Anita, thanks for your reply. I appreciate it.

1. As you make practical choices in life, including whether to end this relationship or not- choose what will minimize your stress level, which I think should be your highest priority, for your own well being and for your daughter “who is having some serious growing pains with the divorce, Covid-19, and a frequently stressed out mom“.

You are very right about this. Prioritizing my peace should always be at the top of my list.

2. You mentioned your lack of social support: “a frequently stressed out mom who has no other family or friends around.. I don’t have anyone else to confide in about this”- if you find my input helpful, keep posting here and I will be glad to read from you and reply every time you post.

I appreciate that.

– the first man, it was not effective to give him a long, or very long list of your questions and concerns, fears and doubts. There was an assumption on your part that he is able and willing to process all that information and come up with a plan of action that will take care of your long list of issues with him and otherwise. I very much doubt that he was that capable. Even if he was a capable psychotherapist, he would have been way less capable in the context of a personal relationship. You gave him too much credit, giving him that list and attempting to discuss it.

I feel you’re right about this too. I’d had a few literally sleepless nights. He was living in Asia and we’d had some long conversations in which I abandoned my needs for sleep in order to communicate with him, so by the time I decided to write out all those questions, concerns, and explanations, I wasn’t really thinking that clearly. No, it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but deep down I knew I didn’t trust him anymore anyway. That list was just a way of trying to confirm something that didn’t need his confirmation. It made zero sense.

– the second man, like you implied, he is quite immature, but he reads like a good guy. You see him as worse than he is; again, giving him too much credit in a negative way. His easy going lifestyle/young age lifestyle may be a benefit to you, in comparison to being involved with a very mature, busy and very uptight man.

Yeah, he is a good guy. I think the only way in which I see him as worse than he is is with my having issues with his relationships with teenage girls. My own past raises my hackles when I see it, to an irrational point. I feel it to be something I need to really get used to and understand over time before I can truly trust that it’s solely innocent. I hate that it’s like that for me, but it’s true. It doesn’t just come from nowhere, but it is harmful in the context of a relationship. And again, I don’t judge him for his life. I comment on its simplicity as a boon to him and because I wish I had it. Mentioning it to him reads as judgment, but that is not what I feel about it. And you are right, I do not want to be with an uptight, busy, overly mature man. I like to be silly and spontaneous and have fun. I have enough on my plate and don’t need to add further seriousness to it. When I say he doesn’t leave the house and reads and paints, these are his words, too. Not a judgment.

– you are overly critical of the men, expecting some kind of impossible perfection from them. Not that any of the men was even close to any idea of perfection, but your expectations are unreasonable. You watch them too closely, looking for reasons to get suspicious and offended, not giving them the space to just be. You expect them to remember everything you told them at all times, be focused, and filter themselves accordingly, on an ongoing basis- an impossible task for a human (possible for a computerized robot).

I actually have a lot more flexibility in what I allow than I communicate here. But if literally one of your only issues with a partner was constant comments on other women’s looks or bodies and you mention it to him instead of sitting on it and silently stewing, why can’t that be a topic? I don’t tell anyone how to dress, be, etc. But if I start to feel uncomfortable or disrespected, it’s expecting too much to bring it up and want to have a conversation about it, one that ends with me saying, “Hey, that’s just how I feel. I cannot tell you how to be or what to do.” And when it came to sexual favors with the last guy, that was something he could have communicated to me. He asked me to maintain a long-distance relationship. We talked about almost everything. Maybe it was foolish of me to think that that would be a topic he would broach, but I did. I was trusting. I don’t even ask for constant filtering. I truly don’t. But I did want to address it because we also talk about a lot of topics and I wanted to understand his thought process in those moments. I find people attractive, but I don’t need to always call it out. It raises questions of, is there an underlying reason for this? Some people truly want you to feel insecure by doing that. If he had said, yeah join in, I think it’s blah blah blah, I’d have said sure! But he nixed that idea. I just try to make sense of things for myself. Is it annoying to others? Yeah, probably so. I know that not everything makes sense or needs to be analyzed.

Having this unrealistic human-behavior expectation would make a healthy and lasting relationship with any man, including one who is almost perfect- an impossibility.

I give and accept a lot. But I am also inquisitive and not always the most trusting of every single thing. Time and experience have shown me that I mustn’t trust without clarity or an explanation sometimes (see the above sexual favors response in which I trusted he was not straying because I thought we were more straightforward than that). But yes, I could probably stand to focus more on myself and making myself happy so that I am less focused on the behaviors of the people I’m seeing.

– reads to me that you are over-reactive at times, to put it mildly, earning yourself the term “psychopath” that the first man mentioned and the what the second man referred to as your violence (“he still tried to.. play up my ‘violence’”). A daily routine of aerobic exercise, like long, brisk daily walks, listening to guided meditations and practicing Mindfulness can help you to pause between feeling triggered and reacting/ over-reacting to the feeling.

I have to disagree with the psychopath reference here, Anita. That is a serious thing to lodge at someone that he was actually pretty mean to. What strikes me is that I am always meant to be more forgiving of these men but that same understanding is not always as readily welcome to me. I know that I am only responsible for myself, but they have accountability too. I’m drunk, I kick at a stool while seated, I don’t knock it down or go on a rampage, but feel like his touching my person was uncalled for. I’d gone on a five mile walk that day, but too much alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine with not enough food spell disaster for someone with a sensitive system. So yes, that is a combo that made me particularly “over-reactive.” And again, I was quite out of it, but he slapped my hand and broke a beer bottle in the street and I’m the one needing to take responsiblity for all of it? How? Again, accountability on both sides here.