more relationship crrrrap and evil confusing women

[dogwood]

Oh man. Here I am again. Another encounter with crazy women.. bleh. Anyway here's the story: J and I dated for a year and half. The relationship was full of a hell of a lot of drama, but was also filled with some of the most amazing and fullfilling experiences and connections I've had in my life. For the past 1.5 years she's been the closest person to me, and visa versa - we've been each other's world, and I've never connected on as many levels or as deep a level as I have with her - and never met such a goddamn unique, intelligent, creative and incredible person as her. However, she is of course also unstable, insane, (literally diagnosed with psychosis and bipolar), self destructive, jealous, etc etc. So yeah, I'm not too good at picking women.

 

But regardless of her issues, and how many fights and obstacles we've encountered, we got over every single one of them, loved each other to pieces, and seriously went through A LOT together. We have billions of great memories. We even hitchhiked accross France for 3 months together. Now, to get to the current time frame - in September we moved in together, in an apartment on the edge of town. We soon realized that we hated living in such an isolated area, and also preferred to live separately. While living in this apt for 3 months we also eventually came to the conclusion that it was time to break up (this was back in early November) - we both knew that she was too unstable and had to many issues to really support someone else in a relationship, and I was really getting dragged down by all of her drama. But we remained very close friends after breaking up, and still loved each other. (I really don't know what label to put on it - somewhere between friends and lovers.. but gradually trying to shift from lover to friend over time.)

 

Anyway, everything had been fine, up until a week ago. We both moved out to new houses mid December, and started our new lives. We've hung out once since the move, and everything was great. We bonded, we enjoyed each other's company, laughed, even held hands randomly (again.. grey-area relationship) and that was that. We were still texting eachother every couple days, sending good vibes and jokes and such, and everything was fine and as usual. Then we had this really stupid fight over msn.

 

I'd lost my phone (hoorah for that) so we chatted on msn instead. As I'm sure many of you know, it's really easy to get into a bad fight over online chatting. There's no body language, no tone, no sense of sincerity vs sarcasm - you really are missing a hell of a lot of dynamics of natural communication. So there was that factor. Both of us kept making little jokes here and there that the other person kept misinterpreting, and things just kept getting worse. In addition, lovely msn was sending our messages in the wrong orders, to add to the confusion. And in addition to that, I was in a really stressed out and anxious mood, was overanalyzing everything, and she seemed to be in a depressed nonchalant mood from what I could gather. Put all those factors together and you get a nice long up fight that escalates until it explodes. By the end she'd said she didn't want to be friends anymore, and I said I never wanted to see her again, and that was that.

 

Now you might think that's a really terrible fight and a really big deal. It was definitely to experience, but J is a very dramatic person, and often says extreme things and takes them back the next day. We've been through many intense fights over the 1.5 years we've been lovers/friends, and gotten over every single one of them. We've even fought physically, screamed horrible things at each other, and been fine the next day. This may sound not so healthy, but again she's a dramatic one.. and we always knew we still loved each other and would be fine after a couple days, no matter what words were said in the heat of the moment. Either way, I am in a very tough spot right now.. because of how things went after this msn fight.

 

The next day, I sent her an email, (phone still missing) apologizing for my own behavior, and trying to acknowledge that we just had a lot of miscommunications and that I'd hoped after cooling off everything would be fine and we could still be friends. I didn't hear from her for a few days, then finally she texted me very coldly generally saying she'd gotten my email, wanted to know when I was paying her back (I've owed her some money for a few months, but this has nothing to do with the fight) and that was all she wanted from me. She's blocked me on msn and won't answer her phone (she doesn't have caller ID... so I suppose she's not answering it at all.) I've tried to get her to explain her actions, telling her I can't understand why she's taking this one fight so seriously and is so angry, when we've had so many others that have been just as bad if not worse, and we've all overcome.. this fight truly is insignificant compared to everything we've been through together. But no response. She's leaving me in the dark for now.. I even told her that if she wants to take some time apart in order to "officially" break up and get over each other more, that's fine, but please say so. Still nothing. One week ago we were amazing friends and she was telling me she loved and missed me. Today she hasn't spoken to me for days and has cut nearly all lines of communication. What's going on?

 

I guess I just have to sit here and see what happens.. there's really nothing I can do. I've thought that there might be something else to this - she is bipolar, and it is the winter, and she's just moved into a new place in a basement room where she hardly speaks to her roommates, and also seems to not be answering her phone at all... so perhaps she's feeling pretty lonely and is spending a lot of time alone with her depressed and psychotic thoughts (I mean this literally, I know her well.) I know she only has a few close friends, and up until now supposedly I was the closest, so in addition to hurting me she must be hurting herself by doing this.. Who knows.

 

Anyway - sorry this is so long and complicated, just trying to include all the factors. It's so hurtful to me because it feels so sudden and unexplained - it's not like we had a terrible breakup and couldn't be friends, everything was going fine until this stupid fight somehow spurred her to suddenly cut contact. We even had all these plans, we were going to record music together, etc, but she's thrown it all away because of this. There's got to be more going on, but either way she sure isn't letting me know what it is. I even asked her if she seriously didn't want to be friends or if she just said it impulsively during the fight (very likely) but she won't answer any of my questions. Any thoughts?

 

*edit. just called her. she answered, but said she was in the middle of and couldn't talk. likely a lie though of course..

[handsdown]

Is she medicated for her bipolar and psychosis? She absolutely needs to be in order to lead a healthy and productive life. The love of my life is bipolar, hospitalized several times for psychotic episodes. He is medicated and our lives are pretty drama free. Having a mental illness does not give someone permission to be verbally or mentally abusive, sorry, I firmly believe this. I would never allow my partner to treat me in the ways you describe you are being treated. My partner ensures that he is regularly seen by a doctor and medicated properly, communicates with me every mood every whim and tries to live as healthy as possible, for both of us. Supporting her through this means you have to tell her your expectations and stand by those convictions.

[dogwood]

Incredibly unhelpful response. You have taken a complex situation and simplified it drastically - not to mention insisting she needs medication as your only advice. You know nothing of the severity of her mental diagnoses and you have also immediately assumed that is the reason for this conflict. People can behave poorly for a thousand reasons; medication does not immediately "fix" that. And if you must know, she's been handling her bipolar well lately and her psychosis is mild; antipsychotics, lithium, etc - these are incredibly powerful and nasty drugs and should only be taken if necessary. This society is way too influenced by the DSM. Please only respond if you have something intelligent to say that relates to my current problem, not just advising me to toss drugs at my ex without knowing any details of the relationship other than my summary.