Dear lk09,

I am planning to respond, but at the moment don’t have too much time to spend at the computer… but I hope I will be able to post within 24-48 hours. Have a nice day! <3

Dear lk09,

I apologize for the long silence – I’ve only just returned from holidays and finally have more time to sit down and gather my thoughts 🙂

First, I am happy to hear that you’ve been taking care of yourself well, eating healthy, exercising, cooking healthy meals for yourself, and in general feeling better about yourself. Self-care is a form of self-love, and I am very glad that you’ve been practicing self-love… I am also happy to hear that you have more clarity about what you want in a relationship:

I have no expectations from anyone. Now I know what I need to do. I want a family and a extremely loving partner… Someone who would crave for me to hug him after a day of hard work, someone who would want to kiss me subtly good night…  I want him to be grateful that I am a part of his life. Why? Because I know what sort of a woman I am and what I bring to a relationship. And love and care should be responded with love and care.

I agree. The above are in fact your expectations, and it’s okay to have them. So scratch that first sentence “I have no expectations from anyone” 🙂 Because you should have expectations from a person you share your life with.

Now about your relationship with Dandan:

I meant stable for the current situation that was ever since we mended things. All the things that concerned us, we had made a list and had actively worked on those and we were honest with each other in terms of telling exactly how we felt… Even if there was fear or nervousness. We conveyed that.

It’s good that you were honest with each other and made a list of things you wanted to work on. It means a part of him wanted to make the relationship work. However, he didn’t want to work on his addiction and the causes behind his addiction, which have to do with his childhood. Without that, your relationship didn’t really stand a chance, because he didn’t heal the core emotional wounds which prevent him from having a healthy relationship with you (or anyone else, for that matter).

Worst, he wasn’t even interested in healing it – as you say, he continued to reject seeing a professional. This shows he doesn’t really want to change, even though he claims he does. And you need to realize that without his willingness to seek professional help (which is equivalent to admitting the extent of his problem and his willingness to change), there is nothing you can do to help him, and that talking to him and lending him your ear won’t do any good. I am mentioning this because of the following you said to him:

maybe we can talk about it (not getting back together but we can talk…the only thing that kept pulling me back to you was our immense comfort and friendship so I owe you my ears because of that). Or maybe not. Let the time tell.

You can try to “save” him again, going for another cycle, but if he isn’t willing to seek professional help, you’ll end up disappointed again. Even if you start out not wanting to get back together, sooner or later you’ll want more than friendship, and will end up hurt again. Please take that into consideration if he asks you to start talking to him again. My advice is to stop being his therapist and ask him to find a real one, and in this way show that he really wants to change!

Yes, you two were very close, you were super honest with each other and he was comfortable telling you anything. That’s why you feel “immense comfort and friendship”. But the problem is that in his honesty and his comfort telling you everything, he was also hurting you: he told you hurtful things, such as that he was making out with another girl, that he was watching porn and that he didn’t find you attractive. He also told you he didn’t miss you when he was away from you. Yes, you can value his honesty but you need to protect yourself from getting hurt like that.

You said you got used to such behavior (I am so used to his behaviour now that I don’t feel hurt). And that’s where the problem is, because you SHOULD feel hurt by such behavior! He begged you to marry him and told you you were the love of his life – only to leave you stranded 3 months later, telling you he doesn’t feel attracted to you because you’ve slept with him!

You are used to such behavior – used to getting hurt by him – but you shouldn’t be. You don’t need to expose yourself to hurt, even if it’s by someone who themselves is hurt and wounded. You need to protect yourself from people who hurt you, even though they are wounded and you have great empathy for them.

You have allowed yourself to be hurt in this relationship for a long time. You found excuses for him. You made yourself believe that you are not really hurt, whereas the truth is that you are crying at night, because indeed, his behavior is immensely hurtful. You have been fooling yourself that it doesn’t affect you that much, that you are strong… But you don’t need to be strong and KEEP TAKING THE ABUSE. Strength is about PROTECTING YOURSELF FROM ABUSE, setting boundaries so that you don’t get unnecessarily hurt.

So next time he reaches out, wanting to “talk honestly”, or even wanting to renew the relationship, tell him to go see a therapist first, because that’s what he needs. A therapist won’t be hurt by his confessions, whereas you will. You don’t need to expose yourself to that. He has hurt you enough already. Please be strong and protect yourself from another round of being punched in the face!

There is more I want to say, dear lk09, but I want to send this first. Please let me know what you think…

Dear lk09,

How have you been? I hope you are fine, taking good care of yourself…

I keep thinking about you and your situation… trying to understand better. In my last post I was surprised that you weren’t hurt or angry, and that you’re feeling “normal” after what he did to you. But in the meanwhile I’ve realized that it could be because you have already experienced this kind of behavior from him, so it wasn’t such a shock for you.

In fact your second breakup, in April 2021, was very similar to this one – it happened after you’ve spent a week together in relative bliss. But soon thereafter he proclaimed that he still can’t make up his mind about marriage. This was similar, only you spent an entire month together, and he was initially very eager, professing his love for you – perhaps even more eager than last year.

But since he had already betrayed you in a similar way before, I can imagine that you don’t feel so much anger this time. Rather, what you might be feeling is perhaps a mix of resignation, disappointment but also acceptance. Finally facing and accepting the reality that you need to let go of the dream that some day he will be yours. Maybe this is the feeling of “normal” that you were talking about? Accepting and making peace with reality, although it hurts. And that’s why you are crying at night…

If I am sensing this correctly (and please correct me if I am wrong), what hurts you the most is exactly this acceptance of reality, of harsh and sad truth, that you won’t have a future with him. In all fairness, it’s actually for the best that you don’t marry him and suffer greatly being married to such an unstable and confused person. But for you, it’s the loss of a dream.

You say you feel at peace, and I believe you, but this “peace”, it seems to me, has elements of defeat and resignation in it, of accepting a less than optimal future for yourself. Because you’re now saying things like “I don’t think I should be choosing partners anymore. I don’t think I choose people well.” (July 20, 2022). 

But I don’t want you to accept a less than optimal future, a future where you settle for someone that your parents chose for you, a future where you’ve convinced yourself that you can’t choose a good partner for yourself. No! I care about you and I want the best possible future for you, in which you will choose someone you truly love and he loves you back! Someone who won’t be withholding his love from you, who won’t hesitate, who won’t be changing his mind all the time, whom you won’t have to chase for morsels of his love and attention. Someone who will give you his love freely, because he knows what mature, healthy love is.

Or, in your own words, someone who would “crave for me to hug him after a day of hard work, someone who would want to kiss me subtly good night…”

I want you to find such a person and not settle for someone who is not the choice of your heart.

But! And here comes a big BUT – you need to let go of the idea that Dandan is “The One” for you and wait for him until he makes up his mind (possibly forever). And second, even more important, you need to change something about the way you do relationships. And that is: you need to stop tolerating your partner’s negligence, ambivalence and lack of respect for you.

Maybe you have already realized it yourself, but I want to say it out loud anyway, because so far it was lacking in your relationships: You need to set boundaries of what is acceptable behavior and what isn’t, and how you would like to be treated, so that your partner cannot say or do hurtful things without any consequences.

For example, Dandan told you he got hooked on porn during covid, but he wasn’t really willing to do anything to stop it. Similarly with his drinking habit – he didn’t want to stop. You tolerated it and had understanding for him, instead of saying “I don’t want to be with someone suffering from addictions, which are ruining our relationship, while he refuses to do anything to stop it. I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t care about me enough to seek help for his addictions. I don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t care that he is hurting me with his addictions.”

Or even in smaller things, like keeping in touch every day, you tolerated that he would go silent for multiple days. Last time it happened, you timidly pinged him, asking “don’t you miss me?” And he said, no I don’t. He said there was nothing going on, that’s why he wasn’t texting you. You accepted that too – you accepted his negligence, coldness and lack of care for you, instead of saying something like “Please, I would like to hear from you every day. Can we agree to chat every evening, unless something important comes up and either of us cannot make it?” Or something along those lines.

Dear lk09, please don’t think that I am judging you – that’s the last thing I’d want. I only want to help you see (if you haven’t seen it already) that this pattern of tolerance and endurance isn’t good for the relationship.

But I also know it wasn’t easy for you to be assertive, because of the history of bullying at the hands of your sister. We’ve talked about it already and can talk about it more, if you’d like… But what probably happened is that every time you expressed your preference or boundary around your sister, there was a retaliation. She attacked you and you needed to buckle down because your parents protected her, not you. And so you could never express your needs, desires and preferences freely. Everything had to be subordinate to her will. I think this is the pattern you carried over into your romantic relationships too…

As a result, you stayed for too long in relationships where you and your needs weren’t respected. Come to think of it, neither your sister nor Dandan respected your needs, so they were similar in that sense. But the way they went about it was different.

Anyway, to sum up this loong post: if you want a healthy relationship, you need to be assertive. That includes expressing your needs and desires, your preferences, and your boundaries. You don’t need to tolerate and endure things that hurt you.

And one more thing, dear lk09: don’t lose faith in finding love, in your ability to find a good and loving partner for yourself. You can do it, trust me. You only need more assertiveness. And assertiveness can be learned – maybe with the help of therapy or coaching, but it’s definitely not out of your reach!

If you wish to talk, I am here… <3

Dear Ik09:

I am thrilled to receive your message and to read about the fun you had recently!

* As a matter of fact, in the last hour or so,  I was reading through your threads, enjoying your writing and I was preparing a post for you. Here it is:

“Dear Ik09: A small sample from the writings of a talented writer:

May 9, 2018: “I always have had the fear of being left alone all my life… I was a smart girl, but when it comes to (guy 1) I have been really dense!!!… I have decided not to date or love again till I am sure I love myself enough to not be afraid of being alone”.

May 25 2018: “I am at a stage in life where everything seems nonsensical and without a purpose. I aced through school and college, and then I got tired of everything. The only thing that kept me working for the future was the concept of love”.

Dec 18, 2018: “I was on a vacation with my sister and two of her friends. One of them (guy 2), I was attracted to him… One day, when drunk, he texted me that he had a crush on me… There was an undeniable connection… I have met many men in my life, even my ex, but this level of compatibility was never present with any of them… But this man… I understand him like I am seeing myself in the mirror”.

Dec 23, 2018: “Sometimes in loving people, we put them before us. I have done that a lot in my life and it never worked in a positive direction for me… For a long time I was upset: why people don’t love me as much as I love them. Now I have realised that some people aren’t capable of expressing, while some wouldn’t love you no matter what you do for them”.

April 23, 2020: “I think it was my obsession to have a guy in my life who truly loved me…  a girl’s fantasy. When drunk, you (guy 2) used to say a lot of things that girls want to hear, and I felt that this was it, the love I was hoping to enjoy and live in this
lifetime”.

April 8, 2021: “The guy I dated for last 2.5 years just left me yesterday, saying he is unable to make up his mind about marriage, and wants me to meet guys as a part of arranged marriage system as approved by my parents… I have a decent job now. I have two master’s degrees… I don’t want to settle for a man through an arranged marriage. I always wanted to be swept off my feet… My parents want me to get married by next year and I feel so pressured especially when I have been ditched by the man I thought will be my life partner”.

– back to the reply following receiving your latest update: I am fine except that I somehow bruised my hip muscles and am in pain, sure hoping this pain will go away. But it makes me feel better to read that you are in a good space!

anita

*Oops, I submitted the post I was preparing for you twice, by mistake.

anita

Dear lk09,

believe it or not, I was thinking about you the other day, and thought to ping you around Christmas… but anita was faster 🙂

I am glad you’re doing fine and are satisfied with you new job, which pays better. And that you had a chance to go on a 3-week workcation. I can imagine beaches in India are amazing! Also glad that you made new friends! (no potential candidates among them, huh? 🙂 )

But the thing is I needed to experience him when I did. I believe we are meant to meet people at a certain point in time to make certain incidents happen. I would perhaps have no financial standing even now had I not met him.

You mean he encouraged you to study for your masters degree, and so now you can get better paying jobs? Sorry, I don’t remember it clearly, but I do remember you mentioned something like that…

Otherwise, well, we are attracted to certain people because we have some emotional wounds… and we might stay for too long in the relationship, because of those wounds… But if learn from those experiences and not repeat them, it’s all good. They have served their purpose.

Am I healed? No, I feel like I have a lot of demons but I need some more time before I hear them patiently.

Hmmm, I wouldn’t say you have demons. It was he who had them, in form of addictions…. I’d rather say you have wounds… But I don’t want to go deeper into heavy topics, unless you’d want me to.

If you feel that what I wrote this summer is mostly true, then I hope that you will go into your next relationship with more assertiveness and self-respect. Not to allow the same patterns to repeat again. You are precious and worthy, don’t forget that! And you have the right to be with a man who will see you and treat you that way.