GH31, Your situation continues to echo so much into what I've experienced with my STBX...and while my situation differs in many ways - some of the dynamics are just all too familiar...
One thing I might offer from my own experience is that in the end, or as we finally started the process toward the end, I had to accept my STBX for who she is - and also allow her the journey she had to take in her life. I loved her intensely - and have only recently felt that love wane to a feeling of confusion - one which has me ask myself quietly, why did I feel so much for this person? But the point is that I had to let go of her - not just for her sake - but for my sake as well. There are reasons, many reasons, we entangle ourselves in the lives of others - and sometimes those reasons can be sorted out and mended, but other times, it's best to see that the personal history that brought us to a particular person was just inevitable - and that something about our lives made loving a particular person seem necessary and even urgent. It can certainly feel like an addiction - and it can feel impossible to consider a life without that person - but, at the risk of sounding like I don't believe in love, knowing that we can live without someone is both healthy and necessary...and if we feel so attached to someone that we can't imagine being without them - no matter how terribly they treat us - than there must be something in that love, in that need, in that compulsion that reflects an unhealthy urge from our past.
I don't think we'll always know what motivates that unhealthy urge or drive - but I think it is always possible to identify it when it happens - and then we have to make the brave, difficult choice of rebuilding our lives based not on the abuse someone visits upon us, but on the genuine feeling of self worth we discover once that person is out of our lives.
Your W is not in a good place - in fact, I think she's suffering a lot and probably miserable - there's no way someone could find any happiness through her actions and her state of mind - but there is nothing you can do for her - nothing at all - other than to let her go and allow yourself to heal from what has become a destructive presence in your life.
I don't see your W as a bad person - but it does sound like she's very lost - and the pain in loving someone who is that lost is that there is nothing anyone can do for them - nothing at all - other than to love them without attachment. When I discovered in me the capacity to love enough to let my STBX go, I actually found myself again - it was process I was afraid to go through - a voyage I did not think I could undertake and come through in one piece...but I'm managing - and I'm finding, as you have, just how toxic my STBX had become to me and my life. In my situation the impact of her negativity was intensified by her behavior toward my older son...
Your story breaks my heart - and touches me deeply - but I am certain that you will be fine.
