TeaK, the thing is I feel that he is and has tried a lot to work on his issues so that they do not affect the relationship. He takes my feelings into consideration, will hear them now, won’t try to escape or leave the room or belittle them. He will sit and be comfortable with me crying. I know he still will need to go deeper, in order to feel things on a deeper level, but he really does try to give all that he can within his limits at this time. He didn’t say he’s never willing to work on himself, just that he isn’t ready right now. I am trying to have a little faith.

Maybe love can come close to having complete stability, where someone really promises to stand by your side no matter what. I guess they can hold that intention at least. I meant that the intensity of love changes as does our other feelings and one day love ends, as everything does, and then renews again. I’m probably getting too philosophical here about it all.

I wanted to clarify a few things today and expressed to him that I wish to live together in the next few years. That he should take this time for himself now and live alone if that is what he wants, but that I do see that as a goal and I want him to see that with me. I am willing to see how things go and I am very happy now, but that I probably don’t want to eat alone forever. He seems to see it too but has a lot of practical fears. I think he’s quite afraid to have any sort of unhappiness within a relationship. He seems to rely on it to maintain a bit of equilibrium, so it’s as if he’s trying to create a situation that will instil maximum contentment and peace. I mean I think even having a conversation about how we would deal with issues as they arise before we’d live together would be important as well. He did have a terrible experience with his last roommate and that seems to have scarred him. He’s also never lived with a woman and he seems to have skewed views of what it might be like. When he does move out and live alone again, I think showing him that things can be good when I’m over there and that I don’t invade his space, might go a long way to ease some of his fears.

Luz, yes I agree I do believe that I do suppress some of my own needs to communicate out of a fear that they are arising due to my attachment style. I do agree that words of affection (my main love language) will be something I will want to practice more with him and encourage. It may start with me expressing what I feel more and being okay with not hearing it back sometimes. I know I am not his ideal love, but we have admitted love to each other and it would be nice to express that more. It still exists and is what it is.

Sometimes I have hard time coming to terms with what it is I want, vs what I am supposed to want. Society says I should be married now with kids and I don’t really see any of that for myself, but sometimes I think that would be nice. I just feel that I will never be one of those women who can demand it. I want that to come naturally if it’s meant to go in that direction. At the same time, I’ve usually been the one pushing and men are always fine to keep things status quo. My last major ex was willing to get married he just wanted to further his career a little more, but there were other issues there. Marriage wouldn’t change a lot for me, it would just give me a fairy tale moment of someone proposing. My friend says but it shows a bigger intention that someone wants the ultimate commitment. I just feel like it’s sort of out of my hands, especially with the custom of the man asking in our culture.

I try to live in the present most days, so I do just take things as they come and I know how swiftly everything can change, even the best laid plans coming from people with the best of intentions. So I’m not completely against just letting things unfold as they do, but I know I need to at least voice my potential dreams for things, and that’s what I’m trying to do. I just feel like I had grand romantic ideals when I was younger that I held on too tightly too, and now I want what I have, something more real. I just want to give him all the lee way he gives me to be who I am, but try not to sacrifice myself too much in the process.

He is a grand communicator through acts of service and gifts. He will do anything for me that I ask. He has gotten much better at expressing affection and love, saying “I miss you” and “I can’t wait to see you” etc. We just haven’t gotten to the point of saying I love you with any kind of frequency. It means more in a way when I do hear him express words of love.

I don’t know, it would be very hard to end things right now. Things are good and I am happy with him, I just see a future with him and want to at least sketch a plan for that. He seems receptive to possibilities so we will see.

Anita, thank you for your continued insight. Your latest post about my OCD tendencies and compulsions is very true, and I check myself often to ask myself why I am needing something, and whether I need to ask for it right away. I usually try to sit with my anxious thoughts for a few days before bringing them out into the light.

TeaK, you are new to my topic here but I really appreciate your insight, and I have been thinking a lot about my wounded girl and how to keep feeding her on my own, so that I am not looking for him or someone else to do that. It is so true, when you are full you become a fountain, overflowing and the love does not become something you are seeking, it becomes something that you already own, that you are at home with. I also agree that I cannot tip toe around him forever and his issues and there needs to be open and honest communication. We have since started this discussion and I will address this below.

Luz (Rosalina), lovely to meet you and have you share your unique experience. I appreciate the overlaps that you see in our stories and I am happy for you having found the love that you did not in the past, embracing it fully now. I do agree with a lot of what you shared, the importance of expressing what I want, and continuing to ask for what it is I believe I need. This is where I feel there is a lack of understanding on Chickadee33’s part. She says that I am hung up on psychoanalyzing him and needing to create excuses for why he will not fully commit to me or for why he is not in love with me. You also addressed this as a pattern of yours with your past twin flame. I have no desire to get him to fall in love with me. Being in love would not be the goal of my continued relationship with him. There have been many men before him that expressed a lack of a desire to continue a relationship and I did not spend time psychoanalyzing them. I could’ve taken a few guesses for sure, but I did not feel like there was a need for a continued relationship and we parted ways. I don’t feel that I have a need to make someone love me. I am not simply chasing or psychoanalyzing this man out of a desperate attempt to hold out for a sliver of love. I don’t think he will realize one day that he is in love with me. What I am looking for is what we currently have. A relationship where there is undisputed love (whether we are in love or not is beside the point for me), affection, care, support, honesty, trust and an agreed upon level of commitment.

I do not wish to be his therapist and have told him this. I recently suggested that he might want to consider therapy in the future as his lifelong sadness and numbness (as he puts it) has plagued him from early childhood, and I feel that it might keep him from feeling the depth of his emotions fully. That may or may not apply to our relationship. That is for him to discern and attempt at his leisure. Do I believe from my very intimate view of him that it does keep him from experiencing love fully, and has him holding out for an ideal that doesn’t exist? Yes I do. He admits this also.  Is this because I hope we will one day have a fairy tale romance and that I need for him to be the one? No. I don’t believe in fairy tales, I just believe in what we have shared up until this point which has grown to be a consistent expression of love and support and a slow and steady submission to greater awareness of each other and ourselves. Growth in a relationship? What an absurd thing to strive for, haha.

Chickadee33 while I respect the “he’s just not that into you” approach to dating and relationships, it will forever be far too black and white for me, and my deal breakers are completely subjective and unique to my experience. I would never want there to be blanket deal breaker, except that I am not physically or mentally abused, and treated with respect and kindness. That’s the basis for all relationships. As far as, this man or woman should do this, within this amount of days, in this exact way, or else the relationship is worthless and the love isn’t real…. Well those are expectations I do not want to be wrapped up in. I come from a background of psychology, and I know how multi-dimensional people are, it’s too hard to ignore that. Should we make excuses for people, and not consider our own needs first? No. I made it clear that I was not accepting of him still being on the apps and it was not behaviour I would accept if it continued. But he needed to make that choice himself.

Chickadee33, I might even have agreed with you if this was a few years ago. That he’s just an object of my obsession and all of my hopes and dreams are wrapped up in him. In other relationships I pushed for the advancement of things, just out of a need for security and love that was false. But I also left men in those relationships when my needs weren’t being met, including an alcoholic, another depressed man and a man who was lying about not dating his ex when he was. I have moved on from men who don’t meet my needs, and have since learned a lot about what my needs are. Now it’s more about balancing my needs with my compulsions for security. I deserve love and commitment and all of the things I’ve mentioned, as we all do, as I am trying to balance those desires with a healthy dose of reality and understanding of the other person in the relationship. I am trying to be aware of myself, while also not being too demanding. No one is going to be able to give me everything instantaneously and I do not wish to leave someone who is giving me a lot, due to a lack of acceptance of where he comes from. I feel the need to at least try to reconcile that with my own experience and see if we can find a happy medium. You cannot have a relationship of growth without fully accounting for the other persons’ experience. Do I need to ask for basic things that I feel that I deserve? Yes.

Most recently we had a very open and honest conversation and I laid my cards out on the table. I said I would like to be in a fully committed relationship where I am his girlfriend and we do not see other people. I said at this point that is where I felt we stood. He said he calls me his gf and has not been on the apps and will not be going back to them since we had a convo about that about a month ago. He says he loves me and values me in his life, even though it is not the romeo and juliet ideal he had in his head. He admits that he does not believe that that is real and that we have a lot of good between us and he wants a future with me. He does not want to move in together at this time (since we had been discussing that more recently), as he wants to be on his own with his own space for a while and his early schedule for work (middle of the night wakeup) would either disrupt me, or he would be disrupted by me. He says we can definitely revisit the idea in the future. He looks forward to having me stay over with him on weekends and bringing my dog. He seemed very anxious that I would be upset by this, but I just said that it’s fine for now, and it’s something we could always try down the road.

Are we madly in love? No. Would I want that? Not really, as the rush and the height of that eventually comes tumbling down, and I feel that being “in love” is impermanent and ultimately just a state of intense infatuation. I want something consistent and real and supportive and that has depth. I am still wildly attracted to him, more sexually satisfied with him than I have even been, and really enjoy spending time with him. I was with a guy before him that I was definitely highly infatuated with and it just burned out so quickly. There was so much that was unmet in that relationship.  He has been a very slow simmer, but such a wonderful one at that. Had there not been any progress up until now, I would be feeling very despondent about our relationship. Even just last summer I was told he did not want to be exclusive and this resulted in my many posts on this forum. If anything when we agreed that we would date other people, I did and he did not. Not one date. I had a few almost other relationships. I know what lies out there for me, and I am not giving it up just for the chance to psychoanalyze and get what I want from someone who won’t give it. I just don’t see love as something to attain and hold onto desperately. I just feel that it is something fluid that slips in and out of our grasp, dancing around us, reflecting back what is already there.

Anita, what do you think about me expressing love again. I almost feel like he’s been trying to express it for a while, and I would like to let him know he can, or give him an opportunity to, but it will probably be easier if I say it first again. What do you think? It’s hard because he didn’t respond the first time and because of what he’s told me in the past. I don’t feel the need to push it, or feel assured. I do feel that he does. I just feel like it could be time to try again.

There are so many things wrong with your reply and so many things to reply to. You have so much of it wrong and you clearly did not ready through my posts. I am not sleeping with other men and no I wouldn’t tell him about a pregnancy scare to make him jealous.

Perhaps you have been wronged by men in the past, I’m not sure why you keep such a singular view, but you keep it with such a fervent measure. You’re discounting all relationships that ever proved to be confusing or hard or requiring of patience with your view. I have a friend who said I love you to her husband and he didn’t say it until a year later and they’re married with kids now. Not every man who can’t express how he feels is a waste of time or user looking for the next woman.

He may very well not see me as the one and there may very be a better woman out there for him, but that doesn’t exclude the possibility that he does close himself off from people he gets close to and that he uses excuses to keep them at a distance. There is a reason why there is psychoanalysis. The human mind and early experiences are very diverse and shape us all in different ways. I am slowly watching and hearing more about his experience. I am not trying to force conversations that he sees as hard. Even his own sister has expressed that he’s a difficult one to figure out.

Anyways I don’t need any more of your analysis chickadee, thank you, but it’s not an analysis that I’m unfamiliar with. I’m not rejecting it to fit so schema in my head either. Most of the time I tell myself how likely it is this won’t work out. I’d be surprised if it did, but it doesn’t mean our connection is worthless or that I need to drop him like a hot potato. I’m aware of what is going on and I don’t feel that I am being used. Please do not respond to my thread anymore. I am looking for analysis that is kind and open minded and seeks to uncover truths that might be a little more hidden than I believe your type of analysis can account for. That’s just what peaks my curiousity. I believe your more Frank and black and white approach may suit certain situations and with other relationships I may have benefited from it, but not with this one.

Respectfully, Michelle.

You know what’s funny Anita, the last three times that I’ve gone to see if you’ve replied, I have come to the page 6-7 seconds after you’ve posted. Weird synching happening.

Anyways, thanks so much for the time and energy you’ve put into this whole journey with me and this man. I wish you a Merry Christmas if you celebrate or else a Happy Holidays.

Part of me can envision a future like the one you suggested, definitely something unconventional, possibly even sleeping in separate rooms. Sometimes I feel that his compliments and efforts are bigger than I even know. Like he’s trying to say more with them. My friend who was engaged to my brother mentions that my brother was very similar to Carl in the beginning of their relationship. Refused to acknowledge the relationship and downright rejected it many times. He’s of a similar personality (OCD), but different upbringing. He eventually proposed to her and then cheated on her with someone online who lives out of the country. He’s currently trying to get her back. This was over a span of 7 years. It could go on for some time.

Thank you for your analysis of my openness. You’re very kind.

I didn’t get him anything really emotional this year like I did last, and no card as he doesn’t seem to appreciate them. I did have an idea for a good gift that would touch him a little more, but I will save it for later. He says my gift didn’t arrive in time, but he described it as shiny haha. I asked if it was a spoon.

I don’t know what to think Anita, as I go back and forth between feeling like he only sees it short-term, to also being confused by some of the things he says and some of the actions he makes. Also these new revelations seems to discredit what you have said in the past, no? IDo you still believe that he has trouble opening up with people because of his parents, or do you think it is just me he has trouble doing this with.

I’m confused as to why he would want to come to my family’s house and get involved with them again if he only sees it as short term. It would be much easier for him to say he’d rather just stay with his family on Christmas day. I’ve also know men who have seen me as a short term casual affair, and they don’t tend to care the way he does, or want to spend much time. If anything they’re indifferent, and at worst uninterested and it shows.  I know you’re saying that maybe he is able to do that because he knows it will end, but I feel the opposite is true, that he would feel guilty and thus he would slowly pull away more and more. I feel like he is unsure and that the only thing that would make him more sure is time and the dissolution of his ideals.

Therefore he would need to seek out other women to reinforce that I am truly not or truly am what he is looking for. I feel it is more a case of what you said before. Him feeling imperfect and being afraid to disappoint me and be rejected by me in the end. Thus no one can be perfect enough to suit his ideal. I feel he’s played defense more than offense? He has told me that he has ended relationships a lot sooner and for simpler reasons than the ones that he tried to pin on me.

I also don’t think he would’ve been so distraught at the idea of losing me over the summer. He was severely depressed for the weeks that we weren’t talking or seeing each other much. I feel like men who have not really wanted to be with me and have been fine to move on and seem to feel relief when it’s over.

Like I said in my heart of hearts, I’m not quite sure it’s as black and white as he only sees it short term. It’s different to have a carpe diem attitude about things when you are dying with one week left to live, or you’re on vacation and have a lot to spend, but I don’t know if his character is reckless enough to be so unforgiving with my heart and his level of investment. Though perhaps it’s true and what is most confusing is that he truly does care about me and does love me, but it doesn’t translate to a livelong love. Perhaps that’s just the hardest ideal of all to let go of, because it’s forced down our throats. That if we don’t end up in holy matrimony with the people we date, that we have failed, and should feel ultimate rejection. But perhaps that just isn’t meant for me. Perhaps love can and does exist outside of that box, but he’s also wary to express it in fear of disappointing me by not being able to give me a life long love. I just don’t know anymore if that’s meant for everyone and if it’s meant for me.