Dear Seaturtle:

I was awake for too long last night, couldn’t/ wouldn’t sleep, so I thought a lot about your question and in general, I thought about, taking it from Shakespeare, To be or not to be, that is the question (be/ not be in a relationship with N), a question you’ve been asking yourself and debating over 8 months before you posted here for the first time on July 29, 2023: “My mind hasn’t rested in 8 months… I really have been having this entire debate in my head for a straight 6-8 months“. You’ve been asking this to-be-or-not-to-be question since about November 2022, and still asking this question in November 2023, a whole year of asking and debating.

For the last year of your 2 years and 3 months-long relationship (for the duration of close to half of the relationship), you’ve been asking this question.

“But then what if being afraid my expectations are too high makes me settle?“, you asked yesterday. Let’s look deeper into this question: there is fear of leaving the relationship (finding out that your expectations were indeed too high and regretting leaving the relationship) and there is fear of staying in the relationship and missing possible great opportunities outside the relationship.

Since I already did all the thinking last night, I’ll jump straight to my answer/ my suggestion: leave the relationship. Being conflicted about it for so long, and for close to half of the relationship is reason enough to leave it.

It crossed my mind, that if it was possible, a great solution would have been to put Earth on Pause, leave to another planet, have quality psychotherapy there for 6 months-a year (where you’d talk and process all that we talked about here on your thread), then return to earth (with your therapist to guide you), and Un-pause life on earth. Take it from there.

But since this solution is entirely fictional press the Pause or End button on the relationship with N as an exclusive, committed, long-term relationship. If possible, desirable and beneficial to both sides, the two of you can be friends, sexually intimate or not, but you need to be free to date anyone you want, and you need to put aside and no longer entertain a future with N.

Back to what you shared 3 days ago about your father: “he would promote outfits that made me look like a box. I am a curvy girl... The story: I was 11 years old, my friends were playing outside, my friend S was allowed to wear whatever she wanted… my dad stopped me and said the shorts were inappropriate and I needed to change to longer ones… This is my first memory of having suicidal thoughts”. Less than an hour later, on the same day, you wrote: “N brings out my tom-boy behaviors… I miss my femininity. I sort of feel like I want a man that brings the parts of me I love, out to the surface“-

–  You are a curvy, feminine young woman but your curves have been flattened/ restrained/ boxed-in and hidden by F. No doubt in my mind that the right man for you- in the far future (after a long enough pause on the idea of a long-term, committed, exclusive relationship)- would be a man who makes you feel curvy and feminine. Settling into a life with a man (ex., N) who doesn’t is a bad idea now or in 10 years from now.

anita