I’ve come to the unfortunate realization that we truly were complete opposites in every way that mattered. I saw everything through a positive lens, while she saw everything through a negative lens. I looked at reality of what’s in front of me, she looked at fantasy she made up in her head. I twisted bad things into good things, while she twisted good things into bad things. I was fundamentally moral, honest, and straightforward; while she was fundamentally dishonest, immoral, and deceptive.
I am reminded of a few months ago. I have this device called a Mendi, a neurofeedback device that you put on your head and connect to an app and try to mentally make the ball go up a hill, as a way to activate the executive functions by mentally increasing blood flow to the prefrontal cortex in the brain. When you first set this app up, you choose moods, but since it is mental, you need to be honest about your moods. I let her try this and set up her own profile to use it.
When I chose my moods they were predictable for someone 3 months into a relationship who was smiling in bed with someone they are falling in love with. Happy, confident, etc. But when I saw her moods, it surprised me and concerned me a bit, although I didn’t think about it much after because I couldn’t make sense of it. She was being outwardly loving, smiling, saying I was the man of her dreams, saying how handsome and attractive I am, increasingly choosing to stay overnight with me at my apartment frequently, calling me an “angel” repeatedly, talking about marriage, etc.
But the truth that was really in her mind showed her mental illness, that I could only come to find out about later. When I saw her choices, they took me aback and concerned me: uncertain, sad, lonely, disconnected, etc. During that moment, I thought there was a problem, but her secret emotions were the only evidence, and her smiles, telling me “I’m happy” constantly, continuous stream of compliments, and talk about our future together, led me to believe that she was someone different than she truly was: a depressed, narcissistic, psychopath with no heart, who twisted everything good into something bad.
At 5 months, she decided to go to Spain on what is called a “workaway”, where you work part of the day relatively easy jobs in exchange for accommodation. She quit her stable job, which she had constantly complained to me about hor “horrible” it was (she only had to clean up paint in a fun art studio), and abandoned me in tears, as she was planning to leave for 2 months, during one of the most challenging times of my life – dealing with foreign residency in 2 months, taking 3 classes, and planning my future about where I was going to be for the forseeable future.
She wanted me to follow her and rent an airbnb nearby – but I was also paying for my apartment back home, so I needed to find a replacement, and couldn’t find one in time, so I couldn’t afford an expensive airbnb plus my apartment which also was not cheap, for 2 months. She left me alone in tears, and the reason was simply because she was not happy in her home country.
She found a place on the sea in Valencia, in perfect weather, steps from the ocean – literally a private apartment that you could see the sea from her door (I later visited the place, and it was a dream), but I could not hear the end about horrible it was. She had demanded alternative accommodations to upgrade from the original place, which looks fine in the video she showed me, but she said it had “bad energy”. The host agreed and offered the private apartment mentioned.
The original job was to work for 5 hours per day for free food and accommodation. But due to her insistence she found the bare minimum they would permit to work to keep the accommodation: 2 hours per day of basic tasks like window washing. This I would come to understand was her way of operating – pushing people to get the maximum benefits for minimum efforts, using drama, accusations, and threats to get what she wanted.
She was literally on a dream vacation literally on the sea in Spain with a private apartment completely for free for a whole month (she quit after 1 month because it was “too terrible”), where she only had to wash windows and do basic chores for 2 hours per day on weekdays, and the rest of the day she could go to the beach or do whatever she wanted, and she still could see only the negative, and called this dream vacation “horrible” and “the worst”.
Believing her twisted lies about the “horribleness” of her workaway (I later visited and found it to be amazing, of course not 100% perfect but most people’s dream), I asked her to come back, but she said no and doubled down and committed to living there for at least a month. I tried to rescue her from this, so I found another workaway in Ibiza on an estate, also with private accommodation and food provided, even better than her first workaway, although the work was harder. 5 hours of weeding per day, basically, although as a man I had to dig rocks, do sanding and powerwashing, and do other harder tasks than her.
I was taking 3 graduate data science courses which were very rigorous at the time. yet I still never heard an end to the complaints. We were on one of the most famous and expensive islands in the mediterranean, for free, and getting paid 60 euros each every week to buy our own food, and I was literally driving her around the island to exotic beaches on most days, but still there was no end to the complaints and demands about everything – everyone was a horrible person, a snake, backstabbers, etc. Later I came to realize I had bought into her twisted realities and it wasn’t near as bad as she claimed.
This was her standard operating mindset about everything. The truth is she twisted everything into something negative when it was amazing – her former job, her dream vacation, her second consecutive dream vacation with all expenses paid and a private chauffer (me), her loving artistic boyfriend and potential husband willing to commit, and even her own loving family. No matter what she had, nothing was ever good enough. There was always something to complain about, and everything good was twisted into something bad.
Even if there was literally nothing bad about some event, and no way to complain, it was quickly forgotten, like our 1-day excusion in northern Italy, which of course I paid for entirely including the flights. 2 weeks later she was telling me “we haven’t gone on a date in a long time, I can’t even remember the last time” and demanding I arrange for more dates.
Like is she even serious? I literally slaved in the fields for 5 hours per day while paying rent back home and taking 3 rigorous graduate courses and exams, all while driving her around in a rental BMW to exotic beaches all around Ibiza for a month – all at my expense, then on the way back flew her to Italy where we had a romantic getaway where I rented another car to drive her around to take her to a fancy dinner, Italian pizza, and Italian ice cream, and that was 2 weeks ago, are you kidding me? Did she forget already?
I was the opposite. I had a girlfriend who constaintly complained, was never happy, never satisfied with all I did, held back almost all love and care (like cooking, helping, shopping, etc) due to perceived “oppression” and “fear of submission”, never acknowledged my emotions (it was always immediately twisted into an attack on her), never made me feel cherished – just complimented, never helped me during hard times, drained my time, energy, and resources without giving back or appreciating me, and all this and I still found ways to twist all this into something positive, and would never have left her.
She did me a huge gift by leaving. I was in a toxic relationship, and my greatest problem was partner selection. I had chosen a monster, but I won’t make that mistake again.
