What was this INSANE situation?

I will try and make this as short as possible because it’s a long story, but I’ll start with saying I ended the relationship so this question is purely being asked for my mental closure and sense of “WTF???”.

Basically, my (now ex) boyfriend has a stalker and he seems to have feelings of some kind for the stalker.

We were dating and split up for a year (due to geography and the pandemic) and during that time he was sad, lonely and became friends with a woman who worked in his office and lived clos by. She did the whole love-bomb thing where she showed him in attention and compliments and made him feel great, then alcohol led to sex, and he was then seeing her as a FWB for about 4 months.

She said she loved him and wanted more and he told her he still loved ME and wanted to get back together with me. He and I were still talking most days. We did get back together and he broken things off with her completely and she just could NOT accept it.

I don’t understate the term “stalker”, she literally broke into his house, stole his personal data to harrass his family, harrassed me extensively, threatened herself / him, hit him, smashed his stuff, pretended to be pregnant, jumped on his car when he was trying to drive away, tried to pretend he was her boyfriend on social media…literally.. TERRIFYING.

He had to work in the same office as her, he said he felt bad for breaking her heart because he had cared about her a lot after spending so much time with her and he felt responsible for her going “crazy”, because she kept telling him she was only crazy because she was insane with love for him.

As well as the more scary behavior, she was also texting and messaging literally constantly – I mean it was nearly 60 times over a few months and these were long love letters about all their special times, or angry letters about how much she hated him, or even a lot of letters about how I was manipulative and controlling (she has never met me!)

He told her very clearly he loved me and their relationship was over and apologized for hurting her but she still carried on. I asked him to block her so she could not send more messages – he said he felt it was best to let her vent because otherwise she would escalate to breaking into his house again.

he didn’t want to take “official action” with the cops (although they had to take her away once when she was crying on his porch for 7 hours and would not leave) and instead thought she would just eventually get the message if he ignored her and re-enforced the relationship was over.

To make things worse, he kept saying “she was a nice person until I drove her mad” and even at times said he missed her company because he was very lonely and she was fun to do things with. Which made me absolutely crazy.

She did NOT get the message, and this went on for so long I started to get anxiety attacks and he just would not take action to stop it. In the end, she kept me awake one night calling and messaging me for 7 hours for the entire night telling me “he doesn’t love you, he loves me” and genuinely it was scary.

I ended the relationship because I said it was dangerous, but he seems to simultaneously be genuinely terrified of her (she was threatening him a lot with things like false domestic abuse charges) and also actually LIKING her and missing “how things used to be before when they were just friends”.

I started to even think he had feelings for this woman, but lo and behold, after I ended it he STILL didn’t want to be with her because she was messaging me again.

Can you get attached to someone who scares you? I really did feel like his loyalties were split between us. The whole thing was just nuts