Dear Timepassages2070:

“I was one of the first people she chose to tell about divorcing her husband… she flat out told me I was one of the only male friends she had told about her situation… she made a point several times over the course of the past year of letting me know how close she had come to consider me.. she had flat out told me I was one of the top people on her ‘list’… She had also made it pretty clear to me that getting close to people, and opening up, was something she really struggled with… she literally called me afterwards to tell me how much she appreciated me… and multiple times she said she never had a friend like me… she had wanted me to do a private yoga session at the house of.. female friend… because she probably wasn’t totally okay with me doing this session alone”.

This is what I see here regarding you: you have a deep desire to be someone’s first, someone’s # 1, a desire that has been there likely since childhood-  an unfulfilled desire to be noticed, to be appreciated, to be important, to be chosen over others, to be values, to be Special in a parent’s mind and heart. Your anger at this woman is the same anger you had decades ago, anger for having been rejected or neglected (not noticed, not appreciated, etc.) by a parent.

Your interest in this woman has been primarily emotional, not sexual.

When you felt that she had You in her mind and heart as Special, you were thrilled, and you were and still are invested in interpreting her words and behaviors to mean that you are indeed special to her. When she took that Special away from you, you were and are devastated. And angry.

This is what I see regarding her: she told you that “she could never imagine dating, or trusting, anyone again but she is a human being and human beings have needs“. You interpreted that to mean that she used you and other men to “get some of those ‘emotional needs‘ met until her and her husband ultimately separate”.

But she may have referred to her sexual needs, not emotional needs otherwise. I don’t think that the other men in her life, the men you mentioned, are likely to have had the emotional needs that you have for this woman. Likely, they were interested in her sexually. It may be that she has had a series of sexual affairs with other men while married.

Therefore, I don’t think that “the situation she is currently in is perhaps causing her to cross, and perhaps, push boundaries in her friendships with men”- I think that her friendship with you really was special/ unique,  just like she told you (“multiple times she said she never had a friend like me”). Other men were interested in her sexually, you were interested in her otherwise; with other men she had sexual affairs, with you- she had a friendship… until that friendship became to stressful for her, and she ended it.

anita