Hi Anita,  My friends are in a similar situation to me…one was cheated on in maybe a worse way, both have kids. Meeting guys is near impossible, there are no guys around here you would want to date. Or, they are not interested because there are lots of younger women.

With my ex it is strange. It should be a closed door. But i feel in my bones its not. Ive said before there is some kind of connection, once before i suddenly had a strong urge to see him and was missing him…and then his car drove past me. Things like that have happened before. Yesterday feeling strongly i wanted my colleague to get rid of the house….and in the afternoon she informed me he had sold it.

I wanted to start saying that my sister didnt take from me but in fact she has. One reason i fell out with her (now more than 6 months i think) is because while she stayed with us…longer than expected due to Covid….she had borrowed some clothes and then returned them…one was torn, I dont think anything was washed, another she took with her and left me with 3x plastic bags full of clothes she had bought at a charity shop and told me to ” give them back to charity or choose what you want”. Alongside this she had hardly paid for anything during her 3 month stay, my parents paid most times but other times it was me…when she gets home she always says she and her partner are making good money and taking trips etc.

I am a single income, not well off individual. But she arrogantly thinks our parents will just take care of me and dismisses any criticism. I feel this is repressed anger from her childhood. She felt i got more than her, things and especially love.

Growing up my sister was remote, not involved and sullen. Into adulthood my parents complained they hadnt heard from her, i certainly never heard from her…then in the last few years…she has a partner and a child, they have a business and things are tough but getting successful. Since having her daughter she now wants more contact with our parents..but its the same again, it has to be on her terms. My parents tell me sometimes they dont get to see the grandchild but its withheld like a pawn. My sister is craving the love she feels is missing. I sometimes feel my mother is unfeeling but i also see, my sister feels its never fair, or enough. She has had the same feelings about friends of hers, when she falls out she can be vicious about them.

I noticed the last time she was visiting, that she was determined to have the last word..certainly authoritative about her child. It has to be about her. Ironically enough, its very similar to our mother. Who mostly gets her way at home and is angry if she doesnt. My sister is turning out to be the same. They are both able to be very charming but also have a terrible temper.

In a way my ex´s behaviour was similar. Self centered behaviour, entitlement and a temper if they don´t get their voice heard. One of the last things he said when we were splitting up was that he didn´t want to end up like my parents…but i always felt he was like my mother, which means he hates himself! Maybe growing up with all this made his behaviour normal to me.

I know and knew he wasn´t mine.

He didnt want that. When we discussed a commitment he just avoided it. and yet he was very jealous. In the early days he went away on holiday without me, it was a guys trip he had planned for a while. I know he missed me terribly and when he came back he had brought me a ring. It was like an engagement ring and i wore it but he refused to call it that.  He said no, “its a promise ring” and i would get angry with him. He even told his old neighbours and various other people he knew that we were getting married, but not to his close friends or family. It was teasing something that i really wanted at the time. The ring was burning a hole in my hand..i wanted to be proud to wear it but..i felt ashamed for my need to get married when it was clear he couldnt offer it. And i felt ashamed for being weak because i loved him.

Eventually we had an argument where i thrust it back at him and in an angry reaction he threw it away…god knows what he was thinking my reaction would be to all this teasing.

Maybe he was so afraid of commitment himself that he was going through the motions to see how it felt…i just dont know. His father had left his mother when he was 15 and i know it affected him very much because life changed, probably a lot. I think his father was a cheater and a charmer too. I think he struggled to get his attention.

I felt equally commitment-phobic about marriage. My previous relationship had gone downhill after a “romantic” proposal and i felt a dreaded sense of responsibility washing over me. I didnt expect to feel such revulsion to it and realised that i couldnt just get by on feeling “comfortable” when i didnt love him. I couldn´t even wear the ring, somehow it felt like a sentence and felt really uncomfortable. I felt owned. I was never the girl who would dream of her wedding, not at all.

But with this guy…i still was not into weddings but i wanted a commitment with him..he knew it but just couldn´t do it.

There were many times he asked me if i was seeing someone else….just like my sister it seems, the love i gave him just was never enough to satisfy his insecurities. Maybe i was too cool in showing it..and im more reserved publicly…i think he wanted to see adoration to show his friends, to show off…but ive no doubt at all they saw that.  He didnt, so he kept looking for others to show him what was lacking from me.

As i write this i know, im still right there. Nothing seems to budge this feeling of connection. I feel like i need to sleep with someone just for the sake of it. I don´t want to.