Dear Jason:

This woman is now in her mid thirties (single, in an on-again-off-again relationship), and you are in your later forties, 12 years older than her (single or married, I don’t know).  Ten years ago, she was in her mid twenties, and the two  of you dated. You learned of “her traumatized past(loss of one parent, abandoned by the other, loss of a brother, chaotic lifestyle in different countries, history of abuse”, and you observed “how traumatized she was from the abusive relationship she was in before we met”. You thought of her as “a good person with a lot of baggage”.

Some time after you dated her, either you or her moved to a different country. “We haven’t seen each other face to face in 8 years, all our contact is mostly text and the occasional phone call”.

About five years after you dated her, she entered a relationship with another man . At some point they lived together for two years.  “The first two years they seemed ok”. The three years that followed consisted of breaking up and getting back together multiple times.

During the five years of her on-again-of-again relationship, the two of you text and occasionally talk on the phone. From time to time she suggests meeting you for some fun: “when she’s feeling low she sometimes hints at us meeting again, because when we were together it was ‘always fun’… or she starts flirting a bit. Reminiscing our good times way back and she could use some ‘me time/fun time’ and have a fun weekend together somewhere… she also threw in another ‘hey we should go somewhere nice for a weekend”.

To her suggestions to have a fun, romantic, sexual weekend together (which is how I understand her suggestions), you reacted this way: “Twice I said ‘ok let’s do that’ but as always that conversation wouldn’t go anywhere because in the end she’d still be back with him… before that even takes any shape, here come the stories about her ex again”.

You partly view her as naïve, and boyfriend as a weasel: “I call her naïve that she’s letting all this happen… I ask her if she really doesn’t see how he is weaseling his way back to her?”.

* It is clear to me that throughout some if not all of your communication with her over the five years of her relationship with her boyfriend, you have felt a romantic and/ or sexual interest in her, and she sensed that this has been part of your motivation to being in touch with her, listening to her and giving her advice.

I put together all that she said to you and read through it all. I see no evidence whatsoever of him abusing her in any way. I see that he has been pursuing her all along and she has been the one doing the rejecting, again and again and yet again.

This is how serious he has been about her: “He wants me to move to his village, where his relatives live, so that we can have a nice big house and start our own family. I however want to live in the big city”.

“He just won’t let me go. For me, it’s over no matter how hard he tries. I call him my ex; he keeps calling me his girlfriend. We broke up this time and I actually started dating other guys. Like always he just keeps acting like we are still together”- she is enjoying having power over him, enjoying that he needs her more than she needs him, that he is willing to do anything and everything for her. Notice: she dated other guys but he didn’t date other girls: for him.. she is the only girl.

“He still has the keys to my house and sometimes he comes inside my house when I am at work to check if there’s still pictures of us on the wall, and he would leave notes for me. He came into my house while I was at work and left flowers. He brought me flowers and gave me a ride to the airport, which was actually handy. I can’t be rude to him after all he did for me..he still pays part of my rent”- he pursues her hard; he is very invested in her, like she said, he won’t let go of her.

“I am back with him. I want to give another chance to the person that has been therefor me the past five years in all the good and bad times. I broke up with him and moved to a tiny apartment in the big city. He then convinces himself it could be ok in the big city then, after he realized I wasn’t coming back, nor was I going to live in his village. He kinda accepts the new reality but I can see he’s hoping one day I would change my mind”- he was with her in “all the good and bad times”. He wants her to move to his village, but he wants her so much that he convinced himself that he will be okay living in the big city, as long as he can be with her, hoping that she will change her mind and live with him in his village.

“He sometimes stays in a hotel because we argue too much and I refuse to stay with him“- she is refusing to stay with him, not the other way around.

“I feel I can’t be bitchy to him after all he did for me”- but she was okay being bitchy with him before he did all that he did for her.. ?

“He doesn’t show me any physical affection anymore, despite saying that he still loves me: this makes me feel insecure, unattractive and rejected. I already have low self esteem, and it even changes he way I hold myself around other people. I feel that I am to blame for it. I don’t understand why he wouldn’t just let me go if he wouldn’t even sleep with me. I feel  like the last woman in the world, absolutely unattractive”- I very much doubt this is true: he is too crazy about her to  not show her affection and to not have sex with her.

In summary: Unlike your evaluation of her being naïve and him being a weasel, I think that he is crazy about her, following around, wanting to live with her happily ever after, and she is the one toying with him, pushing him out of her life and taking him back in, enjoying exercising power over him and against him: she is the one abusing him, not the other way around.

anita

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