Happened Again... Worse... Way Worse... Best Friend This Time

[Watchmaker]

Been battling dark thoughts daily as of late.

Reconnected with a 25 year best friend I'd always had a thing for and been attracted to, feelings for, in love with, etc. She reciprocated for a time, we both mutually expressing attraction, love, feelings, future plans. Flirty and intimate, but never got sexual. But cuddling, holding, embracing, holding hands, dating, laughing and crying together, hours and hours and hours on the phone... never spent more time with in person, voice calls or in text with anyone else ever in my life like this.

I broke her heart when I couldn't get out of denial and foolishly didn't escape my dead and buried marriage.

Though LO and I always had a keen and strong connection, and always had much in common and were one of the people that 'gets' each other the best, there were also some incompatibility areas that manifested and became evident. MAJOR CHALLENGES, like: I'm an Echo Codependent (always wondered if I lean BPD too); she's a Covert Narc... I'm Anxious Preoccupied; she's Dismissive Avoidant... I'm Type 6 Enneagram and ENFT (not sure what she is, but I'm sure it must be one of the ones that's most diametrically opposed, etc). Also, it would seem she’s manic bipolar. Addicted to pharma too. And I’ve gone insane, and continue to drink, smoke and toke.

Her mind, her personality, her energy, her eyes, her hair, her height, her body, her curves, her lips, her hands, her feet, her... everything. Never been so transfixed on such beauty and sexiness.... ya, ya, I know... we've all heard it a thousand times over on a forum like this... yeah, yeah, I said of my former LO that she to me was like a cross between Helen of Troy and Marilyn Monroe (at once the most beautiful and the most sexiest woman in history)... but my 25 year friend LO has exponential multipliers of the rich deep long friendship history, is more beautiful, more sexy, taller, and more badass... and, unlike my prior neighbor LO, this friend of mine also recriprocated for a time, expressed attraction, feelings, and being in love with me... talked about marriage, rings, houses, co-parenting, finances.... (I now know it musta mostly been 'fake futures')..... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

GASLIGHTING, GASLIGHTING, and more GASLIGHTING... All the classic hallmarks are there: revising history, denial of things with proof to the contrary.... absolutely crazy-making... making me question reality and feel like I’m going insane.

I’ve been consuming content daily from the likes of Richard Grannon, Dr Ramani, HG Tudor, Lee Hammock, Briana MacWilliam, Aaron Doughty, Thais Gibson, and more... a lot of good it’s done me, as after hundreds of hours of trying to self educate, I don’t seem to be any closer to change or breakthrough...

She reconnected with another mutual friend... He fell in love with her... she with him too (although to this day I don't think she realizes it). She continued to dress/undress in front of me, go out on dates with me, send me sexy pictures... all while 'seeing him'...

I give her $3000+ monthly and can't seem to stop. Don't really want to. We are completely in bed together (figuratively/circumstantially). Never had sex with her - HUGELY DEPRESSING... I would kill and die for just one sexual encounter with her... anyways...

All I know is I never loved anyone like I love her... I will never love like this again... I never cared about, believed in, or have been committed to anyone like I do/am for her.

Now, I am tormented and tortured all the time thinking of how I lost her, and my two best friends (LO and other mutual friend) are together.

She also does overnights with another friend of hers... he staying at her house... her staying at his house.

I am completely, entirely, perfectly, nonstop in misery, torment and torturous states.

I have totally unraveled and fallen apart, battling suicidal thoughts on the daily, and contemplated checking myself in several times.

I am profoundly stuck and trapped and cannot get out. I will not reject her, leave her, suspend my financial support, friendship or any other support. I love her hopelessly and desperately. I cannot and will not go NC. This is the hill I will die on.

Like Li Mu Bai said at the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: I would rather be a ghost drifting by her side, a condemned soul, than to enter heaven without her.

She recently called out the limerence. Said I seem to be content to be in this one sided, unreciprocated delusion. She's friend-zoned me over and over, been very patient with me, told me repeattedly to stop the romance, the love bombing, the compliments, the feelings, the attraction. I. SIMPLY. CANNOT. We talk on the phone, she tells me the score, I say yes you're right I'm so sorry I'm changing my ways... then when I see her in person again, it all melts and goes out the window and I simply cannot control myself, falling all over her... completely hopelessly smitten by her beauty, sexyness, her spell... she so owns me... I am so wrapped around her finger.

No one has ever been as verbally abusive to me as she has. Concurrently, and in parallel, no one has ever showered me with such encouragement and compliments and loving support and cheerleading. I guess one small victory for myself, is that a few months ago, I stood up for myself and I told her, look: we are best of friends, and best friends do not verbally abuse each other. You have terribly verbally abuse me… Told me things like I should hate myself, like she can see why my SO got tired of me because I wore her down, how I can’t go a year without my dick in someone else’s mouth, which is actually 100 times more true of her current love interest, a whoremonger and a drunkard. But I digress. Anyways, she owned it, apologized for it, and even wrote a contract saying that she will not abandon our friendship and will never be verbally abusive to me again. I’m glad to say that, although we have sparred, fought, and argued, she has never again gone back to the nastiness where it was. At least this is one small victory for me, standing up for myself and loving myself. But obviously, it’s also pretty much too little, too late.

Last week, she came to see my band’s concert, our triumphant return to the stage for the first time in over 10 years. She made me feel 10 feet tall. Not only just by showing up and attending, but she got to meet some of my other best friends, and they got to meet her. After the show, we found a quiet corner to sit and talk for an hour. I did all sorts of shit that I am “not supposed to “do anymore… I kept hugging her, and giving her kisses on her forehead and cheeks, holding her hand, complementing her beauty and telling her how amazing she looks and how much I love her. She gave me a long leash that night, and let it go, and I think really honored that it was “my night “. The day after, she left to go spend a week with my other former best friend, the guy she’s been seeing. And then the following week, she’s going on a getaway with yet another friend where they’re going to spend nights together. I am in fucking hell and misery. I hate my life.

She is everything to me.

I just want to die. I am in hell. But she is all my reasons any more. All my hope and life force feels like it is for her.

She is all I ever wanted in this world, all I ever wanted in this life. I am lost without her.

Listen to me... pathetic, psycho-babble, incompetent, failure, shell of a person, beta cuck... consigned to flames of woe.

[moreissuesthanvogue]

WM,

We are both back....

This situation sounds super emotionally abusive, toxic and exploitative. I think the best thing would be therapy and strict no contact.
You need to figure out a way to navigate out this tangled web. It's the only positive solution for you.

[David]

I give her $3000+ monthly and can't seem to stop.

That money would be better invested in your own emotional growth. Its one thing to pay a woman $3,000/month in return for getting sex, its another thing when you are not even getting that.

As others have said, NC is the way forward.

[Watchmaker]

God help me. I just can’t seem to do NC. I’ve hurt her and don’t want to let her down anymore.

Plus, as my mother pointed out, I’ve had a tremendous guilt complex at feeling like I failed my SO, and now I’m trying so hard not to fail LO. Even though I already have. I guess I’m just too toxic. Feels like I’m just too far gone.

[David]

At the risk of trying to rescue you have you read any books on masculinity? Such as the rational male series by Rollo Tomassi?

[Watchmaker]

Haven’t read the books but have done some YouTubing of red pill stuff, including Rollo. There was a time a couple of years ago when I dreamed of the MGTOW route... but I’ve lost my way, it seems. Feels like too much insurmountable apathy, exhaustion, defeat, etc.

Also, did Prozac for 10 months a couple of years ago, which I guess maybe helped me get through the LE with my neighbor... but went off it because the stomach side effects were too much. Then tried Lexapro for like 3 months but that didn’t seem to work or make much difference. Now, I’ve had a bottle of Zoloft for months, but it just sits there and I haven’t been able to bring myself to take it.

Cannabis def helps with the panic and anxiety. But that’s like 3-4 times a week, and only later at night before bed. I don’t wanna get into ‘pot-head’ levels of all day/every day thc use.

Also had different doctors and counseling off and on over the years. Some assistance there, but...

Back on point: I guess I’m not really even so sure anymore of who I used to be... but I’d like to think that I used to be more alpha-like... at least more confident, brooding, manly, secure once upon a time. But I’ve always been a sensitive guy, heart on sleeve and more open and free emotionally than most guys I know, always gravitated towards friendships more readily and perhaps even more easily with females... and typically females who are really really gorgeous, beautiful, pretty, sexy, etc... Some of my guy friends be like: dude, how you have so many incredibly beautiful female friends?...

I also come from a relatively conservative religious Christian background. And have had VERY few sexual encounters apart from/outside of that with my wife of 22 years. And of these very few ‘sexual encounters’ I’ve had other than with my wife, most were only manual/oral - only had coitus (PIV penetrative intercourse) one other time with one other person. Adding to my shame, I just a few years ago learned about the clitoris... not it’s existence as a named anatomical body part... but how basic and key it is for female pleasure and orgasm. Like, do you know how fucking ashamed and embarrassed that makes a grown ass man feel? To learn about that shit at 40-something fucking years of age?!?!?! Like, why the fuck didn’t I know about this when I was 16 or 21?!?!?

I am clearly in the betabux end of the spectrum. Alphafux feels a universe away from me. I saw this meme in social media recently, which says: “ I don’t date anymore. I just foster women until they find their forever homes.”

I guess I am a Jedi-Knight level orbiter.

[Watchmaker]

Good point.

[David]

i deleted my comment about confronting your father as im not sure if you are ready for change

[Watchmaker]

I thought you made a good point.

What do you think ready for change would look like and mean for me?

I guess I’m self aware enough to realize that I’m coming across as making excuses in not standing up for myself, loving myself, etc.

[L-F]

I have a theory but I won't put it here because it's really not about you per se, but about religion and limerence.

As far as I can tell, sex education wasn't taught in schools, so don't beat beat yourself up about female anatomy. I suspect your wife doesn't know much either (just because women have a clitoris, doesn't mean they know how to use it). I know of several women from various religious backgrounds who are only discovering masturbation and climaxing in their 50s! In fact, there are various was to climax and majority (80% according to link below) of women don't climax from penetration. Then there's the difficult task of finding the G-spot, squirting, anal stimulation (which is fantastic for men and women regardless of orientation). Soooo much to learn and I highly doubt they teach this in school.

So don't freak out! 40 is young!

https://metro.co.uk/2017/09/21/almost-8 ... x-6945941/