Here's another podcast recommendation: This Jungian Life.
I've only listened to a couple episodes but already had several
aha moments. Today I realized that my ex was overtaken by her
animus. No wonder she had no empathy in my weak moments.
When I had my burn out, I called my boss and told I am too anxious
to go to work. Then I called my spouse and told her that I had
just told this to my boss. She laughed. Another time I told her
that I have started to develop empathy towards my father, who I
had had a troubled relationship with. She said that it's horrible
I would empathize with him.
It really makes me wonder how (or if) I should communicate with
her. The level we connected through was intellectual, witty and
humorous. I couldn't really connect with her emotionally. It is
strange that I didn't really understand how deeply she lacks some
basic building block. She's the sort of person who thinks that
being smart is about taking words and reorganising them. She comes
up with philosophical or psychological sounding mic drop lines,
but on deeper analysis you can see that she doesn't understand
the underlying logic. She uses her victimhood as a protective
gear. Usually it is rather imaginary. When she crashed her car
she kept commenting on the road being bad at that particular spot.
After that she neglected to renew her driver's license, so I had
to chauffer her around. She liked to control me through her
self-imposed limitations like that. I'm sure she has the driver's
license back by now.
It's hard for me to parse out what part of my response to her
was necessary and what was just falling for the manipulation.
She once told me about thinking of suicide, and that threat
went into my mind (much like in "Inception", actually) and kept
spinning there. I think this might have been her greatest trick.
She even told me later on that she wasn't really going to kill
herself.
She outdid herself, though. The thought of her killing herself
transformed in my subconsiousness and became sort of a general
worry about her physical wellbeing. I didn't notice this at
first, but as I got sober for a year and stopped smoking, as
a result of wanting to exercise some form of control over
myself through the anxiety, it became more and more obvious to
me that she had no control over her drinking and eating. She
first joined me in sobriety, but was back to drinking in a few
weeks. She had gained a lot of weight and pretty much stopped
walking. I think her fitness was so bad that even her tolerance
for different weather conditions was reduced, so she stopped
coming outside, complaining it was too cold, hot, moist, windy,
whatever.
Here's the tricky part. I saw this happening, and on some level
wanted to confront her, but on another level I was kept from
acting by that suicide threat always hanging there at the back
of my mind. I did complain about her drinking some times, but
she just kept at it. I did not complain enough, though, and not
as much as I would have if she had never told me about the
suicidal thoughts.
It is a strange conundrum. In some ways I can see that her
slow suicide through overeating and overdrinking is mirrored
by my allowing that slow version in fear of the quick version.
It isn't clear to me, though, how should I have drawn the line.
It isn't clear at all if the suicide threat was a manipulation
or the real deal. If it was manipulation, then my weak response
to her lifestyle is "enabling her" but if it was a real threat,
then by not enabling her I would have risked her life.
As a side note, I find it frustrating that her therapist can't
just fill me in on this. It seems like I should not have had
to grope around in dark all this time. It is pretty fucking
tiring.
The way she ended up outdoing herself is that the thought
about her wellbeing had developed into a real beast inside
me, without anybody really noticing. She had gotten us a new
apartment. Practically without telling me, BTW, that's how
she rolls. There were candles burning, I was going out with
the dog, she had a glass of wine next to her. I told her,
remember that you have the long candles burning in the
kitchen. I had a bad feeling about it, but I reminded myself
that I am paranoid and shouldn't take it seriously every time.
I took a long walk, came back, she is passed out and the
candles are still burning, dripping onto the tablecloth.
Maybe if I came a bit later, they would have just gone out
by themselves, maybe they would have ignited the table,
who knows. What happened instead was that the little spinner
inside my mind exploded. I had it with this construct.
Few days later I had gone to the countryside to think it over.
That's the last I saw of her. In a month I had my own apartment.
First I tried to get a therapist for us, to have some help with
the separation, but the therapist got sick. Then I was too
[#####] to reschedule. I only communicated the practical
stuff with the ex and pretty much went dark after that.
She says this was cruel, like I just vanished. I don't know how
I could have kept talking to her, to be honest. Her victimhood
is powerful. I don't think it could have drawn me in anymore,
but it just seems that after seeing through the manipulation,
there isn't much there I can comment. I won't have any influence
on her worldview. She needs her victimhood to cover something up
with.
But yeah, after half a year, I wonder if there is any point of
talking to her. I can see that in some generic case it is
beneficial to have some kind of a graceful ending for a
relationship. I don't think I have the keys for such ending
here. It could be that what is so intolerable to her about how
things ended up is that I left and she didn't get her final
manipulation in. I think the move she would have liked to end
with is that final therapy session where I somehow end up
apologizing to her. Victimhood confirmed.
