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Well, isn't really much, but I wanna know what you guys think :)


tbh

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So I've been dating this guy for a few months now.

 

He's amazing, a good listener, thoughtful, caring and always tries his best to be there for me.

 

He's very understanding too. We're both really introverted and try to be open with each other.

 

But sometimes I feel like he acts too...unrealistic.

His ideals seem very naive and I hate how childish he can be about our relationship at times.

 

I mean, it's hella adorable that you think we're forever and till death do us part and stuff, but I'm the practical kind who doesn't want to indulge in such thoughts without any certainty.

 

Am I overthinking it or is he a little too carried away with what we have here?

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Can you provide a bit more detail? Maybe start with your ages?

 

Speaking generally, I think everyone is different when it comes to this stuff—meaning the stuff they need to say and hear to feel comfortable with someone, to keep surrendering to a connection in which they feel secure. Me, for instance? I have always—always—struggled with the lofty language, particularly when it comes early, because it just doesn't ring as "true" to my ears.

 

Part of what I believe makes a connection so strong is the forever recognition that it is fragile, mysterious, that you never know exactly where it's heading. That is scary too, of course, but I need there to be room for that fear and uncertainty to be softly acknowledged—together—rather than using "together" as a shield to keep it at bay. Makes me feel more secure, because it makes me feel like I am building something with real bricks rather than the fantastical sort.

 

But, again, everyone is different, and has a different way of expressing themselves, sharing excitement. These, perhaps, are just his. Do you express your own, in your way, back? That's kind of how two different languages become one, or at least how we discover if that's possible.

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He's always going on about how we're going to be together all our lives, and is very specific about him being my priority (which he kinda is)

For example, once, he got really upset when i said that i loved my best friend more than him and we fought about it. Later, when things had cooled off, he apologized and told me that he didn't like that I placed my friend above him and wanted to be "the only one".

 

I was really irritated at how immature he was being.

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Part of what I believe makes a connection so strong is the forever recognition that it is fragile, mysterious, that you never know exactly where it's heading. That is scary too, of course, but I need there to be room for that fear and uncertainty to be softly acknowledged—together—rather than using "together" as a shield to keep it at bay. Makes me feel more secure, because it makes me feel like I am building something with real bricks rather than the fantastical sort.

 

Exactly! I completely agree with your point of view.

Sometimes, I feel like he's mostly just fantasizing about our future together. He sounds like he's in love with the idea of romance and I don't want him to get too carried away...

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Sounds like you two are miles apart on the issue of compatibility. He sounds like a big kid. How old are you both?

 

We're both in our early twenties, and of the same age.

He's pretty much a big kid, yep :))

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Is your best friend a man or a woman? Just curious. Also curious to know how something like that even comes up in conversation, meaning why you're both putting "love" in the context of ratings. Yes, his response is immature, but so is the whole framework in which it was expressed.

 

His view on love does strike me as juvenile, transactional, a bit more fueled by insecurity than curiosity about another human (you). The "priority" business, for instance: that's a short skip from "possessiveness," which to my brain is almost the opposite of love, or at least the training wheels version. Call it the undergraduate school of You Complete Me, rather than the graduate studies of You Compliment Me.

 

Early 20s, yeah? Weird time, that one. Some people are still very much in high school, emotionally speaking, while others have left the kiddie pool and are happily swimming out into the deep oceans of adulthood. Could be that you guys, in that respect, are in different places. So from him you get the very nice juju of being an object of obsession—a lovely thing, early on—but you don't quite get that deeper churn of being and feeling seen, heard, as a person independent of him, which is generally what makes for a longer journey. Classic dynamic, I dare say, at that stage of life.

 

Per my earlier post: Do you talk to him about your feelings about all this?

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Agree it sounds like irritating fluff and faux future-talk. It could be manipulative because he thinks saccharine words will impress you. You need to immediately redirect to reality such "as we'll cross that bridge when we are officially engaged".

 

However it seems like a yellow flag. It's a bit possessive and frankly all about him. Listen to your instincts on this and reflect on your gut reaction to it.

He's always going on about how we're going to be together all our lives, and is very specific about him being my priority (which he kinda is)For example, once, he got really upset when i said that i loved my best friend more than him and we fought about it.I was really irritated at how immature he was being.
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Is your best friend a man or a woman? Just curious. Also curious to know how something like that even comes up in conversation, meaning why you're both putting "love" in the context of ratings. Yes, his response is immature, but so is the whole framework in which it was expressed.

 

Per my earlier post: Do you talk to him about your feelings about all this?

 

My best friend is a woman.

He knows perfectly well I don't have any romantic intentions with her, and that I'm straight.

Which just adds up to the immaturity of it all.

Nah, actually I said it for fun when we were all hanging out with a group of our close friends. He didn't mind then, but a few days later, he tells me that he's hurt.

I didn't think he'd take a passing comment seriously.

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Agree it sounds like irritating fluff and faux future-talk. It could be manipulative because he thinks saccharine words will impress you. You need to immediately redirect to reality such "as we'll cross that bridge when we are officially engaged".

 

However it seems like a yellow flag. It's a bit possessive and frankly all about him. Listen to your instincts on this and reflect on your gut reaction to it.

 

I thought so too, but knowing him, it's just him being childish over something stupid.

I thought of it as a rather dramatic gesture for my attention, but talking it out with him frankly surprised and annoyed me as I realised he was being a little too serious about it.

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My best friend is a woman.

He knows perfectly well I don't have any romantic intentions with her, and that I'm straight.

Which just adds up to the immaturity of it all.

Nah, actually I said it for fun when we were all hanging out with a group of our close friends. He didn't mind then, but a few days later, he tells me that he's hurt.

I didn't think he'd take a passing comment seriously.

 

Hmmmm.

 

Well, I guess it kind of comes down to both your patience and whether this is something you want to explore—meaning seeing if you can come to see a bit more eye to eye, or if you just need more of the eye-to-eye, on this front, to be in it, to surrender more fully.

 

Thing about dynamics like this? Part of it could also be that he is overcompensating, because he senses, on some level, that you're just not quite as "into" it as he is. This happens, in various ways, even among the most mature and enlightened. Gets weird.

 

Some people have an endless, unquenchable thirst for "into," meaning they need to know, 24/7, that their partner is super duper into them. I personally label that as immature, unrealistic, and extension of insecurity. But people do make whole marriages out of that, and happy ones. Ultimately, you're the only one who can decide if this works, or doesn't, for you.

 

I have found myself in the position, more often than I'd like, of having to be the one who "tempers" the lofty enthusiasm, who keeps the collective four feet of a romantic union on the ground while the heads float into the clouds. Learned that doesn't work for me, since I'm not a robot and want to feel all the sparkly, rosy things alongside someone. For me to go there, however, I need someone with feet on the ground. That's what I'm "into," far more than someone being into me in a looney tunes way.

 

Maybe you're learning something similar in yourself, or maybe not. Time, and your gut, will let you know.

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Thing about dynamics like this? Part of it could also be that he is overcompensating, because he senses, on some level, that you're just not quite as "into" it as he is. This happens, in various ways, even among the most mature and enlightened. Gets weird.

 

Some people have an endless, unquenchable thirst for "into," meaning they need to know, 24/7, that their partner is super duper into them. I personally label that as immature, unrealistic, and extension of insecurity. But people do make whole marriages out of that, and happy ones. Ultimately, you're the only one who can decide if this works, or doesn't, for you.

 

I have found myself in the position, more often than I'd like, of having to be the one who "tempers" the lofty enthusiasm, who keeps the collective four feet of a romantic union on the ground while the heads float into the clouds. Learned that doesn't work for me, since I'm not a robot and want to feel all the sparkly, rosy things alongside someone. For me to go there, however, I need someone with feet on the ground. That's what I'm "into," far more than someone being into me in a looney tunes way.

 

Maybe you're learning something similar in yourself, or maybe not. Time, and your gut, will let you know.

 

I really empathize with you, because that's pretty much my position here :))

 

But I try to tell him how I feel too, about him getting his hopes up and soaring, and he seems to understand. Some part of me says that this might become an issue, but well, so far, so good except for his being immature and childish

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Sounds controlling and insecure. It seems that he may be trying to isolate you. Also, a few months in and saying you will be forever is a huge turnoff.

 

Does this guy have any friends? How old is he?

 

He does have friends, and I've known him for a while before we began going out, actually.

He's just being a little clingy and whiny. Basically a 'big kid' about this whole thing

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Does he want you to stop hanging out with friends? Does he make you feel guilty?

 

Nahh

He actually encourages me being with them and stuff and is nice and polite to them too

This sort of thing has never really happened before

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Welcome to ENA. Hope you stick around.

 

The tricky thing about taking about this stuff is trying to find a way to not put it terms of, "Hey, I think you're getting your hopes up here and soaring a little high and fast." That's going to be a blow to even the most secure person on the planet, you know, since the rough translation is basically: "Hey, I like you, but not as much as you like me, so maybe you can take this here chill pill?"

 

So perhaps think about putting it in terms of how you operate—your emotional operating system—so you can see if someone hears you, and how they go about the business of hearing you, if that makes sense. Which, yeah, might be tough here, since you two have already established one dynamic. Ugh, as the experts put it.

 

If you'll indulge some philosophizing, a good while back, when I was around your age, I read Rilke and loved the way he wrote about, well, love. Example: “We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.” Another: “The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development."

 

Those have been little guides for me, since they're kind of built around the idea that loving another person is about loving all you can't understand: the unknowns, not the knowns, and giving their singular unknowns room to breathe and flourish. I've found that expressing some of that in my own way as helped me find people who "get it," as I need it to be gotten, rather than going about the business of trying to force someone who gets it in a different way to come around to mine. They deserve, of course, to be "gotten" by the right person too, in whatever form that means for them at any given moment in their life.

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Welcome to ENA. Hope you stick around.

Those have been little guides for me, since they're kind of built around the idea that loving another person is about loving all you can't understand: the unknowns, not the knowns, and giving their singular unknowns room to breathe and flourish. I've found that expressing some of that in my own way as helped me find people who "get it," as I need it to be gotten, rather than going about the business of trying to force someone who gets it in a different way to come around to mine. They deserve, of course, to be "gotten" by the right person too, in whatever form that means for them at any given moment in their life.

 

heyyy i sense great wisdom there XD

thank you so much for taking all that time to say that though

I highly appreciate it :)

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I am a bit confused. "He didn't mind then, but a few days later, he tells me that he's hurt."

 

I meant that he didn't really react then but it might've been on his mind, so when we were talking about something he just told me that he was hurt by it.

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