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