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Unsatisfied. Is it me or him?

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  • August 30, 2018 at 11:12 am #223751
    Bun
    Participant

    Hello all,

    As always I am very grateful to even be able to ask for advice from people with such an attitude that I admire and respect- thank you all.

    I am writing about a relationship I have been in for about 8 months.

    I entered this relationship when I was depressed and lonely. I wanted love, I wanted someone to help me live happier- as I felt i had no friends, etc. I met someone, and I latched on.

    He is very different from anyone I would normally date. Usually, I date guys a couple years older. Also, guys who usually are financially superior. From a younger age, I grew attracted to the concept of a man who could “treat” me in that way. Also, I have worked to have some “brownie points” in life. I am decently successful, and COULD date someone who could give me the absolute world. I feel I have a lot to offer.

    So, him and I are the same age. Yet, I am much more mature. He feels like a boy, and I feel like a woman. I have been skeptical about him since the first month of us dating. Not sure if it is my own projections or what.

    Here are the reasons I feel skeptical:
    1. He is very feminine. It makes me think he is attracted to men as well. He often makes extended eye contact with gay men- which when confronted says it’s not true. Maybe he is flattered that they find him attractive, but it makes me VERY uncomfortable. I now can’t release the feeling that he is attracted to men, and that is something  I wont accept in a partner. (sorry)

    He always wants to use my face products. I view him even more feminine as he intently watches me do makeup, and always uses my face masks, etc. “Just be a rough man!” I think. It makes ME feel less feminine, and turned off.

    Everything he does is feminine. He loves the color pink..it makes me turned off even more.

    2. He always splits the bill. I feel materialistic. In the beginning, I said what I want is a pure heart and I don’t care about money. But I have found myself increasingly turned off when we split the bill. I feel I am dating a friend when I have to pay. It makes me take him less seriously, and I see him more as a boy- though I realize I may be wrong.

    3. I view him as a boy. I view him as SO young, though we are the same age. He looks like a boy, he acts like a boy. He is immature with sex, which FURTHER turns me off. Example: showing me a condom in his wallet and raising his eyebrows/smirking. Come on, I am not in high-school anymore. It turns me off. I feel his energy is “I am a boy, take care of me” and I am tired of feeling like I have someone sucking my breasts for milk. (I am sorry I am being so mean.). His energy is very young, and I feel I did not go through all of my trials and tribulations in life, to revert back to a girl. I am a woman.

    In the beginning, I thought it would be good to date someone my age so I could stop feeling older. Now, I feel like a grown woman dating a boy. We are both 22 :l

    4. He takes more for himself. When I cut the cake, and there are two slices, one big and small, I have always given everyone else the bigger slice. I love to give. He always takes the bigger slice for himself. If I ask for it, then he will hesitantly give, but naturally, I feel a childish energy that says, you are the mom, I am the boy, I get what I want. He is spoiled by his mom, and I feel it.

    5. I feel I have more to offer. I feel mean for thinking such way. In the beginning, I was always ready to throw in the towel. I felt he was INCREDIBLY lucky to have me, as I usually date people of much higher status. I felt I was taking steps back. I have always dated people who naturally encouraged my growth. Their greatness rubbed off on me, now I feel I have taken steps back. He still has a lot to build. I feel I have more to offer in my lifestyle than him. He comes to me, and I naturally rub off beneficial things, yet I feel all he has to offer me is cuddles and romance flings. I don’t feel he adds to my lifestyle, but I feel I tremendously add to his.

    6. My expectations. I like to go out to brunch. He doesn’t. He acts so stingy with money, which again may be a negative fault of my own to think so.

    He is so caring and sweet, yet these things bother me TREMENDOUSLY. Since the beginning, I felt maybe we aren’t the best match but I held on, it’s hard to let go sometimes.

    I want to break up, but I feel I don’t want o at the same time. If he ended it, I would be happy- because at least this inner conflict  would be over.

    I can’t help but feel I superficially deserve much better. Yes, he is there emotionally. Which I value highly, because in the past I have dated some men who are there financially, but not committedly, as he is. He seems committed, but I can’t help but feel this is just wrong and I am doing myself a disservice being with him, when my life could be so much better with someone who adds more. Yet, I don’t want to be so shallow.

    What is this?

     

    • This topic was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by Bun.
    August 30, 2018 at 11:28 am #223757
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Bun:

    “What is this?” – I’ll give it a try, to answer your question.

    1. A feminine man does not mean a homosexual man. Plenty of masculine men are gay and plenty of feminine man are straight.

    2. You can’t help liking what you like and disliking what you dislike. No use of trying so hard to eat broccoli if you dislike broccoli, better eat asparagus if you like asparagus.

    3. “Unsatisfied. Is it me or him?”- it is you who are unsatisfied, that is for sure, you expressed it very clearly here.

    I assume that if he knew that you don’t like a whole lot about him, I assume he would unsatisfied too. Wouldn’t he?

    anita

    August 30, 2018 at 11:38 am #223761
    Bun
    Participant

    Hi Antita,

    Thank you for your response. I realize that he may not be homosexual, but his feminine nature turns me off. Maybe it is my own insecurities. I wish that I could accept this about him. I like his heart, it feels warm, but the rest creates a conflict within me.

    He would be :/

    August 30, 2018 at 11:44 am #223763
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Bun:

    You can’t help feeling turned off by his ways, these are automatic reactions on your part. It doesn’t make you good or bad to be turned off by his feminine ways. Everyone likes certain things and dislikes other things.

    Better then that you break up with him, end the relationship with kindness. It will be the honest thing to do for yourself and for him.

    Acting honestly with ourselves and others, unlike liking/disliking this or that is a big part of being  good people.

    anita

     

    August 30, 2018 at 11:46 am #223767
    Anonymous
    Guest

    * didn’t reflect under Topics

    August 30, 2018 at 11:49 am #223771
    Anonymous
    Guest

    * still didn’t…

    August 30, 2018 at 11:50 am #223773
    Bun
    Participant

    Antita,
    I feel I should break up, yet the thought deeply saddens me. I feel “but..but..what if its me. What if I just have toxic thoughts”..he does everything right emotionally…but these superficial thoughts always seem to come back up. I wish we could just date casually and openly until I feel sure, but he would not do this- as he is sure of me, but me not of him..

    August 31, 2018 at 2:37 am #223811
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Hi Bun,

    I feel like I can relate quite a lot to your situation. I am with my current boyfriend for 1.5 years. At first, I felt exactly like you – that he didn’t match my ‘successful’ lifestyle, he couldn’t afford to take me places, he didn’t fit in with my friends and was immature. And I think this unspoken arrogance I had was sensed by him for sure, because a year into our relationship he cheated, which I never thought in a million years would be possible.

    I ended it at first, but in the end we spoke and the floodgates opened. He admitted he was depressed, stressed and struggling in life. He was stuck in a dead-end job and for entire year I knew him he said he wanted to change careers but he didn’t do anything about it. It would have easy for me to mark it off as him being lazy. But when you truly understand people, you realise that nobody is lazy, just uninspired.

    He started going to therapy to work through his issues and was in fact diagnosed with ADHD. Things started to make sense and it made me realise that its not always what is on the surface, there is so much beneath the surface and now I have made a choice to be more understanding and give love unconditionally.

    I think you are scared of committing to him because you think you can do better, which isn’t a bad thing but nobody is perfect, and its very much worth it to work through issues together. I think this generation of dating culture always teaches us to strive, never settle, ‘you deserve the best’, but if you keep thinking like this you will keep chasing something unattainable. I believe the message of, ‘don’t give up so easy with people, work through things if you truly care about someone, dig deep to understand someone who deserves to be understood’ should be message to each other.

    I hope that helps.

    xxx

    August 31, 2018 at 4:44 am #223833
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Bun:

    I read the powerful reply you received from azu and will put aside our communication for a little while. I would like to read your reply to azu and possibly a communication between the two of you.

    anita

    August 31, 2018 at 7:58 am #223805
    Shona Keachie
    Participant

    Hi Bun

    How you came to be in the relationship is very telling – it sounds as though it was from a standpoint of him needing to fill a void you felt within. I get this, I’ve done it many times myself!

    Since many of us get exposed to similar ideals through media, at home and in society generally, my early ideas about relationships were probably similar to yours. The sorts of beliefs that formed in my head were things like:

    • it is my job to make others happy, and it is their job to make me happy
    • we are meant to be with someone, the right person is out there for each of us
    • we ‘fall in love’, an act which is outside our control and completely random
    • if it is ‘meant to be’ it will just work… and so on.

    While society has changed a lot in the last four decades and some of these ideas have become a bit old fashioned, many of us still hold on to these beliefs somewhere in our psyche. I know I certainly felt I’d failed on many levels as the years chugged on and my relationship numbers tallied.

    When I met my current partner twelve years ago, it was almost the first time I had been alone since I had hit my teens. Admittedly I hadn’t been single for very long, but it was the first time in my life I had actually been happy about being single. Getting to that place had given me the chance to really start to understand my own needs better and take a more honest look at myself.

    By the time we met in our thirties we were both very aligned on what we had learned from our previous relationships. We agreed on the need to be ourselves, to keep doing the things we each enjoyed (even if it wasn’t something the other wanted to do), the importance of independent friendships and of good communication.

    Around that same time I heard two things that really resonated deeply, and have reshaped my beliefs ever since.

    The first was advice to let go of the cumbersome impossibility of trying to control other people and circumstances. That phrase “cumbersome impossibility” just felt so rich and on-target and conjures up exactly the way it feels when I am trying to control anything other than my own reactions.

    Since I am the only one who controls my reactions, I then began to really understand I am therefore the singular creator of my own reality. So the second thing that stuck – although really confronted me at first – was hearing that if I really understood my ability to make myself feel good, I would ask no one else to be different so that I could feel good.

    Over the years I have proceeded down our relationship path with these new thoughts in mind, yet admit I have often been drawn into thoughts and behaviours that are attached to my old beliefs, like looking to the other to “make me happy”.

    I’m not saying we should never work on improving our relationship; but our relationship is always improving when I look at each annoyance, disappointment and frustration as things that hold a lesson for me. Then I find the root cause is rarely my partner; he is merely the trigger of some other deeply entrenched belief that is typically not helpful to me anymore.

    Neither am I condoning that anyone stay in a relationship. But it is important to understand why you were drawn into it to try to break the pattern and avoid a recurrence as someone else has said. I’ve learned is that life is a mirror, so you are both reflecting things back to each other that you can learn and grow from.

    From a broader perspective, whether you stay or go, it’s all good in the scheme of things.

    All best

    Shona

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