Why Do Girls Only Family Events Bother Me
Love Therapist: My Boyfriend Won't Let Me Have Male Friends
He'due south been cheated on before, and he gets very anxious that I will want to be with someone else.
Editor'due south Note: Every Monday, Lori Gottlieb answers questions from readers well-nigh their issues, big and small. Have a question? Email her at dear.therapist@theatlantic.com.
Dear Therapist,
My boyfriend and I have been together for ii years now, in a long-distance relationship (we live 2 and a one-half hours apart). We are both happy and serious almost our human relationship. He has been in a few relationships earlier and has been cheated on every fourth dimension. This has really damaged him, and he gets very anxious that I will want to exist with someone else or will stop loving him 1 twenty-four hours. He also gets worried when I don't bulletin for a while. I accept a decorated schedule and things ingather upwardly randomly, so information technology is difficult to message sometimes. I tell him this, but he doesn't cope well with any change to the organization.
He too gets very upset and threatens to exit whatever fourth dimension I mention any boy I am acquainted with, and he worries well-nigh what will happen when I get to college soon. I take tried assuring him that I am never going to leave him, because I love him, merely this doesn't help at all.
He says if I am ever friends with boys at higher (I currently attend an all-girls school), he volition have to leave me, because he won't know how to handle his anxiety. He fifty-fifty gets upset if I message any boys, who are simply friends, on social media. He too hates the idea of clubs considering he says that boys only get there to get girls, but I feel that going out with friends to clubs is a typical college activity.
I sympathize the pain he has been through and I am very supportive of him, but sometimes I don't know what to practise and just give in to what he wants, because I detest seeing him unhappy. I know this isn't the right thing to do!
I am drastic for some advice on how to build up trust between us.
Bearding
Boston
Dear Anonymous,
You clearly intendance virtually your boyfriend and empathize with the pain he feels over having been cheated on in prior relationships. Only y'all're struggling with your sense that despite your mutual declarations of love, something feels off hither and his demands seem unreasonable.
I desire you to trust that instinct, because what y'all've picked up on when yous say "I know this isn't the right thing to do!" is that there's a difference betwixt beingness loved past someone and being possessed by him.
What yous're experiencing is a possessive partnership, and it's a class of unhealthy love that tin range in intensity from unpleasant to potentially dangerous. In a salubrious human relationship, partners support and encourage each other'due south growth and well-being instead of trying to restrict information technology. In a possessive partnership, however, one person attempts to soothe his anxiety—unremarkably, a fear of abandonment—by decision-making the space between him and his partner.
Generally speaking, at the very outset of a human relationship, a temporary merging between partners occurs in which both people seek quite a bit of togetherness while somewhat neglecting their exterior interests and friendships. But in healthy partnerships, equally the relationship develops, a mutually comfortable balance is struck between connectedness and independence, and both people savor existence together but likewise value and respect the other person's need for time autonomously.
That's not how your human relationship evolved, and two years into it, you're feeling frustrated and smothered. Your boyfriend has footling interest in how you experience—about the pressure he puts on you to reply even when you're busy, about his dictating the parameters of your platonic friendships, virtually his endeavor to control the activities you lot participate in during higher—considering he places a higher value on his safety than he does on yours. But the safety he believes he's creating for himself is an illusion. The kind of rubber he seeks can but come from within. When you text him back apace or hold not to communicate with your guy friends, information technology fills his emptiness—but non for long. It's like pouring water into a strainer instead of a bowl.
You tin can't make him feel prophylactic, because his trust issues have nothing to do with yous—and may not have all that much to do with his exes either. You lot say that he's been cheated on in all of his relationships. When a pattern similar this emerges, an aphorism comes to mind: If a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, perchance it's you. Sometimes people with trust problems choose untrustworthy people, because those people feel familiar to them. Similarly, people who have angry parents ofttimes finish upward choosing angry partners, those with alcoholic parents are frequently drawn to partners who drink quite a flake, and those who have withdrawn or critical parents find themselves married to spouses who are withdrawn or critical.
Why do people do this to themselves? It's not that people want to get hurt over again. It'southward that they desire to master a state of affairs in which they felt helpless as children. Freud called this "repetition compulsion." Maybe this time, the unconscious mind imagines, I can go back and heal that wound from long ago by engaging with somebody familiar—but new. The problem is, by choosing familiar partners, people guarantee the reverse result: They reopen wounds and feel even more than inadequate and unlovable.
Your swain may have a history of feeling abased and try to protect himself now past controlling his partners, simply information technology's also possible that your young man has dated women who were otherwise true-blue, so when he restricted their bones freedoms with unreasonable demands, as he has with yous, they started looking for the primal to the jail cell, and that key happened to exist another guy.
All of this is to say that the way to build trust with your boyfriend isn't by acceding to his demands and neglecting your ain needs; it's by sharing with him how those demands brand you feel and the impact they have on your relationship. You can start by telling him that y'all understand his need to experience condom, only that his attempts to experience prophylactic are pushing you away rather than making you feel closer and more than connected to him. You can say that you aren't responsible for what his other girlfriends did, and that the simply way for him to feel more than secure in your beloved is for him to do the inner work required to sympathize his fear better. You can say that you lot don't feel that your needs are taken into account, and that because you lot want your relationship to thrive, you lot promise he'll try to learn more about himself by seeing a therapist. You tin can allow him know that when it comes to love, vulnerability is the price of admission; nosotros run a risk our hearts in whatsoever intimate human relationship, and you tin can't guarantee that you lot'll never leave him any more than he tin can guarantee that to you. You tin can also communicate clearly what's important to you lot in a lasting relationship, such as that yous both have friends and hobbies and respect each other's broader worlds while likewise remaining monogamous.
If your boyfriend is willing to focus inwards and do the work to take responsibility for his anxiety, make certain to tell him how much yous appreciate it when you lot catch him making changes: I felt and then skillful well-nigh us when I couldn't text yous back right away and you managed okay without me. At the aforementioned time, when his possessiveness creeps back in, don't ignore it—brand sure to explain every time how his behavior makes you feel in the moment.
By handing responsibleness for his safety dorsum to him, you're creating the kind of healthy and balanced relationship that will make you both feel safer in the long run. And if your young man isn't willing to do this piece of work, if he can't take that nobody can salve him just himself, you lot can do something different than his other girlfriends did—you can stop the relationship with artlessness and pity, perhaps having left him with a glimpse of what a future relationship might look like whenever he's set up to own his part in it.
Dearest Therapist is for advisory purposes only, does not constitute medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical communication, diagnosis, or treatment. Ever seek the advice of your physician, mental-health professional, or other qualified wellness provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it—in role or in full—and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/06/dear-therapist-my-boyfriend-extremely-possessive/613033/
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