Dear lpkR09,

I’ve taken a look at your previous thread (“Is taking a break okay?”), as well as this one, which you started about one year ago. You say that “the guy i dated for last 2.5 years just left me yesterday”. I guess that means you got back together with him since your last break-up one year ago, right? But now you broke up definitely, since he isn’t ready to marry you.  He says he wants to be with other women before finally settling down. He tells you to get married with someone arranged, someone your parents will approve of.

You’ve waited for this guy for 2.5 years, you thought he’s your soul mate because he could understand you so well, you loved him a lot. But he wasn’t that sure about you. At the beginning of your relationship, he was very eager to get the approval of your parents and sister (possibly because he previously had a bad experience of being rejected by his ex’s parents). Getting the approval of your parents and sister turned out to be an impossible mission, since your sister is jealous of you and outright against you, and your parents seems to believe her more than you. In spite of this, your boyfriend was pretty keen to get her approval.

Later, as both of you decided to take things slow and take time to get to know each other, he seems to have lost interest in you. Your relationship was long distance, and he was engaging in online pornography and told you he doesn’t get pleasure from having sex with you. Still, you tolerated it because he showed some remorse and promised not to do it again (he “pleaded that he knew it was sick and he wanted to get better and not do this”).

Last April, you sent him a goodbye letter, baring your soul. In that letter you actually gave the reason for your suffering:

“I think it was my obsession to have a guy in my life who truly loved me”.

“When I met you alone, I felt like I knew you from a long time. The concepts of soulmate and twin flame and
what not kept coming in my mind. I didn’t want to let you go, you were precious in my eyes. A handsome man who was not only intelligent and sensitive, had lived a social life similar to mine and understood me on a much deeper plane”.

“I don’t think very highly of people and if I felt you were so fantastic that it couldn’t be true that you were real. I kept forgiving your indulgence with other women just because I felt that you were not a bad person and I can’t lose you”.

You thought very highly of him, and in fact saw him through rose glasses. In an earlier thread you wrote: “But I had always made it clear to all of them [your family] that I may compromise with my happiness in everything else but not when it comes to choosing my life partner“. You were adamant to choose your husband out of love. You wouldn’t settle for anything less. When you thought you found that love – someone who seemed like a perfect match – you were adamant to do anything to keep it.

On the rational level, you did want to give yourself time to get to know him properly so you wouldn’t experience another disappointment, and you were telling yourself you should focus on your studies rather than obsessing about him. However, the craving for perfect love was stronger, and it blurred your vision. You wanted him so badly to be “the one” that you never complained (“you used to ask me why i was so good when I didn’t complain and understood when you were busy or tired“), and you even tolerated his pornography addiction. And then you blamed yourself for causing him “drama”.

Actually I don’t think you caused any drama, it was your sister who accused you of that:

“No matter what I do is never good enough and then listening complaints and how bad I am and how i shall never have anyone in my life and how I shall always be alone in my life, How acc. to my own blood, I am planning day and night another dramatic stint to disturb other people’s lives and how I enjoy the mental trauma others go through by fighting.”

And: “A few days back, I was constantly being shouted on, non stop complaints – about how I am perfectly useless and how
I cannot do anything.”

Your sister accused you day and night, until you couldn’t take it any longer and you broke down, and had that episode where you were hitting yourself and smashing your head against a wooden swing. You had a nervous breakdown because you couldn’t take it any longer.

After that incident, you decided:

“I am never going to destroy anyone’s life now and I will stay on my own always. I will be honest about my mental state with whoever approaches and will be on my own.”

You never destroyed anyone’s life – your sister and your family made you believe that. Your parents agreed to give you away because you weren’t a boy. They disowned you, basically. That’s why you feel unloved and unwanted, and are dreaming of someone who’d finally love you perfectly and completely. Your longing is legitimate – there’s someone out there who’d truly love you and respect you and be a perfect match for you. You don’t need to settle for an arranged marriage.

BUT you’d first need to learn to love and value yourself, and realize that you don’t own anything to your family. They unfortunately don’t seem to value you as they should. As for their pressuring you to get married, you can tell them that your sister is getting married at 32, after some failed attempts, so why do you need to rush, being 5 years younger?