Dear Neverdyed,

I am glad you’re trying to get to the bottom of the problem, that’s the only way to resolve it.

“The last video chat ended after he said I’d made him responsible (I couldn’t hold my tears because I missed him even without addressing it).”

Could you explain this? In his view, what have you made him responsible for?

“Somehow I think only marriage empowers the couple to demand/request what he or she wants/expects, maybe it’s because it’s formal? As for my idea about marriage, I believe it’s related to my parents’ terrible divorce, but I’ve stopped claiming that it’s all their fault. I don’t mind having a partner for life, just “getting married” is totally unnecessary for me, the most important thing is being faithful/loyal. Now it seems weird to me for how infidelity scares me off as it has nothing to do with my parents’ divorce!”

So your parents had a difficult divorce, and it probably affects your idea of marriage. That’s why you don’t want to get married. You only want loyalty, however, here is one big problem: you said you can only request things (I guess this includes loyalty) if you’re married. So how do you request loyalty if you’re not married? Do you see your internal contradiction?

It’s totally understandable that infidelity scares you, in the sense that you don’t want to have an unfaithful partner. But you need to be able to demand that from him – even if you’re not married. That’s called a committed relationship.

So what would happen if you’d demand faithfulness from your partner? We already know that the man you’ve been involved with refused to be faithful. Not only that, but he suggested that you too should have more than one lovers (“he suggested me have more than 1 lover to avoid being stuck”). That’s when you started withdrawing and have been trying to forget about him, but it was very hard and it made you suffer a lot.

But also notice that him suggesting infidelity was the line you didn’t want to cross. You could tolerate his long silence, his not answering your messages for days on end and other stuff, but you couldn’t tolerate him being unfaithful. And that’s fine, that’s a healthy instinct. That’s a minimum in a healthy and loving relationship.

Do you think you could demand that from a future partner? Or there’s something standing in the way?

“Finally, I’d like to bring up a question since I’m quite afraid of being a third party without knowing it in the future… How to tell if a man’s single?”

Well, if he’s available to chat during the day (or if he’s busy working during the day, then in the evening), he’s available to meet during the weekends, he isn’t secretive about where he goes and how he spends his time, you‘re allowed to call him, you’re invited to meet his friends or his family… Also, he doesn’t promote open relationships, he doesn’t talk about having more than one partners, he isn’t avoiding you, he is eager to spend time with you…