Hello -- Long time since I've posted. I was married for 4 years to a UBPD, had a nasty divorce, but we are now successfully co-parenting, and it seems that, by holding my boundaries with my ex-wife, I've encouraged her to largely curtail the violent and abusive behavior that was common when we were together.
And so, moving forward in life...
Having been married twice now, I'm not interested in ever being married again, and am highly skeptical of romantic love and the concept of finding "the one." I've started viewing all romantic relationships as limited and temporary — they all have an expiration date, and that's OK, and I should learn to be OK with that. I don't ever want to get so invested in a relationship that I'm devastated if it were to end. I still enjoy the company of intimate partners — the connection and pleasure of sex when it happens, and hours spent over coffee or time in the woods in meaningful conversations, learning about people's lives and what makes them tick. I do nothing to lead anyone on to thinking I want more than that, and I'm up-front about everything I've said in this paragraph.
(Sometimes I question whether this point of view is healthy for myself; I'm hashing that over with my therapist. But it seems to be my truth right now)
About a year after the break, I started casually dating someone. It seemed from the start that she was more interested in me than I in her. She clarified that she didn't want the standard "relationship ladder," wasn't interested in monogamy or living together or marriage or a family. I was fine with that, and I shared my above thoughts with her — that my priorities are
- My child
- My self-care and personal health
- My work
- My friends, family and relationships
At first the relationship seemed ideal — we'd go camping, have fantastic and frequent sex, she'd bring me fresh-baked cookies and have sex. After a few months, though, something started making me uncomfortable — she wanted to have more of my time, and i started to wonder whether I was getting love-bombed. Then she let me know she was experiencing panic attacks at her work (retail) in which she would collapse in tears in front of customers who might have just been looking for socks. She confided in me that she suffered from PTSD from abandonment trauma — she felt abandoned and neglected by her parents and past lovers. She started having panic attacks when we were together.
Then in December she took a leave of absence from work and pretty much holed up in her apartment, resisting my invitations to go out for a hike or a meal. She wanted me around, wanted support, sex, company, to be held. I started to get very uncomfortable with this — it seemed she'd alienated all her friends, it didn't feel healthy to me, and it started to conflict with boundaries I had set around my time. I started feeling responsible for her and her mental state. I started to feel as though I was being held hostage — that if I were to leave to go home, she might start self-harming or worse (She has self-cutting scars on her hips, and had a troubled youth).
When I'd try to leave, she would insist that she needed "After-care" following traumatic conversations. It was starting to feel very co-dependent.
I finally told her that I wanted to remain supportive during this time — that she clearly was having a rough time and was in a lot of pain; but that I need to scale our relationship back to platonic out of responsibility to my own needs. This didn't sit well with her — "You waited until the worst possible moment to dump me!" etc. Our discourse deteriorated — I tried to offer support and empathy and love the best I could without compromising myself, and she insisted that any communication I made was "invalidating" and that my "boundaries" were a way of washing my hands of her.
I dreaded the prospect of talking to her. At some point, I stopped answering her calls because they'd turn into hours-long crying/accusation spells where I felt I couldn't offer any more support, and I told her so. She ended with a few text/email bursts and a "do not contact me again."
On one hand, I feel relieved. I think I learned from my previous marriage not to get manipulated into caretaking and putting my own needs aside; It feels as though in this case, I was able to listen to my intuition, and to separate myself from a situation that I wasn't comfortable in.
On the other hand, I feel a lot of lingering guilt wondering — could I have handled this better, with more empathy for a person who was in extreme anguish? Was I holding my boundaries, or did I cross over into being an abandoning jerk?
How does one know?And yet another part of me misses the intense sexual connection I had with this person and wonders whether I could have built something meaningful If i'd "Leaned in" on the relationship instead of walked away.
Ah, live and learn.
Have any of you had similar situations, and what do you make of it?Happy new year — Caco
