My Fiancée broke up with me +Extreme change of mind +Police threats

[Meaulnes]

Meaulnes, that's my fault, not yours. Like most other Americans, I'm language poor because I know only one. Hence, our ability to communicate anything at all is due entirely to your splendid knowledge of a second language.

 

Downtown, I really don't know how to thank you for every minute you've passed trying to help me. Thank you for all of your time reading my posts and for analyzing her behaviour for me. Thank you for looking through websites and for helping me with all these pieces of information. I really want to thank you for your altruism. You don't know me at all, I'm an unknown to you, just some words written in a forum, yet you're still there trying to make me understand and I really appreciate that.

 

There's nothing left to make me feel better at this point, nor even a real explanation from her (because I wouldn't believe it). I can only trust in time to heal me. These days are difficult, I just want Christmas to end and my work routine to come back. Although I try to go out with friends, go swimming, read or anything to keep my mind occupied, she keeps haunting me. It's still recent, not even 2 months since the last conversation.

 

First of all, you're right about IAD, it makes sense and a lot of her strange behaviours could be due to that. She was really hypochondriac, always looking through Internet whenever she felt something was wrong in her body. But we cannot forget about those other behaviours she showed which were really strange and don't match the IAD. It's true that none of us is trained to categorize it.

 

- Her all good/all bad categorization. That happened a lot and I remember I thought 'If ever we broke up she's going to treat me like this'.

 

- The distance issues. This is an important one and the thing that really bothered me troughout the relationship. Let's analyze this:

 

Summer 2012. She went back home after being 3 months together. We had already made love, kissed each other, told the first 'love yous' and talked about being a couple and our future once she would get back in September. However she acted really strange when she arrived at the States. She would never tell me I love you nor tell me sweet things. I think she was confused because she couldn't touch me. When we did Skype things were strange. I use to write my feelings down and I have some papers from that summer where I say that I don't understand that. I remember talking with her about that but she would continue doing the same. I sent her a big letter-book with pictures, silly things, even videos I made for her trying to cheer her up, singing and all but she wouldn't react. It was strange. When she came back the first kisses in the cheek happened. Then Paradise began.

 

Christmas 2012. She was in my house with my family, being so nice so generous so good to everybody... making cookies, singing carols, etc.

 

Summer 2013. We were really close. 'All of me' from John Legend was our song. First trip to the States with her so no distance this summer, just some weeks before my trip that we spent preparing my visit. She was so happy showing me her culture and things. We made a big trip and I could see love in her eyes.

 

Christmas 2013. Again in my house, we went to another city in my country to visit some family. She was happy, generous, good with everybody.

 

Summer 2014. She had to go by herself and was sad to leave me. She didn't want to spend too much time without me so she just went home for 4 weeks. She sent me like 10-11 cards, once a day, counting the days till her flight. When I received her she again forgot to kiss me but then smiled like if suddenly she recalled who I was. She came with the idea of doing a Master in the States in the future, though she didn't know when. The father had told her to (emotional blackmail: Meaulnes is doing a Master and you aren't. You're losing your time)

 

Christmas 2014. We went to the States. Really happy there (you Americans really know how to celebrate Christmas, I enjoyed it).

 

Summer 2015. Ok, this is the summer who marked the beginning of the end. The conversation about not being the owner of her body and all. The father wanted to pay me the flight a couple of months earlier but I declined it because I'd just come last Christmas and didn't want them to spend so much money on me. They understood but my ex was sad. She was going to be a month or so there. She told me I was leaving her alone. When there, she used to say I miss you, she would eventually get mad with her family there. She would send me again lot of cards. But when I met her at the airport again she acted strange. She was shy and didn't know how to treat me. This time she came convinced that she wanted to do a Master in the States. Again her parents, I'm sure. The year before she would speak about staying here and working as this or doing that. Anyway, she wouldn't prepare her papers nor do the application in the following months. Her father would ask if she had already done it EVERY week.

 

Christmas 2015. This was also weird: she went back home that Christmas without me. Nor her family nor her asked me if I wanted to go. She seemed really sad to leave me, bought me things, put me sad faces, told me she was really sorry to go, sorry for having to choose between the two parts and everything. She came back colder. Already had prepared and sent the papers. The crisis came within a month. I don't know what happened that Christmas there. Anyway, she would speak to me every day she spent in the States, send me a surprise and came back with more presents.

 

Summer 2016. She went home excited. I would have gone with her but we had already started the visa process and I could have been stopped in customs. All summer preparing things, speaking with me, lot of cards...

 

I don't know why I think she may have had two faces: one here and other there. She hid lot of things to her parents: the 'unofficial' wedding papers we signed here, the fact that we were living together, that I was always with her in the appartment, etc. I remember that when her mother came in April my ex asked me to take all of my clothes and things and carry them to my parents house because she didn't want her mother to know the truth. Apparently she did all of this because her parents would 'hate' me or 'don't love me anymore' if they discovered (Traditional family, she had to wait until matrimony to live together and do things). I would accept that because it was her decision but if she was capable of lying like this to her parents...why wouldn't she be lying to me all that time? I don't know if the correct word here is 'lies' or 'hiding things'.

 

On the other hand, I'm not sure about your hypothesis about the break-up. It's an ideal one but it's only put together because of some comments she made at the end. It was 4 months since her flight, she would have realised before that she didn't want the wedding and our future together. In the last conversation, the 'police' threats and the way she was treating me were both really harsh. She acted as she didn't care at all. I'd never forget that. She wasn't trying to minimize the harm. I had already paid the hotel and flight and she knew that because she saw the ticket/reservation in my message. She didn't let me the freedom of choosing what I wanted to do. She acted this way to protect her, she was scared for whatever reason. I felt as a stranger, a crazy man, a harasser. She made me felt like that and I wasn't forcing her at all to see me. The city is big enough. I had my plans. And then, I don't know whether to completely believe her last message or not. There's a lot of things, double faces, hidings and behaviours from her that prevent me from doing that. I'll explain myself.

 

This last year she was cold, right, but she kept insinuating about the marriage. She would even say that before my parents, showing her hand. Remember one of the first things she told me when she came back that summer (2015) was 'this is my last year here so if you want to do something it's now the moment, I'm not going to repeat it again'.

 

This last year also was the only one in the whole relationship that I've been really busy. I was doing a Master, working almost all afternoons and trying to get an advance certificate in an European language other than English and my native one. I was also kind of wary because she had already told me her plans and I didn't know what was going to happen. I loved her but I was seeing how our world was falling apart and big changes were about to happen. Big decisions.

 

I think now that when finally I decided to ask her for marriage it was too late. She had been making plans with her mother before that moment and I wasn't in those plans. Remember the 'Leave to Meaulnes all stuff you don't want'. I heard that in one of those moments I was next to her hiding from her parents. Whatever happened, I'm sure she had 'two realities' in her head. In one I was going to go with her there, we made lot of plans and talked about that almost every day. But she kept waiting the ring and I wanted to finish all my obligations to find the right moment to give it to her. In the meantime, friends and coworkers wouldn't stop asking us 'So when is the wedding?'. In the other one, she was going alone to the new city to start a Master and was preparing to leave my country and all memories behind. This coincide with the 'two faces' hypothesis.

 

And she was contradictory. Since she came back that summer. When she left my country she gave my parents a card where she said that she would never forget them and always keep them in her heart. It sounded like a farewell. However, I had already given her the ring and she left me a different card where she said 'Big things are waiting for us there, I can't wait' (sort of). I think when I gave her the ring she was really happy, she wanted that, she wanted me, the wedding was all she had been waiting for. She told everybody (Friends and family, I even spoke with her grandma), she posted it on Facebook so all of her friends could notice it (I mean, would had she done all that if she didn't feel it?) and told me how the wedding works in her country. But it was too late. I'm sure her parents had thought I was doing it at the last minute, just because she got accepted and that I didn't really cared about her. Remember the father indiference when we told him, remember I never heard from the documents he had to sign (she should have sent it to me in summer). However, I'm sure that if she really had 'two faces' in that moment she wanted me and that future we had been talking about. My mind just cannot accept a person could pretend so many emotions.

 

Imagine me as a balloon in her head who was deflating little by little once she took the flight. The first weeks she would prepare lot of things: create Word and Excel to organise the documents we needed, look for EVERY plane ticket or hotel reservation we had made in the past, wrote the marriage letter to the government, started to look for places where we could marry, talked to me about the pastor, about who were we going to invite, etc. The next month the new city was in her head but she was still excited showing me the flowers in the city, calling me to talk about appartments, decorating it, choosing it, even the mother would talk to me and tell me which one was better, etc. I felt part of all of that. At the end of the month the cards came. Lots of. Speaking of our future. Then September began. Loneliness for her, big changes, lot of work, but still talking. She started to get stressed about what was I going to do there and I would tell her to relax. The balloon was deflating (as every summer) although she still showed me interest (the ticket plane and the 'I wish you could come', the comments about places, people, friends, some pictures, fear of the visa never answering back, etc.).

 

Now let me analyze with you the last week: I sent her a picture of the suitcase I'd just bought and she seemed excited. I sent her a picture of two Star Wars cup (we both love the saga) and she was laughing and sending me hearts, telling me 'I want you here' and so on. She tried to call me through videocall and I thought it was an audio so I answered but I cut it down with a disgusted face because I was in pajamas, my hair crazy and not decent for talking with her. She told me 'Why that face?' I told her why and she said 'I just wanted to say hi...'. She seemed sad. On Thursday she told me she was really stressed. Lot of work, all day in library, no life at all, and needed to talk to her boss because work was starting to step on her study. Also, she would ask me for help with a paper she had to hand over. I had to record my voice while reading 3 texts. 'I just need 1 for tomorrow, don't hurry with the rest, you can send it to me NEXT WEEK'. She wasn't planning at all what was going to happen a couple of days later. On Friday she told me she was getting sick. We talked about her work and everything. Normal. On Saturday we just had a little conversation in 'her' morning and suddenly she disappeared. She answered me back a couple of hours later, she was in the library with a friend. I cannot say why but I didn't answer back. I just didn't feel like doing it. 'Her' whole day and 'my whole night passed without speaking and the next day I had the 'We need to talk' message in my phone. I'm telling this because I know that I also have my part of guilt in this, although I don't think that was the primary reason for her to break up.

 

Something happened that weekend. A friend (man) she never had told me about, a sudden epiphany. Who knows. These are the two main hypotheses that I have: Either she had been playing with me all that time and was just waiting for someone 'better' to come by or the appropriate moment to get rid of me (just to get used to the new routine would serve) or she really wanted me there (as showed in the summer and until that very moment) but something really bad happened which made her erase me from her life (out of guilt, shame, hate or whatever).

 

The three phases of the break up were also strange: 1) confusion over the phone on Sunday, just wanted a break, she would write me in 2-3 weeks; 2) the next day she broke up really convinced when she read my message, accused me of attacking her, blocked me and wished me good 3) I panicked, she was supposed to write me back in weeks, I didn't know what I'd done wrong. The aunt adds me, tell me 'I hope you both recover' and I start to think I'm guilty. I did something wrong. I buy the plane tickets, write to her and hell unchains. 'Police' threats and she treats me as if she wouldn't know me at all.

 

The 'attack' she was talking about was me saying 'How can you say you've been doubting all this time? Have you been taking advantage of me while in my country these last months? You just wanted me to help you with the move? To keep you company? Have you ever loved me?'. I was confused after the phone call. Never really meant that but didn't know what was going on. Maybe she felt somehow offended, maybe she felt that the trust we had had been damaged for good. Maybe she was just waiting for an excuse. Maybe she wasn't brave enough to tell me that on the phone. Maybe all her emotions were just lies and she was pretending all the time. Maybe all her emotions were true but someone or something made her change (quite fast) her mind. Maybe she felt I wasn't interested at all in going there and her stressful life amplified that emotion. Maybe she felt betrayed by me.

 

Anyway, we'll never know what happened in that beautiful head. What were her true motivations, her secrets, what did she hide. There're so many hypotheses I could write a book! It would serve me as a sort of catharsis.

 

One thing is for sure: everything happens for a reason and the actions that led me to this present were also provoked by me (unconsciously). I mean, I'm not perfect, I have lots of flaws like every human being and I also admit my part of guilt in the break-up. There're lot of things I've learnt with this whole story.

 

Oh, I don't like Christmas at all.

Edited December 23, 2016 by Meaulnes

[ExpatInItaly]

OP, I know you are trying to make sense of all of this. I don't blame you. It's confusing and hurtful, and I agree she seems to have some serious underlying mental health issues.

 

My ex-boyfriend is diagnosed BPD. I know what that hot-cold, love-hate, come here-go away dynamic feels like. It's maddening. I agree with Downtown that your ex demonstrates a lot of the behaviours characteristic of someone with BPD and other anxiety disorders. Believe it or not, my ex also once threatened to phone the police to report my "harassment." (This was in response to one text I sent him when he was angry, to please answer my call so we could talk.) I saw how quickly he could flip between loving me and hating me. I knew there were serious issues brewing.

 

But I also know I couldn't change my ex, and that his emotional problems were taking far too great a toll on my own well-being. He refused to seek any type of treatment and blamed nearly everything on me. When I finally walked away, it was painful. But then I felt a huge sense of relief and calm. It freed up space in my heart and mind to allow a stable and emotionally healthy man to enter my life. I wish my ex the best, but I could never return to that. You will someday reach that point, if you continue to work to detach yourself from her. Do what you can to remember that her problems are not your fault, and that it appears you tried hard to accommodate her. But now you have to take care of you.

[Downtown]

One thing is for sure: everything happens for a reason and the actions that led me to this present were also provoked by me (unconsciously).

Yes, Meaulnes, and given that you witnessed the R/S for 4.5 years, it is frustrating -- even for someone simply reading your story -- to not know for sure why it ended in such ugliness. So far, we've identified four possible explanations for her nasty behavior, none of which is convincing or satisfying:

 

1. Narcissist/Sociopath. The simplest explanation, by far, is that you were simply manipulated and deceived for four years by a woman who tossed you aside when you were no longer useful. There are several reasons, however, why this explanation is not credible. One is that anyone doing that much work for four years is going to go after a wealthy guy.

 

A second is that any usefulness you had ended when you moved her furniture for the last time and she returned to the States -- four months before she did all that work setting up the wedding back in the States and then ending the R/S. A third reason is that, although anything is possible, it is not believable that you could not seel that four years of love and adoration were a faked performance.

 

2. Struggled with her own feelings. The "ideal explanation," as you say, is the one I offered in my last post. I described a young woman who fell out of love with you in the fourth year and, not trusting her own feelings, then struggled for a year to restore her feelings and make you happy. This is consistent with her admission, at the end, that "She said she's been doubting since the day she knew she got accepted in the Masters!" -- i.e., had been hiding her doubts from you for 9 months. This explanation also is consistent with her statement, "I've lied to you but above all I've lied to me."

 

After spending 4 months away from you back in the States, she finally accepted the truth she had started seeing 9 months earlier. She then lashed out at you -- in an ugly fashion -- because she knew that anything less ugly and less hateful would not keep you from getting on the plane. One big problem with this explanation, however, is that -- after deciding to leave you -- she made little effort to soften the blow and ease your pain.

 

Another problem with this scenario is that, if she were really focused on sparing your feelings, she would have known that it would be less hurtful for you to spend a few days in a hotel and touring the city than to be treated in such an ugly hostile manner by a woman you had loved for four years.

 

3. BPD traits. BPDers are notorious for flipping on a dime -- in only ten seconds -- from Jekyll (adoring you) to Hyde (hating you). As we discussed, you describe a few behaviors -- e.g., black-white thinking and lack of object constancy -- that are BPD warning signs. Yet, because BPDers exhibit an emotional instability that starts in the early teens, it is extremely unlikely that a 22 year old BPDer could remain stable for 4 years and then flip from Jekyll to Hyde at age 26.

 

4. Hypochondria and OCD. As we discussed, you are describing most of the classic warning signs for hypochondria (now called "Illness Anxiety Disorder" here in the States). It has an average age of onset in the early 20's. Athough hypochondria explains a lot of your exGF's unnecessary trips to the hospital, it does nothing to explain her abrupt and brutal treatment of you. Yet, knowing that she may exhibit moderate to strong traits of hypochondria opens a door to the co-occurring disorders -- one of which may explain her sudden hateful behavior.

 

I therefore suggest you read about OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), which commonly occurs together with hypochondria. They are both anxiety disorders and, in a sense, they are two sides of the same coin. Whereas a hypochondriac is mistakenly convinced she HAS a disease, an OCD sufferer typically is convinced she is at great risk of CATCHING a disease. An example of hypochondria, then, is your exGF's frequent trips to the hospital for "stomach problems" even though she looked fine to you. She was convinced she already had caught the stomach disease.

 

In contrast, examples of OCD would be her frequent hand-washing routine that required your participation as soap holder, her compulsive checking of expiration dates, her fear of eating any food prepared by your mother, her disgust when sitting in your parents' home, and her insistence on you taking a daily shower at a particular time. These seem to be examples of her fearing she will catch a disease she does not yet have.

 

I draw your attention to OCD because it results in compulsions and obsessions that often go far beyond medical concerns. About 80% of OCD patients exhibit both compulsions and obsessions. The remaining 20% exhibit only one or the other. A 1996 study reports that the mean age at onset of OCD is 24 years for women.

 

With regard to compulsions, BrainPhysics.com lists "Cleaning/Washing" and "Checking" [e.g., of expiration dates] as the first two items on its list of six "most common compulsions." What I find more relevant to your concerns, however, is the BrainPhysics.com list of "most common obsessions." It includes the following 7 concerns:

• Fear of making a mistake
  
• Fear of causing harm to another
  
• Fear of behaving in a socially unacceptable manner
  
• Need for symmetry or exactness
  
• Excessive doubt
  
• Fear of contamination
  
• Religious and sexual concerns
  

As I noted, these fears typically go far beyond medical concerns. Importantly, I am not suggesting that your exGF has full-blown OCD or that, even if she does, it necessarily would explain her brutal treatment of you.

 

Rather, what I'm suggesting is that, because you are describing classic warning signs for hypochondria, and because it commonly co-occurs with one or two clinical disorders (e.g., OCD, ADHD, Panic Disorder, or Bipolar), one of those related disorders may cast light on your exGF's distancing behavior. It grew stronger every time she went back home to the States without you. Indeed, her distancing behavior was the very strongest when she was there the longest -- being under her father's influence for 4 months -- at which point she ended your R/S.

 

There're so many hypotheses I could write a book!

Well, in this thread, you've already written a term paper. Perhaps you can get credit for it as the introductory chapter to your Master's thesis.

[Meaulnes]

OP, I know you are trying to make sense of all of this. I don't blame you. It's confusing and hurtful, and I agree she seems to have some serious underlying mental health issues.

 

My ex-boyfriend is diagnosed BPD. I know what that hot-cold, love-hate, come here-go away dynamic feels like. It's maddening. I agree with Downtown that your ex demonstrates a lot of the behaviours characteristic of someone with BPD and other anxiety disorders. Believe it or not, my ex also once threatened to phone the police to report my "harassment." (This was in response to one text I sent him when he was angry, to please answer my call so we could talk.) I saw how quickly he could flip between loving me and hating me. I knew there were serious issues brewing.

 

But I also know I couldn't change my ex, and that his emotional problems were taking far too great a toll on my own well-being. He refused to seek any type of treatment and blamed nearly everything on me. When I finally walked away, it was painful. But then I felt a huge sense of relief and calm. It freed up space in my heart and mind to allow a stable and emotionally healthy man to enter my life. I wish my ex the best, but I could never return to that. You will someday reach that point, if you continue to work to detach yourself from her. Do what you can to remember that her problems are not your fault, and that it appears you tried hard to accommodate her. But now you have to take care of you.

 

You're right Expat. I also want to thank you because you've been following my story since the very beginning and tried to help me.

 

Whatever her reasons, whatever her problems... I cannot change the past, I cannot change a person. It's impossible to enter into someone else's mind and try to understand what's going on.

 

She's gone forever and it's difficult to accept that. I'd have never imagined this relationship would end in such a disgusting way. When she told me we had to talk I remember I wrote to her, scared, thinking maybe one of her grandparents was sick. Asking if her family was okay. My mind couldn't expect at all what was about to happen. A bullet straight to my heart.

 

Even if she took the blame she has made it seem as if it was me who had pulled the trigger. First of all, when she broke up she said: 'Your message has helped me in my decision'. And then, when telling her I was planning on going there, she treated me as a crazy and unknown person who wasn't respecting her. Even if I kept telling her she wasn't forced to meet me. And finally, those last quotes in her Pinterest which show her as a victim, as someone who's living in a hell, who doesn't want to 'hate' a man even if he has made her feel so low. I've showed these quotes to some friends and everybody agrees that it seems as if it was me who had dumped her. She's so confusing, so contradictory. I mean, who send a picture of a plane ticket wishing her fiancé was there, break up the next week and threaten him the next one when she hears he's coming saying 'I respected you as a person but I cannot believe you don't care at all about my feelings', 'You cannot force me to be with you' etc, etc.? How am I supposed to react to all this madness?

 

Am I guilty for all of this? Did she expect me to stay quiet and not to say anything at all after that sudden phone call? Did she expect me to just leave her (my fiancée!) drop that sudden bomb and not to do anything?

 

I didn't deserve that treatment at all. We're humans, we have feelings. She didn't care at all about mine and made it seem as if it was me the selfish one. Those words, coming out from the mouth of the person I have been trusting for almost 5 years and that I was about to get married with... I don't know how to explain that. It's bigger than a deception, it just broke into pieces my whole world and I was buried within.

 

But I have to move on, there's no other way to overcome this and no one is going to do that for me. I cannot stay trapped in this moment forever. As you said, I have to focus on ME. I need to heal. I need to find happiness in the little things in life. A new year is also a new life. She has to stay behind.

 

I wish you a happy New Year!

Edited December 26, 2016 by Meaulnes

[Meaulnes]

Yes, Meaulnes, and given that you witnessed the R/S for 4.5 years, it is frustrating -- even for someone simply reading your story -- to not know for sure why it ended in such ugliness. So far, we've identified four possible explanations for her nasty behavior, none of which is convincing or satisfying

 

It is frustrating, Downtown. It really is. Who was this person I was going to marry? If she really was doubting all along this year and I didn't notice AT ALL... who was the person I was living with? How could she keep telling me about our future plans, about marriage? And how could she throw herself into so many preparations in spite of her 'supposed' doubts? If she got stressed and/or made a mistake that last weekend, how could she treat me in such an awful way? Where did she leave all those plans, memories and affection when she treated me like that? Why she made it seem as if I was somehow guilty despite her taking the blame? Why didn't she want to talk things over? Why didn't she want to hear me, to read me? Just silence, blockings and threats. Given all the details, given all of her actions I really don't think I'm talking about a 'sane' person.

 

I've checked about OCD. It also could be one of the 'right' options. But, as you say, none of our hypotheses is convincing. Let's just say she's a mixture of the four options and that she'd be a case worthy of study for the most renowned psychiatrists!

 

You've been a great help, Downtown. Now it's time for me to heal, to forget about (or rather learn to live with) all of this madness. To come out of this stronger. To start a new chapter.

 

I wish you a happy New Year!

Edited December 26, 2016 by Meaulnes

[Downtown]

I wish you a happy New Year!

I wish you the same, Meaulnes! Please take care of yourself.