Thank you! I hope things are going well on your side too. If you need a listener, I’m here.

Hi Anita,

I took a while to get back, apologies. I broke up with my boyfriend yesterday. We had a lot going on over the past couple of months. We graduated, shifted houses and states, and my boyfriend moved from DC to NC to live with his cousins until he gets a job. I am in Boston. We met a couple of times, we had hard conversations, and we thought of breaking up but we thought let’s try some more, let’s try some more. Yesterday, we broke up.

As you mentioned before, it did not feel right for me to be in this and express dissatisfaction from time to time – it is disrespectful. I don’t know, I don’t know if it is my intuition or anxiety that ruined this for me but all I know is breaking up is the right thing and I did it. Time will tell. I want to focus on healing myself for now.

Thank you Anita for patiently answering, I am grateful.

“You’ve been thinking that he’s the one throughout all this time that you’ve been presenting him as an unsatisfactory choice of a partner (in so many ways)?

I am puzzled. I would like to understand better (therefore, I am asking many questions in this post, and as always, you are welcome to answer or to not answer any of the questions I ask)” – I meant after my old relationship, I took time to be happy with myself and I thought I knew what I wanted. Someone with no toxic masculine traits and career-oriented. This was what I wanted and when I was getting into this relationship, I thought “This is it”. But fast forward today, I am not happy with what I thought I would be happy with. Though my mind says this is alright my heart races and I feel very anxious.

you want to step into your feminine, as in: to no longer be the strong one, the initiator, the one taking charge, the leader. You want him to be these things so that you can relax and let him lead..? – yes.

Are you angry with him (have you been angry with him for along time) for not being strong enough, initiator enough, social enough, etc.? – I guess yes

The kind that likes and respects him, I hope, the kind that thinks highly of him. – Am I a bad person for not doing that?

Do you think highly of yourself? Do you like you? – Yes but I think I can do better. There are still episodes of severe self-doubt, self-criticism, and being hard on myself.

I think that your relaxed part will come out when you are satisfied with your choice of a partner and no longer want him to be someone he is not, and when you are satisfied with who you are. – Makes sense. Whatever I said, does it seem like I am making it up? Can I change the way I think about them? It isn’t like I don’t want to be satisfied with him and searching for reasons to be dissatisfied, right? Do I sound like that?

that it’s okay for you to be you, and that it’s okay for him to be him? – maybe

This makes so much sense. “You need him to be the strong male figure so that you can abandon your strong-male-figure role and relax into a female role, while he needs you.. to continue your strong-male role?” – I think this is exactly what is happening.

Is there a way out of this? Or are we just not meant to be together

Hi Anita,

Thank you for getting back. My thoughts when he was silent – “why is he so silent”, “how can he be so silent”, “I just want to have a heart felt conversation with him”, “I am the one who should always initiate conversations”, “people are starting to feel bored and he is not helping me to keep the energy of the group up”(we went on a drive with few friends), “maybe my friends will think he is boring”, “he always brings my energy down”, “he is not making a good impression of himself near my friends”, “he is not making an effort to be nice to my friends”, “maybe my friends will judge me if he keeps silent”, “my friends will think I settled for less” – it is embarrassing to open up and share that I get these thoughts but I do. I hate it too.

Coming to the second question – most prominent behavior was not being ready for commitment, not being open about the relationship and hiding it, not caring, not making any plans to do things or spend time unless I do, just not fighting with me, not trying to make it work when things started falling apart.

Yes I think! I am leaving today and I feel sad that the doubts did not leave me yet, that I still have questions on my mind and that I am unable to stop overthinking. I feel this is unfair to my boyfriend, why should he go through this? He has told me today morning I am overthinking too much and it is not helping things. He said his best friend and cousins also think the same – that I am overthinking which hurts me. This has never happened to me. I wish I could do something and stop it.

Hello Anita,

Sorry for the delay, I am feeling better now. I will leave my boyfriend’s place tomorrow – we had a great time together! I have been thinking about what you said and it is very true.

” I think that when she told you that he is not good enough for you, she delivered the almost certain kiss of death to the relationship.” – this thought occurred to me before and it does not shock me. From the moment my mom said he might not be good enough for me, I have been overanalyzing and overthinking about my relationship and my boyfriend which did not help the relationship in any positive way. You are right, I have to explore the relationship with my mother with the help of a psychotherapist to get better clarity and I am on it now. I have been trying to find a good therapist and it’s taking a while. If you have any recommendations, I would be happy to hear from you. My sincere thank you again for taking the time and effort to point this out and help me out through my journey! It really means a lot and you will be in my thoughts and prayers. I wish more strength to you to go through your healing journey that in turn inspires people like me 🙂

Apart from that, I want to update that I had a great time with my boyfriend, he is a wonderful and genuine person who cares for me and loves me. Our relationship has grown so much over the past one year, it took us so much work to be where we are today, at a better and happy place with better understanding of each other. Both of us have decided that we need to work on ourselves and build more self-confidence which will ultimately reflect in all the areas of our life including our relationship.

But the feeling of missing the attraction and spark is still there. My mind says everything is going well but my heart keeps saying something is missing – my heart doesn’t say yes! At the same time, when I am with my boyfriend, I feel my social life and spiritual life are not thriving and it bothers me. Like I mentioned before, I keep getting thoughts like “Am I settling for something less?”, “maybe I can get someone with better compatibility”, “am I going to regret this decision”, “i don’t feel inspired enough around him”. The thoughts have definitely decreased this time but still come to me from time to time.

But I will start with working on and trying to heal my relationship with my mother – thank you for your insights!

Hi Anita,

Thank you for responding. I have never heard of this term but I will read about it now.

I also want to mention that I did talk to my boyfriend about my anxiety from time to time and he said that as per his observation, it might be because this is a healthy relationship and I am not used to it. I am used to fixing things and hence it is feeling alien to me and taking time for me to get used to this.