Dear B:

There will be 3 parts to my reply (1) what seems to certainly have happened, best I understand it, (2) the information you have based on what he told you, if I understand correctly, (3) your current state of mind and my thoughts, and (4) your questions and my efforts to answer them:

(1) When you met this man, you were going through a divorce, a mother of two girls living in Pennsylvania (PA), working in a hospital. He was a physician-to-be working in the same hospital, an Indian man whose family lived in India. You felt a deep bond with him, and the two of you “started dating immediately”.

The last part of the relationship was long-distance because he was completing his fellowship in NYC. The plan, as you understood it, was that he moves back to PA to be with you after his fellowship. At some point,  “Suddenly, he became very standoffish and mean… it was hot and cold… I didn’t know what version I was going to get on a daily basis”.

He visited India and returned to the NYC in mid-March 2020, when NYC was the Covid hotspot, and therefore you were unable to talk to him about his trip to India. By April 2020, he “went from this loving, compassionate man, who suddenly was mean & hated me”, and the relationship ended, but not quite: “I was getting I love you and I miss you and he would randomly pull me back as opposed to letting me move on.. sucked me right back”. At some point he unfriended and blocked you on Instagram, and lied to you, telling you that he deactivated it. His behavior “literally drove me mad”, and you went to NYC one morning, showing up at this door. “he looked like sh**.. tried to push me away at first, but then held me, made love.. told me everything will be ok when he comes to PA”. A week later he denied telling you that he will be coming to PA.

You found out that he was involved with another woman while in the long-distance part of the relationship with you. The other woman was a devotee in the NYC International Society for Krishna Consciousness Temple that he was visiting, and he stayed with her during the summer while waiting for his visa.

(2) He told you that is parents were “very strict, believe in arranged marriage”, that they pressured him to agree to (a second marriage), an arranged marriage to a woman of their choice. He told you that he was depressed, that he didn’t want to be a doctor anymore. At one point, he told you that the other woman “contacted his parents about marrying him”, and they refused the idea. He told you and swore that he didn’t cheat on you. And at another point he told you that “he told his parents to find him a girl and was going to accept an arranged marriage”.

(3) “I’m just lost and I want to believe him so badly, because I still deep down believe he is that kind hearted person in our first year… I have no closure and no answers… I just torture myself daily replaying everything. Wondering if he went to the Temple because he was searching for answers”.

My thoughts, here is what may have happened: he showed up in the hospital where you worked and in your life in a good-enough state of mind, clear-minded and calm. His relationship with you maintains his calm and clarity, and in that state of mind he is the “kind hearted person” you knew in the first year of the relationship.

He then moves away from you to NYC, travels to India, and gets stuck in the country’s Covid hotspot at the time, in a lockdown, and somewhere along these changes he loses his good-enough state of mind: he becomes confused, unsettled, distressed and depressed. In this mew state of mind, he is the “standoffish and mean… hot and cold” unstable person you got to know.

He visits the Temple so to get his calm back, so to undo his distress and loneliness. He meets a woman there and lives with her. He tells you that he didn’t cheat on you with her.

* In the beginning of your story, you wrote: “We started as friends, both of us were going through divorces”, and you wrote that his family lives in India, being “very strict, believe in arranged marriage.. he is from tribe”- it is likely that his parents arranged his first marriage, and having done so, they are very unlikely to agree that he divorces his wife. Divorces in India are the lowest in the world, from what I read, less than 1%. Unless you met his wife, the one he was allegedly divorcing, then it is very possible that he has been married throughout the time you’ve known him, only that his wife, and likely his children, live in India, with his parents perhaps, as is the custom in India.

If I am correct, this only added to his distress, as the real plan may have been not for him to move to PA and live with you, but to bring his wife and children to the US and live with them- a plan made much more difficult because of the unexpected and unplanned for Covid.

(4) “why did he have to lie to me about it? Why didn’t he just be open and honest and end things?”- I am guessing because if he told you that he was married, that his wife and children live in India and that the plan was to move them to the U.S. (assuming this is all true)- you wouldn’t date him. Alone in a new country, in PA,  a woman physically in his life. You were interested, he liked you, so he told you what was required to date you and then, to keep you in his life. Not everything he told you was a lie, as people who lie don’t lie all the time.

When he moved to NYC, alone, he still needed a woman to be there physically with him, so.. he located one.

“Is there any chance he is the good person I believed he was, or have I been completely fooled?”- every person is or was a good person early on in their lives. You get glimpses of that good person if you look long enough into the eyes of any bad person, even the worst. It is only cartoon characters that always look like bad people.

I hope you recover from this relationship, and you are welcome to post again with your thoughts and feelings.

anita