Dear Ashmitha,

you’re welcome. In your family home there was a lot of distress because of your father’s alcoholism, and I believe what happened is that you felt it’s better not to upset your mother with your problems – your emotional needs – because she was going through a lot anyway, and your father was unavailable or at least unreliable. So you decided not to share your problems with your parents, and tried to manage without their emotional support (I do not like asking for help from others. I find it hard to ask for my needs to be met, like maybe I am asking for too much or I am being difficult.).

You focused on school and academics, in which I guess you were talented and successful, and you found certain fulfillment and satisfaction there. This also helped build your confidence, so you do seem confident, and also pretty “low-maintenance” and relaxed. But that’s just a defense mechanism, because you do need emotional closeness and intimacy. You’d like to be vulnerable and share your inner-most feelings with your significant other, but you’re afraid to do so, because you’re afraid you’d be seen as too demanding and possibly even abandoned (I think I also have a fear of partners leaving me, which is why I hold my feelings back.).

You’re in a relationship with someone who’s got a lot of “needy” relatives to take care of, and since he’s a people-pleaser, and probably also has a sense of responsibility towards his family, he spends most of his free time taking care of them, not you. If you meet once per week and the rest of the time you just chat, not even daily, it seems to me there isn’t too much chance for emotional intimacy and sharing. It’s good that you started demanding a certain level of attention from him, such as daily check-ins.

You’d also need to work on your willingness to share emotionally and express your needs, and on the fear of being rejected, of being “too much”. And you need to see – when you do share and open up – whether he’s capable and willing to acknowledge you and support you, or he isn’t willing to have that level of emotional intimacy with you.