[nonaxium]

I want to apologize for the book I have written but I am in need of serious and experienced advice. I am in love with a woman who is Bi-Polar and suffers from PTSD. She is aware of my feelings and we are both friends and working together on a private project to start a company.

She is brilliant, She is wise, She is drop dead gorgeous and she stood by me through some of my dark times. She holds a psych degree from Harvard and she is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

I was raised by a Bi-polar mother who caused a ton of damage in my youth, and I have made very poor choices in relationships due to a personal need to be with someone and willing to settle for less than love to fulfil this need. Through this process I have become very adept at compartmentalizing my feelings and locking them down with an intellectual and logical process.

The woman in question ripped apart my ability to do this. I have never experienced a woman of such beauty, intelligence, wisdom and compassion. For someone who never believed in the concept of a soulmate, she has ripped apart every emotional lockbox that I had stored and for the first time in 40 years, I finally know what true love is. She is my world and my light. On the darkest day, just a thought of her clears the skies and brings out the sun.

So what’s the issue you ask?

I am. I also suffer from OCD, Anxiety and ADD. We are both treated and are both religious in our treatment.
While going through a dark place in my life (lost my job to outsourcing, divorce) she stood beside me, knowing how I felt and being honest with me that she did not return the feelings. We often talked about this and both analyzed our positions and the truth is that I would take her in my life as a friend if I could never have anything else, she is that special.

Enter my stupidity.

On a dark and cloudy night (figuratively) I emailed her a very arrogant and aggressive email about my feelings and my assumed ideals on her feelings. The statement could be summed up with “You do love me as I love you but you are too scared to acknowledge it”.

I have regretted it ever since. She did not take it well and it actually led to two weeks of PTSD flashbacks, night terrors and a Bi-polar dive. This confused the hell out of me, because if my assumptions were wrong then I would get corrected and if they were right, then I hoped for a conversation on the topic.

I was very, very stupid. She has rebounded, thank goodness, but she now considers my love and her “confessed love” a trigger for her disabilities. Her reaction, she admitted, was because she did love me and that my approach on this email crushed her. Her health is the most important thing to her and it is also the most important to me to.
But due to this she will not consider her love for me or “us” and has, herself, compartmentalized it into her own lockbox. I am lost. I am love and all I can be is a friend. But I also can’t go out and just hang with her for dinner, drinks, ect as it just hurts too much right now.

She is adamant that there cannot be an “us” because I am a trigger. I have tried the argument, the negativity between us (the email) causes a negative trigger that has serious health consequences, but has she considered that a positive “us” with love shared could possibly be a positive trigger that could advance her healing and stability?

Right now, all I can do is sit back and love and hurt. I will always be there for her, but I cannot even look at another woman, because she is everything and no one could possibly compete. Anything else would be a lie.
I need advice and help from those that have some experience here or education on this topic.

Signed,
Lost and in Love, time to become a monk.

[lowinmood]

I think she might be trying to tell you that it's not going to happen, although it hurts, perhaps you need to move on.

Who knows, she might change her mind in the future, but if two people are in love, they usually cannot stay away from each other, I think this might be a case of unrequited love, as painful as that is.

Find someone who feels the same way about you, there will be someone out there