Dear Tineoidea,

the following is what I wrote before seeing your latest post, about her flaunting her wealth:

She did let me down multiple times and even didn’t do things she said she wants to and will.

It could be that she even sabotaged herself in some things. There are people who promise a lot and never deliver. And they promise too much because they want to be liked by others. When they don’t keep their word, people get disappointed in them. That’s self-sabotage because they get the opposite effect of what they originally wanted: to be liked.

I don’t know if that’s the case with her, and what her motives were, but she might be someone who wants to be liked by everyone? In the beginning she might have been making all those promises, perhaps even to be liked by your family, and then she didn’t deliver on them – either because she self-sabotaged, or because she already started having doubts about you and started to withdraw.

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.

That’s quite insensitive and selfish of her. How did you react to those requests?

Or blaming me for not solving the conflict between her and my “friend” in a proper way and for putting her through it even though she herself constantly tried to interact with him while he wanted nothing to do with her, I told her to stop and she herself said it’s hurting her and she should stop.

Perhaps her need to be liked by everyone is what actually motivated her to reach out to him – because she wanted him to like her?

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And now addition after having read your latest post: she might have a subtle belief that people only like her for her wealth, but still she uses it to attract them and make herself more appealing. But also there is a deep conflict in her that they don’t like her for her “true self”, and so after a while she gets disappointed in the relationship and starts withdrawing her love, i.e. her money. It can all be her projection – not reality – that you don’t love her truly but are only after her money. If someone is super uncertain of themselves, they can invent an alternate reality.

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…

Dear Tineoidea,

He wasn’t the only one. There were two more I’ve known for a longer time and was closer to, but one died and the other ended up drifting away, marrying and going on with her life. There’s another also whom I’m pretty close to and we talk often.

OK, so I guess those were the friends that your “best friend” (M) was jealous at… You now have one online friend whom you talk often, the others are gone from your life. How is it with your offline relationships, if you don’t mind sharing?

Hate is somehow an alien feeling to me. I don’t know how exactly it feels to hate and I don’t hold grudges. The strong negative feelings I do feel are deep disappointment and a feeling of “unfairness” (and not necessarily towards me).

Disappointment is kind of a rationalization, but behind it can be both sadness and anger. A sense of unfairness is similar –  both anger and sadness can be underneath. I told you already that you seem a bit detached from your emotions. It’s quite possible that those feelings (stemming from your childhood) would be too much to bear, and you protect yourself by suppressing them, not allowing yourself to feel them. I also believe that unless you can attend therapy, it’s better not to start digging too much into those feelings, because they might indeed overwhelm you.

You said in your first post:

At the start we helped each other a great deal emotionally, unraveled each other’s issues, helped each other heal and bloom, become confident and full of life.

How much did you talk to her about your past and the trauma you’ve experienced? Do you feel confident at present in yourself and your abilities to create a better life for yourself?

Because it seems to me you’d need to do some more healing and processing before you can get out of your present hardships and start anew, confident and full of life.