Dear Tineoidea,

I’d like to revisit something you said about this whole situation being unfair:

The strong negative feelings I do feel are deep disappointment and a feeling of “unfairness” (and not necessarily towards me).

To whom is it unfair? Is it towards your family, specially your mother?

Because earlier you said that your family counted on your ex-girlfriend’s help and was blindsided by her plans:

Like I said already, I have never asked about her finances or for any of this, she herself pushed it strongly. I kept refusing this “help” for quite some time until she finally made me cave in with that projected honesty, then me and my family got involved and blindsided by her “plans”.

So perhaps you’re feeling a sense of unfairness because of what her turning against you will do to your family?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Tee.

Dear Dave,

I am yes, definitely feeling the pressure to not mess things up next time, but I think I am also feeling a sense of calm, that I definitely know what I want and need from a relationship, and will be able to choose carefully before becoming too involved, and also to be honest with people I date about this.

This is great that you know what you want from a relationship, and will be able to choose wiser, not so much from your wound but more from a sense of wholeness and knowing yourself.

Thanks for the advice, I have joined two meetup groups in my area and have planned to go to two events in the next few weeks

Good for you, I hope you have a good time!

I’m a little nervous about telling my friends about these, as I’m not sure if they would judge, but then again, they are all in couples, so it would be hard to understand my position right now.

Maybe you don’t need to tell your friends, if you feel they’d judge you. Tell them only afterwards, if things work out fine.

Wishing a speedy recovery to your father!

Dear Tineoidea,

He wasn’t the only one. There were two more I’ve known for a longer time and was closer to, but one died and the other ended up drifting away, marrying and going on with her life. There’s another also whom I’m pretty close to and we talk often.

OK, so I guess those were the friends that your “best friend” (M) was jealous at… You now have one online friend whom you talk often, the others are gone from your life. How is it with your offline relationships, if you don’t mind sharing?

Hate is somehow an alien feeling to me. I don’t know how exactly it feels to hate and I don’t hold grudges. The strong negative feelings I do feel are deep disappointment and a feeling of “unfairness” (and not necessarily towards me).

Disappointment is kind of a rationalization, but behind it can be both sadness and anger. A sense of unfairness is similar –  both anger and sadness can be underneath. I told you already that you seem a bit detached from your emotions. It’s quite possible that those feelings (stemming from your childhood) would be too much to bear, and you protect yourself by suppressing them, not allowing yourself to feel them. I also believe that unless you can attend therapy, it’s better not to start digging too much into those feelings, because they might indeed overwhelm you.

You said in your first post:

At the start we helped each other a great deal emotionally, unraveled each other’s issues, helped each other heal and bloom, become confident and full of life.

How much did you talk to her about your past and the trauma you’ve experienced? Do you feel confident at present in yourself and your abilities to create a better life for yourself?

Because it seems to me you’d need to do some more healing and processing before you can get out of your present hardships and start anew, confident and full of life.

Dear Tineoidea,

thank you for sharing about your childhood. It hasn’t been easy for you, you were exposed to multiple stressors: frequent moving, poverty and starvation, your father betraying your mother and leaving when you were just a toddler, humiliation and abuse by your father’s family, including their attempt to kill you and your mother (?!) It was a very harsh childhood, and I am sorry you had to go through all that.

I basically spent them growing up online, which to me was a good way to escape the pain of daily life, make actual long-term friendships and so on.

Have you met your former friend also online, or you knew him in person?

What comes to mind is that loyalty might be important to you because your father wasn’t loyal to either you or your mother, and you didn’t want to be like him. And constantly moving didn’t allow you to form deep bonds with people, so you craved for loyal, long-term friendships, for people who would be there for you through thick and thin and wouldn’t abandon you. And so you ended up with your former friend, who truly was “loyal”, but to the point of possessing you and not letting you breathe. So his loyalty was distorted – but at least he never abandoned you… and you appreciated it.

What do you think? Would you say this is true?

* correction: not BDP but BPD – borderline personality disorder

Dear Tineoidea,

the following is what I wrote before seeing your latest post, about her flaunting her wealth:

She did let me down multiple times and even didn’t do things she said she wants to and will.

It could be that she even sabotaged herself in some things. There are people who promise a lot and never deliver. And they promise too much because they want to be liked by others. When they don’t keep their word, people get disappointed in them. That’s self-sabotage because they get the opposite effect of what they originally wanted: to be liked.

I don’t know if that’s the case with her, and what her motives were, but she might be someone who wants to be liked by everyone? In the beginning she might have been making all those promises, perhaps even to be liked by your family, and then she didn’t deliver on them – either because she self-sabotaged, or because she already started having doubts about you and started to withdraw.

Things such as expecting me to both work on multiple things at once while giving her my full attention and most of my day as she was well aware that I was barely getting a few hours of sleep a day for months and months.

That’s quite insensitive and selfish of her. How did you react to those requests?

Or blaming me for not solving the conflict between her and my “friend” in a proper way and for putting her through it even though she herself constantly tried to interact with him while he wanted nothing to do with her, I told her to stop and she herself said it’s hurting her and she should stop.

Perhaps her need to be liked by everyone is what actually motivated her to reach out to him – because she wanted him to like her?

—

And now addition after having read your latest post: she might have a subtle belief that people only like her for her wealth, but still she uses it to attract them and make herself more appealing. But also there is a deep conflict in her that they don’t like her for her “true self”, and so after a while she gets disappointed in the relationship and starts withdrawing her love, i.e. her money. It can all be her projection – not reality – that you don’t love her truly but are only after her money. If someone is super uncertain of themselves, they can invent an alternate reality.

Dear Tineoidea,

she was pretty unfair when it comes to her expectations while knowing my hardships (and not doing much if anything about those even though she could have easily) and consuming most of my free time.

That’s interesting, perhaps she was like him in some aspects, and that’s why they “clicked”. It still may be true what I suggested earlier that she had some resentments against you (“being dissatisfied no matter how hard you tried or how much you gave”), but didn’t share them openly with you. But when he came along, he confirmed her view of you, and that’s when things started going down..

One thing I find curious is that on one hand, she didn’t want to help you with your hardships (“not doing much if anything about those even though she could have easily“), but you also said this:

W herself wanted to help me with zeal (and I have never asked for it either) because she wanted me close, in her life.

So did she want you help you zealously or not? Have you asked for her help or not?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Tee.

Dear Tineoidea,

I guess I can, although I wouldn’t call his behavior prior to this accident abusive, troublesome yes.

I looked up now the definition of emotional abuse:

“Emotional abuse is a way to control another person by using emotions to criticize, embarrass, shame, blame, or otherwise manipulate another person. In general, a relationship is emotionally abusive when there is a consistent pattern of abusive words and bullying behaviors that wear down a person’s self-esteem and undermine their mental health.
Emotional abuse is one of the hardest forms of abuse to recognize. It can be subtle and insidious or overt and manipulative. Either way, it chips away at the victim’s self-esteem and they begin to doubt their perceptions and reality.”

So blaming is a form of emotional abuse. You said your “friend” used to blame you for not spending even more time with him (although he was already monopolizing your time and criticizing your other friends). When I asked you whether you felt guilt around him, you answered:

Perhaps I did to a degree as he often complained that I wasn’t giving him enough of myself even though he was trying his hardest to be the best friend. What I felt though is that I had to erect barriers to fend off his possessive behavior. Yet I still cared a lot about his wellbeing and such.

He also threatened to kill himself if you cut contact for even a few days:

I must also say that there were times where he was very unstable or borderline suicidal over me telling him to cool off and cutting contact for a few days.

He didn’t outright voice such a threat but did something which could be considered rather suicidal (driving at night while on substances and no intent of coming back) and communicated it to me.

I felt a strong worry of course and resumed contact. However I’ve been very stern and distanced with him after that, which he didn’t take well.

Threatening to kill oneself is also a form of emotional abuse, I believe. It’s a form of manipulation. Because you cared about him, you of course tried to prevent him from harming himself, and so you gave in to his request – you resumed contact. So he manipulated you into doing something you didn’t want to do.

I’d say he emotionally abused you in at least three ways: 1) by demanding constant contact with you and monopolizing your time, 2) by blaming you for spending time with your other friends and criticizing them, and by 3) threatening to kill himself if you cut contact.

He sort of held you hostage, and even though you tried to “erect barriers to fend off his possessive behavior”, you didn’t quite manage because you feared that he’d kill himself – you feared for his life and well-being. Do you see now that his behavior wasn’t just troublesome, but also abusive towards you?

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Tee.