A long winded tail of losing the love of my life.

Hello all! I`m after a little feedback please.

Six years ago i met a beautiful Turkish lady while on holiday
in Olympos. We quickly became friends, and although i fancied
her something rotten i was in a long-distance relationship at the
time with an American girl (who had BP), but thats another long,
sad story. Anyhoo...this girl, N, seemed a really lovely, mellow
soul, and we stayed in email/myspace contact, which early this year
bloomed into something so much more wonderful. Our letters became
a daily highlight but i began to notice how she seemed down every
five days of so, and sometimes her writing (pretty good english)
would remind me of an Italian girl i dated (again, another story!)
who felt passionately about her country to an also paranoid degree;
"the people this, and the people that". She also broke off the
relationship a couple of times without much reason.

In April of this year i went over to Istanbul and it was INCREDIBLE!
Everything worked in every department, like discovering a soulmate
and lover in one glorious package. She was funny and fun, sexy and
cute, smart and pretty sharp. We had a perfect chemistry. But i did
notice she was a little different from the mellow girl i met those
6 years ago. She seemed `lighter`, almost giddy and euphoric at times,
which of course i found utterly intoxicating. I put this doown to
just being in love, as i was feeling that way as well. We shared so
many romantic moments that week (and senstaional lovemaking ),
and we agreed to spend our lives together...hasty i know. I have never
been so happy. One evening during that week we had a conversation
where she spoke for an hour or so about her past. About her late mother
who was sometimes the life and soul of the party, then the reverse of
that in private moments. About her father`s coldness to her and her
sister throughout life (who lives with her as she cares for him, he
has altziemers), the long depression she suffered.And also about
an relationship she once had with a teacher who left his family for her,
they then finished and due to guilt she gave the other woman money.
I was pretty shocked by this story as i really didn`t think her
sensitive soul could manage sucha thing. Anyway, it was sooo hard
to leave her that week. Our writing intensifyed and i booked another
flight for 2 months time. It was gonna be a long wait!

Then i started to have a strange feeling that something wasn`t quite right,
and started to note these mood shifts she had. 5-6 good or amazing days,
always followed by several down days, minimal contact, a coldness
in the way she wrote. A pattern seemed to be forming. She would seem not
need minimal sleep at times. (She is self-employed and just building up
her company). In some of the photo she`d send she looks utterly lost, or
sad, frail...not the N who i knew at all. She also had a little paranoia.
I didn`t appear she had many friends and and no-one ever seemed to be in
her photo`s, both old and new. Our love continued...our letters and contact
became my life but those cycles continued.

My second visit was the not a great one. I knew she would have a busy work
week but it was extreme. The magic seemed to be there for the first days and
then it wanned only to reappear by the end of the week. Our sex life remained
beautiful. First thing in the mornings would be a long kiss yet she started to
become more closed into herself, and she was definately not on the euphoric
high like before. Was falling out of love with me, or was there something else
going on? The only medication in her flat was for iron defficency. I met her
sister a couple of times. She has a strong BP disorder. Then, on our penultimate
day together she spent the entire time having meetings, one lasting over three
hours. She just left the flat without even saying goodbye. On her return she
couldn`t understand why i was concerned, and even laughed at my expression after
tellin me that this business meeting took place in the resturant next to her flat,
and in that entire time had zero contact with me. Then she said she had another
meeting to go to that evening. I was far from amused but held it together.
I went an got a little drunk, then went to bed. She arrived four hours later,
tipsy and horny and once again couldn`t understand why i was upset. I asked
her why she didn`t or couldn`t send me the message she had promised me...
she simply said she forgot to. Of course it didn`t help to ease my already
suspicious mind! We had a great last day together, and the last morning was
filled with future promises...but she was different. It was the euphoric high N
once again. The girl with the giddy joy of a child.

On returning our letters increased ever more. I started learning Turkish.
I`d send her poetry, songs, photo`s, anything to make our situation more
intimate but that pattern of up/downrefused to go away. I had three weeks
booked for September and i thought that in that time together i`d be able
to get some real insight into what is going on. I was ready to give up everything
to move there so i thought i deserved to know and to be 100% that this move was
the right thing to do. So i started to read about BP on forums. The profile/symptoms
didn`t seem to fit, and then i started to read about cyclothymia and my heart
stopped. The mood shifts, the huge wardrobe of neatly folded clothes, the emotional
inbalance, the low self-esteem, the reckless spending (she has spent a good deal
of her father`s money without him ever knowing due to his condition. The minimal
sleep, the politcal paranoia (ok, she does live in Turkey after all!). The lack
of time awareness. That certain gleam in her eyes when she is on a high, and the
vacant look when she isn`t. How she`d leap from topic to topic with no connection.

I attempted to address these issues as vaguely and gently as i could. Holy ###$ did
that not go down well. She was livid to say the least. She acted like i`d betrayed her,
and wrote some really toxic things which hurt like hell on fire. She told me
to never speak of this topic again. This was not the open, calm and understanding
conversation i`d hoped for. Then a few days after, everything went back to normal.
Letters brimming with love and affection, talk of our future life together. I kept
noting her up and down spells though and after a few months of doing this the pattern
was unmistakable that there was a pattern. Last Sunday i was writinng to her about
a good friend of mine who was just diagonsed after a year of group therapy for Borderline
disorder. She then started to open up a little, saying about how the doctor who
classed her sister as BP had also assessed her as not having it, but maybe it would
have been better if they did so she could understand her problems more. At this point
i thought there was absolutely no better timme to try and get her to see if she
can see the things i`ve noticed about her. BIG MISTAKE!!! The fire that came back was
unreal. In fact i`ve now got a whole weeks worth of letters that pour so much anger
over me, she was only fully confirming my hunch even more. She contradicted herself at
every turn, wouldn`t accept anything i said, blamed me all the ways, twisted everything
she could and repeatly hurt me even when i was pouring love to her. She threatened me
with ending our relationship. She made it uber-clear i should NEVER talk about this again.
A 100% denial of anything wrong except low-selfesteem. And now, after a week of abuse
she wrote a goodbye letter. A pathetic one as well. Of course i`m devestated:(

Thank you if you are still reading, and i`m sorry for taking up so much of your time,
but i would just like to know that, i still believe my actions were correct, but
does this sound like someone who does suffer from cyclothymia or rapid-cycling? And do
i have a problem of being drawn to that kind of personality?

Thank you.