Hello,
I don't post a lot about my personal life here anymore but I have a situation that I'd like some feedback on.
I have been dating A for about 5 months. She is a university professor, originally from Madrid Spain, speaks 3 languages, quite an interesting and intelligent lady. However, I have also come to find that she is very insecure and somewhat childish emotionally.
She has brought up marriage several times, and I have tried to keep her at bay on this subject, as I just don't know if the relationship has that kind of feeling or not.
The problem is, I don't know what that feeling is supposed to be. I don't have overpowering Romeo-and-Juliet romantic feelings towards her. I know I like her a lot, but I just don't know if I like her enough to make a lifelong commitment. I wonder if my romantic ideas are just Hollywood bullshit that doesn't happen in real life, and if I should be happy that I found somebody like her even if I don't feel like "oh my god she is my whole world" and that kind of stuff.
One of the biggest problems I have with her is that she doesn't seem to respect my independence. It's like she has an idea of how I should be and she becomes angry when I don't toe the line. It really has made me mad on a couple of occasions. She often takes on a very maternal sort of tone when she speaks with me. The overall feeling I have with her sometimes is that of being stifled.
The only relationships I have for comparison purposes are from like 15 or 16 years ago, when I was just a kid in high school. Of course back then it was much more Romeo and Juliet with the girls I would get involved with, spending hours talking on the phone - "I love you I love you I love you" and all that. But those relationships never lasted more than a couple of weeks. I didn't date at all when I was a JW, I was always out of the loop socially.
She left my house Saturday, basically saying that she would wait to hear from me but she was going to start looking around. She was crying, it was a very emotional day for both of us. We haven't talked since, and I have to say that in some ways it feels like a weight has been lifted.
I feel terribly guilty about it though. As I said, she is very insecure, and beyond that I do believe that she has some mental illness, I don't mean that as a slam at all, but there were a couple of incidents that really made me raise my eyebrows. Also, she is always having nightmares, every night she would start yelling and I would have to wake her and calm her. She has what I consider to be an unhealthy relationship with her father in Spain, talking to him on the phone every single day, like she's a kid away at boarding school not a 37 year old independent woman. She has been suicidal in her life before, and the melancholy in her eyes Saturday was heartbreaking for me. It's like, I love her so much but I can't deal with her pain.
Is this what love is supposed to be like???