Hi Anita, thank you again for your response which is extremely helpful. I’m sorry for the delay i take to respond, i live in the European timezone and it’s 5:30pm here.

“he offered you the version of love he knew from the context of his mother/himself: it was about her desires, her choices, not his. She was first, he was far second.”, “(…)but not having experience in equal, or just relationship (…)”, “he doesn’t know yet how to be himself.” => Those parts make a lot of sens, he has a very big desire to please to someone and his way to do it is to almost “erase” his own needs, his own personality. At first i thought it was because he was a very adaptable person type but with time, looking at how he got confused when i asked him to be himself and not an idealistic version or when he had to take a decision for both of us sometimes and now your messages, i realize it was something else.

” Fast forward, he is a young adult, you are trying to teach him something different- it’s a bit too late: his best learning years were when he was a child.” => True, but i think he tried to make some efforts in order to “understand” what i said, as i think he sensed he could finally show without the feeling of being either judged or misconceptualized who he was (he sent me pictures of him wearing feminine clothes for example and even when we met sometimes he was dressed with feminine clothes). But i still feel it clashed with something and my acceptance towards him didn’t seem to be enough for him in order to feel totally relaxed. I agree it’s a bit too late for him to change something deep inside but, does that mean he’s stuck in the rock into this conception of a relationship? I was wondering if the fact that he still lives at his parent’s home plays a role and if maybe he leaves the family’s house, he will feel more free and therefore start to feel less stuck to the norms?

” If he did, then these were only words, expressing his temporary thoughts and feelings, no actions followed, correct?” => No he didn’t but i was just refering to the fact that he said i was the first person he wanted to try something out for serious.

“can you explain specifically what you mean by “my appearance”, in this sentence?” => i don’t have a specific look when it comes to my clothes, i’m pretty classic. But i got a lot of reflexions about it “yes but you look extremely fancy”, “very bourgeoise”, “you must come from a high social class”. And everytime i feel the need to justify my look and i start to tell my background while it’s a bit stupid. I mean, it’s just clothes, it doesn’t define who i am, for who i vote, if i’m a model of virtue etc.. and i think the same for people, they aren’t defined by their appearances, we are more than that and it seems to be a bit superficial to qualify someone according to what he/she wears, at least for me..

“can you explain what you mean by “go further away with him”? (You wrote earlier that he expressed that he was afraid of commitment, afraid that girls will want to marry him, so there may be a contradiction here..)” => The more i write the more i remember some parts of the conversations with him. He spoke it loud that was afraid of commitment (the official reason why he decided to stop with me..) BUT when we talked about our pasts, when i asked him why he never got into a serious relationship he told also that when he met a girl (always from a dating app, i’m the first girl everything happened – from the first meeting to the breakup – IRL) everytimes she never wanted to go further away in the relation with him. So yes, there is a BIG contradiction here i realize it now that i’m writing it down.

” I don’t understand what appears to be a contradiction here: that he wanted you to be serious/ commitment- serious?” => Yes, again there is a contradiction. I’m still not sure what he expected/expects from me. He knew i wasn’t the hookup/friend with benefit type and he didn’t play me just to get sex (which is something which barely happened actually).. I told him many times i wanted to take things easy and very slowly. I mean, being serious doesn’t mean you expect from someone a proposal after a few months of relationship.. I didn’t even consider we “dated” for real, we had one real date and after it was just us lost in the blue, going through a pandemic and dealing with his personal issues.. we were far to be a real relationship, we were serious toward each other for sure but after, it requires way much more to really try things out with someone right..?