Dear Ashmitha:

You shared that your parents had a bad marriage, having stayed together for the children, and that your father was an alcoholic. Because of that, you are “just scared of picking the wrong partner”, and “choosing the right partner is very important” to you. You understand that expecting a partner to be perfect is unreasonable, and as a partner, you are accepting and understanding.

You have been in a few short-term (6-8 months) relationships. In the last, you felt that you and your former partner were “best friends”, but because your morals/ values were not aligned, you broke up with him. Your current relationship is your longest. You are considering marriage with him, but you are experiencing a “lack of close friendship”, “something is missing” in regard to the relationship.

Your values in regard to culture, family, children, etc., are aligned, he has good qualities, but you have different interests. You are concerned with two things: the lack of similar interests, and the lack of friendship.

When together, you are quite content, when apart, you “question if he is the one” you should marry.

Three months ago, you shared that you’ve been seeing this man exclusively (a year and a half, currently) with a break of 7 months. You were concerned at the time about you sending him messages online and not receiving replies from him for hours, and sometimes not until the next day, even though he was active online (and texting his friends and family a lot).

You met him only once a week, but even during those meetings, he was sometimes “glued to his phone”. You felt that he was very much sexually attracted to you, and suggested that he was not attracted to your personality (“He is still very much sexually attracted to me but I care more that he is attracted to my personality and that we are close friends… Dating my best friend is important to me”, January 2021).

Later on, in your January thread, you shared that there were times when the two of you did “text for hours”, but “it does not happen very often”.

You also shared that he was working full time from home, because of the pandemic, that he is a “kind-hearted person and is trying to do the right thing”, that he is the eldest child in his family, and therefore, he has heavy family responsibilities,  that he is very close to his family, and that you “come second to his sisters and cousins”. You mentioned that his interests are sports, jokes, cultural music, and that you have girlfriends with more similar interests to yours.

My thoughts this morning: your experience as a child, witnessing the bad marriage between your parents, has been very powerful in shaping your mind, creating a fear that causes you to be alert to, and alarmed by any existing or possible problem in a relationship with a partner. You simply don’t want to have the bad marriage your parents had, and therefore, even if a partner is as good a candidate for marriage as can be, you are likely to focus on what is wrong with him and the relationship and dismiss what is right. For example, back in January, you complained that he doesn’t answer your messages for hours and longer, but later, in a following post, you shared that the two of you at times spend hours texting. I was surprised at the time because I was under the impression that it never happened.

Even though you view yourself as relaxed, accepting and understanding in the context of your relationship, and you may behave in these ways, inside of you- you are fearful, and you focus on what the man and the relationship lacks.

The loneliness you experienced as a child, I believe, fuels your perhaps unrealistic expectations of having a “best friends” relationship with a man, having an excessive need for a compatibility of interests (such as music and sports), and an excessive need for him to be attentive and available to you.

I hope to read more from you, about what your thoughts regarding what I wrote here today, and regarding the current extent of your boyfriend’s availability and caring attention to you.

anita