My Mom's loving advice might be harmful

Hi Everyone,

I've been writing in the break up advice section and recently I was trying to understand one of the reasons why my relationship with my girlfriend doesn't seem to work very often. We are in a Long Distance Relationship and basically we should see each other every 1-2 months to not to miss each other too much and have at least some physical contact. From my side we are missing my commitment to our common future. The willingness to do just about anything to strengthen our relationship in our future. We kind of don't speak now, because we don't know how could we continue this relationship if I am not open for us meeting once in a while. I rejected her to visit me, because I am worried where this relationship is going. Big part of why I have doubts about things is that I have sometimes strong lust towards other hot women. I don't flirt with them, and I forget them, it's just that it makes me think that I don't think my girlfriend is hot enough. This feeling bothers me, what if I will be unhappy or it's a sign that I'm unhappy with her? There are moments when I'm not turned on by her physical appearance and that's also scaring me. Unfortunately or fortunately I told this to my Mom, and she tries to tell me sometimes that I need a more beautiful girlfriend. But that is just so shallow to want to have. She is a humble, kind, loving, caring, compassionate person. She cares about small details related to me, helps me find jobs, apartments, help to recover my strength if feel little depressed, cheers me up, she is mostly on the same wavelength with me. We've been together for 2 years, but not living together, just on and off, we broke up twice and didn't speak for couple of weeks. Sometimes I feel I need freedom from the doubts I have related to her and just be happy, open up to the world, go meet new people. My Mom is telling me, I'm more handsome than she is pretty, and I heard this from other people too both in my family and just random friends. Why is everyone so shallow? But both my Mom and I acknowledge that she has a very sensitive, beautiful soul, she does what she believes in, and doesn't do things just to impress random strangers. We share many things, but I wish we could share my passion for creating art and music, or for concepts in mathematics or the interest in history. But I feel if she starts to be interested in these things just because I tell her, that is not 100% honest, authentic desire to engage in a hobby or whatever. For me hobbies and interest areas really mean to me who I really am, but maybe I'm too shallow because of this as well. I am more of an idealistic person than she is. She is afraid to move abroad, I moved abroad, but I also have been planning eat for a while. Now it is difficult for us, I am trying to realize why is it so difficult - and if it is because of me, how could I make it better. Maybe my Mom has too big influence on my feelings, because she says I should go have more fun with women (she is single, and I was raised by her being single since I was a baby, she had an on and off relationship with a man throughout my childhood for almost 2 decades). But maybe she just confirms my own wishes. I mean lust is present, and these feelings stop me from committing 100% to our relationship. But I mean I constantly feel shallow for it as well, because I judge her on small things. My gut feeling tells me when I'm together with her that this may not work out in the long run, because of sometimes missing physical attraction, although she is pretty especially her charming face and eyes, I just have higher expectations somehow. Because of the long distance, I want to engage in my life here abroad, but because I miss her and she is the one person I'm in constant text message contact with I sometimes feel I am not engaging in my life here enough and I am one foot home and one foot abroad. This is my own life, I am not supposed to be together with someone for charity, nor because of self pity or fear of loneliness. I should get out and do stuff, that is really true. When I'm alone at home I get overwhelmed and start to blame my circumstances for being lonely, but I am about to start a new workshop project so hopefully that could distract me from negativity. I am not this miserable type of person, it's just been difficult in the past months, in fact I am quite of a social, outgoing person and people appreciate me for that.

I also feel shallow because I think her parents are too old-fashioned, and could never understand why I like certain things in music, art, lifestyle, politics, science, eating habits, travelling. I mean I don't have that high expectations, but I could only have polite conversations with them. Although I appreciate them for being a loving parent for my girlfriend and raised a beautiful, honest, true person with great manners. They have family conflicts that I don't want to deal with, I just want to be there for my girlfriend emotionally. But our family has the same sort of difficult stuff, and she is the same towards me about it.

It sounds like ending this and setting both of yourselves free would solve a lot of problems. First there is the LDR which in itself is torture for many of the reasons you mention. It makes you lonely and craving a physical relationship. Then there is social, intellectual and cultural incompatibilities. There is also no similar goals, values or plans. At this point hanging on to this for some texts and videochats sounds very unfulfilling and is holding you back from enjoying life fully in your current location.

In you next thread, please use paragraphs.

In you next thread. Please use paragraphs.

YES ^^^^ very hard to read a wall of text.

I think you are shallow, like you say. You place too much emphasis on this girl's looks, even tho you profess to like her personality. She doesnt need to enjoy the same hobbies as you do, either. My husband is a car guy thru and thru and I have a passing interest in his cars, they dont really matter to me. He's not much interested in my hobbies, which is fine, doesnt matter. Core values and lifestyle are more important.

I think you need to end this as it's not working for you. A girl from your own town or city that you can see often and do things with would suit you better. LDR is so hard to do for pretty much everyone.

You aren't happy, you're long distance and you should just break up with her. Whether or not you think you can pull someone with better looks is neither here nor there at this point. Just let her go and find someone close enough to you to actually be able to nurture a relationship with.

I highly suspect that if you are in the same vicinity as your partner, you'll not put so much thought into looks because you'll be able to nurture an actual connection past this superficial thing you have going on with this girl who you only see in person on a part time basis.

We kind of had a tough conversation and decided that it could be better to break up, but we agreed that we will speak to each other again after we have thought things through. She said if she doesn't see the effort from my side she starts to have doubts about our future as well.

To react to the comments: I actually had similar feelings about her looks during the one year when we were physically living in the same city as well. This is seemingly shallow, and it might be reinforced by the opinions of other people. I mean from people who tell me she is not pretty enough for me. I shouldn't care about them if I loved her enough, as it is my own life that matters, not what others think and they would stop judging if they saw I am happy. This feeling is mostly a voice in my head and sometimes surfaces as some unwanted drops in physical attraction. I think I put so much emphasis on matching hobbies or interest areas, because I need to overcome in myself some returning feelings of inferiority.

I might overthink the situation as this was my first real relationship, where both parties have put a lot of effort in building the relationship up, managing to compromise for the other and show our honest appreciation. Also I think with the person I want to spend the rest of my life with it is important to have similar moral values, about how to take care or treat our family members, how to work hard, what is worth to spend our time with and what is not, not doing things just to impress others, but what is deeply important to us. In this sense our relationship was close to perfect. Furthermore, it is also important to have a similar (not identical) taste in clothes, furniture, food, music, preferred style of visual art. It is important that you don't think about your partner's choices that "OMG, I cannot relate to that". Sometimes I think I had to be polite not to be offensive. This is not because I think I'm better, it just revealed our differences. Even our parent's houses and taste in design were things that affected hugely our own taste. I would like to create or buy something in the style of modern minimalism. She similarly appreciated minimalism, but sometimes she put up too much with the old-fashioned style of her parents. These are things that are okay, but she lived with her parents and didn't have plans on moving for at least 2 years because they are old, a bit sick and alone. I understood her decision to do so, but I still had the feeling that I should either be there to help her or try to progress with my life abroad. Our differences weren't so outrageous differences that I could never tell her my honest opinion out of fear of offending her. She also understood I am not a huge fan of old-fashioned dusty design. Mostly we had matching taste about where to travel, we showed each other music that we could both really like and appreciate which plays an important role in both of our lives. But I'm a musician and I love experimental stuff which were sometimes too much for her. These are things that can be totally fine in a relationship too and I shouldn't expect having so profoundly matching preferences.

The main and strongest bond in a relationship of course should be about values related to how to spend money, time, decisions about children. Actually because of my doubts we didn't talk about these things too often. But I could see that she is bit more to herself around children while I love to play and talk with them. That is why I want to work with them in the future. I am maybe also a bit more liberal and she is a bit more strict in her ideas about pedagogy/didactics. I knew I could learn a lot from her because of her decisions about saving money, about not spending valuable sleeping time with working on creative hobby projects, about rather trying to live an accomplished 9-5 office job life. The moment we got together I was trying to both advance in my creative projects and trying to find out if a career in finance/marketing at big firms was for me. She understood deeply that it is not for me, she also enjoyed working for smaller firms much better so that's what she did and she recommended me to do so If I want to return to that field. But because of my deep desire to advance my skills in digital drawing and playing music, I felt she doesn't understand how I relate to time management. I wanted to motivate her to find something that she can do whole-heartedly, and she did make steps in that direction gradually. She started private teaching, she also enjoyed helping some of the clients at their office who came to them with personal problems. She pushed me to spend as much time with creative endeavors as I want, because it's better for both of us if I feel accomplished. In fact, I did start to feel more accomplished which she was happy for. Sometimes she admitted to me that she doesn't know what she really wants to work and she envies me that I have so many different skills that I could use to find a job, but I should be more persistent towards one thing that I really-really want.

I got the affirmation from her which I need and I gave her affirmation about the things that she was good at or even better than me and that gave dynamic tension and constant opportunities to learn from each other. We both kind of deal with issues about not standing up for ourselves and sacrificing our independence for our families - not knowing always where to draw the line. Although we are both sensitive type of people, take things personally sometimes, we felt that all our relationship-hardships are to be overcome because we give each other so much strength for our everyday lives. Honestly she probably felt that more often than me, although it meant a lot to me to be able to share my emotions with someone who loves and encourages me, and to be able to return that with similar love. Some of my friends told me that recently I became more conformist, and I have put up with too many things that actually frustrated me deeply. Actually, I am not sure if that is true. I think I rather learned to be more persistent, balancing rationality and gut feelings.

All in all I was just trying to find the feeling that lets me say she is the one that I want to spend my life with and who I want to fight for, no matter what difficulties I face - without opposing gut feelings. I usually heed the guidance of my gut feeling and although this is the first time in my life I face so much loneliness because of breaking up with someone after a longer relationship - I also think rationally it is the right thing to let each other go, in this set up and after giving it several chances to grow.

Although I still love her, I have to acknowledge that we are not heading in the same direction, it would mean sacrifices that we might regret later. She said one day she could move to the same country with me, but to be able to do that she wants me to stay in one place for a longer time (which I have been doing now) but for now she wants to use the work opportunities back home. Although I miss my home, my friends and family, I want to use the opportunities that are possible here where I am and for that I need to immerse myself in local social circles much more.

In person, hopefully this long monologue would sound differently and not like some painful attempt for reflection or trying to come up with fake explanations. I simply want to draw the consequences and act accordingly. I am open for comments and for more conversation and also grateful for the previous ones. I hope everyone else is able to find people who they can share their experiences with to gain strength from it and move on.

Missing her. Not respecting myself. Not having a goal.

I am missing her constantly everyday because out of the 2 years we were in LDR for 11 months and living in the same area and were in a relationship for 9 months. I forgot to mention on my previous posts that she is my first girlfriend that I really loved/still love. I did have a hard time fathoming the idea of committing long term because of my lust to other women now during the LDR. But actually I was unsatisfied with her belly and visceral fat for all the length of the relationship. Now she turned 180 degrees and is working out hard and going to courses about how to live a healthy lifestyle and about different natural medicine related healing methods, she also travels to another city or goes on a hike every weekend now that we broke up.

I am kind of disappointed that when we were together we had a hard time coming to an agreement when we would see each other or travel somewhere together, but now she is travelling to different places for day trips every weekend. Our biggest conflict was over that she values security over freedom and I value freedom over security. Although she is definately an extremely rare and valuable personality, probably an ISFJ according to the MBTI, who are famous for being caring, providing, very faithful and practical partners. I am more of an idealistic person and I wanted her to want to travel freely with me, also to venture intellectually into new areas every now and then because if I want to commit my life to her, she should be my best friend as well. While her prereference was that first she wanted me to commit to her, to make her feel safe in the relationship and THEN she could have moved to Denmark with me. She needed me to promise that I want to be with her forever and to show this by always planning the next step together to make the relationship our priority over everything else. Well, I couldn't make our relationship a priority, I wanted freedom and to base our relationship on freedom-loving and -sharing friendship. It seemed that these are too big differences in values. Now I'm totally destroyed emotionally, also because my workplace closed down for a month and I have to work at another place, making me feel miserably useless, out of control. I am spending too much time alone in this small Danish town and the people around me are cold and distant and this is not the Denmark I imagined to live in.

I miss her as my best friend to share every information and passing emotion with, to know what is happening to her, what is she excited about, what are her plans. Although I keep myself busy with writing music, learning webdesign and reading about psychology, studying on the Teacher Education, working as a waitor, I am not really social and I don't really find the people around me relatable enough, they are too young and immature. Although I might be bit more immature than my peers at my age. I am thinking about moving back to my home country, because I am missing my friends, social opportunities. I have doubts about becoming a teacher, not sure If this is the way to transition my career to something more creative, although I have a project about a workshop in planning phase. I could make this workshop happen in March with the help of the University I am studying at. If I moved back to my home country I would work in marketing and study jazz music in the evenings in a music school for adults. I am not sure often, if it was the right choice to stay here and try to accomplish something, like gaining a language certificate in Danish before moving back, because maybe I want to escape again because my ego is rationalizing my feelings of disappointment and I'm coming up with reasons why coming here was a bad decision as I am just lonely here, not finding like-minded folks. Otherwise moving back would make me have to face the failure of not making it abroad, not giving myself more chances. Also I would go back then I feel it wouldn't work out to start to talk to my ex-girlfriend again, but I would be interested in the dating opportunities in a bigger city such as my city in my home country, but sometimes I cannot predict what my emotions will turn out to be if I change my environment.

My question is too-fold. Am I wrong for missing her when I kind of admitted to myself that it wouldn't work out now, because I have to get my life straight first? Should I move back to my home country for different kinds of opportunities and meeting more like-minded people or should I wait around and work and see if a more promising opportunity comes around, a more fulfilling side-job next to my studies?

I am 28/ENFP or INFP

Honestly, if you have strong lust for other "hot" women, mom is spot on. (not the part about you being handsome so deserve a 10 - that part is shallow but i think that reflects yours shallowness) you are justifying all the reasons why you are with this young woman (she sounds absolutely lovely, btw, but still you are coming up with reasons why you should love her). But you refuse her visit. you are not in love, truly, if you are lusting after "hotties". If you were in love with everything about this young woman, they would not be on your mind so much - the next visit would be on your mind, the next SKYPE chat, and you would be figuring out how to bridge the distance gap.

Our biggest conflict was over that she values security over freedom and I value freedom over security.

she sounds like an adult - and you sound like you want to sow your oats.

But I could see that she is bit more to herself around children while I love to play and talk with them.

people can be a bit reserved when presented with kids they do not know or are not family, but with their own and family/children who are close, they are different.