Dear Paradoxy,

She said that she was hurt by the break up, she was hurt by my parents’ views on the women today due to the horrible experiences they have come across.

When I said she was hurting, I was referring to the hurt that predates your relationship. The hurt that made her prostitute herself. The hurt that makes her feel loved and accepted by people who pay her for sex. That kind of hurt. Because those are not sentiments and reactions of an emotionally healthy person. Those are reactions of someone with an emotional injury.

She might have been offended by you asking if she was a gold digger, but it wouldn’t have caused a normal person to go prostitute herself. She is blaming you for hurting her, but she had been hurt much earlier, by her parents and other family members, in her childhood and youth. And she is still carrying that hurt, and acting out from it.

She said she felt more loved by other men than with me cause of the stereotype my parents had of women in general in the modern world.

I think she actually has self-esteem issues, she feels unworthy, otherwise she couldn’t have prostituted herself. And she seems to want validation from you – that’s why she is talking about discrimination and is so easily offended by your parents’ views (you had numerous fights about that, right?).

But she is not getting any validation, partly (1) because of your general suspicion of women, which you inherited from your parents (spiced up by the fact that her aunt is actually a gold-digger and a woman of suspicious morale), and more importantly (2) because she behaves in inappropriate, sexually provocative ways with men.

So she feels rejected by you and your parents, but at the same time she is behaving in ways that prove your parents’ suspicion. She is offended that you don’t give her more respect, while at the same time she is not warrantying that respect – based on how she behaves with men.

My guess is that she is in her own vicious circle of wanting approval and ruining it with her own actions. But then she doesn’t want to accept that it is HER who is ruining her own credibility, but is blaming you for that. That’s the double abuse I was talking about: first by lying/cheating, and then by blaming you for it.

So this could be her inner struggle: wanting respect and ruining it. Feeling worthless (and doing things with which she further humiliates herself), but wanting to feel worthy.

You didn’t cause her to feel worthless (it happened in her childhood and youth), but you are adding to the feeling, by staying in a relationship with her and trying to force her to be decent, and teach her about it (about the rules and moral codes), and calling her stupid when she doesn’t comply.

This whole attempt of yours to “save” her is futile, because her problem is not lack of knowledge, but an internal battle. A battle that she is waging with herself, and you got caught in the middle. You are trying to save her, but as I said before, only she can save herself.

Fine, I could start seeing her like that. And then what? How do I fix it? How do I correct this subconscious desire in her?

You cannot. Only she can help herself – if she chooses to. If she acknowledges that she has a problem and then goes to therapy with it.

I thought I could fix it if I loved her right, but that didn’t work. I thought that my desire for her would have enough effect on her to not appreciate other men’s desire for her.

I just thought my love could fix those issues, those flaws in her.

That’s not how our psychological problems work. If something is missing from our formative years (from that cement that goes into the foundations of the house), it can only be healed by inner work and inner transformation. No external substitute will do. Even if you were the most perfect boyfriend, and even if you tolerated her cheating, she would still have the internal battle within herself. And she would still find reasons to falsely accuse you of things.

You thought you were helping her heal by accepting her lame excuses and giving her another chance. And then trying to educate her how to behave, getting pissed off with her, calling her names, etc. This had zero positive effect on her, it only added fuel to the fire. And it ruined you and lead you to exhaustion, as you said, because she was completely closed for any kind of “correction”. Because as I said, her problem is not lack of education, but an internal battle.

I am able to accurately describe how she feels and she knows that I am the only person who understands her so well, but that doesn’t mean I do not have a limit to how much foolishness I can tolerate.

You don’t understand her, Paradoxy. She is not stupid or foolish. She is in an internal battle with herself, on one hand wanting to feel worthy and respected, and on the other probably believing she doesn’t deserve it. And then sabotaging it by acting out sexually. That’s just an assumption on my part, but whatever it is, it’s not something you can fix for her. She would need to acknowledge that she has a problem first, and then seek therapy.

Like come on, how can you expect me to not get angry when she sleeps with another man and then blames me for it? It is so draining to have an argument with her cause of how stubborn she is.

It’s normal to get angry, but it’s not normal to repeat the cycle endless times, trying to make her see how she is hurting you, and she not wanting to listen, and you trying to force her to listen (the amount of pressure I have to put to force her to listen is really high. I have to figuratively shut her mouth with tape to make her listen, that is the level the situation has become.)

I hope you haven’t actually taped her mouth (!) but it shows how strongly you are attached to changing her. Which is an unhealthy amount of attachment. You would need to let her go.

You cannot force the person to see you, to have empathy for you, to understand your pain – they have to feel it themselves. And she doesn’t feel it. She is very much in denial of the destructiveness of her actions and her own responsibility in it.

I will still consider what you have said, but I think I need to cut ties with her cause she comes back telling me how hurt she is and etc that I am detaching when it is so obvious that I am detaching cause of the numerous amount of times that she has hurt me.

I never said you shouldn’t cut ties. On the contrary, I advised you not to get back together with her. She is still trying to lure you back, to make you feel sorry for her, telling you that you broke up for stupid reasons etc. When the truth is that you have every right to detach yourself from her, after everything she did.

So yes, I’d encourage you to detach yourself, to stop wanting to change her, to stop believing you can heal her. Because her healing can only come from within – if and when she is ready for it.