Dear nova:

There is something I didn’t think about before now and would like to add it to this post. In your original post you wrote: “All relationships I grew up around ended in, cheating, unhappiness, and divorce!… Because of my upbringing I never learned how to be in a relationship and over the last six years with him… We have broken up many many times just to take time apart and then realize we love each other and want to work things out”-

I would like to suggest an editing to  “I never learned how to  be in a relationship”-> I got scared of staying in a relationship and getting stuck in it.

Because all the relationships around you were bad, you got scared of all relationships, and that could be the reason why- on your part- you needed to break away from him many, many times. On one hand you were scared of staying in a relationship, on the other hand you missed him when away from him.

After the last breakup, in August 2019 (the summer of freedom and joy), you felt more free from a relationship than ever and you flourished in your new freedom: “I was actually quite happy to be on my own…  I was working out, making friends, going out and just overall enjoying my life in a way I hadn’t experienced yet”. You experienced joy like you never experienced before. No wonder that back then, in the summer of freedom and joy, you also enjoyed sexual joy so much (with G): the freedom from being in a relationship made it possible.

“We enjoyed our time together for about a month before I cut it off. Looking back, I believe I cut things off… (because) I wasn’t ready for another relationship”- you got scared of being in a relationship (with G, this time) so you broke away from him.

Next, you resumed the relationship with your former boyfriend, found out you were pregnant, had a second child, got engaged and … you are stuck in a relationship. Fear is not compatible with joy, including sexual joy.

If you look back at your history with your fiancé, I wonder if you notice that before every break up the sex was unsatisfying but greatly improved every time you got back together…  only to become unsatisfying over time and better after the next breakup. If there’s been such a pattern, it may mean that the issue is less of a sexual compatibility and more of the Fear Factor ruining your sex life with your fiancé.

Also, it is possible that part of your motivation to communicate with G, to think about him and about “what could have been” is to propel you to end the relationship, so that you can be free of it. And it is possible that if you got into a relationship with G, the same pattern will take place, for the same reasons.

anita