Thank you so much for all of the replies. I agree that this is an excellent learning opportunity for me. What’s troubling is that I find it to be a cycle and am noticing similar feelings between relationships. While my ex and I are not in contact, he will reach out to me every few months and is still adamant that we are going to get married. When I am in a good headspace, I am able to brush this off and wish him well. However, when I am not I find myself questioning my decision and why I could have just stuck it out.

With my boyfriend, things are much different. We are friends, he is very affectionate, family-oriented, thoughtful and considerate. Anita, you are correct in saying that my ex-boyfriends logic was very calming to me. I believe it is because I can be so emotional, so having someone who did not look at life in that way was soothing. My boyfriend is a lot more emotional, which is perhaps where the challenge comes in for me.

Anita, you have asked a loaded question lol. My relationship with my parents growing up was not the best. While they loved me to the best of their abilities, they both struggled in relation to one another (ultimately ending in divorce when I was 21), and I often felt like I took on a lot of my mother’s emotions, and also felt like I was constantly worried about my dad and felt like I looked for his attention as he was not very emotional. Today, the relationship is better, I try not to get upset with them because I know they were doing the best they can. I still worry about my Dad financially, and know that if an emotional relationship were to ever happen, it would be because of me. For example, I had to forcefully start a habit of saying “love you”, because it was never done before. With my mom, there is still a sense of hostility there, which I cannot fully understand. She often is upset with me because of a “tone”, or because I’m not agreeing with everything she says, but I’ve been practicing implementing boundaries around that. That is the short, condensed version of our relationship.