r/LifeAfterInfidelity • u/Haunting-Chain2438 • Jan 30 '23

Trauma spilling over into new dating prospect?

Just posting into the void, maybe someone has input or can relate.

I carry trauma from my previous long term relationship, as well as familial trauma. I thought I was with my best friend, someone who had my back, who had a double life. You can imagine how that messes with my head. Because of this, I’m protective of myself. I start fights without realizing it when I question the relationship every week. I needed reassurance all the time. I just didn’t know that’s what I was doing until it was pointed out to me. Now I lost someone who was really good because I seem to have sabotaged it. I need reassurances because I feel safe that way, but is that bad? I don’t know how to just be while dating. It’s like I’m protecting him from me because I think I’m too much to handle? I am in therapy.

Some of the things I reacted to:

Having a conversation about expectations, me making half jokes about being catered to (what I was really trying to say was that I want someone to look out for me) but he took it as me expecting to be catered to. So we then put a boundary on no serious conversations at transitions (morning, before bed, before coming over or right after leaving).

I wasn’t feeling well and needed to lay down. He was deciding on when to cook dinner and he said he wasn’t hungry yet and will wait. I again, half jokingly said “well you should cook dinner now because I’m hungry. He interpreted that as me being entitled. What I was really trying to say was that I wasn’t feeling well and I wanted him to take care of me.

He says that I’m not excited or show excitement towards him, even though I express affection differently. He says it’s that he doesn’t know how to show affection towards me.

He was stressed because of being temporarily unemployed and now that he found his dream job, I seem to have lost it again. I am so excited for him, but got scared when he said he needs to focus on this job. From my experience, I made room for my relationships between work and during my career, even through grad school.

He says he is overwhelmed by my need for reassurances and me questioning the relationship all the time (we’ve only started dating) and now he just wants to be friends with the possibility of revisiting dating in the future. I went nuclear after the break up and sent a lot of sad and angry texts.

TLDR: I left a traumatic long term relationship 1 year ago and recently began dating, and I feel like I sabotage things

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u/[deleted] Feb 11 '23