Advice How will I know if he really loooovess me....

[Atomic_Decay]

Arriving at a point where I genuinely want to hold a woman for hours and just listen to them, or just be quiet in the dark together with them, rather than keep fucking them again and again has always been the point where I think I truly love them. In my life this feeling has always been fleeting and transient - I really wish I knew how to sustain it.

 

[PaintTheTown]

Arriving at a point where I genuinely want to hold a woman for hours and just listen to them, or just be quiet in the dark together with them, rather than keep fucking them again and again has always been the point where I think I truly love them. In my life this feeling has always been fleeting and transient - I really wish I knew how to sustain it.

This is so honest. I've always wanted love. I realize that four letter word is to powerful for children to use or understand. I had a lot of emotional immaturity. Developing my trust in myself will help me navigate all those love emotions in a healthy way. I truly believe it will not be as hard to sustain it when the work is done in advance. I never paused in between relationships or did work on me. I spent a lot of time blaming the other person, holding on to anger, and wanting people on my side. My fear of what may or may not happen in the future kept me terrified to love in the moment. I would even become antagonistic to my partner to test which is so unhealthy. For me I tried to love when I was incapable of loving myself, anyone else, and I chose partners that I knew were not healthy themselves (very codependent). I didn't feel I deserved love. How could I possibly sustain what I never had in the beginning? I had to address me a lot to understand, to make changes, to not ignore red flags, and to not blame others. Love is on the horizon, it's beautiful, and I absolutely will want to stay there without fear, with or without someone else. That is what true love is sustained by, self love.

 

[Atomic_Decay]

This is so honest. I've always wanted love. I realize that four letter word is to powerful for children to use or understand. I had a lot of emotional immaturity. Developing my trust in myself will help me navigate all those love emotions in a healthy way. I truly believe it will not be as hard to sustain it when the work is done in advance. I never paused in between relationships or did work on me. I spent a lot of time blaming the other person, holding on to anger, and wanting people on my side. My fear of what may or may not happen in the future kept me terrified to love in the moment. I would even become antagonistic to my partner to test which is so unhealthy. For me I tried to love when I was incapable of loving myself, anyone else, and I chose partners that I knew were not healthy themselves (very codependent). I didn't feel I deserved love. How could I possibly sustain what I never had in the beginning? I had to address me a lot to understand, to make changes, to not ignore red flags, and to not blame others. Love is on the horizon, it's beautiful, and I absolutely will want to stay there without fear, with or without someone else. That is what true love is sustained by, self love.

These days I definitely think I deserve love and feel that I have an ocean of it within me to share.

But even removing the regular drug binges from my life, there always some dark thing that gets between me and a woman and eats away at the relationship. A few times I’ve been told by a departing girlfriend that she absolutely adores 90% of me but just can’t co-exist with the other 10 %

I have no idea what that 10 % really is or if it is the same thing each time. For a long while I suspected it was an insecurity/fear of abandonment that led me to regularly pressure-test the relationship in very unproductive ways. Possibly because I have no close emotional connections with family or friends and feel terribly lonely in life I simply ask too much of people if they do fall in love with me.

Lately I’ve been demonstrating my capacity for love by gifting my former Party Girl professional friends a few hours to keep their clothes on and do whatever they feel they need at the time. I feel the same kind of happiness whether they gratefully sleep for an hour next to me or elect for a cuddle and chat. There’s something very nice about being trusted and believed in a context where those feelings are extraordinarily rare.

But I need to move back into mainstream society very soon - despite feeling most comfortable here with all my lady friends out on the very fringes.

 

[PaintTheTown]

These days I definitely think I deserve love and feel that I have an ocean of it within me to share.

But even removing the regular drug binges from my life, there always some dark thing that gets between me and a woman and eats away at the relationship. A few times I’ve been told by a departing girlfriend that she absolutely adores 90% of me but just can’t co-exist with the other 10 %

I have no idea what that 10 % really is or if it is the same thing each time. For a long while I suspected it was an insecurity/fear of abandonment that led me to regularly pressure-test the relationship in very unproductive ways. Possibly because I have no close emotional connections with family or friends and feel terribly lonely in life I simply ask too much of people if they do fall in love with me.

Lately I’ve been demonstrating my capacity for love by gifting my former Party Girl professional friends a few hours to keep their clothes on and do whatever they feel they need at the time. I feel the same kind of happiness whether they gratefully sleep for an hour next to me or elect for a cuddle and chat. There’s something very nice about being trusted and believed in a context where those feelings are extraordinarily rare.

But I need to move back into mainstream society very soon - despite feeling most comfortable here with all my lady friends out on the very fringes.

I honestly feel that if someone can not live with a percentage of you that it can be verbalized exactly what it is they feel you need to change. Telling you that there is this mystery that they can't live with is a bit abusive if you ask me. I know it can be hard to be direct about feelings but leaving someone in emotional limbo because they seek 100 percent sounds like their issue. I will say I can relate to the abandonment issues. I poured so much in to my partner because I felt they could leave all the time. F that! That never made me feel safe and surely could have made my partner feel overwhelmed. I'm not sure but I can say I've had those who took advantage of my codependent behaviors, enjoyed all the attention/rewards, and would come back for more. That never helped my confidence in the long run. It was like being on an emotional rollercoaster that would take me through sunshine and storms on repeat. Confidence is key, when I'm confident I don't rely on my partner's presence, enjoy my own hobbies, I don't isolate, and able to sustain relationships with family and friends with very clear boundaries. I came from a very toxic family myself so I get it, I was taught a lot of negative behaviors from my elders but also many positive, and work daily to change so I get a different result. All my relationships felt the same because they were the same. I was the same, I chose the same.

The most important thing and hardest thing for me was confronting and being honest with myself about the things and behaviors I needed and wanted to change for me not my future, unknown relationship. That takes time and if you ask me does the work ever end? Do we truly need someone to tell us what we need or want to change? Most of the time that is not the case. We can identify our negative behaviors and if not seek outside, trustworthy advice.

Being a human is hard, adding another human to that equation is even harder, but if humans are lucky enough to find other humans who enjoy each other space....then I say that's a blessing.

Just stay away from and don't become a human that doesn't know when to leave the party....balance.