Dear Lealea,

you’re very welcome!

I play it cool because I have been pretty damaged in the past…

if you want to talk about it, please do. If I understood it right from your previous thread, you were in a serious relationship 3 years ago, and you were planning to get married (you even bought the ring). But I guess something happened and it didn’t work out? If you want to talk about it, I am here…

I know this prob comes down to my ability to know ill be OK regardless of others.

Yeah, we don’t want to get hurt, because we feel it will take us down and we’ll never recover. I guess we lack emotional resilience, which is exactly what you said: being OK, feeling good about ourselves, regardless of others. So even if he turns out to be a j*rk, we won’t be destroyed, we can bounce back pretty easily. Also, we recognize red flags on time and don’t allow to be abused or manipulated for long.