Dear Felix,

try to slow down a little as you’re reading my post, try to receive and listen without immediately shooting back the answer (even if the response is just in your head).

I am not expecting anything or desiring a positive outcome.

It’s not wrong to desire things and expect a positive outcome. We all need a dose of optimism in our life, because we wouldn’t have motivation to continue when things get tough. And in general, without desiring and hoping for things, life is dry and meaningless. The nature of our soul is to hope and desire – if you take that away from yourself, you’re killing a part of yourself, you’re creating that arid wasteland and emptiness that you may be experiencing at the moment.

I mentioned the similarity between how you view the universe and how you view your parents, so that I could help you see that you’re projecting your view of your parents – ungrateful, rejecting, harsh, punishing – at the universe. If you believe you are up against such a universe, no wonder you’ve lost all hope. What can you expect from such a universe? Nothing good, even if you try your best. Only further hits and punches.

Do you see this? Do you see how you’re projecting your belief about your parents at the universe, and it makes it very hard for you to expect anything good to happen?

Dear lpkR09,

When he emphasized that he loved me a lot, that I was important to him, and that we have never had a normal relationship because of this issue and she fixing the damage she did at least in my home would bring us both happiness and we wouldn’t bother her anymore.

This was his illusion – that without your sister’s approval, you wouldn’t be able to have a happy relationship. You said that your parents weren’t necessarily against him (at least not a priori), so if he hadn’t been so sensitive, you could have lived pretty well without your sister’s presence. You wouldn’t be missing her too much in your life anyway…

But his own insecurities made him need her approval. If she approves, then he’s a “worthy man”, a man worthy of marrying into your family. She made him aware that he’s not worthy, that he’s beneath your family, both in terms of his family background and income, if I understood correctly. Societal and material status is very important to your sister, and he wasn’t a good match – is that correct?

Your sister was constantly rubbing salt into his wound of unworthiness – she reminded him again and again that he’s unworthy, that he’s not good enough… and the problem is that a part of him believed her. Specially because of his addictions. But a part of him fought for his “honor” and perhaps his parents’ honor too. He did say he had a bad experience with his ex who dumped him after her parents rejected him. And that this was a humiliation for his parents too.

I am slowly starting to understand why your sister’s approval was so important to him – it wasn’t just about him and his own worth, but also about his parents’ honor. It was a weighted and emotional topic for him. If he were sure of himself and his worth, he wouldn’t have been so upset. He would have just ignored her or even laughed at her, but like this, it was hurtful, it was rubbing salt into the wound…

In any case, it’s a pity he’s lost like this. If he’d agree to talk to a therapist, to deal with his lack of self-worth, there could be hope for him. But don’t let him come back into your life unless he decides to work on himself. Because he might return, and you might try to save him once again… but until he’s in the grip of addiction, and with such a low self-esteem, he’s just going to hurt you more.

I understand you’re feeling alone now, and it’s difficult, but as Anita said, you felt bad most of the times during your relationship and according to your own words, it was a constant struggle. Because he was questioning it and making problems from the very beginning. You did have a few occasions of happiness and bliss, but that was few and far between. It’s more that you felt a strong attachment and dedication to him, because you wanted it to work. Releasing this attachment gives you now a sense of loss. But on his side, he wasn’t very dedicated to you, he was battling his own demons. So the dedication was mostly one-sided… Keep that in mind as you’re slowly releasing that attachment, savoring the good moments, but also looking at it realistically, without the rose-colored glasses.

Dear lpkR09,

thanks for writing and  illuminating the issues some more. Interesting that your previous ex was a dominant party in your relationship, and that you felt weak. He did have a clingy, needy mother, and now I remember he told you you remind him of his mother, is that right? So you were a little bit weak and needy in that relationship, and when he left you, you decided to stand in your power and become less dependent of a man. You didn’t want to be weak any more. That’s good, that’s how we learn from our mistakes and grow over time. It’s good that you saw your own weaknesses and decided to work on yourself. That’s why you got stronger. Nevertheless, the core wound – of craving for love that you’ve never properly received – was still there. And it got re-activated with your current ex.

To this day I feel he is my kryptonite but he did make me feel like a superwoman. He made mistakes in our personal life but he always uplifted me and advised me with my career and studies.

I can imagine that – he himself felt weak and insecure, but he saw you as strong and capable. You were superwoman in his eyes, but at the same time he felt bad about himself. He was encouraging you, lifting you up, motivating you to succeed in your studies and career, but at the same time, he couldn’t do that for himself, he felt weak and not good enough. You were trying to help him, or sometimes, when he wasn’t responsive, you would leave him alone and try to focus on your studies, but in general, he felt bad about himself and you couldn’t help him.

His obsession with your sister’s approval is still somewhat of a mystery to me:

“He used to say that in his mind he always told himself why did he associate himself with someone connected to my sister. He said he wanted no relations to her whatsoever so it kept hurting him that why he kept coming back to me when I am related to her. It used to mentally bother him that he kept a connection to his bully when he wanted to snap it off”

She had such a power over him that he didn’t want to have anything to do with anyone related to her, including you? How exactly did she hurt him? By spreading rumors about him (about his drinking, or other addictions)? And then, why would he need approval from someone who bullied him and hurt him so much? I guess a part of him felt that what she was saying about him – her accusations – were true, so he felt the need to “prove himself” to her. It’s like a child who needs approval from a criticizing parent. Somehow he saw her as an authoritative figure whom he needed to please, I guess…

Especially after the September issue when he texted her after 2 years expecting she would have cooled down about all this and would perhaps understand his feelings for me if he made her understand. You obviously know what happened, it backfired. She abused not only him but his family and his parents.

Actually I don’t know what exactly happened. So he texted her in Sept 2020 to again seek her approval, and then what exactly did she do?

Dear lpkR09,

I’ve been thinking some more about your situation. Your boyfriend did take you for a ride… I mean, from the onset, he was worried about what your sister will say and insisted that she approves of your relationship, even though you said let’s take things slowly and first get to know each other better. But before you were supposed to leave to another city to your PhD studies (in June 2019), he insisted you talk again with your sister, and if you don’t get her blessing, at least get her promise that she wouldn’t be meddling in your relationship. Because, as he said, “unnecessary stress from her would keep on causing us pain“.  And if she refuses to stop meddling, he said “its best that we walk away because no amount of happiness in a relationship can mitigate stress on the personal front.”

So if your sister refuses to approve of your relationship, he was willing to call it quits with you, because he believed that the stress would be just too big for you to be able to enjoy your relationship. Here he projected his own feelings of stress onto you – it was him who wouldn’t bear the stress of not being accepted by your sister and parents, not you. You would have been fine with that, if you needed to choose.

He called you dramatic, but in fact it was him who created this whole drama of asking for approval from your sister, totally unnecessarily, and then obsessing about what will happen if she doesn’t agree. And then anticipating that she wouldn’t agree, he felt your relationship was doomed, and so he already started withdrawing. Already in April 2019 he was getting cold and not interested in talking to you much, and confessed that he almost sexted another girl. He was “tired” and “exhausted” from all the drama that he himself created!

You told him you were willing to fight for your relationship and cut off contact with your sister if necessary, but he said “please don’t, not for me“. And he said “even if we break up now you will laugh about how stupid it all was in a year.  Life changes you know and this is not important. The world is so big and we have so many things to do and see.  Love is not everything.”

It seems he’s the kind of person who gives up even before he even tried. Moreover, he sabotages himself so that there’s no chance he would succeed. He sabotaged your relationship with the unnecessary drama before it even had a chance to develop. The only reason you stayed together was because you were very tolerant about it, you agreed to “take it slow”, you overlooked his decreasing interest in you, his doubts and fears, and later, his addictions. I believe his addictions are another way he’s sabotaging himself. He’s afraid of success, afraid of love and of being loved.

When the two of you just met, end of 2018, he wanted to wait for 6 months to start a proper relationship with you, to get his act together. I believe it was because he felt unworthy of you. You mentioned he did some things in his past that he wasn’t proud of – so probably that was a part of his problem. My take is that he felt a mess and unworthy all the time. But he didn’t openly show it, but rather behaved in a way that sabotaged your relationship, sabotaged his chance with you.

You were super supportive and understanding because you wanted to believe that he’d overcome his problems… and that’s why the relationship dragged for so long. But as you said it yourself, every day was a struggle for the entire 2.5 years. He was struggling with his demons and his insecurities and was pushing you away (indirectly, with his ambivalence), and you were struggling to keep him “afloat”, to convince him that things will be better some day. You didn’t want to let go of your dream of a perfect relationship with a man you love – and you persisted for 2.5 years. Eventually, he realized he can’t give you false hopes any more, i.e. that he won’t get rid of his demons any time soon, so he told you to go for an arranged marriage (as if you were desperate to marry just anyone – so this in itself was a little bit of an under belt hit, and it hurt you).

This is my view of the dynamic between you. In any case, he’s a troubled man, and if he’s unwilling to work on his traumas, he’ll only spiral further down. You can’t be his savior, when he doesn’t even want to save himself.

Dear lpkR09,

moving ahead. Please be with me. I feel really alone these days.

You’re not alone, please feel free to share whatever you might be feeling and going through, because it’s not easy for you, you’re in a vulnerable spot right now. Please take care of yourself, but also reach out, either to us here or to other people you trust.

Dear lpkR09,

I told him then itself, its time we split. I cannot take this stress anymore. I can’t convince someone that they love me especially when they just say but don’t reflect in their actions.

You did well, it’s obvious that he’s very troubled and doesn’t really want to deal with his addictions. You say he’d refuse to talk about it every time you’ve tried, and he went to one therapy session but immediately dismissed it as not working. He probably doesn’t want to face his deeper issues, and he doesn’t want to give up addiction because it makes him feel good, as you say. Such a person isn’t capable of engaging in a healthy relationship because he’s a slave to his addictions. I understand he might be a good man otherwise, but to no avail – his addictions are stronger.

I forgot to say in my first post, that it’s great that you’ve moved out from your parents’ flat and are now living on your own, and also that you’ve reduced contact with your sister to a minimum. She unfortunately doesn’t wish you well, and you shouldn’t expect any kind of support or “blessing” from her. And I’d encourage you to work on your own issues, so that you can meet a solid, emotionally healthy man who’ll be able to love and cherish you as you deserve.

There were never issues between us- we understood one another well but these addictions were always the bone of contention.

Based on what you’ve written before, I believe there were issues between you, but you chose not to look at them. You said your long-distance relationship got cold after a while, e.g. when you’d send him love emojis, he’d send back nervous emojis, because he wasn’t comfortable to reciprocate. It might be because he was in the grip of his addiction and would have felt dishonest to send you love and kisses and pretend that everything is fine – but in any case, he wasn’t really showing the enthusiasm that you were showing. He was withdrawing already then. It was you who chose to believe that things will get better, because you couldn’t imagine losing him.

That’s why I said in my previous post that you were looking at your relationship through rose-colored glassed. You decided to ignore or minimize the signs of trouble, you believed addictions “could be fixed”, you chose to ignore his lack of affection and his refusal to talk about his problems. You believed that he was “the One”, the fulfillment of your dream to marry out of love and have that perfect relationship that you craved for.

You told him in your goodbye letter last April:

I think it was my obsession to have a guy in my life who truly loved me. One who loved my weirdness, my craziness,
my dramatic self, one who wasn’t ashamed to hold my hand and show me to the world that I am his.

You needed him to love you and accept you as you are, the whole of you, and not to be ashamed of you, but be proud to show to the world that you are his. I believe this is because you felt/feel rejected by your family, you felt they were ashamed of you, they don’t accept you for who you are, they don’t value you. And you needed him to give you that what you’ve never received from them.

The background of your feeling of rejection could very well be the fact that your family gave you away because you weren’t a boy, and you spent the first 5-6 years of your life away from your parents.

This is what you said about it earlier:

“I am am Indian girl…and although I belong to a well educated family but still…my late paternal grandfather was not very receptive to a second girl child in my family….he wanted my parents to give me up for adoption….there was a lot of stress so my mother requested my maternal grandmother to keep me… I stayed there till I was 5-6 years old…. My maternal uncle and aunt hadn’t been blessed by a child then so they decided to adopt me…but then for some reason they changed their my mind later… A year later… My parents were able to convince my paternal grandfather to bring me back home and he agreed…

All through my childhood, I worked hard just to prove that I am worthy. Now I realise how weak it made me from within…”

Yes, and a part of you is still feeling unworthy and seeking that love and validation – from a romantic partner. You’d need to process and heal that wound, to get in touch with your inner child and give her that love and validation that she needs. You need to embrace her and tell her she is wanted and she’s special and you’re proud of her. All that you wanted your boyfriend to tell you, you should tell to the little girl inside of you.

And you have all the reasons to be proud of yourself because you’re an intelligent, accomplished, compassionate, talented, courageous young woman, who isn’t willing to compromise her ideals and dreams. You’re true to yourself, and that’s wonderful. Now what you’d need to learn is to love and cherish your inner child too, so that you can truly heal, in the relationship aspect as well.

Dear lpkR09,

I’m not Anita 🙂 I’ve joined this forum a couple of months ago, and have been catching up with some of the topics here.

I don’t know why i meet people who don’t want to stay.

I believe you’d need to learn to love and value yourself first. Then you’d meet people who also love and value you more than your previous boyfriends. You say both of them said they want to explore other women as well, as if they’d be missing something if they got married. It doesn’t have anything to do with you, but with them.

He wasn’t an addict earlier, it became worse during lockdown…

Possibly he wasn’t addicted to porn, but didn’t you mention he used to drink but he gave that up when the two of you met? He might have an addictive personality, i.e. a tendency to get addicted, and that’s due to some childhood trauma. He’d need to work on that in therapy. If his first counselor wasn’t a good match, he should look further. I’m sure he can find someone to help him,  if he truly wants help.

But kept coming back to me because he said he felt like he could never like anyone else the way he liked me.

You said you could understand each other very well, so probably he felt understood by you, and probably not judged by you either, since you were tolerant about his porn addiction.

I am trying to focus more on work so that I think less of this, obviously, it doesn’t work but trying hard it would.

You said the same thing while you were together – that you should try to focus more on work, rather than thinking about your relationship problems:

“I don’t like the way I am spending too much time thinking about his moves and his behavior. I have my own work and studies to look after but then I am getting bothered.  I want to not care and be as casual as possible.  If it works,  it works.  Doesn’t then doesn’t.”

On the rational level, you don’t want to care, you want to focus on your work. And it appears your work is very important to you because it will allow you to do something worthwhile, and when you achieve that, it will give you the right to marry by your own choice:

“I always knew that I wanted to love and marry by my choice and I also know that to do that I need to assert my place by doing something worthwhile.  So,  getting a job and at least getting one novel published even if it is not very great was on my list.”

So it’s almost as if you believed that a success at work will grant you the right to marry someone you love. Is that right? It appears that when you’re in a relationship with someone you love, and there are problems, you don’t allow yourself to look deeper into those problems, but you look away, becoming somewhat ambivalent, saying “If it works,  it works.  Doesn’t then doesn’t”. You escape into work because subconsciously, you believe that work comes before love, i.e. that success at work will allow you to be with your true love. So if you just focus on work, you believe that the love part will sort itself out somehow. But it doesn’t. It would need to be looked at, and if you see there are problems, they would need to be addressed. Pushing problems under a rug won’t make them go away. I think you’d need to look at this dichotomy in you, where you almost sabotage your relationship by not looking deeper into its problems.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Tee.