Dear Paradoxy,

The more I talk to you, the more aware I become, the more broken I get

I am very sorry, Paradoxy. I was rather harsh, specially in my last post, because I was trying to break through the thick veil, where you still wanted to find excuses for her and ascribe her behavior to stupidity and naivete, rather than manipulation. I was trying to tell you: don’t you see?? she is fooling you! Get away!

But I am very sorry for what happened to you. Yes, she was manipulating you, and I actually found a “proof” that she was lying about the half-naked photo too. I’ll present it to you now, just in case she ever comes back claiming she was never lying and that it was all a “misunderstanding.”

So on March 20, in your first post, you wrote that she admitted (back when it happened, in Nov 2022) that the man in the photo is her ex, whom she briefly got back together with, since she still had feelings for him:

I confronted her when I realized she deleted it and she told me it was the ex that she still had feelings for, and it happened on the day after that we broke up from the decision that its better to not date at all. Obviously I was hurt and I broke up with her in that moment of pain but then I decided to take her back on the technicality that we were still broken up when this happened, so I cannot accuse her of cheating. She got forgiveness on a technicality.

So basically she admitted to having slept with him, but you forgave her since on that particular day you were broken up, right?

But then a few days ago, on April 9, you said that she later gave you a different explanation of the photo:

She said that on the day she took the picture and video with her ex, she was actually in her towel with her ex’s sister who was removing her braids but when she got busy, the ex’s sister told the ex to remove the braids for her and so she just allowed him to remove her braids for her. Keep in mind that she was naked, but she had the towel wrapped around her body so her naked body is not visible to her ex.

So now, according to this version, she claimed that she didn’t sleep with her ex, but that he was only helping her with her braids.

So when the half-naked photo was originally taken, sometime in November 2022, she admitted she slept with the guy in the photo. Only you didn’t know at the time that this guy was also living with her, as her housemate. But then a year later, when you found out that the guy in the photo is actually her housemate ex, she told you a different story: that she didn’t sleep with him, but that he was only helping with her braids.

In other words, she was lying…

You probably forgot what she said a year ago, and so when she came up with this new explanation, in which she presented herself as innocent, you believed her. And she got away with a lie.

I can imagine there were more examples like that. You actually said it yourself that you don’t remember exactly what happened more than a year ago, which is only normal:

the issue is I don’t know the exact dates of her “cheating” and she said she doesn’t remember and since it has been more than a year, even my memory is not that accurate.

I found another example, related to the prostitution case, where you in recent days remembered the events more favorably for her than what you stated in your first posts, some 3 weeks ago. Perhaps as you were arguing about these events in recent days and weeks, she was coming up with new versions of the story, different than what she told you even 3 months ago.

So it seems to me that she was twisting the story all the time – to make it more favorable for herself – and you couldn’t follow it any more. And you wanted to believe her, and so you did.

Anyway, I hope that you see now that she wasn’t innocent and oblivious, but unfortunately wanted to deceive you.

Now everything feels fake. What if every moment we had was manipulated? What if all the happy moments I had were fake? What if I was being used the entire time? The realization is breaking me. I want to cry.

I hear you, Paradoxy.  She was fake, I mean she wasn’t honest with you. She might have liked you, but she had her own demons and her own crooked ethics, which she learned from her aunt and probably the rest of her family too. That’s not an excuse at all – so please don’t see it as an excuse and a reason to reconcile. Because she did hurt you immensely.

But it is a lesson, a learning experience, as you say. And you had this important lesson early in your life, at only 19. If you learn from it and heal what needs to be healed, you can have a much healthier relationship sometime down the line.

You can still find a loving and caring woman to be your wife. But in order to do that, you’ll need to do two things: 1) heal the emotional wounds from your childhood, and 2) update your view about women – get rid of the false beliefs.

But what now? I have no one. Not my parents. Not my friends. I am just all alone. Like I was, once before. My suffering is all for me to bear.

Dear Paradoxy, I hear you, people on this forum hear you. You are not alone. And also, it would be important to have someone with whom to release and process your emotions. Please talk to a counselor, if you’ve got one at college.

I want to cry. I want to release my pain but I have exams and other things to worry about. In a week, I will be traveling to my parents’ place again and I cannot show them my grief cause they will ask questions.

Your urge to cry is understandable. You do need to cry it all out. But you’re right, it wouldn’t be good to show it in front of your parents, because you’d probably only get judgment and scolding from them. They would hurt you even more. So no, don’t show your pain to them. But show it to someone you can trust. Perhaps to the close friend of yours, whom you confided in about your fights with B?

But the best would be to express it to a counselor. Because they are professionals, they know how to “hold you” and contain you as you express your pain.

You don’t have to be alone in this, not this time. You were alone and helpless as a child, but now you can help yourself, by seeking people who can understand and who can help you. A counselor, primarily. And it’s good that you reached out here too, baring your soul, even though it wasn’t easy.

I feel like God gave me this experience to teach me to be careful what I should wish for.

Well, I believe you had this experience to learn and heal, as I said above. Please don’t use it to make false conclusions, neither about yourself nor about women in general. You can come out of this a new man, a healed man, who is ready for a healthy and a truly nurturing relationship. So use this opportunity for good: for growth and for healing.

I am here, if you need to talk. I have more things to say, but I’ll stop for now. I hope to hear more from you, as you start a new phase.

I know it’s hard, it’s excruciating to have your dreams crushed like that. But you know, what you had with her was a house built on sand. Now you need to build it on a solid rock… and as I said, that requires healing…

Dear Paradoxy,

And she didn’t gaslight me, she just said that she thought the fact that the guy was her ex felt unimportant to her

She already agreed that she would not wear the less revealing outfits, and barely did it too but she tends to have the habit of forgetting things too easily

She has a habit of considering things to be not as important as they actually are, which means she thought it was okay to have a casual hug with men; she thought all she had to do was not partake in one of those more intimate hugs

So if someone slaps you in the face, but then says “I thought it wasn’t important not to slap you in the face”, and then apologizes, and then keeps slapping you in the face, and apologizing… what would you think of this person?

She has been slapping you in the face all this time, pretending she is oblivious, she “wasn’t thinking”, she “forgot”, she “didn’t think it was important”…. when in reality, she has been lying to you, manipulating you and making a fool of you.

You believed that she is oblivious and too “stupid” to understand those things. And your belief (which you adopted from your parents) that women tend to “do stupid things” actually came as a boomerang: because you believed she too is innocent and stupid, rather than manipulative and calculating.

Basically, the false belief that you have about women blinded you to the fact that this girl is manipulating you. That she isn’t some silly oblivious woman, whom you need to teach the right manners, but in fact a very good actress and a manipulator.

she apologized and told me she was just ranting her feelings in anger and she didn’t mean it,

She always apologizes, but then keeps doing it. That’s why I told you: those are fake apologies. She knows if she apologizes, you will be naive enough to forgive her, and it will all stay the same: she behaves the way she likes, and she gets to keep you as her financial backup.

Because that’s what she’s been doing all this time: taking your money and even convincing you to invest in some financial schemes, in which you lost a lot of money (we lost a lot of money in trading too). And whatever little you earned, went to cover her health expenses (she got severally sick or she had to get her tooth removed or something).

Now, after knowing the situation a bit better, I am almost sure that this girl doesn’t want to lose you because you are giving her money. You have been financially supporting her for most of the time that you were together. And she doesn’t have anyone else to support her, because it seems her father is not giving her money, and her aunt… well we know under what conditions she can get money from her aunt. So she depends on you financially. And that’s why she is so keen on keeping you around.

She still says that what she did in January is not cheating because we had broken up in that one week and that it is none of my business because we were not dating

You were breaking up and reconciling all the time. It was your pattern – you always reconciled after a few days or a week at most, haven’t you? You even broke up and reconciled around Christmas 2022, when you were visiting your parents, and she was visiting her aunt who lives in the same area. The reason for the breakup was that you asked her the gold-digger question, but a few days later you already reconciled:

But a few days later we realized we could not live without each other and we got back together.

So let’s put this into perspective: she knows you have a turbulent relationship, with constant breakups and reconciliations. But after one such breakups, which is similar to the others, and which is most likely only temporary, she suddenly starts feeling so “depressed” and “heart broken”, that she falls for her aunt’s evil plan and goes and prostitutes herself. For 3 days out of 7 that you were broken up. And then you reconcile and you travel back together to college (if I understood the chronology of the events well?). As if nothing happened.

Go figure. I am actually having a hard time comprehending this. But what is for sure is that she wasn’t too affected by her stint with prostitution, since she later acted as if nothing happened.

Oh and by the way, if you were only broken up for a week, but she kept messaging with the guy for a while afterwards, and even developing feelings for him – then this would be cheating on her part, wouldn’t it? If we want to be super “technical”.

She still says that what she did in January is not cheating because we had broken up in that one week and that it is none of my business because we were not dating

So if you break up every second week, and she goes to sleep with another man each time you break up, it would be none of your business either? And she would be called loyal and faithful?

Hey Beni,

Mostly it is helping myself these days. Yeah, like today and yesterday I need support to play and be stimulated and it’s so hard to give it to me. So the best I can do is try to not suffer too much and endure it.

Still part of me feels that I only get accepted if I do whatever pleases people and I endure it.

I wonder if you, as a child, felt guilty for playing and simply having fun and being care-free, because your mother was always unhappy and sad, in the martyr mode? And so you felt guilty if you were happy and enjoying yourself?

And perhaps you rather did what was expected of you? Actually, now I’ve taken a look at you earlier posts: you said that you didn’t do what was expected of you, but would rather freeze or engage in a self-destructive behavior:

I’m not sure if I tried to help her. I’m more prone to the freeze or self destructive behavior. I belief she couldn’t give me space, maybe I was part of meeting her needs.

Okay, so you were not a “good, obedient” boy – you rather went into the freeze or rebel mode. But underneath that reaction (which was a defense mechanism), you felt not accepted for who you are, right? You felt that not even your purest, selfless love is good enough:

I just want to be accepted. I’m when I think of it even afraid of that when I give selfless/love that it might be received that way.

It sounds like you felt you were not good enough, your love was not good enough. Perhaps you simply being yourself: a joyful, playful, loving kid was not good enough? Perhaps when you were playing and wanted to show your achievements to your parents (in the sense of “Mom, look at me!”, or “Dad, look at me!”), they didn’t appreciate it – your mother because she was always sad and burdened, and your father because he was working a lot and rarely at home? So perhaps play became not a source of joy and pride, as it should be for a child, but a source of distress and pain?

If so, then allowing yourself to play – to feel the joy and the impulse from within, without feeling guilty about it – might be what you truly need at the moment.

I think what I can do well is to create harmony in daily live that’s what I do when I regulated myself and I’m doing public things. Maybe there’s someone who’s afraid to skate in the park and I notice it. I go to the person and I talk with her about it and let her know he/she’s welcome.

That’s nice. You did say in the beginning of your thread that you would like to have a deeper connection with people (“Right know I belief that what I actually want is deep connection with people.”). So it seems you are doing that now, offering your selfless, pure love (in form of kindness and help to a stranger), and that’s how you are expressing what you couldn’t as a child, i.e. what was not appreciated by your mother (or both parents?).

I think it’s rather simple that the meaning is to feel what would be the greatest now or in the foreseeable future and if you make it happen, that’s the meaning.
Like give a hug to this person or walk to the Garden, leave the house. Express yourself. Ask someone who she archived a goal. Tell someone that you appreciate him.

Yeah, it seems expressing your true self, your compassionate and loving self, is your priority at the moment. Also, expressing yourself perhaps in play (e.g. skate-boarding), or doing other activities that bring you joy, instead of getting stuck in the usual freeze response, which actually blocks your joyful self-expression.

Dear Paradoxy,

She said that she was hurt by the break up, she was hurt by my parents’ views on the women today due to the horrible experiences they have come across.

When I said she was hurting, I was referring to the hurt that predates your relationship. The hurt that made her prostitute herself. The hurt that makes her feel loved and accepted by people who pay her for sex. That kind of hurt. Because those are not sentiments and reactions of an emotionally healthy person. Those are reactions of someone with an emotional injury.

She might have been offended by you asking if she was a gold digger, but it wouldn’t have caused a normal person to go prostitute herself. She is blaming you for hurting her, but she had been hurt much earlier, by her parents and other family members, in her childhood and youth. And she is still carrying that hurt, and acting out from it.

She said she felt more loved by other men than with me cause of the stereotype my parents had of women in general in the modern world.

I think she actually has self-esteem issues, she feels unworthy, otherwise she couldn’t have prostituted herself. And she seems to want validation from you – that’s why she is talking about discrimination and is so easily offended by your parents’ views (you had numerous fights about that, right?).

But she is not getting any validation, partly (1) because of your general suspicion of women, which you inherited from your parents (spiced up by the fact that her aunt is actually a gold-digger and a woman of suspicious morale), and more importantly (2) because she behaves in inappropriate, sexually provocative ways with men.

So she feels rejected by you and your parents, but at the same time she is behaving in ways that prove your parents’ suspicion. She is offended that you don’t give her more respect, while at the same time she is not warrantying that respect – based on how she behaves with men.

My guess is that she is in her own vicious circle of wanting approval and ruining it with her own actions. But then she doesn’t want to accept that it is HER who is ruining her own credibility, but is blaming you for that. That’s the double abuse I was talking about: first by lying/cheating, and then by blaming you for it.

So this could be her inner struggle: wanting respect and ruining it. Feeling worthless (and doing things with which she further humiliates herself), but wanting to feel worthy.

You didn’t cause her to feel worthless (it happened in her childhood and youth), but you are adding to the feeling, by staying in a relationship with her and trying to force her to be decent, and teach her about it (about the rules and moral codes), and calling her stupid when she doesn’t comply.

This whole attempt of yours to “save” her is futile, because her problem is not lack of knowledge, but an internal battle. A battle that she is waging with herself, and you got caught in the middle. You are trying to save her, but as I said before, only she can save herself.

Fine, I could start seeing her like that. And then what? How do I fix it? How do I correct this subconscious desire in her?

You cannot. Only she can help herself – if she chooses to. If she acknowledges that she has a problem and then goes to therapy with it.

I thought I could fix it if I loved her right, but that didn’t work. I thought that my desire for her would have enough effect on her to not appreciate other men’s desire for her.

I just thought my love could fix those issues, those flaws in her.

That’s not how our psychological problems work. If something is missing from our formative years (from that cement that goes into the foundations of the house), it can only be healed by inner work and inner transformation. No external substitute will do. Even if you were the most perfect boyfriend, and even if you tolerated her cheating, she would still have the internal battle within herself. And she would still find reasons to falsely accuse you of things.

You thought you were helping her heal by accepting her lame excuses and giving her another chance. And then trying to educate her how to behave, getting pissed off with her, calling her names, etc. This had zero positive effect on her, it only added fuel to the fire. And it ruined you and lead you to exhaustion, as you said, because she was completely closed for any kind of “correction”. Because as I said, her problem is not lack of education, but an internal battle.

I am able to accurately describe how she feels and she knows that I am the only person who understands her so well, but that doesn’t mean I do not have a limit to how much foolishness I can tolerate.

You don’t understand her, Paradoxy. She is not stupid or foolish. She is in an internal battle with herself, on one hand wanting to feel worthy and respected, and on the other probably believing she doesn’t deserve it. And then sabotaging it by acting out sexually. That’s just an assumption on my part, but whatever it is, it’s not something you can fix for her. She would need to acknowledge that she has a problem first, and then seek therapy.

Like come on, how can you expect me to not get angry when she sleeps with another man and then blames me for it? It is so draining to have an argument with her cause of how stubborn she is.

It’s normal to get angry, but it’s not normal to repeat the cycle endless times, trying to make her see how she is hurting you, and she not wanting to listen, and you trying to force her to listen (the amount of pressure I have to put to force her to listen is really high. I have to figuratively shut her mouth with tape to make her listen, that is the level the situation has become.)

I hope you haven’t actually taped her mouth (!) but it shows how strongly you are attached to changing her. Which is an unhealthy amount of attachment. You would need to let her go.

You cannot force the person to see you, to have empathy for you, to understand your pain – they have to feel it themselves. And she doesn’t feel it. She is very much in denial of the destructiveness of her actions and her own responsibility in it.

I will still consider what you have said, but I think I need to cut ties with her cause she comes back telling me how hurt she is and etc that I am detaching when it is so obvious that I am detaching cause of the numerous amount of times that she has hurt me.

I never said you shouldn’t cut ties. On the contrary, I advised you not to get back together with her. She is still trying to lure you back, to make you feel sorry for her, telling you that you broke up for stupid reasons etc. When the truth is that you have every right to detach yourself from her, after everything she did.

So yes, I’d encourage you to detach yourself, to stop wanting to change her, to stop believing you can heal her. Because her healing can only come from within – if and when she is ready for it.

Hey Beni,

glad you’re doing better!

Haha, I do the same with the physical symptoms. Sounds like you’re confident and hands on about this!

Yeah, I believe in the mind-body unity, and I’ve practiced this approach since long ago. And it really helps because it gives me  some sense of control and the ability to impact things. It’s not like my body is against me, but it’s more like my body is trying to tell me something…

Juhuu, feels good to read that. Reminds me at Gabor Maté I heard him say last week. Asking yourself if you’re good enough is the wrong question. Do you ask yourself if a tree is good enough or a Mounatin

Yeah, we are all inherently good enough and worthy. But we were made to believe we are not…

Is it a way of giving love?

Yes, you could say that. It does come from my heart and I believe in it.

I belief in the way things are and so far haven’t met a higher power. It can be frustrating to know things you’d like to do and not being able to do them. I think praying can really help me to be an antidote to feeling helpless. Then I can pray for finding way’s to do what I want to do with joy. To overcome my obstacles in times of despair.

Okay, it seems you do know what you’d like to do, but you feel unable to do it. (It can be frustrating to know things you’d like to do and not being able to do them.)

Because in your previous post you confirmed this understanding of mine: you don’t know what your contribution (to the world) should be, and you want to pray for clarity on that.

But it seems that you do know what you’d like to do (i.e. what your contribution should be), but you feel unable to do it? Or you feel no joy in doing it? (Then I can pray for finding way’s to do what I want to do with joy.) Oh perhaps you feel a certain obligation to do some acts of service, to serve the world in some way, but you feel no joy in doing that? Please help me understand because it’s not quite clear to me…

Thanks for sharing this observation. What you write is very close to how I feel. Yeah, this impulse confuses me and it is a challenge to bear. What I do is to let go which takes some time and control.

You are welcome, Beni. Okay, if that’s how you feel, perhaps it is related to the above: feeling a certain obligation or pressure to do something grand and noble (to serve the world in some manner), but not feeling joy in doing that? Again, I apologize in advance if I am misunderstanding it.

It feels good to read that

Happy to hear that 🙂

Hi Paradoxy,

isn’t admitting the mistake similar to taking responsibility for the mistake?

No, it’s like saying “Yes, I robbed the bank, but you made me do it.”

She is blaming you for sleeping with other men, basically.

She is abusing you and then blaming you for the abuse. It is called victim blaming.

If that obliviousness is actually fake, then that girl deserves an oscar for her performance cause that is how convincing it is.

Maybe she should be an actress. And second, if you want to be with someone so “oblivious” and “stupid” (this level of stupidity makes me wonder whether she is actually 24 or actually 5), then go ahead. I don’t want to keep trying to dissuade you, if that’s what you really want.

I just can’t imagine any other girl caring for me the same way B cared for me. Like which girl would help dealing with dandrives in someone’s hair?

Well, that’s nice of her to try to help. But you should know that when two people get married, they vow to be there for each other in sickness and in health. It is normal to care for one’s partner if they are sick. However it’s not normal to lie to them and cheat on them.

But today she has taken full responsibility for her actions and promised to not bother me anymore but claims to have trust in God that I will come back to her….

So she and I have come to the agreement that we are now broken up and we will no longer talk about the relationship but she is welcome to ask for my help for her work or whenever she needs it.

Good that you decided to stop going back and forth on it. You said she has finally taken full responsibility for her actions – what exactly did she say?

My attraction for her has nothing to do with her stubbornness. I definitely do not want someone who is too high on their horse to acknowledge what is right and what is wrong. Yes I want someone who understands me but I definitely do not want someone who literally drains all the energy out of me before they finally understand me.

But you keep trying to make her understand. For more than a year now, with no success. Until all your energy was drained. And you still want to give her another chance. It seems you really want this stubborn (“oblivious”, according to you) girl to finally listen to you.

You said something similar about your father: you said he was incapable of understanding your feelings (he is INCAPABLE OF UNDERSTANDING). She too seems incapable of understanding. So I see a pretty big similarity there.

I’ve seen how these girls behave, literally no respect for their partners. These girls make B look like she is a perfect angel from heaven

How are these other girls worse than B? Because I have a hard time imagining bigger disrespect than cheating on you and then blaming you for it.

Besides, the girls who are actually worth it, won’t even give me a chance. So I am just stuck with my fate.

Based on what you said about your online encounters with girls, between ages 15 and 17, you did have some success, but it was either your parents or the girl’s parents who put an end to your online romance. But you concluded – incorrectly – that none of those girls were interested in you. So I am guessing it’s not true now either – that none of the normal, decent girls (which can be found, I guarantee you!) would be interested in you.

Dear Paradoxy,

I asked B recently why she did what she did and she told me that when we broke up, she was heart broken and felt abandoned and in that moment, she felt that the only person who cared for her was her aunt. So she decided to just do what her aunt told her to do, because she was under the impression that only her aunt cared for her. So heart break just became a catalyst for what happened, and her aunt was waiting for the opportunity like a predator waiting to pounce on their prey and B fell right into her trap.

This idea that she was a puppet of her aunt’s is a false one, because she already rejected her aunt’s wishes in the past. Her aunt told her to stop seeing Al, and she didn’t obey, which lead to her stopping contact with her aunt for an entire year:

She told B to leave Al because she knew Al was not a good man but B, on her own accord, rejected her aunt and decided to stay with him. After which, she stopped talking to aunt 1 for a year.

She could have similarly rejected her aunt’s wishes in the prostitution case too. But she didn’t. And eventually she even developed feelings for the guy.

So can you really be mad at a 5 year old?

You should certainly not date a 5-year old…

And I don’t see her craving men’s attention, she just naturally gets the attention cause that is how physically attractive she is, so I don’t see any craving

She gets the attention, but she also returns the attention, e.g. she started sexting with the classmate of yours who was hitting on her, right after you broke up. She went to the resort to meet her guy friend, right after another breakup of yours. She went to a concert, where the music artist started hitting on her – which means that she made herself quite visible, so the music artist would single her out from the crowd. This all seems like someone who is very much craving and seeking male attention, not only passively receiving it.

She is fine with staying at home minding her own business if that is all she had to do.

Is she really? Because after your most recent breakup, she didn’t stay at home, but immediately went to party with her girlfriends, and then she went to a resort to be with her guy friend, and then she went to the beach:

her going to a concert with her girlfriends right after the break up to party (which she knows I am not a fan of cause she gets hit on by men a lot, which is exactly what happened at the concert by a music artist), her going to a resort several hours away to be with her guy friend, hugging her guy friend and his friend too close, her wearing a bikini/revealing outfit (while with her guy friend) and posting it despite knowing that I hated it, going to the beach in another revealing outfit,

But she did say that all her dress ups were for herself  (including the bikini outfit), which I think is bs cause no woman dresses up in a fancy outfit just for themselves.

If it were for herself, she wouldn’t have put it on social media.

And another excuse she had for the bikini incident is that she was in her bikini early morning when everyone was asleep, which is so stupid cause she is literally at a resort, she cannot possibly assume that everyone would be asleep.

Paradoxy, you are forgetting that she went to the resort with the goal to meet her guy friend. She didn’t go there to have a swim early in the morning while no one is around. She went to meet him. And she did. And they took a photo. And she posted it on social media. Her true intentions are very clear and transparent, but she is trying to muddle the waters with her ridiculous excuses. She is trying to make a fool of you, Paradoxy.

She also said that she said all those things about me ruining her life and etc cause she misunderstood and she was just angry and she asked me to forgive her for what she said in anger, so should I?

Please look up the term “the abuse cycle”: it is when the abuser is trying to convince their victim to stay in the relationship, by promising they would change and claiming they didn’t mean what they said, and that they are sorry. The victim agrees and the relationship gets better for a short while, but then the abuse starts again. The abuser never really changes. All those are empty promises.

You said she never listens to you:

Its like her brain resets every 5 minutes and everything I tell her just goes over the head. You can literally feel the words going in one ear and her processing it for a second and then leaving the other ear.

You have been trying to explain to her why her behavior is hurting you, why it is wrong, but she doesn’t even want to hear it. To me this is a sign that she doesn’t want to change. She isn’t interested in hearing how she is hurting you. She is only interested in continuing the status quo.

she admits her mistake one moment, and then blames me again, then goes back to apologizing apologizing and blaming me. I think she just wants me to be blamed for my role in causing her mistake, even if she takes responsibility for actually doing the mistake. So she takes responsibility over her actions AND blames me for causing her to do these actions.

No, she doesn’t take responsibility for her actions. She is blaming you. She only admits that she did the deed (e.g. sleep with someone for money). But she is blaming you for it.

But that doesn’t change the fact that her behavior and her lying is 1000x worse than my one lie.

Yes, and your lie wasn’t a lie really. It was a promise to her not to tell the truth to anybody, even to your close friend. So she actually asked you to lie. And you didn’t oblige.

So the technicality of the issue makes me look like I betrayed her and lied to her.

Don’t get caught up on technicalities. Look at the bigger picture. As you yourself said, she is treating you 1000 times worse than you treat her. She is pointing out at the speck in your eye (your inability to hide the truth from your close friend, or you getting angry and calling her names), whereas she refuses to see a massive log in her own eye.

But like I said, she claims to have said what she said in anger, just like I have called her rude names in anger too, so should I really not forgive her for her false accusations?

No, you shouldn’t, because she will be “angry” again and will accuse you unjustly again (as it happens in the abuse cycle). And she is still accusing you for the fact that she cheated and prostituted herself. She took no responsibility for it – she is blaming either you or her aunt. But she herself took no responsibility.

I know that she is a guilt-tripper and manipulator, but it is like she doesn’t even realize she is doing it. It is like a 5 year old crying and throwing tantrums and pouting and showing glassy eyes to get what the child wants, and you just feel so sorry for the child that you just feel the temptation to give in to what the child wants.

As I said, better not have a relationship with a 5-year old…

You know what one of the key features of a toxic person is? They never take responsibility for their actions and always blame others. You can say that she is a like a 5-year old, or you can say that she is a toxic person. Regardless of how you choose to view it, she is not someone you want be in a relationship with.

There is a saying, that you should not go to the market when you are hungry because you will just buy the wrong things. Maybe I just picked the wrong person out of my own desperation for a friend.

A very good and apt saying. Yes, she seemed supportive of your interests and hobbies (and maybe she really is), but otherwise her behavior is very toxic. As I said before, she is hurting you twice: first by her actions (cheating/acting out sexually), and then by blaming you for those actions.

Perhaps a part of the attraction you feel for her is not only that she is supportive of your hobbies and interests, but also that she is very stubborn and doesn’t want to listen to you – just like your parents wouldn’t listen to you.

So perhaps there is an urge in you to get your parents to listen and understand your needs, by proxy: by trying to get her to listen and understand your needs. Which she clearly doesn’t want to…

Hi Helcat,

thanks a lot, I am moved by your kind words.

Yeah, it’s an everyday struggle to choose to look at my chronic pain with hope and acceptance, rather than with resignation and despair. It did force me to dive deep into my faith, I guess. It was shattered for a while, because I believed God is causing these problems to me, that God doesn’t want me to succeed and thrive. But I’ve realized that’s not true and dug deeper to see how I might be causing or at least contributing to the pain. And in that space, I did find a window to help myself.

As for motherhood, the only option for us would have been IVF. And it was too much for me, I didn’t want to go through the procedure, knowing that I have issues with being a mother anyway. So I didn’t opt for it…

When you say you now have more empathy for your parents, I totally understand you. I also understand some of my parents’ decisions, which weren’t the best but were made out of necessity, and I don’t blame them for that. But it’s not those decisions that were the most harmful. It’s rather my mother’s very negative view of life, which made her a bitter person, not able to give  me love but constantly criticizing me and making me feel like I was not good enough. It’s really the slow, repetitive putting me down (instead of lifting me up) that caused the greatest harm.

Of course, mental health wasn’t a thing back then, so that too is large factor. They didn’t know about “conscious parenting” and everything young parents know (or can know) today. All that contributed to how I was raised… Anyway, I am not blaming my parents, I’ve forgiven them. But the emotional injuries still happened and it’s taken a long time to heal them. And the process is still ongoing…

It is wonderful that you opted to have a baby and that you went into motherhood with much more awareness, having had lots of therapy and healing over the years. I think that’s crucial and a guarantee that you will be a great, caring and attuned mother!

Wishing you all the best too! <3