Originally Posted by
aliciagr 
Can I ask, I mean it doesnt look like you knew her well when all this started but you slowly got sucked in and became emotionally connected and some sense of wanting to help her.
In therapy, did you work on how it all unfolded, why you kept going?
My therapist over the course of the last two appointments thought it may have had something to do with the fact that I'm adopted and I was supportive of her decision to give her daughter up for adoption. (Had I known of her drug addiction however, I likely wouldn't have felt that way.) I had a hard time thinking what correlation there was aside from that she has an open adoption while my own (42 years ago) was closed. I've never had a desire to seek out my birth parents but she hopes some day to have a relationship with her daughter. However, I may have mentioned above that the Uber/Lyft driver who was acting as her pimp had emailed the adoptive parents pretending to be her and said some really damaging things that sent her into a panic. Her ex had supposedly cut her out of his life when this happened (he changed his phone number so she couldn't reach him anymore) but she reached out to him for help to resolve this problem. Anyway, I don't know what I would do if I found out my birth parent(s) is/are or were drug addicts, prostitutes, or whatever. I don't think I'd want to know that. However, I don't know if I buy into my counselor's theory in regards to that.
The thing is, not all times with her were crazy. There were a lot of good times that I look upon fondly. But unfortunately the bad times outweighed the good and that's why I had to break it off. Her ex told me on numerous occasions that he thought she was a narcissist and upon doing some research of my own, I agree with that sentiment. She was a predator and unfortunately I was the kind of prey she looks for. I gave her a lot of money that I know I'll never see again. Yet after all the times I threatened to walk away, I always caved and she actually said in our last conversation that she didn't believe I'd actually walk away but I certainly have this time.
The main reason I kept going was because I really believed she wanted to get better and just needed help getting there. But now I know there was a lot more going on behind the scenes that I was unaware of. I really wish I had said no when she first came to me for help. I could have avoided all of this.
I still think about her every day. But I hope time will heal the wounds and right now I don't really feel counseling will help any more. What it did accomplish though was making me realize that under no circumstances can having a relationship with her can be healthy and I need to avoid her at all costs. I shouldn't expect an apology from her for anything and if I do it won't be sincere. And if by chance I run into her somewhere I hope I have the strength to stay away because the last thing I want is to get back into this mess.