First love

[Heather]

Can I ask how long you've been in this relationship?

[GG07]

Well when I was at the beach last weekend with a friend, who is a girl, he would send me a lot of messages and kept saying that I shouldn't wear a swimsuit because all these guys are going to look at me or he freaked out when 8 year old boys wanted to ride around on the golf cart at the beach

[GG07]

I have been in this relationship for 8 months now

[Heather]

Okay.

So, like Sam said, the control he's trying to get over you -- like controlling who your friends are, or suggesting it's not okay for you to even be near a group of people that make up half the world population -- really is not something that suggests a healthy dynamic. You voicing that this person just won't be there for you, and also just doesn't seem to really get you at all per much past the surface, suggests this isn't a relationship that YOU feel happy in or that you feel benefits you.

I know this has all veered considerably past your original topic... except for the part where maybe it hasn't. In other words, some of the stuff you're describing here really isn't love. Trying to control someone isn't loving, and possessiveness also isn't love. It sounds like this person says they love you, but from what I can gather, at least sometimes, with some of what you have described, those words don't match their behavior.

Is this a relationship you feel safe in, and find makes you feel good the vast majority of the time? Is how you feel in this relationship how you envision you want to feel in a love relationship?

[GG07]

Well I've honestly gotten put down a lot, and he tells me that his parents don't like me and all this stuff that really hurts my feelings. I don't feel like he would ever hurt me and most of the time I am happy but when he's putting me down saying that I'm not able to say no to anyone. He acts like I'm this girl who would let anyone take advantage of me, well that's how he acted at the beach but those little boys were 8. I suffer from depression and anxiety, sometimes he really does put me down, and yeah he is someone I picture a future with. Sometimes I just don't know because sometimes I feel like I deserve more but it's hard for me to leave people I love. I've literally given him everything I have to give

[GG07]

I think one of the things he did that really hurt me the most is when we were arguing one night about how his friends said I was a slut and that I sent them nudes and all this stuff when in reality I didn't even know them and my boyfriend took their side basically. I was like no I have never sent them nudes, you know I would never do that and my boyfriend literally said, well my friend showed me nudes and that looked just like your body. Then when I told him a few days later how that really hurt my feelings, he just said he was mad

[Heather]

Can I ask you why you're dating this person?

In other words, what does being with them bring to your life? How does being with them support you feeling great about yourself and enrich your life? What are you getting out of this relationship?

Relatedly: why do you think, if you have any ideas, about why you'd choose to keep dating someone who's treated you some of the ways you've posted about here? Who tries to control you, who doesn't have your back, who you don't feel makes efforts to treat you with compassion in your most vulnerable places: why be with someone like that?

[GG07]

Before I started dating the person I'm with now, I thought I was in love with this guy who never made me apart of his life in any type of way. We had one of those relationships where we said we were boyfriend and girlfriend but we didn't have a relationship. He constantly just wanted to be with his friends and ignored me all the time and I thought that was the worst break up of my life. I talked to many guys, trying to find someone else and when the person that I'm dating now came along, he was the only one he made me feel happy for the first time in a long time and he's also my best friend. I know that you're saying it doesn't seem like love but I have my flaws too and yes he isn't perfect. I'm like him in ways, but sometimes I just think it's going overboard. Like yes I get jealous easily, and no I don't like him talking to other girls but I would never make him feel bad for just giving a 8 year old girl a ride on a golfcart at the beach. Honestly this is my first real relationship, and I'm with him because I love him. I get mad and did things I wish I would've never done to him either but at the end of the day I hold on to the past and my depression gets so bad to the point I'm creating problems in my head that don't exist. Yes I have bad times with my boyfriend but overall we move on and laugh about it. I just hold on to problems, I live in my past all the time and that tends to frustrate a lot of people, and maybe you're right he might be trying to control me but most of the time I do whatever makes me feel happy and I know that he doesn't like me to talk to my best guy friend, but I do anyway

[GG07]

Your advice is great, but I don't always treat him well either. So it's both of us who need to work on a lot

[GG07]

And when I want to break up with him, I'm somewhat scared to. I've given him so much and one of them being my virginty and he's been my first to so much and I've always felt like he's the right person but I've always been told by my family that your virginty is something you can't get back

[Carmen]

Hi again Emily,

While we all do have all our flaws, you sometimes treating him poorly does not cancel out his behavior of treating you poorly - rather it may just be an indicator that you both bring out negative sides of each other and maybe this is not the healthiest relationship for either of you. It also sounds like the problems with the relationship you have described are indeed in the present and you are not making them up in your head - I would encourage you to give yourself the self-love to trust in your experiences and emotions and to feel free to follow your gut and your heart on issues like these. It sounds like breaking up with him is something you have considered but you are scared?
The way virginity is constructed in our culture is very manipulative and shaming to women in particular. Virginity is not something one gives or looses. Having intercourse (which I am assuming is what you meant but correct me if I am wrong) for the first time can feel very emotionally and/or physically significant but you are the one that can decide how significant or not it is to you - and the same could be said for kissing for the first time or any other kind of sexual act. Scientifically speaking, virginity is not something that can be lost and not given back, so your family is wrong on that one. I personally think that saying comes from an ugly part of our culture that shames women sexually by implying they are loosing something while the same saying is usually never applied to men (in terms of heterosexual encounters). All in all, having intercourse for the first time can be as important to you as you want it to be. Sexuality is also something that is very fluid and develops over time, so the fact that you had sex with your certain partner for the first time does not mean you can't continue to explore and grow sexually - it by no means has to tie you down!
On that same note, experiencing the "firsts" in life are significant, but they also should not tie you down or make you feel obligated to be with someone. On the contrary, experiencing things for the first time is exciting in that now you have so many chances to experience those things in new ways and with new people through out your life - figuring out what you like, don't like, etc. I would also stray away from the language of you giving him these experiences - these experiences are your own and you can do whatever you want with them. If you feel like that language is relevant though and you feel like you had to give them to him rather than actively choosing them on your own, that could be something for us to further talk about.

[Heather]

I want to also just add that first loves are very rarely last loves. First loves are also very rarely relationships that tend to last very long, or be relationships people stay in through a lifetime. Additionally, very few people stay with their first sexual partner for a lifetime, and most won't even stay in a relationship for that person for more than six months to a year, based on both anecdote and broad data on adolescent sexual and romantic relationships.

While that can certainly be a bummer, and even a really big heartbreak, it hopefully shouldn't feel like you "gave up" a bunch of things that weren't worth it. In other words, simply because a relationship isn't a forever-relationship doesn't mean it didn't give us anything, or that what we put into it wasn't worth it; didn't feel like it benefitted us at the time.

Sometimes, obviously -- like when a relationship just was mostly not so great, or even really terrible -- it can feel like that. But when it does, staying in something crummy even longer won't fix that, it'll just have us be in something that isn't good for us or someone else (or both) even longer. Time alone doesn't improve unhealthy or unsatisfying relationships.

You say you both need to "work on a lot," but it's pretty early on in this relationship for it to already need so much work. It's one thing for people to be in something that started out great and stayed that way for years, then developed big problems. But when relationships basically start -- and since it's only been eight months, figure you're only just entering into a phase that's past a "start" -- with unhealthy dynamics like you've been posting about here, and start with at least one person feeling unhappy in the ways you're posting about here, it's generally a clue the relationship itself is just not a good fit.

Now, if you two are mutually serious about each other and both want to get some real help and do some real work to change your dynamics, you get to make that choice and do that. But what I hear you saying is that when you bring up your concerns to this guy, he shuts them down. So, he's making clear he doesn't WANT to do that work and won't. And when that's the case, problems like these can't be repaired: you can't fix him, after all, and you can't fix a relationship made of two people all by yourself, I'm afraid.

I believe I already gave you these links, but if I didn't, can you take a look at these?
• Does Your Relationship Need a Checkup?
• Should I Stay or Should I Go?

When you do read them (if you haven't already), what do you think? What are your feelings and thoughts having looked at those pieces?