I have been with my bf for almost 2 years now. In my past relationships i have been cheated on and hurt many times. I am 22 yrs old and this is my longest relationship. My bf has always invited me whenever he would go out with friends or whenever he goes out with his family.When i first met him i had alot of friends. The friends i had were wild, they partied all the time, some cheated on their bfs. When i met my bf and we got close i dropped all of those friends.I now spend the free time that i have with my bf. He is the best and i know he would never do anything to hurt me. The past couple of months i have felt unhappy, i started thinking and im just afraid since we have been together almost 2 yrs and he hasnt yet proposed to me that he doesnt love me as much as he says he does.We have talked about it before and he has a yr and 1/2 of college left he says he wants to finish school before he gets engaged or married. Im worried that he is just using that as an excuse because maybe hes not sure im the one.I just dont want to end up getting hurt i care about him too much. Am i reading too far into this ??PLease help, its really stressing me out and im worried about our relationship!
I hear how scared you are. Actually you’ve been traumatized by many past hurts and rejections.What we need to figure out is whether your fear is based soley upon past trauma or whether you have objective reasons to be nervous. You said that you know he would never do anything to hurt you. I’m wondering if you had that same feeling about the other guys who ending up hurting you unexpectedly.This is an important question because if you felt sure of all your past boyfriends in the beginning and were blind sighted when they rejected you, then it is possible that your blinders may still be on. If this is true, your fear may telling you that you’re headed for trouble with this guy.To figure out whether the fear is objectively founded, let’s look at your relationship a little closer. The first thing you want to do is to compare your boyfriend with the men you dated in the past. Look for signs that your past boyfriends gave off, signs that indicated you were headed for trouble.Keep in mind that you may have overlooked these signs and therefore not even registered them. So, look back over the past relationships with a fresh eye. Did these guys pull away periodically or become distant for no reason, did they not return calls. Study everything. I bet you are going to find that there were all kinds of warning signs that you overlooked.Now study your current boyfriend. Does he exhibit any of the same warning signs that past boyfriends did? If your answer is yes, then trust your fear. If your answer is no, then we can say with pretty good assurance that this guy is a keeper and that your fear is the result of a rocky past.You also need to consider the fact that it is probably not a coincidence that you have been rejected over and over. If you’ve been reading my columns for a while, you know that we choose life partners who recreate our childhood traumas.The compulsion to repeat childhood wounds is motivated partly because we all like to stick with what we know and partly because are looking to heal these wounds. If you were raised by abandoning parents, you will choose boyfriends who abandon you. Of course your unconscious mind thinks’this time around I’ll be so good that I’ll be loved forever, not abandoned.’The problem with the repetition compulsion is that we choose people who are just like the parents who let us down, hence, choosing an abandoning boyfriend guarantees more abandonment. Take a look at your history and see that you have unconsciously chosen guys who were abandoners. Now take a look at your boyfriend. Is he a an abandoner too?After subjecting yourself to the above scrutiny, you will have a clear picture on where you really stand with your boyfriend.
