Dear Adam,

I am sorry you are hurting so much. It’s normal because you were very attached to her, even if she wasn’t giving you what you wanted. I dare say you were codependent, which means your happiness depended on her happiness and all your energy and attention was focused on her. That’s not healthy. That’s basically being dependent on a person, similarly as we become dependent on a drug.

I feel she casted me into a role of being an individual to shelter and protect her from all things bad. When I could not do this all the time in reality and this caused her to feel that I wasn’t truly loving her. I think I cast myself in the role as well, all I wanted to do was to keep her happy and content while understanding that I was here.

Yes, she casted you into a role of her “protector”, but you casted yourself not only in the role of her protector, but also her “savior”. Because you wanted her to change. You couldn’t accept to live with her double personality, with her traumatized self. You didn’t like that part. So you wanted to change her. And that’s a big mistake. Because we can never change a person, unless they want to change themselves.

It’s totally understandable that you couldn’t accept her traumatized self, and her switching back and forth between loving you and rejecting you. However, your mistake was to try to push her to change, to work on her healing, which she didn’t want. You became attached to changing her – and that’s where you became codependent. A healthy reaction would have been to leave – because the relationship isn’t working.

I know the attraction of wanting to help someone heal, to “save” them, and then have them love me fully and completely. But I realized it’s loving the idea of the person – the way we would want them to be – rather than the real person that is standing in front of you.

You were hooked on what she told you when she was content with you:

I keep thinking of a past message she gave about what she was wanting. To selfishly have me in her arms where she is safe and comfortable but knowing that she will only cause more pain for the both of us in the long run and have to do it all over again.

But a lot of the times she wasn’t content with you (and you weren’t content with her either). A lot of the times she was accusing you and you felt you need to walk on eggshells:

the less I’d upset her the more I would be anxious on walking on egg shells. But when I spoke up I felt I was shut down and told I wasn’t listening to her.

She took everything I said about her as an attack. All my comments about her getting work, her attitude etc were always taken personally and I was told not to bring it up. She use to say things along the lines of ‘I shouldn’t feel bad for feeling a certain way‘ , yet when I would say something similar it was unfair in her eyes. It was always a double standard.

She would accuse me of not having my priorities right, expecting that she should be number 1 before anything else.

She needed a caregiver 247 and when I wasn’t there for her it was again signs of me not loving her enough and her not getting what she was wanting.

I feel quite attacked honestly. I don’t think my side was ever considered and she would selfishly use me as a punching bag for her irrational behavior

This was the reality of your relationship: lots of fights, her accusing you of not understanding her, you wanting her to change and seek therapy, get a job, become more responsible, she breaking up with you whenever she disliked something, then reconciliating mostly because you reached out. And the same cycle repeating over and over.

You see? The reality was much different than your imagined future where she is content in your arms and loving you fully and completely. And where she is mostly healed and behaves like an adult.

You are now latching onto that imagined future (which is like a mirage in the desert, not a reality), and it is getting stronger in your mind. And you are forgetting about the problems and fights and the emotional abuse that you suffered in the relationship:

I keep thinking of a past message she gave about what she was wanting. To selfishly have me in her arms where she is safe and comfortable  <– this is the imagined future

I am finding it hard at the moment to dig up that feeling I had over the last couple weeks when we were together. The feeling of loosing myself and becoming a shell. All I can think is it was right person wrong time. <– this is forgetting about the pain and abuse you’ve experienced in reality

You are making it harder for yourself, because you are distorting the reality of the situation. Remembering things as better than they were… and in due time, if she reaches out again, you will be tempted to get back together again.

If you really want to heal, you’d need to accept the reality and not beautifying it. Accept that she is not who you imagine her to be, and that sticking to the mirage will only make you suffer more.

You’ve started smoking again, because it serves to soothe the pain, to reduce your anxiety temporarily. But can you see that you actually increase your pain by beautifying reality, by refusing to see that your relationship wasn’t so great at all? That a lot of it was in your mind, you hoping for things that weren’t there.

Dear Adam, I know it’s hard for you, but you can heal. It doesn’t have to be that hard. I hope to talk to you more about this…