I cannot express how well this rings true for me. I definitely feel like her issues have spread to me to some extent. I was a very level headed, strong minded, focused, and independent person when I first met her. In the last year, my career progression has been put on pause while I poured all my energy into our relationship, trying to seek happiness that always seemed ever so slightly out of reach.
Towards the end of the relationship, I occasionally noticed myself being tempted to give her the random cold shoulder treatment back, because I realised that if I didn't speak to her for a whole afternoon, she would call me up and respond with lots of affection to "win me back". Really felt like I'd discovered Kryptonite, and with some careful fine tuning and a few mind tricks, I could probably control her like a puppet. I never even thought I was capable of doing such a thing and felt ashamed for considering it, but then it suddenly started to dawn on me... she was doing precisely that to me, pretty much the entire time we were together.
She's also 100% in denial (externally anyway) that she has any mental disorder, and just makes out that her "constant fear of an anxiety attack" is to blame for everything. She described it as feeling light-headed and dizzy in certain social situations. I've experienced it very briefly myself when highly stressed and sure it's not nice. But still, that doesn't account for the other 80% of her toxic behaviour.
Now that me and her have been apart for over a month and things are slowly healing, I've been feeling depressed a lot, staying in bed most of the day for the last few weeks, refusing to go into work and unwilling to face the world. On top of that, I completed on a new house purchase 3 weeks ago and should be hugely excited about picking furniture and moving in etc, but instead I feel hardly any emotion towards it at all because it's been overshadowed by this dark cloud.
I feel like I'm actually faring worse right now than she is, but then again this isn't her first time... I guess she's better practiced at break-up recovery than me.
A few weeks ago, I was having a restless night, and ended up staying up all night deeply analysing all of her actions over the year we were together, and trying to get my head around the fact I could never get to the bottom of our relationship problems. Suddenly, I had a eureka moment. I basically deduced that she had to be broken in her head, but I also figured out the most likely point in her life that triggered her to become this way. The next morning I was compelled to tell her, because maybe just maybe she'd say "oh my god you're right!" and maybe I had found the path to fixing everything and patch things up. When I reached out to her and explained, she was pretty stunned and admitted most of what I worked out was in fact true, then we proceeded to have what was probably the most open and heartfelt conversation we ever had since we first met. It just seemed tragic that we only got to this point now rather than when we were still a couple.
In a nutshell, I worked out that her first long term relationship and awful treatment by her boyfriend at the time is what broke her and destroyed her self esteem. She vowed to never feel that low again, and as a result has been taking it out on every boyfriend she's had since. It's also what made her struggle to truly open up to people and trust them with her feelings. I was surprised to hear her agree to what I 'figured out' that night, but looking back now, I think she was just happy to be handed an excuse to legitimise her awful treatment of me and her last couple of boyfriends. At the end of the day, she's still a grown adult, experienced in relationships, therefore she is ultimately responsible for her own actions and behaviour, and can't keep blaming it on something that happened to her 4-5 years ago.
Anyway, everything was going alright after that long chat, things were calm and civil between us as "exes" for a while, until one day she started playing cold shoulder and emotional guilt games with me again. By this point I realised she was truly a lost cause, and I had finally lost it, gave up being Mr calm nice guy, and came at her with some very overdue cutting and sarcastic remarks, which she obviously didn't take very well. Promptly after that, we blocked each other on virtually everything, then she also went and deleted all my friends on Facebook.
I wish that was the end of it, but on a couple of occasions recently, I came across little pieces of information from our past that was proof of how nasty/hypocritical/dishonest/toxic she was, concerning big issues we regularly rowed about. Rather than keeping these to myself as I should have done, I sent her emails detailing what I found out, showing in plain black & white how despicable her actions were. She obviously wasn't able to say much to defend her actions but had a go anyway, along with "and don't message me again".
This wasn't productive or healthy at all, but for some reason I really wanted her to know that I found her out for what she really was (poison), and in some weird way hope I'd make her snap out of it and realise that she was indeed broken and required help... in turn perhaps that would give me some kind of sense of closure that I'm still seeking for some reason.
I should've known better though, she went straight into playing the "victim of a nasty ex boyfriend" role in attempt to obfuscate the irrefutable evidence of her misdeeds. The only alternative from her perspective is to own up to her behaviour, which will never happen. It turns out, she did the exact same thing when she finished with her previous boyfriend too.
My family and friends say they are worried about my well being, and keep telling me to "just drop it", but for some reason I'm finding it really difficult to avoid getting sucked back in. I know I just need to just rise above it all and forget about her (hence why I'm venting on this thread, strangely feels therapeutic). The initial deep sadness has recently evolved to bitterness and anger, and I'm just trying to kick my life back into gear and get on with my career and new house so I can move on and think positive once and for all.
Bottom line: I need to get on with my life and forget her as soon as possible. She's broken and doesn't want to be helped, and despite the fact that a part of me still misses being with her, I've grown to hate her for denying any responsibility for what she's done to me (a wishy washy "sorry I made you feel unloved" is all I ever got). That's what I think bothers me the most.
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