Thank you both again.

I know i’m idealising everything right now as it was so important to me.

No relationship is perfect but it was as close to perfect as I had known so far. But I don’t know yet how much of that was making concessions to keep the piece. Both of our experiences of our parent’s marriages were of fighting and screaming matches, so we did a lot to avoid that in our relationship.

We were also different types of people (I know opposites attract to some degree). She was always very confident with people and was quite promiscuous and had some drinking issues as well which came up. She would challenge me to be more confident which is what I’ve needed for a long time. But she would also go a bit too far in chastising me for being negative about a situation ahead of time, or my not being confident enough to sing or dance like she would. (despite me saying that a lot of my childhood had had given me that issue) I don’t know it doesn’t seem like a big deal now in the grand scheme of things but when you want your person to understand and they don’t its frustrating sometimes.

I don’t know If I felt disapproved of or hurt, but maybe more just misunderstood. She would have a lack of confidence sometimes about her photography business but I don’t know how much of that was phishing for compliments sometimes.  I would support her and not give a judgement.