Dear espressopass:

I think that you should treat her like the married, work colleague that she is to you, and nothing else: no friendship outside of the work context, no flirting, and no physical affection and intimacy.

Why did she marry the man, by the way?

anita

Dear espressopasss:

You are welcome.

I will summarize her story as you shared it: she is 31, four years older than you, a superior colleague at your workplace who married at the beginning of 2020. She was unhappy with her relationship right from the beginning: he put little effort in it and she put a lot of effort, money and time in it. At one time while with him on the third floor, they had some kind of fight and he asked her to jump off the third floor. She then prepared to jump and he pulled her back in. While engaged to him she also traveled to another country so to check out a man who was romantically interested in her.

During the relationship with her then boyfriend turned fiancé, she carried on a romantic- physically intimate relationship with you. And when she married him, she had you as her bridesmaid. Overall, you were “always there by her side. Always.. drop everything .. to attend to her needs.. Sending her to and from work, driving her to get her groceries, accompanying her whenever her SO was away.. doing her work… you name it”. Every time you tried to distant yourself from her, she pulled you back in, complaining that you don’t love her after all, causing you to feel guilty.

When you suggested that maybe she shouldn’t marry him, she told you that she invested too much time, effort and money in him, that it is too late to call it off because she went public with the relationship, and because it will be difficult for her immediate family to explain themselves to other family members, that she is too old to start over, and that she is “destined to be ‘unlucky’ in love”.

My input: she may be a good employee in the workplace setting, but she is not good at personal relationships. I imagine her relationships with her parents are pretty bad, that she is anxious about displeasing them and that’s why she didn’t consider a breakup, so to not inconvenience them. With the man she married, a bad relationship as well. You were her filler relationship, filling the big gaps in her life with a little feel-good comfort, making her difficult life a little easier.

Her being in your life is not a good deal for you, because you receive so little for what you give and there is no improvement in sight. For her, it’s about feeling better from time to time, but you are not and will not change the great relationship-dysfunction in her life.

Did she tell you about her troubled relationships with her parents?

anita

Dear espressopass:

“According to her it was selfish of me to even expect reciprocation”- what she said is illogical. Imagine a situation where she is hungry, so you buy vegetables with your own money, you make her soup, and you serve her that soup,  but when you are about to have some of it yourself, she disapproves and proclaims: you are selfish!

“I often visited her family and it doesn’t seem to me that the relationship she has with her parents is troubled.. her mom used to hit her a lot”- it troubled her a lot that her mother hit her a lot. That trouble is probably what fueled her fighting with her then boyfriend, getting ready to jump out of the third floor, etc.

“quite a close-knit family… her elder sister and brother were the favorite children”- that close-knit appearance is possible by her pretending that things are okay. But she is unable to pretend that things are okay in other contexts of her life. Lots of children and adult children are paying a high price for the pretending they do in their homes of origin.

She felt like the least favorite of her parents, so she wants to  be your most favorite. It’s common for a child experiencing a lack to want to over-compensate for it as an adult, to go to the other extreme: she felt like nothing in her home of origin->she wants to feel like everything with you.

Her mother complained to you about her daughter’s boyfriend, that he is “rude to her daughter, bad manners”- well she got her daughter used to rude behavior (hitting her a lot, which is definitely bad manners!)

If her boyfriend, now husband, is indeed rude and treats her badly, and she spends her money on him, chasing his love, then it may be a repeat of what she did with her mother all these years: chasing the love of a rude, abusive person.

“how do I look at this whole situation objectively? For example, if I feel like she has been taking advantage of my feelings and manipulating me, how  do I know for sure that this is the case and not just because I’m hurt?”-

– look at the soup example I gave you: you buy the ingredients using your money, you cook it on your stove, you serve her a bowl of soup, you are about to serve yourself a bowl of soup too, and she says: don’t do that! You are selfish!! And she says it with a disapproving, angry voice.

If this is the first time anything like that happens, you will say to yourself: she is crazy! I bought the ingredients, I am entitled to have a bowl of the soup I made! What is wrong with her???

But if this is not the first time; if it  happened repeatedly before, you are not shocked by her reaction, you are used to it and you already believe it is true.

Many, many people feel guilty for what they are not at all guilty of simply because they were repeatedly blamed, accused and otherwise told that they are guilty. No matter how illogical, when we feel something is true, we believe it is true.

“how do I keep this going, keep treating her life I would any of my coworkers.. What if she plays any mind games again? Because she knows exactly what buttons to push”- let’s look at how she pushes your buttons, taken from your original post. I will quote what she said to you (italicized)  followed by how you can respond to it:

“Whenever I went radio silent, she would send me a test saying ‘you changed‘”- you don’t change: every time I go silent with you, you tell me the same thing, that I changed.

“you are not as sincere as you said you are‘”- are you sincere? (if she says yes) then ask her what is it, sincerely, that she wants from you.

“stop saying you love me if your actions don’t reflect that way“- okay, I will never say that again.

“it seems like you are fine with not texting me, guess I will  do the same“- okay.

“You have no idea how to maintain a relationship and communicate with your partner“- sounds like you do have a good idea: you must have a good relationship with your husband then. Good for you!

anita

You are welcome, espressopass. Post again anytime.

anita

Dear espressopass:

It may be then that the woman your thread is about has been chasing her mother and then, her now husband for love, while you’ve been chasing her for love. Because neither one of you had that at home. I am glad to read that you will be seeking a therapist and hope it’s a good therapist. You are welcome to tell me about your childhood, if you want my input.

Regarding “I can’t believe how much time, effort and love I have wasted.. How do I come to terms with that?”- I think that wasting lots of time and effort on a personal level and on a global level is the norm, not the exception. Personally I wasted decades of life, including my whole youth. It is not easy to come to terms with it, but I have. Because I see the bigger picture, that it is indeed the norm or the rule, and not the exception. I know that I am not alone. A tragedy is less of a tragedy when it happens to almost everyone.

anita