Dear Lea:

“many times at the beginning he told me that my desires should be the priority and him could pass in second”- he offered you the version of love he knew from the context of his mother/himself: it was about her desires, her choices, not his. She was first, he was far second.

“And then he started to stop acting like that when I told him many times that it wasn’t how it was supposed to be as we were two, and his needs counted as much as mine”- you did the right thing to let him know of how it should be: equality within a relationship, but not having experience in equal, or just relationship,  “he got pretty confused”.

For children- their parents are gods, and what gods teach them is correct. Of his two parents, his mother was the one present at home, and she was the dominant, bossy one. She taught him that what she wanted mattered and that he should come second. That was the version of love he was taught as a child. Fast forward, he is a young adult, you are trying to teach him something different- it’s a bit too late: his best learning years were when he was a child.

You told him: “I want you to be yourself, don’t be what you think I would like you to be”- he doesn’t know yet how to be himself.

“Could it be possible he wanted to act like this because he didn’t want me to see his truest self”- I don’t think he is aware of his truest self. His truest self has been in hiding since he was a young child. What you referred to as “his mental illnesses” came about as a result of his truest self being rejected and hidden for so long.

“maybe the fact that I read through him pretty easily.. could have made him more.. insecure about me actually.. Maybe he got scared.. as he saw I saw not only his qualities but also his flaws quickly”-  I don’t think that his insecurity and behaviors in connection with you had much to do with you and who you are. I think it has to do with his childhood and life before he met you. I don’t think that he was able to assess that you read through him easily when he himself is not able to read through himself.

“I wonder why he’s attracted to me and why I was the ‘chosen’ one to try something out”- I don’t remember if you shared that he used the words “chosen one”. If he did, then these were only words, expressing his temporary thoughts and feelings, no actions followed, correct?

“I shouldn’t feel the need to justify my appearance, right?”- can you explain specifically what you mean by “my appearance”, in this sentence?

“He found a few girls for sex but after they refused to go further away with him”- can you explain what you mean by “go further away with him”? (You wrote earlier that he expressed that he was afraid of commitment, afraid that girls will want to marry him, so there may be a contradiction here..)

“Could it be possible that he thought I was going to let him down? That I wasn’t totally serious..?”- again, I thought he was afraid of commitment, afraid to be stuck in a relationship, so I don’t understand what appears to be a contradiction here: that he wanted you to be serious/ commitment- serious?

-if you do choose to answer/ address what I brought up here, please take your time so to express yourself clearly, edit your post if needed, so to make it simple enough for me to understand what you are trying to communicate to me.

anita

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