A slipper slope

[dogpirate]

I recently broke up with my ex of 3 years this past february, and I'm still struggling to really process what happened. I am no longer dwelling on the feelings of regret, shame, jealousy, anger, sadness, etc. as much as I was a few weeks ago, but my sense of curiosity and shock is still there.

 

We went on a wonderful week-long trip in December, the best trip I've ever had with her. It was our anniversary, and I thought everything had been going perfect, and I felt we were at a high point in our relationship. The last day I saw her before leaving was January 1st, and I left for college January 3rd which made our relationship long-distance (3 hours away) so I could only see her on weekends or every other weekend. The distance does bring some tension between us due to our schedules not meeting up, but after a week or so she stops talking to me and then tells me not to come visit her the following weekend because she was 'busy with family'.

 

Turns out she was getting pretty friendly with another guy she has been friends with for a few months and spent the weekend with him watching movies and hanging out. I don't think anything of it at first, I'm still pretty pissed but I don't want to be overprotective of something I can't control since I'm not there in person. A few days later, I see a blatantly flirtatious message on her facebook stating "I find facial hair attractive now." and this new guy likes her status.

 

I'm pissed, so I text her and I'm wondering what the hell has been up, why she hasn't been talking to me and what she did with her family over the weekend. She gets pissed, and tells me to stop whining and to give her space. At this point I'm like **** it, I'm done. So I stop texting her to cool off and then we called later and exchanged apologies. I tell her "I need communication, even if it is bad for 'our relationship' I still need to know the truth and it isn't fair for you to string me along". This goes nowhere, and after a few days I try again. This time she gets more pissed, placing the blame on my unwarranted paranoia and that if I'm going to be this clingy, she'd rather date him than me.

 

This behavior goes on until she gets home from whatever she's been doing, and then her attitude would change 100%. She'd be all over me, super clingy and intimate and loving, calling me her sweetheart and her one true love. Every single night, I'd be wondering where she was, just texting casually, not looking to cause conflict and I'd get a cold shoulder until 2 AM or whenever she was getting home. This behavior just pissed me off more and more, but I tried to hold my tongue until I was ready to dump her for good. Her 180 flip-flopping caused me a lot of frustration and confusion, as she'd treat me like an entirely different person during the day but then I'd magically become her "one true love" at night.

 

Things are pretty rocky at this point, and any attempt from me to initiate communication just warrants a negative response from her, so I lay low and try to focus our interaction on other positive activities. She gets pissed and goes off and spends time with him instead of me, so I get pissed thinking 'what the ****, is this even the same girl?' and I go back to pushing for communication. It's January 22nd and finally she admits to me that she's been 'in a relationship' with him since the 16th of January.

 

At this point I tell her I'm done, I'm out of her life, goodbye and enjoy what you have but I'm not going to be a part of her life anymore and I'm gone from it forever. She freaks out and becomes hysterical, breaking down crying, screaming and begging me not to go... I tell her I'm not going to put up with this **** and the damage has been done, she's already moved on and she can't keep me around, it isn't fair. She tells me she's ****ed up and that she doesn't want to live anymore, and then she tells me she's going to kill herself because she's ruined the one thing in life that made her happy. So at this point I'm getting pretty concerned and I tell her I won't tolerate threats like that and I'll call the police and her parents if I have to. She continues to tell me she's fine but it doesn't feel right, so I get worried and I call her parents. Turns out she cut herself really badly and had to be taken to the emergency room overnight to get stitched up.

 

At this point I am just broken, I'm at a loss of what to do and I feel intense regret and shame for the situation. I felt like I was too hard on her and that it was my fault for putting her in that situation and overreacting, etc... So after a talk, I agree to stay. I tell her she can figure out what she wants to do, and I'll stay in her life and that I'll support her and that her health and security is very important to me (more important than my happiness in the relationship). This was possibly the worst decision I could've made.

 

Soon after this incident, she starts devaluing me, and demonizing me. Suddenly every little thing I've ever done in the past is a blemish on my character, and she started treating me like she was a level above me or something, like a younger sibling. She became very passive aggressive and condescending... apathetic.

 

I told her I had been struggling with eating and sleeping because of the situation and that it was killing me to know she was running off with some other guy, but then expected me to be home to talk to her when she was going to bed so we could talk about our days and exchange 'I love you's and whatnot (in retrospect it was just absolutely bat**** to do so, but you live and learn). She said she didn't want to hurt me and that her relationship with him was just temporary until I could get back, and it was nothing more than a platonic friendship (hah!)... So I'm feeling really ****ty and drag my feet through the rest of the week, seeing what will happen in the coming weekend, on which I was going to celebrate my birthday.

 

Well, that weekend she tells me she's busy but she promises to make it up to me later in the week. At this point I am just pissed, but I'll take what I can get while enduring the situation. A few days later, I visited her and spent the night with her. We were intimate, but it didn't feel right to me and in all honesty I couldn't really perform or stay aroused due to the situation, I just didn't feel it with her anymore. She enjoyed it, but that was the last time I saw her. We parted ways without really saying much, she told me she loved me so much and that she wants to marry me some day... (even in the relationship with this new guy, jesus). I reciprocated her feelings, but I felt empty.

 

The next day I went back to my campus and I became very depressed, and I stopped talking to her for a few days. I started to feel very helpless and hopeless to my situation, and kept thinking back to memories of our trip, thinking about how could this have happened. I decided to take a few days off and admit myself to a suicide ward and go under an evaluation and talk to a counselor. I was gone for 3 days without any contact from her, and when I got back and checked my phone/email, my inbox had blown up with angry messages from her asking where the hell I've been and that we're so over and that I'm a piece of **** and a stupid mother****er and that she never loved me and that she loves her new guy more and that he taught her what a relationship should be like...

 

I'm already feeling pretty depressed, so this slew of messages from her only adds to my pathetic depressive state. I plead with her to see how she is acting, that I'm still me, that I just want to compromise, I want to be a part of her life, I need her, I can't live without her... (very reminiscent of the speech she gave me when she tried to kill herself just a few weeks before). But she doesn't give any pause to her passive-aggressive apathy, and tells me I'm pathetic for trying to use suicide against her to make her love me and that she never wants to see me again.

 

This continues on for about a week, where she sends me texts just to irk me and cause me anguish ('my mom misses you, she calls my new bf your name sometimes'... 'I'm wearing your sweater today, I love you'). And I just can't take it, I'm burnt out. The depression is very obviously seeping through and after nearly a month and a half of torment, SHE decides to break it off with me, and that I'M not good for HER because of how depressed I have become, and that this situation was all my fault. At this point I'm begging her to stay, that we don't have to say goodbye, that we can be good friends, we can be here for each other, and she hangs up. And that was the last time I talked to her directly. The last few times I tried to initiate conversation with her, she simply replied "**** off, leave me the **** alone." So I stopped.

 

It's been about 3 weeks since my last effort to talk to her, and I'm still left wondering what the hell happened.