to end it, and he is going to make rules for her. He had the ticket booked to see her, and he still was.

July 2016 to December 2017, I continue to visit Peter 3 or 4 times for a week at a time. We are still not together. I see Peter go through a rang of emotions. Depression. Self Pity. Judging himself. Mourning the relationship all over again. Questioning himself. You name it, I saw it. I really don't know why I hung in there. My life didn't stop, but I just tried to be there for him because I cared deeply. Julie does reach out to Peter a handful of times again too from a new number about what to do with cats, cutting off utilities, and wishing Peter happy birthday. Nick wanted full access to her phone and passwords. She bought a second phone. Peter decides to get a new phone number Mid 2016, Julie has no way to contact him now. I keep tabs on Julie occasionally. Nick and she break up last quarter of 2017.

January 2018 to May 2019, Peter is healed. We are officially back together in January. He moves to CA in March 2018 to live together. I still check up on Julie randomly. Not sure if paranoid or not, but feel need to. I begin noticing that Julie and I are sharing mutual friends with relatives of Peter I have had added since 2017. Relatives that are prone to accepting all incoming friend request. Goes from 1, 2, then 3. Peter has a new facebook account, due to lock out of original. During one check up, I find Julie has created a 3rd IG account now. She is following people that follow Peter's new IG and friends on his new FB as well. People she has not followed on her 2 prior IG accounts that are still open, vice versa for them with her. No history whatsoever of prior interaction. Julie goes on weird spurts of posting 5-10 images that are old pictures once a week. Some are off the Europe trip with Peter in 2015. I also suspect she has another IG account floating around, because she posted IG cropped photos of her going on trips with her older sister, visiting her parents, and other trips she took on her facebook. I also confirmed their divorce was finalized 6/16/16 from the county court website. This means Julie had blatantly lied about still being married to Peter on my 1st trip to IA, and had the finalized divorce decree for a full month. This leads me to believe that she has lied about a lot of her past traumas of rape, abusive exes, and her bad relationship with her sister. I do think she felt invalidated by her parents, as she comes from an Asian background, as do I, and that is common.

June 2019 to Present. Peter and I get engaged in June after we visit my parents and he asks for permission from my parents. Peter posts pictures with my parents, captions them with "family trip". I post up a link to our wedding website to Peter's wall in July. I do a random check on Julie, and she is deployed again. Julie's IG is very active. I notice she posts a picture with a welcome screen that shows her full name. She still legally has Peter's last name in Air Force, but has not used it on any social media since, well ever. None of her prior 2 IG accounts have any pictures referencing Peter's last name. Everything is her maiden name. This is the first time, I have seen her post his last name publicly. Last month, I posted 2 more wedding updates to facebook, and Peter's wall. I checked Julie's IG, and sure enough within a very short time frame after my posts, Julie has posted up another imagine with Peter's last name included. One was a mural on a random wall she spray painted with someone else, and she signed her name in paint with Julie and his last name. Her latest IG post happened the day after Peter and I finally had updated our relationship status to engaged, as we had just not gotten around to updating it. We both aren't huge SM people. Julie took a picture of a random plague she got for advertising that again, shows her name with his last name. His last name is spelled wrong, and she mentions it in the caption about how they spelled had spelled her name wrong.

I have always believed she kept an eye on our social media accounts. I don't think it is just some random coincidence that she suddenly has decided to post Peter's last name repeatedly, so that 3 of the last 6 IG posts she has posted in the last 2 months, contains his last name so boldly and within days of a post referencing our upcoming nuptials. Am I crazy? I don't know, really. But I worry, that I am just trying to see patterns where none are really. I am cognizant that I could making patterns in Julie's behaviors because I want to see them, not because they are really there.

And if there aren't any patterns, how do I stop feeling this anxiety that she will come out of nowhere again, to stop our wedding.  To have Peter go back into that space again?  What will happen to me, if he does?