Dear natie:

I read your recent post of less than an hour ago and I want to take my time re-reading your previous threads so to give you my best answer. It will take an hour or two before I submit a post for you. Also, there are very strong winds this morning where I am living, which means I might lose electricity and the internet. If I am not back to you in a couple of hours, that would be the reason.

anita

Dear natie:

It took me over two hours longer than I expected to put your story together because as I read through your threads, I kept inserting new information and details into the initial story. I am sure the following summary is not 100% accurate, but it is as accurate as I can make it this late morning (your words are in boldface):

In about 2018, you (21) started a relationship with a young man of the same age, an “short and very thin” man with a hearing disability. First. you were best friends, and later, the friendship developed into a romantic relationship.  He chose a career path that is easier to get into and enjoyed stability in his work life so far, having been a candidate for a second promotion. Yet he has been the emotional, child-like person in the relationship.

You’ve been a career-oriented woman, trying to get into an industry that is very tough to get into, going through an unstable work life, repeatedly changing jobs. Yet, you’ve been the practical, mother-like person in the relationship: “sometimes it felt like I’m his mom… he is an emotional person and I’m more practical…I’m not someone who is really good at showing emotion and tend to be an over-thinker and a realist most of the time“.

For 2.5 years, the relationship was one of “love support and complete honesty and transparency we had dreams together it felt like we are on the same page most of the time“, but there were also arguments from the beginning: “we argued when we were at the start of our relationship“. During these years, you helped him in many ways: you showed him how to clean and wash his clothes, you wrote his work emails for him, gave him interviews advice, researched the internet for him, encouraged him “to face those who give him a hard time and calming him down to help him articulate what to respond“, and more.

He wanted the two of you to get married in the first year of the relationship, but you declined, saying: “I want to be with you but let’s first figure out our careers and do our MBAs and then we can settle“. His response: “he always told me he was proud of me and how motivated I am in my career, and he feels bad for my bad luck in my unstable jobs“.

At one point, you planned to move abroad together so to further your careers, but sometime in 2020, the two of you found new jobs in different countries and the relationship became long-distance. Three days after his arrival to the U.S., he called you “crying in the middle of the night“, and you tried to comfort him, telling him that “it’s going to be ok; you need to man up“. You became somewhat impatient with him at one point, and he accused you of screaming at him, and of not telling him that “it’s ok to go back home… that it’s difficult and nothing forces you to stay“.

When his father died, about March 2021, he wanted the two of you to move back to the home country. You didn’t want to move from the UAE back to the home country because while he would have found employment opportunities in the home country, there would be none for you, not in the industry you are trying to get into.

During 2020, he lost weight and “became super thin“, and you started feeling that you are “not really physically attracted to him“. You then told him: “you and me being the same weight is really wrong and as a girl it would feel different to have someone who is bigger in body next to me, cause it might not feel physically attractive otherwise“. He told you that he accepted what you said, and that “other people recently mocked him in a brutal way“. He started going to the gym and drinking protein shakes so to increase his muscle weight and appear more masculine and attractive. But at one time or another, he also accused you of “not accepting him the way he is”, and he said that “if he wanted to be with someone with better body features, he would but he accepts (your) body, and he started pointing out which body parts” in you he was not satisfied with. He later apologized.

Following his initial and consistent support for you focusing on your career, he told you this year: “no guy waits all that long , all I want is to be with you , I don’t see why you can’t make that happen even if it means to change your entire career you can always find another job“, saying that your internship in the UAE  was “a selfish move and that I did it for my own good and not to the good of the relationship“.

When he wanted to convince you to move back to the home country, he brought something that he didn’t mention for eight months: an affair that you had with a woman over the span of two months, an affair for which you confessed and for which you expressed deep and prolonged guilt and regret; an affair that he seemed to have easily forgiven you for eight months prior. He told you, paraphrased: I forgave you for that affair, and you now owe me a favor: move back to the home country! You were concerned that he was setting a bad precedence: that in the future, when he would want you to do something that you didn’t want to do, he would guilt-trip you yet again.

He later apologized for guilt-tripping you, but two weeks later, the two of you had “a huge fight” where he accused you in regard to breaking up with him after his father died, accusing you for “being selfish… (and for lacking) empathy in this relationship especially because his father died“.

Following his accusations, and him calling you a devil, you considered that maybe you are a “the devil in this relationship… a narcissist or a sociopath…. being the toxic person… really selfish for thinking about just securing my career and post-grad degree and then I would love to be stable with him”. You shared that both he and a friend of yours “keep telling me I’m controlling in this relationship“, and you shared: “sometimes I feel like I’m not normal or that I’m asking too much or that girls should not be like that“.

Back in June this year, you wrote: “sometimes it felt like I’m his mom which I guess I had no problem with at first but then I hated it and I communicated that to him, he understood and tried to prove things otherwise with a change of behavior“.

In July this year you shared that during a visit the two of you had in your hometown, he told you that “he doubts any guy would want to be with me with my mentality (not wanting to marry right now and join him at the states“. You shared that the two of you “decided to break it off and stay friends“, that he went back to the states and you stayed in your hometown, that’s it’s been completely silent between the two of you for 4 days, and that you were “always thinking of him if he is doing ok or if he is hurting alone away from his family and friends“, and you were doubting that the breakup was a good thing for you, feeling scared about a single life.

Fast forward almost 5 months and you shared today that you “made good progress in the last couple of months and accepting that this relationship has ended“, having understood that the relationship was “more of mother- son/ teacher-student” kind of relationship, that it therefore exhausted you, and that you lost attraction to him because you “never felt understood or we never really connected“, and you acknowledged that you messed up and hurt him at times.

Recently, after being broken up since July this year, he arrived at your hometown from the U.S., for the holidays, and asked to meet you urgently. He then “comes begging to rekindle the relationship, telling me that for the first time ever in his life he was able to sit down with himself and understand everything I have been trying to help him with, and how he has changed, became more open minded, flexible, easy going, responsible and extroverted… how he just wants to prove to me that he gets me“.

You told him yesterday that you were “not attracted to him anymore at least not in a romantic way, plus I am not in a happy state to share my happiness with someone else at the moment“. But since that conversation, you’ve been doubting yourself.

Above is my summary. In the second part of my post, I will respond to what you wrote today part by part, given the summary:

1) “What if he truly changed within these 6 months?“- my answer is the same answer your “nagging voice” told you: “that no one can change or sustain a change that big in a span of 6 months”.

Also, back in June this year, you communicated to him that you felt like you were his mother and hated it, and he told you, back in June, “he understood and tried to prove things otherwise with a change of behavior“. Fast forward five months, and he told you yesterday that “for the first time ever in his life he was able to sit down with himself and understand everything“- if he understood back in June, how is it that a few months after June he understood for the first time?!

2) “What if he is the right guy but I met him at a wrong time where wasn’t mature?“- repeating and elaborating on what your nagging voice told you: he was the wrong guy for you then and he is the wrong guy for you now. It is always the wrong time when it comes to being with the wrong guy.

3) “Should I give this a chance, or should I just let him go forever?”- let go of him forever, or at the least: let go of him for the rest of your life.

4) “Every time I look at him, I just remember how exhausting that relationship was“- and it will exhaust you again if you resume it.

5) “I keep on being afraid that if I gave him a second chance and we start the long distance again – then I will never get to experience ‘the change’ he talks about and end up wasting his time, my time and causing heartbreak all over again and delaying healing“- if you give him a second chance, the only change that you will experience is the deterioration of your mental health. You will not only be delaying your healing, but you will also be making yourself sicker.

6) “I don’t know what to do, is being understood more important than being loved in a relationship or am I just complicating things?“- you are complicating things. I will get to simplifying things shortly.

7) “Should I give another chance (as not to lose someone who is fighting to keep me)… ?“- no, please don’t give sickness another chance. If the wrong man fights for you and succeeds, he is still the wrong man for you.

8) “or should I just focus on moving forward?“- move forward.

Here is my simplification: (1) You are not attracted to him physically, (2) There is no reason for you, being a woman in her 20s, to consider dating or marrying a man you are not physically attracted to,

(3) Your mental attraction to him has been an extension of your childhood desire to fix your mother’s problems, and take care of her and your siblings, (4) Your childhood mother, caretaker role has extended to your adult relationship with this man. This role caused you lots of anxiety and self-doubt when you were a child, and if you resume the relationship with him, more anxiety and more self-doubt are on their way.

(5) No matter what I write here, you will continue to doubt yourself, overthink and complicate things, if not right now, then later. Doubting yourself is a mental habit, something you did for so long that it became a habit, at least at times when you experience elevated stress and when someone disagrees and argues with you, accusing you and blaming you, etc.

The solution to self-doubt is not to do what is wrong for you to do, but to endure the stress involved in doubting yourself and still do what is right for you to do. Accept that choosing what is right for you will not make you feel peaceful for long, not because the right thing was really wrong, but because no matter what you do, or don’t do, self-doubting will return.

I am not suggesting that you take psychiatric drugs (particularly the anti-depressants of the SSRI group that are often prescribed for the purpose of alleviating obsessive thinking/ overthinking). What I am saying is that it is better that you see a psychiatrist if your overthinking continues and bothers you too much- than it is for you to marry this man!

I am also not suggesting that this man is a bad person, and I am not suggesting that you are perfectly good. No one is perfectly good at all times, but we should strive to improve, to become better. If you date him again, or marry him, your anxiety will go up and so will your impatience and anger. Of course, impatient and angry, you will not be treating him well. No one can control ongoing anger that well.

I have more to say based on the first part of this post, and I will add more later. Feel free to respond to what I wrote so far; it will help me with further thoughts.

anita

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by .

Dear Anita,

I dont know how you do it but you manage to bring some sense of clarity to me! Thank you.

As for the last point, It is very tempting honestly, it tore me apart. Him saying that sparked something me like maybe he did change and finally gets me and maybe we can start correctly this time especially because  such a kind and loving soul. But to be honest for the first time ever im resisting this temptation even if it scares me because for the first time ever this dynamic of him finally showing signs of change and how he can get me for real this time does not add up, i longed for a connection from the start but to have that connection after several years and to start all over again seems like it could lack the genuine/nature feel it should have even if he is really genuine in his understanding me after all this time. I know he means well and i see all his efforts and despite how tempting that is ,despite that it feels like im losing a really great person who loved me wholeheartedly , something just seems off about the fact of starting all over again but this time i am being seen. i hope it makes sense

Dearest Anita,

out of curiosity, when do you believe its suitable to give someone a second chance, if any?

This one Anita. Thanks

Thank you very much