[Count the number of days between their first communication, first sexting, declarations of love, and plans to spend the rest of their lives together: this is a timeline Melissa made herself, in retrospect, and if you really think about how few days transpire between each of the major events, it is subtly horrifying.]
"Who do you want to be five years from now?"
Who she is, today, is the product (and sum) of decisions made in the last five years.
She made a commitment to a five year plan: she was going to become a politically engaged intellectual with Chinese as her language of scholarship —perhaps in combination with economics, perhaps history, etc.
As soon as her "love affair" with Abhi began, all of that ended.
Forever.
Her life was ruled by "pornography" of a sort, yes, but it was ruled by malice to a greater extent.
She did nothing but practice her hatred and cruelty toward me for all these years, inventing the myth that she was entitled to be (simultaneously) a housewife and a porn star.
She made herself believe that she was justified in hating me because she wasn't already married and pregnant (she discusses this with Abhi many times, BTW).
She "forgets" that I never agreed to support her as a housewife (nor as a porn star)... I agreed to support her in becoming a Chinese-speaking intellectual (along with some politics, economics and philosophy in the mix).
She was supposed to have the distinguished career I couldn't have. And she "forgot" all this precisely when she found a man (Abhi) who told her that she didn't need to do anything at all...
He told her that she didn't need to read a book, she didn't need to go to the gym...
...and he encouraged her to hate and resent the man who really was trying to help her because he made her feel "inadequate", rather than loving her just the way she was (with no further education or accomplishments required).
She cultivated this sense of resentment against me, forgetting entirely "the deal" (the commitment) that justified my moving with her to live (and study) in Taiwan in the first place, and then supporting her in Victoria (enrolled in studying Chinese) thereafter.
She reverted to teenage behavior not just in terms of webcam pornography: she "hates" the person who loves her because she can't be better than him, can't control him, etc. —and then cheats on him with a moron who is willing to agree when she rants on about how unreasonable it is for her boyfriend to force her to read a book or go to the gym (when she's totally unemployed, and my financial support was supposed to be for her studies and eventual career, nor for her perpetual status as an egomaniacal pornstar-housewife).
Many of the things we're discussing here as psychological subtext are explicitly stated as text in her dialogues with Abhi:
she openly says words to the effect of, "I hate Eisel because he refuses to flatter me; I love you, Abhi, because you flatter me endlessly no matter what, even if I'm bad and evil and wrong."
It isn't "beneath the surface", it is on the surface.
"I love you because you're helping me become a better person (sobriety, learning Chinese, politics, philosophy history)."
—VS—
"I hate you because you're trying to force me to be someone other than who I am: you won't simp for me (you won't flatter me, adore me uncritically) like Abhi —the man who knows me as nothing more than an unpaid Cam-Whore."
[Again, look at the illustration at the top of the article: at most 13 days elapsed between their first contact (as total strangers on the internet) and Melissa sending him videos and pictures of her open vagina, masturbating —cheating on me, commencing an affair not just contrary to the usual expectations of monogamy, but very much incompatible with our own rules for polyamory / an open relationship.]
