Dealing with a former colleague turned stalker, uBPD "Waif" tendencies

[Zeero]

Hello forum, this is my first post.

First off, big cw, SA content ahead, false accusations, suicide, the works.  Please, please don't continue reading unless you're prepared to be very upset and uncomfortable.

I (gay male) am currently in a traumatised state.  I am unable to work, I am spending my days pacing and talking to myself, attempting to puzzle out a seemingly impossible situation.

Many years ago, I was befriended by a colleague who I'll call Tess.  The early stages of our friendship were defined by Tess informing me of seriously upsetting stories regarding her personal circumstances.  Telling me her father was violent with her, that a mutual friend of ours was sexually abusive to her, that she'd been raped repeatedly by her college-age fiancée.

As one might expect, I believed all her narratives, felt incredibly sorry for her, and found myself willing to respond to her frequent texts.  Our friendship was accelerated by all these tales of her distress.

We lived in different cities, but work in the same wing of academia.  At one point, Tess was visiting, and we were working on a paper together.  She made an awkward pass at me.  I told her I was gay.  She persisted in her advances.  She asked me what I wanted to do and I said "I don't really have an opinion."  Eventually I submitted to her, feeling like "why not?"  It felt, at the time, easier to consent than it did to decline or resist.  We had a very vanilla sexual encounter, and it was fine.  Despite the odd pressure of her advance, I didn't find the experience upsetting.  This was the first sexual encounter I had had with a woman in over a decade, as I exclusively am attracted to men.

Tess continued to solicit further intimacy from me after this event, which I declined, telling her over and over again that I was gay.  She told me she had a suicide attempt and I spent an hour with her on the phone calming her down.  She told me she'd had a miscarriage as a result of our intimacy; despite the near-impossibility that this could have been the case, I saw no reason not to believe her, and felt intense guilt, and continued to meet her requests for emotional support and comfort about "nightmares" she would claim to have about it.

When I started dating a man who would become my boyfriend, Tess started texting me while I was on dates with him, asking me to call, telling me she had "a nightmare about the miscarriage".  I acquiesced a couple of times, and then, the third time she asked me to leave a date to phone her, I told her no, that I'd speak to her tomorrow.

She would then tell me the next day that my refusal to leave the date and call her would cause her to have "a seizure".  She would then claim further seizures over the next months, usually as a result of some minor thing her boyfriend had done.

She would then claim to me that her boyfriend had sexually assaulted her.  She described the assault, and it was too minor and inconsequential to really call an "assault".  (He was big-spooning her while they slept, and she was woken up to feel his erection pressing into her buttocks).  She kept telling me that she had to leave school because she was "crying about the assault".  She had to pull over her car because she was "crying about the assault".

It is really hard to describe to somebody just how convincing she was.  It sounds so ridiculous to type it all out here that I didn't have a highly skeptical attitude toward what she was doing.  But I believe survivors.  And I had no reason to believe she was lying.  And I couldn't comprehend that there was any reason for her to lie.

The next time I saw her, she again made intimate solicitations.  Again, feeling like it was easier to consent than to continue to resist, I agreed to two further encounters.  I then told her I really didn't want to pursue anything.  She kept asking why, then she got angry.  Then she started grabbing at me and begging and crying.  And then, yes, she faked a seizure in front of me.  I saw her faking a seizure, and I stepped into the bathroom, and started silently crying.

After she left, she gradually became more and more hostile toward me.  She started group chats with my boyfriend's friend group over Twitter.  She started sessions with my own therapist behind my back.  I'll repeat that last one: she started sessions with my own therapist, over Skype, behind my back.

She kept wanting to talk about "her visit".  She asked if I had a good time with her and I said that I did.  I gently mentioned that her intimate solicitations had started to make me uncomfortable, but that I was looking forward to a long future as friends.  She didn't reply, but then fired back: "you need to understand that the only reason I was asking you to sleep with me was because I hoped to undo the trauma of the miscarriage and have you hold me through the night while I tried not to cry and I'd probably cry but I'd try not to really hard".  Actual quote, that.

I stopped texting her as frequently and she started texting me more, asking why she felt there was space between us.  Asking me at 1am "is everything OK between us?"

Tess texted me strangely sinister things, like "why do you have such a hard time talking about our sexual relationship?  Everything that happened between us was consensual."  It read like a coded threat.

Then, I got an e-mail from a mutual friend demanding that I send Tess $2000 "for therapy".  The mutual friend was angry, disappointed, but wouldn't specify about what.  (I literally thought she was mad about me "being gay" and yet having sex with a woman, that's what I thought the leverage for this extortion attempt was.)

Tess and I talked about it, and Tess told me that her friend had "invented, of her own accord, a narrative in which I had sexually assaulted her (Tess)".  Tess assured me that her friend was incorrect.  Tess then said, "that said, I could really use the money."

It was actually only at this point that I opened up to my boyfriend, my parents, and my friends about Tess.  Told them we'd hooked up a few times, told her she'd been pressuring me into more intimacy and got mad when I turned her down.  I showed them my chat history and they were extremely alarmed.  "This person is crazy," they said.  "She is clearly stalking you," they said.

Instead of fulfilling this weird extortion attempt, I told Tess I wished for no further contact, and to never speak to me again.  "What did I do" she texted.  "[Expletive] you" she texted.

For the next six months, Tess informed anybody and everybody in the academic community that I had sexually assaulted her.  I attempted suicide over this.  I did not succeed (obviously).

I hoped Tess would stop.  She did not.  She e-mailed the dean at my university claiming I had assaulted her.  I called a lawyer.

My lawyer twice asked Tess to enter into mediated resolution.  Tess ignored the requests.  We filed a claim of defamation.

We included a motion for settlement.  We would waive the compensatory damages if she'd agree to stop lying about me and leave me alone.  She agreed to settle.  She requested "mutual confidentiality" as her sole stipulation.  I presume she was trying to protect herself vis-a-vis the actual nature of our relationship, where she was (effectively) sexually harassing a gay man.  I agreed to this stipulation.

We settled.  The woman wrote an apology and retraction.  The woman agreed to leave me alone.  I believed it was over.  I was wrong.

Immediately, the paper at her school published an article about me.  The headline read "Zeero settles lawsuit with woman who accused him of sexual assault."  The implication was that Tess was the plaintiff and I the defendant in a civil sexual assault case.  The article did state, in the body, that it was a defamation case.  It did not state that Tess had admitted she lied and apologised.  We provided the reporter with the apology and retraction, but it did not convince him, and Tess refused to provide the reporter with it.

As a result of this article being published, I had two colleagues respectfully decline to continue working with me.  "We don't think you raped her or anything, but we need to keep distance to abate our own anxiety."  I heard from a third party that one academic was positing that "Tess only admitted that she lied as a result of being coerced legally; she just wanted to avoid a legal hassle."

I started drinking heavily, and then I had another suicide attempt and was hospitalised.  My boyfriend was so distressed about the situation, both the false allegations and the suicide attempts, that our relationship fell apart and we split up.

Despite the "amicable resolution", I fully contend that Tess has continued down her path of rage.  I didn't publish anything or attend conferences.  I kept my head down and did low-key work.

It's now five years later.  The state of constant distress that this situation created had abated.  Until about ten days ago, I felt really normal and sane again.

I was announced to be a guest speaker at a symposium.  I was excited about the appearance.  One of the other speakers is a colleague who I've known for fifteen years.

The colleague informed the organisers of this symposium, suddenly, that he couldn't participate in it if I was speaking.  The organiser told me that my colleague stated that I'd "assaulted his friend".  The organiser cited that article from Tess's school as evidence.

Immediately I fell back into this spiral of distress.

I informed the organiser of what I surmised was happening: that the defendant in the defamation suit (Tess) was compelling my colleague to start trouble for me.  I told the organiser the truth, as far as I was able, that I'd been falsely accused and the defendant had apologised and agreed to leave me alone.  I offered to submit the retraction/apology if further clarity was needed.

The colleague, realising that he was now in a position of liability for defamation himself, blandly reached out to me and said the following.  "The organiser misspoke.  I did not say you assaulted my friend.  I simply read that article about the defamation suit and decided I didn't want to be on a panel with you."

I contend that my colleague is now lying.

Insofar as "how I'm handling this", I'm leaving things strictly in the hands of my lawyer.  My lawyer is making the smart decisions.

Insofar as why I typed all this here, I'm asking the following.  My therapist once advised me that Tess's behaviour followed the description of an un-approved theoretical BPD diagnosis, the "Borderline Waif" effect.  I read about it, and saw some similarities, and some differences, but enough similarity for me to theorise that this could be what is causing Tess to behave this way.

What is the best outcome I can expect, here?  I just want Tess to leave me alone; will she?  What conditions could exist that would cause her to stop interfering with my life?

I don't think it's possible for Tess to ever truly admit that I didn't assault her.  She can't bring herself to accept the truth, that she was pressing for something I didn't want.

I contend that just as she used narrative after narrative on me to coerce preferential treatment, she's now been using this "Zeero raped me" narrative, and if she ever actually truly admits that she lied, her entire world (including her employment) will fall apart.

I have constantly attempted to provide Tess with an open door to leave, to leave me alone, and yet here we are.  She can't bear to see me even speaking at a symposium without attempting to get me cancelled.

Please tell me what I can expect.  I'm utterly at a loss.  This situation has ruined my life and my psychology.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

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[kells76]

Hi Zeero and welcome. This is a group that does get it about the incredible difficulties of coping with a pwBPD who seems to be committed to blaming you, for years, to others in your small social/professional circle, about stuff that only has a grain of truth and that allows her to be the victim in the narrative.

My husband's kids' mom has many BPD-type traits and is married to H's former best friend, who has many NPD-type traits. We were all in the same small academic-related social subculture in our city for many years. Long story short, in my own way I understand parts of what you went through. The pwBPD's commitment to a false narrative (built out and embellished from a sliver of truth) where they are allowed to be the victim, while you have to be the perpetrator, is so destructive. I'm sorry you've been through what you've been through, and I understand the pain and exhaustion of trying to live your life while being blamed in such a way that defending yourself makes it look like you are guilty.

...

In an odd way, it almost "doesn't matter" what's going on with her, what her diagnosis or label would be. The critical part is the impact on you. That being said, her actions could certainly be in line with BPD, and it can help to have a specific framework for understanding what an effective path forward would be if that's the case.

My H's kids' mom doesn't have a diagnosis (as far as I know), but interacting with her "as if" she has BPD has been more effective than trying to interact with her "as if" she doesn't.

My thought is that "providing her with an open door" to disengage with dignity might work for a "generally normal" person, but probably won't be effective for a pwBPD, who may for emotional reasons find that holding on to the narrative is more important than moving on in life.

It's good that you have experienced professional support in your life. With what has happened, that would've been my first recommendation. Do you know if your L has any experience with "high conflict persons"? That's a term coined by lawyer Bill Eddy, who also wrote Splitting: Protecting yourself While Divorcing a Borderline or a Narcissist. While you aren't divorcing her, many of the legal dynamics may be similar. I'd recommend getting a copy and seeing if you and your L can get some guidance there; and, in general, reviewing Bill Eddy's High Conflict Institute materials.

Have your L and your T been able to talk to each other?

Keep us posted on how things are going. We'll be here to listen;

kells76

[Zeero]

Hi kells76, thank you so much for your response.  It was so clarifying and I'm glad to know I'm not alone.

You are correct, it is not up to me to attempt to understand/pathologize/diagnose what is happening with Tess.  In fact, I've come to realise that this is part of her mechanisms.  While I'm here, pacing, trying to make logical sense of what she's doing, trying to apply her behaviour and comprehend it in relation to my own psychology, this is precisely part of her desired goal.  She wants me to feel off-balance.  It's not worth any of my brain time to be analysing her behaviour.  I just need to accept that she is a threat and to make myself safe.

My lawyer has not engaged with Tess.  My lawyer has engaged with Tess's lawyer, and they are, in fact, friends outside of this professional engagement.  I recently asked my lawyer if he thought Tess's lawyer actually knew what Tess was up to, with the sexual harassment, and he replied, "oh, he doesn't care.  That's not his job."  I kind of smiled at that, and said, "wow. I like this guy."  My lawyer replied, "oh yes, you'd like him, he's great at his job."

I'm attempting, for now, to reason with the people at the symposium, show them evidence that I'm being sexually harassed (the evidence is obvious), and see if they'll soften.  I don't think there is any reason to attempt any engagement with Tess or her lawyer about this.  Negotiating with somebody who is trying to cause you harm will just cause more harm.

Thanks again for your feedback, it's so appreciated.