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.

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.

So she was quite similar to your “friend” – monopolizing your time, demanding your constant attention and “being dissatisfied no matter how hard you tried or how much you gave”. Exactly like him. I think that’s something worth noting, because I don’t think it’s by chance that you get involved with such people.

With neither of them you noticed you were abused: you said his behavior was “troublesome” but you yourself didn’t feel abused. With her too, in the beginning you said that she suddenly flipped from being very much in love to hating you, when in reality, the signs of trouble were noticeable already before – only you didn’t want to see them because you were “madly in love”. If you really want to heal from this experience, you’d need to look what is it in you that makes you susceptible (and loyal) to such people.

Perhaps she just saw a new victim to use in the nearby future. But also, she does indeed want to be liked by people and gets upset when they don’t accept and validate her. I’ve seen that a lot. She would also often get into the conflicts of others and try to “help”, then get depressed because those people refused her. When it comes to “friend”, she was constantly saying things like “I’m the person who has shown him more good will and care that anybody ever but he keeps hurting me”.
I was her only close friend by the way.

I don’t think she is a predator who was looking for a new victim in him. Rather, she is very insecure, having very little self-love and self-esteem, and also very conflicted. You confirmed that she wants to be validated by people. She wants be seen as “the person who shows more good will and care than anybody else”. In a desperate attempt to be liked by others, she even meddles into their affairs, trying to “help”, and then gets disappointed when they don’t appreciate her meddling.

When all of this went down and I finally voiced that I felt a lack of support and care from her in multiple places, she retalliated with “I can’t do everything for you” and blamed it all on me. Even though she didn’t really do anything to improve my situation.

Another similar trait to your “friend” is that she lacks self-awareness and self-criticism. It’s always other people’s fault, never hers. She saw herself as your victim, as the abused one – exactly like your “friend” saw himself. In their mind, you were the boogeyman, him and her were the victims.

She could be actually suffering from BDP because I know a person with similar traits, which I believe are BDP, although undiagnosed because she’d never agree to go to therapy. But the extremes of behavior, meddling in other people’s affairs, having a distorted sense of reality, alienating friends, always playing the victim… it’s all there. A very difficult person to live with, and she has been actually living alone for more than 30 years now.

Anyway, if I were you, I wouldn’t hope for a reconciliation with your ex. Instead I’d work on myself to prevent to be sucked into a similar relationship in the future…