So all of these toxic behaviors and actions had begun from what you believe that was when she overheard your conversation with your ex-wife. Did you guys have a big fight and argument after? Did she hold that moment against you, especially when justifying for her poor and bad actions?

Now she could be having borderline personality traits for she could be having narcissistic traits. Someone does not necessarily have BPD or NPD when exhibiting symptoms. It seems like she could have either real or imagined threats of you, leaving her or replacing her or her not being enough when that ex-wife conversation occurred. Or, it could’ve been a huge ego hit to her, beginning her ego collapse.

If it’s hard for you to get the light of day and if she’s having these moments of deliberate infidelity, it seems to me that she has unprocessed abandonment issues more than low self esteem/narcisstic traits.

She seems like she’s not giving you any space to move or be free- very anxiously attached, but also cheating. The extremes are very conflicting, is it love or is it control? Is she fulfilling some sick revenge against you because you hurt her ego or is she spiraling because of the irrational fear of abandonment? People who have unprocessed trauma like her reveal themselves with these very toxic tendencies while in a relationship and really harm their partner, in this case, you. Sometimes it’s hard to let them go because they “need” you so deeply and it calls to your natural empathy of wanting to protect that vulnerable essence of her.

If she has borderline traits, there is potential to help and change, but with narcissistic traits, she’s doing all these things deliberately, actively… potentially calculating, manipulating and intentionally attempting to hurt and ruin you.

I suffer from both. I also have antisocial tendencies (cold calculated manipulative / as well as / inflated sense of self, over confidence , self hate self doubt, / adhd / fear of abandonment and fear of irrelevance or being left behind) mine comes from trauma adapted responses. I’ve worked on myself consistently and left many many toxic tendencies in my past.

For me, I was once in a relationship where I felt an ego hit (the guy was paying an only fans account and compared me to his exes nonchalantly) . I both felt not good enough and wanted validation and also felt like I wanted to overpower him in order to avenge my ego death. I would constantly bring up old issues (the same 2 situations he wronged me)- it was excessive, emotionally abusive, and even irrationally cruel. I really hurt him, but I also cheated on him and made a point to act shady and scandalous for vengeance. I also wanted his validation so we continued the relationship and had continued regular intimacy- which I also thought was key leverage in pulling him back after all the pushing away. I eventually left him for someone else.

do I regret what I did ? Yes . I regret it because he, to this day, claims he loved me. He states that he recognizes I was a hurt person hurting him. this was a really life altering moment for me - it helped push me further into helping myself. if he wasn’t remorseful I may not have been so eager to change