Dear Jason:

Your first relationship: you met her at school, you are 27, she is 26. It was a fast paced beginning relationship where you “automatically.. wanted her over all the time.. spending most days together and most nights”, at least six days per week. As the school year was ending, she took more shifts at work and you felt neglected.

Before the two of you got together she had a 33 year old boyfriend, a relationship that ended a few weeks before your relationship began. Before him she was in a relationship with an immigration lawyer for whom she worked.

She believed that “the man should provide everything to the relationship” even though the two of you made about the same money. She did cook for you after school and on weekends, but you wanted to go Dutch on dates, and felt that you “deserved a bit more out of what I was giving”. Also, she mentioned her most recent boyfriend but you mentioned him even more often, “it almost became obsessive to me”. At one point you looked through her phone and saw photos of her with him on social media, “She really seemed so happy in those pictures and I felt jealous”.

You talked about your frustrations with your parents, grandparents, brother and his girlfriend, and “They began to reset her for making me drive her and spend money on her when we were making the same amount of money”, and you thought you needed a girl “that would not bring up her ex and make me feel insecure”. When you broke up with her in July, you told her “to go back to her ex because he could do all  those things for her without issue”.

You broke up with her at the end of July and got back together in August, but you missed time from work “ruminating about the relationship and feeling worthless about my anxiety and depression”. Your brother’s girlfriend who never met your girlfriend “got mad that she was neglecting me and treating me poorly, not  paying for me or her share of things (though she takes care of her rent, clothes, food, etc.., just not dates), and feeling like I was being used”.

“but she was slowly changing and started offering to pay for.. some meals, but I felt ridiculous that she even offered”. You went to a nice trip at the end of August but you were upset over the fact that she took many pictures and that she “was on her phone that she was talking to other guys”. You checked her phone a few times during the trip and found out that she texted a few guys but “it didn’t seem flirty”, but she sent a guy money and you “thought that was insulting considering I was her boyfriend and why should this guy get money from her”.

And so, you broke up with her again at the beginning of September, “I felt like I was only being squeezed into her life when there was nothing else she had to do. The night before last you asked her to get back together but she is not interested, saying  “she is tired of everything” and that you “have to grow up and not be controlled by my family’s opinions and do what I want”.

“I’m confused as I don’t know if I threw away something wrong or right”. She wants to remain friends and suggested you attend her wedding in the future. “it’s hard to stomach even imagining her with another man. I imagine this will be someone who will stand up for her, is mature, makes lots of money and a great life for her and her kids, and will be there for her no matter what. I imagined myself to be that guy only a few weeks ago”.

My thoughts: in the heart of the matter is what fueled your feelings of being used and neglected by this woman, what fueled your feeling “of being squeezed into her life when there was nothing else she had to do”, what fueled your jealousy that she was happy with a previous boyfriend but not with you… what fueled your upset when she started working more shifts and had less time for you, what fueled your upset that she didn’t pay her share of dates and that she sent money to another guy-

What fueled all this hurt and anger and upset is your childhood experience of the same: either you as a child were not the preferred one in any of your parent’s mind and heart, maybe they paid more attention to a sibling, or to strangers… but not  to you or you witnessed one of your parents being used and neglected by the other and you felt a lot  of empathy for the used and neglected parent.

Find out the childhood experience that has been fueling your distress in this first relationship with a woman, and that will be a start.

Your thoughts?

anita