What is this now?

So my issues brought up in previous threads on this forum continues in a slightly new direction.

Court date is <soon> for the guy.

I still have contact with the mother, oldest sister, older brother, and older brother's girlfriend. I'm being ignored by the middle sister and the friend I sort of crush'd on. I'm still maintaining no contact with the "victim" per her request.

Since the break, I've felt really angry once and wrote it all out and got rid of it.

Now my biggest feeling is just wanting to continue on with my life... but exactly how it was before the drama. I want to just show up for family dinners, hang out with people, invite everyone out, help with tutoring. I still want it all back, and the feeling in me, which I'm not good with my own feelings, is like, "Screw all of you, I'm just going to do it." I guess that's how I'm used to operating. But these are other people, so that's not actually possible.

I think you've done the right thing respect her desire to stop contact between you. Personally, I think you didn't do anything really wrong, but probably overstepped some boundaries. You were in a sort-of parental role, so that must have been confusing to her. Obviously, I don't think you will have caused her nearly as much trauma as that other guy, but if she feels hurt and upset, that's her prerogative. I hope the court case goes in the victims' favour. I still reckon you're a pretty good man, for what it's worth.

It's hard sometimes to resist the urge to try to reconnect somehow. I've pondered offering to take her to the trial... because at one point she was obsessed with going and nobody would let her. I've pondered trying to tell her how to get exactly what she wants, and offering to help her to those ends. Basically, both things that I intuitively think would do more harm than good, but I want that door open again. Restraining myself is still going alright, but I'm beating myself up in real life. Putting back on a lot of weight I've lost. Eating and drinking too much to quell myself. Various medications. Every day of work is harder than the last one, even though I'm accomplishing more each day. It's bizarre. I feel worse and worse, take worse and worse care of myself and my affairs, but I'm more and more successful socially and at the office. I don't know where this road goes.

I'd say, go with you intuition, though I can understand your sense of loss. You could contact her by letter and offer to accompany her to court, but she may well not respond and it might be quite an emotionally complex situation and one for you to best avoid. Sorry to read that you're not doing so well in your personal life. Do you play any musical instruments or have any hobbies? Sometimes I find that doing non-verbal things such as playing guitar can help. Also, while it's a cliché (and I don't do it nearly as often as I could) exercise might help with your mood.

Personally, I really don't think you should beat yourself up. This guy up-ended her life, not you. You may have complicated things and I do think you got too close/ intimate, but I do think you can cut yourself some slack. I really do hope that the court proceedings work in her favour because I think that would obviously be best for her and that would also help you feel better, in turn.

I'm in for a weird time in two weeks. The second oldest brother is getting married and moving far away with his wife this month. They are having a party. The girlfriend/fiance/wife is a very cool friend of mine as well and she specifically messaged me to come to her party. I believe she knew the girl would be there and that I would be uncomfortable about it, but she wanted me to go.

Also the trial has passed, but I'm not sure of the outcome yet. Hasn't been updated.

And I'm having dreams of reconciliation, but I think that may just be because that's what I want. I only mention that, because in all the weirdness of this situation, way way way back I had nightmares about what I basically ended up finding out about. Like I subconsciously picked up all the details and knew what was up. I'm wishful that maybe I know things I don't really know.

-- Fri Mar 07, 2014 10:19 am --

I read a FBI handbook on identifying predatory behavior patterns recently. It pushed some weird thoughts to the surface.

One of the realizations I've been mulling over is how I became so attached/involved/dedicated to this girl. It was not romantic or sexual or fatherly. I guess I sort of know how it came to be. My schizoid defenses shell me off from a lot of different kinds of interactions and relationships. The kinds of relationships I can have with people seem to hinge on the few areas where I developed "normal" boundaries. I'm good at handling people that I view as equals because they seem intelligent, competent, creative, clever, or capable. I don't deal with anyone or anything that acts "superior", and I'm awful to anyone I view as inferior. I brought down my walls because this girl was so incredibly alone and vulnerable. The same traits that draw certain kinds of predatory people out for her, her mother, and sisters. I let her in, and I guess she was my first and only actual loving attachment. We were even sort of physically close for a time, and that was really a first for me too. She is absolutely an intelligent, competent, creative, clever, capable person - but she doesn't realize it yet. She lacked confidence. She believed the narratives around her from people that were either trying to get in her pants or discarded her as unimportant. I wanted to give her what I have, confidence and the inherent strength to be able to face down anyone or anything. I was too pushy and I put her on a pedestal at times. And part of me really wanted her to love me the way I loved her. And part of me wanted to know this girl when she did realize how strong she was. And I guess, looking under the hood at my behavior as objectively as I can, I was cultivating my affections for her because once she was strong enough and autonomous enough to stand beside or against someone like me, I'd finally have a chance to find someone I could love all the way. It sort of makes me a bizarro predator. I couldn't possibly open myself up to someone who I see as an equal now, but I could with a vulnerable person that needs me. And I couldn't possibly have romantic or sexual relations with someone I don't view as an equal, out of respect for the other person and myself. So I was "grooming" her... for the long game... as a preferred partner when she was 25, done with college, in a happy career, respected and loved by friends and family.

I mean, this is my observation from taking a step back and picking myself apart like I would someone else. I did have weird ulterior motives and interests... but not ones that I guess are traditionally objectionable. They're just weird. And I'm a weird person. And the math doesn't work, because that's really a ten year plan, but I didn't care. I was all-in. And it wasn't a plan I was consciously pursuing. It was definitely largely situational. I wasn't planning this. It just happened. And kept happening. I wasn't trying to keep her to myself, I was actually the comfortable one with her relationship for the first while I knew about it. It was only when I saw her being harmed, over and over and over again, and how the guy didn't seem to really care about her at all. That brought out my full set of guardian-type behaviors. I wanted to see her grow up happy and healthy and meet people and have normal relations with good people. And that too fed into an end goal which was probably, under the hood, a goal to finally have someone I "could" have a relationship with. Someone who wasn't broken, and that I could let inside my walls. And I would cut down anyone that was a risk of truly breaking her and making her just another broken person. I was controlling... in a weird way.

All the more reason I should leave her alone and not go to this thing. I should even stop talking to the rest of the family that likes me. I think it's all very atypical. You don't run into people trying to "take advantage of someone" like this. I fall somewhere in a weird spot, but reading documentation on predators and their features, I hit so many of the marks... but when I try to figure out what this monster's end goal was... it's weird. It's not evil. It's insane in that it's unrealistic and leads to a thousand thousand disappointments, and it's a bit controlling, and I was putting someone on a pedestal above my own well being. I mean... it also brings to the front that I'm kind of a master manipulator. I played everyone and everything, even myself. I used the law a bludgeon. I built up a safe and respected and caring relationship with the family. I kept everything right in line so I was always the classic "good guy" and "pillar of the community."

And I still do care, on a more nominal level, about her sisters and brothers and her mother. And I was attracted to/interested in her older friend. But that was much more typical. She was pretty, fun, had her own quirks, and already a bright capable creative person. We made good friends, she just wasn't romantically interested in me, and I just couldn't do anything but wear the mask around her. I doubt I could ever let my guard down. Similarly, I think a lot of my friends are showing me off to their female friends lately, possibly because I'm better looking right now than I've ever been, but I just don't have anything but social interest in any of the interactions. Some of them are obviously my type, but it's walls and mask all day every day. The obvious advice that follows is to "try" to bridge that gap, but I don't actually even desire to try. I just don't have any motivation to try. I'm happy in my walled fortress. That's why this whole thing was so very much a situational issue. If I hadn't been around the right kind of girl at the right time in the right circumstances, I'd still have just been happily schizoid as hell... oblivious.

I wouldn't have done anything if she hadn't made some moves to push things in that direction, whether she intended it or not. She called me her role model. She said she trusted me more than anyone [about school though, but the mind reads what it wants]. She told me she loved me. She told me I was family. All very platonic things, but for me that's the most emotion anyone has ever given me. I was a dog who was starving and didn't know what food was so I kept on going without it, and then she held out a hand and fed me, and I became loyal and eventually dedicated everything of myself to her. God... that's an apt analogy. I've always been so very dog-like in my behaviors. But I'm a big dog, and a smart dog, and the relationship meant more to me than her, I guess. I trampled some other guy, and I still feel rightfully so, but I wasn't exactly an obedient animal. I'm definitely not domesticated. And now I'm ashamed, and I guess I don't fully understand what I did, and I'm begging and begging and begging to be fed again. Hunger is worse when you know what it's like to not be hungry. The whole adage, it's better to have loved and lost? Not true for the schizoid. Now I'm starving, and I only know one place to get it, and I can't make anything else work.

-- Sat Mar 15, 2014 7:56 am --

Apparently one of her fears is that I kept images of her. I didn't. I wouldn't. But I don't know how to get her to believe me. I told her I'm an open book if she wants to know, no-matter how embarrassing some of it might be for me.

This runs along the lines of problems I've always had. People don't believe I am what I am. I can't be like I am, they think, because that's not how their own mind works. I thought she had some understanding of me, but she's still so young and naive. She thinks I must be just like her father, step-father, the internet boyfriend, or herself.

No idea what to do with that. She gave me an ultimatum. Doesn't want to see me at this party thing. I still don't know what I'm going to do.