This paragraph says all anyone needs to know about your chances. This isn't about her. It's about you. Guys don't do the white knight thing because they're wonderful altruistic people. They do it because their self-esteem is so damaged that they feel nobody would love them without a really good reason. That's why the white knight pursues wounded women. He thinks that if he can rescue the girl and in the process prove he is better than whatever unfortunate circumstances she came from, she'll fall in love with him out of sheer gratitude. But it's opportunistic, not altruistic.
And it doesn't work that way anyway. Puppy-dog-like solicitousness is never attractive, but here it just won't work, ever. She won't feel better about herself by taking up with you because she wouldn't have to overcome anything to get you. You serve a purpose here, but it's incompatible with the purpose you're after. You've taken it as your job to make her feel better, so how is she to know she
deserves to feel better about herself when she's with you? You'll just automatically tell her she does no matter what. However, she does like hanging out with you because you pay attention to her, it's predictable and she's in control of how things go.
You imagine that you're helping her eventually get what she needs (which, surprise, surprise, happens to correspond exactly with what
you need). Only you're not realizing she
is getting what she needs from you, right this minute, and it's exactly the thing that's killing you. It won't turn into anything more.
There's a pattern particularly common among serial monogamists where the good-guy/bad-guy role you experienced in your last relationship gets reversed in your next relationship. It's the source of a lot of needless drama. That's what is happening to you here. She was trying to "rescue" a married guy from his no doubt shrewlike and frigid wife
rolleyes
, bound up her self esteem in the idea that she was "better" than this horrible woman, and when she realized she wasn't going to win, it crushed her, because how horrible must she be if she isn't "better" than the woman she's heard so many awful things about? Now you're the rescuer. You're doing almost exactly the same thing, she's stringing you along in much the same way she herself was strung along, and the end for you is going to be the same as it was for her.
Yes, you are in denial. You are listening only to things that say what you want to hear and rationalizing away the rest. It's normal to do that in your position, but it's still completely effed up, and the sooner you realize that the better off you're going to be. "Maybe I'm meant to be a legend?" Dude, I can tell you right now, you're not. This is not the situation you think it is.
