Hi all,

I’m in a relationship, soon approaching our one year anniversary. This is my longest relationship so far. It’s been tricky since the beginning. My partner has been one foot in, one foot out for most of it until recently. He’s broken up with me a few times because he wasn’t sure if a relationship with me is what he wants. This alone has been very hard on me.

Our relationship started in an not ideal way. We met as roommates in assigned campus housing. We ended up talking a lot and having fun as friends. He was in an open relationship with another girl at the time (which I had utterly no idea about) but ended up kissing me one day. Things took off from there, and in the next couple of weeks, he told me about his other date and said he wanted to break things off with her. I was kind of hurt and confused, I didn’t really know what to make of the fact he did not tell me sooner. I told him I was in an open relationship before and was done with that, and we agreed to only date each other.

I did not realize this while it was happening (oh my, I’m so oblivious), but our relationship started in a detrimental way. He did not take me on dates. He lied constantly. He did lots of drugs without me knowing (once I planned a vegan nachos night with a couple of our friends and he showed up high on PCP, and did not tell me until 6 months later). He masturbated to other women and told me about it. He told me I wasn’t turning him on and that he had to imagine other women to stay hard during sex. So yes, all his behavior was screaming “this is not what I want”.  But then, when I tried to leave him, he would come back and say that he was just confused or scared and I am what he really wants after he reflected on things.

It was heartbreaking to me when I found texts from the girl he was dating before me and saw that he was CONSTANTLY asking her on cute dates and planning things for them to do together (I’m talking like every day, whether she responded to him or not, up until the day he kissed me).  When I asked him about why we never went on dates, he told me he hates going out and was happy that he and I just spent time at home together. He said he did not like going on dates with the other girl, but felt like he had to in that situation in order to ever see her. I still felt unwanted.

In addition, I had also found out that he followed 100+ women models on Instagram. When I asked him about it, he was kind of defensive at first but eventually ended up telling me he masturbates to them. He likes their “tight tummies and large breasts”, as he says. The thing is, I don’t look anything like that, I never will, and have no interest in it. There is more about his masturbation/sexual interests that are very specific and unattainable for me. He says he is attracted to lots of things, including me of course. But to be honest, it makes it very hard for me to be around him other/hotter women. It makes me sad and uncomfortable to think what he might be thinking/feeling about them. Not that this is his fault, but these things haunt me. I do truly feel I’ll never be good enough for him.

Thank god many things have changed over this past year. A few of these things have gotten a lot better as time has gone on. It took a while, but we now go on dates together fairly often (due to me). Even if he starts off going begrudgingly, I can tell that most times he ends up really enjoying going out with me now. For a while during the school year, we made it a weekly routine to go to a different coffee shop in town every Saturday to study. It feels good to me that he became more comfortable going on dates with me, and no longer sees it as a burden. That’s just one example. Sex has also gotten better in some ways. And as far as I know, he now only smokes cigarettes and drinks occasionally. Overall, he has become more dedicated to relationship. I can see a lot of his behavior before (and he says it too) was because he was afraid, uncertain, and bottling up a lot of things. I think when he became for comfortable being honest is when he started to feel less trapped by the relationship. He now sees a therapist who is supportive towards him working on being in a relationship with me, and he says he is happy about that.

The problem is that because the way the relationship started, I now have a lot of trust issues with him and I constantly worry that I’m not what he wants. And like I said earlier, knowing he has other sexual fantasies and preferences still lingers in my mind. I am not his “ideal”, and I have to face that every day, every time I flip through social media, every time I’m out in public with him. Sometimes it makes me want to shrink away when he touches me because I am so embarrassed. Though other times, I do not think about it as much because I am more focused on enjoying the moment with him, which is nice. When it comes down to it, we are close and enjoy spending time together.

I do ask myself if  there could be some other reality for me. Is there a relationship that I can feel secure and wanted in? Could I ever feel pretty enough for someone (small boobs and all)? Is there someone out there who would love to take me on dates?

I realize that these things are all superficial, so maybe I should just be focusing on other things?

Let me know what you think.

Thank you in advance,

Neen