I hope I helped you be better for someone else

Being upset because you will never be able to live with your partner is not on the same emotional level as not being able to enjoy eating out at a restaurant, because your partner struggles. One is a lifestyle preference. The other is a core life compatibility issue. Treating them as equal minimises something that actually matters deeply.

My red flag should have been, “You don’t have to buy that for me. Stop trying to win me over.” I’m not trying to, “Win you over,” and that really feels like a mentally abusive phrase. You should never be trying to win someone over. You should always be your genuine self. The phrase, “Winning someone over,” implies that you are purposely acting like someone you are not, in order to please the other person, with knowledge that you are going to withdraw all of what you were offering as your normal genuine self, along with all of your effort, and the other person is going to be left confused and hurt. You don’t try hard at the beginning of the relationship to earn your partner’s trust and then stop trying. Once you earn your partner’s trust, the only way to keep them is to be consistent. You have to always try, at times even harder. The meeting someone and gaining their trust is the easiest part, it is the maintaining it that takes effort.

It should have flagged up too, when your housemate was still on dating apps, while in a relationship and you said to me, "You don't have to worry about me being on dating apps, it's too much like hard work." That shouldn't have been your response. You should have said, "You don't have to worry about me being on dating apps, because I love you and you are the one for me. When I felt like yo had changed and grew distant, which was making me struggle, your response shouldn't have been, "We've come too far to give up on us," your response should have been, "I love you. We'll work on this together." It should never be, "You're my girlfriend now, so I can put in less effort and I don't have to try. You just have to put up with me not caring and not putting in any effort to maintain this." Your response should have been, "I am sorry you're struggling with things. I didn't realise that I hadn't been prioritising us. I love you and we'll work together to make things work again." It should never be, "I'm too busy and too distracted." It should always be, "Let's work together to find something that works for both of us." A relationship can't work if you refuse to put in any effort. I'm not just going to sit here and twiddle my thumbs, waiting for you to remember that I exist, while you're hanging out with friends and family, without giving me a second thought.

I have been told from two past relationship that I need to, “get help.” I have seen a doctor and used the Samaritans both times. Both times I have been told that there is nothing wrong with me mentally, I just need to not be in a mentally abusive relationship. I have been told that having a partner who is present and provides a connection one minute, then withdraws it the next, then occasionally messages, but does not fully engage, then they treat one random day like they love you, then it is back to being ignored, would turn any sane person into an anxious person, and sometimes this even causes a mental illness to occur in someone who was completely fine before. But to do this to an anxious person will make them feel very unstable and often suicidal. I am being told that no one should ever be with someone who treats a relationship like this.

In my very first relationship, I had someone who did not understand how to be a friend. They would tell me that I wasn’t good enough or that there was something wrong with me, because they wouldn’t know what to do if someone said that I wasn’t good enough for him and made me cry. He didn’t know how to be a good friend and defend me. He didn’t see that staying silent meant that he was agreeing with them. That hurt so much.

I have just come out of a relationship with someone who does not know how to be respectful, caring or the basic bare minimum required for a relationship. I have explained what is required to be respectful, multiple times – if you say you are going to be there, you be there. If for some reason you can’t, you say so in advance. You do not then tell someone with anxiety that they are the problem and they need help, when you told them to do something new that they weren’t sure they could do it, but agreed to because you promised to be there and then you change the plans at the last minute. If you were there, like you promised multiple times that you would be, then the incredibly anxious person would still have tried. Saying that 5pm is too late to come over and go to sleep, because I had an engineer over and did not know what time they would finish in advance, but then 7:30pm is not too late to come over and go to sleep when you are in control of the time, is confusing, controlling and hurtful. Having to be Sherlock Holmes and figure out your routine through clues of what time you text or call, the phrases that you use and when you or your firmed and online, in order to be able to plan my life, to be able to figure out whether I can make plans that day, because you won’t tell me in advance when I will see you. You know what days you are busy and what days you aren’t. You plan your life around this. I just have to drop everything at lunchtime, when you tell me that you are free to see me later. The same goes for phone calls. You know what day and time you are going to phone me. I don’t. I had to stop doing yoga, mediations, manifestations, candle spells, reading, creative writing, because I didn’t know when you were going to call me. I would just have to sit and twiddle my thumbs every single day and wait. You refused to agree to have set five minutes for us both to look forward to that was fair so that we both knew when the phone call was happening. The phone call could only be when you wanted it to be, without notice. Not having decent human respect, so that when you are mid-conversation and have an incoming call that is more important that your top priority conversation, the phone call isn’t continued, there is no text message apologising for the interruption. I keep saying what is the basic minimum requirement for a low effort, basic relationship. You need a daily connection. You need to care about the other person. If you message them asking, “How are you?” you need to read their reply. You need to care what the reply says. You need to care if your partner is okay. You need to care that your partner needs to know if you are okay. You need to care enough to check in. You need to care about having the connection. The connection with your partner must be your priority. This comes above all other connections. If you make a huge, life changing decision, you must share it with your partner before you think about doing it, consider their opinions and keep them as a priority update throughout. Your partner should know more about your huge, life changing decision that anyone else in your circle, not less. Your relationship is your number one connection priority. If you cannot make this your priority connection, but you can make time for everyone else in the entire world, then you do not need/are not ready for a relationship. If you can only find time to call your partner when you are bored or waiting for someone, then you do not need/are not ready for a relationship. If all you want is someone to keep you occupied when you are bored, because all of your other friends and family are busy, but you don’t want to actually have a connection with them, then you do not want a partner, you want an escort. And if you say you want a girlfriend, then you really want an escort with prostitute privileges.

The pain that comes with you being able to connect with everyone else in the entire world before you can speak to your partner really hurts. It really does make the person you are dating feel worthless. You don’t have the care to read that they are okay and to let them know that you are okay. You have no interest to prioritise their connection with you, but you can prioritise your friends, family, colleagues and boss over the one person who is supposed to mean more to you than all of them.

You do not make promises of engagements, marriage and living together early on if this is not your intention in life. These types of things are huge deal breakers. If you do not want to live with your parter ever, but to the person you have just started dating this is something that they need eventually in their relationship, you cannot say that you want it too, when you know that you have zero interest in it. The same goes for marriage, or children. You decide that you want to be with someone based on your interests and your life goals. To find someone who wanted to get engaged and married and live together sooner, rather than it be the end goal of their ten year plan, aligned with the person that I wanted to date, but to discover that none of this was real has been not only heartbreaking, but it has made me question a lot of other things too. How much of what I was told was a lie? Was any of it real? It really doesn’t feel like it.

To have your partner make the biggest life decision of their life without discussing it with you before, without sharing all of it beforehand, without including you in the process, but being able to share it with their family, friends, colleagues and boss, and probably even everyone online, that is a kind of pain and disrespect that I’m not sure can be forgiven.

These are not high demands; they are the foundation of a basic relationship.

You say, “I don’t know what to do,” but I would literally spell it out to you, holding your hand, like a small child. I explained exactly what a basic relationship needs. I explained what the bare minimum was. You don’t need to do those things by text or phone if you live together, because you can physically speak to your partner, but when you are in a permanent long distance relationship it is more important to follow the basic forms of communication, and you have to do it more, not less. I told you, I needed you I needed a good morning connection and to be your priority connection in the morning. I told you that I need to hear about your day and for you to care enough to read about my day, not leave the text message unopened until the morning, not read it and copy and paste a generic good morning message. Before going to sleep, you need to spare less than five minutes of your day, which is only 0.3% of your entire day, that is all I ask. You just need to read my message and reply, something simple like, “I’m glad you had a good day. Mine was tough, but I got to see my friend for dinner. Goodnight xxx”

The refusing to put kisses on messages always didn’t feel right too. You are supposed to meet in the middle with communication. My boss, who is male, puts kisses on messages to me. My female colleagues do too. It is three for a partner, one or two for a friend and then lots when you’re really happy. That’s just how kisses on messages work. In person, you alter how you interact with the other person based on their communication and the two of you meet halfway, that is how in person interaction works. You must do the same with written communication too, otherwise you might as well be having two separate conversations. Saying that you never put kisses on messages is the equivalent of saying you are immature and don’t care about your connections. You meet half way.

When something deep matters to me, you do not shrug it off and say that it doesn’t matter what others think. This isn’t about what others think. This is about how I feel about things. If not getting married ever, after being promised it early on makes me feel anxious and upset, I am allowed to feel those emotions. It does matter to me that I am the only person over the age of 20 that I know that isn’t engaged. It does matter to me that I am the only person I know over the age of eighteen that doesn’t live with their partner. It isn’t a case of what everyone/anyone else thinks. These are things that matter to me. When you say, “Well I don’t care about that, so that’s what matters,” or, “I don’t care about those things, so neither should you,” you are dismissing my feelings. How would you like it if I said, I don’t think you should care about wanting to go to a restaurant with your partner, or to take your partner to a restaurant with your family and friends, I think it’s pointless and doesn’t matter. That would hurt you, as that is something that matters to you. So, don’t dismiss my feelings.

You refuse to meet me halfway. You refuse to try. Like with all of my relationship, you have used me as training, so that I could teach you what to do and what not to do, so when you do meet someone else, you can do it right, get married and be happy, instead of being avoidant, refusing to emotionally mirror the other person and treating a relationship like you are still a teenager. You have mentally hurt, damaged and broken me. I hope I have helped you to know what to do right next time.

- Josie -