He is being 100% cooperative, he even told me that we can just be roommates for however long I feel like this is the only thing I can commit to. But everytime he makes me laugh or I feel tenderness or affection towards him (we haven’t had sex lately but we are still intimate, we hug and kiss a lot), everytime I feel warmth something in my head snaps and i feel like I need to get out. It’s so frustrating. I don’t want to leave…

But I am thinking of taking a solo trip of a few days just to strengthen my independence.

For Anita: about my parents and my boyfriend, it’s a funny thing. My mom thinks he’s probably a B, and has judged him SO MUCH about the London thing (and I had to defend him over and over even if I was secretly heart-broken about the London thing, but I had to protect him anyway from her judgement). My dad really likes him. But in that dynamic I described, it was really my mom who did all the judging and pressuring and asking for ‘excellence’. My dad has always been much more relaxed about things.

Dear Anita,

Thank you for such a thoughtful response. Yes, I did indeed talk about my childhood in therapy, and there is definitely a connection between how I felt towards my boyfriend and the relationship with my parents. They are loving parents and show much loads of affection, but they are also incredibly controlling and they asked a lot from me. I had to be perfect to be deserving of their attention and admiration. If I took A- minus in a test, they would ask ‘why not A?’. My mom sometimes would even tear my homework apart if it wasn’t perfect. She would yell at me for taking a B. I also had loads of extracurricular activities which I had to do to be perfect, like private lessons and volunteer work etc. It felt like I was never enough, and I carried that feeling in my relationship. My boyfriend was the only one in my life who would make me feel like I was accepted for who I am and not for what I do and how I do it. So I guess I put him on a pedestal because I always felt like he ‘saved’ me. But then again something inside of me always thought that I wasn’t deserving of his love and trust and admiration. He is so proud of me and it makes me feel almost uncomfortable. I think the physical distance between us protected me from those feelings of discomfort, but the truth is that I do not know how to fully receive and give unconditional love, because it always felt like love was something that I needed to earn. Maybe moving to Rome was the ultimate sacrifice in this sense, and now I feel like I don’t have anything more to give and don’t know how to deal with receiving love when I am not in the position to give it back at the moment.

To Inky: thank you for your input. I just want to say that London is not ‘home’ to me. I am Italian and I lived in London for three years. I loved it, and I was hearbroken when I had to leave, but I am not sure London would have been the place I would have spent my life in anyway, even if I was single. It was lonely and expensive. But I did love the culture, the theatre, and I had a bunch of friends that I miss. My boyfriend doesn’t speak perfect English so he felt isolated when he came for those six months, and his own issues (insicurities, fear of being a failure) were brought up. And it’s not just ‘some guy’ – I am profoundly committed to him. Otherwise I would have left during this hell of a year. Before the obsessive thoughts started, all I wanted to do was to marry him. We talked about it multiple times. Now I don’t feel I am in a position to take major decisions so all of it is kind of on hold. But I still picture having children with him some day. For some reason, it’s easier for me at this time to imagine having kids with him than to marry him – maybe because the wedding is so charged with ideals of being perfectly in love and doubtless and being at the centre of attention for an entire day and being unquestionably happy and I don’t think I can do that at the moment.