Dear White Desann,

I totally respect that you wouldn’t want to share everything on a forum.

INTJ is one of the truly lovely types!  I have known a couple of INTJs in my time – usually people of great integrity and intellectual depth.  I myself am ISFJ.

I agree with your deduction about your exes.  It says a lot about who you are, that they both wanted to remain friends with you.

Ruminating, being on edge, worrying about mistakes – all clear symptoms of anxiety, and a specific type of anxiety.  It takes one to know one.  It sounds to me like you have an unrelenting standards schema.  I’ve had schema therapy for that myself.  It’s important that you realise that no partner will remove that inner voice of criticism from you, but there’s a good chance that a therapist that you connect with / have a rapport with would.  It’s self work and not relationship work really that will be the key.  Schema therapy really helped me minimise that critical voice in my own head (that inner perfectionism – holding myself to extremely high standards), which generated a lot of inner anxiety.  The most hilarious example of this from my own life (from the benefit of hindsight – though it was a little sad) was when I was once chopping carrots while preparing dinner for my ex-partner, and I became anxious when I realised I had not cut them perfectly and feared she would reject me for being a bad cook.  It’s hilariously absurd in hindsight, but I was genuinely stressed about it!

If you can’t find a schema therapist in your area, I can suggest a book (and any related literature) that might really help you work through stuff on your own.  It has a whole chapter dedicated to unrelenting standards schemas and how they are rooted in our childhood development.  The book is called ‘Reinventing Your Life:  The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behaviour and Feel Great Again’ by Young and Klosko.

Absolutely though, we all deserve stability and honesty from a partner.

I too spent much of my teens with my head in books and videogames.  If anything though, that experience gave you the depth and intellectual rigour that you have to this day.  What a precious gift and an asset that you can bring to any future relationship!  You are far, far deeper than a kiddy pool… and the kind of man that the right kind of intellectual woman would be so intrigued by, to the point of finding you irresistible.

You’re very welcome and I hope at least some of the above offers a valuable perspective on things in your journey.