u/Important_Baker_834

Every time I (32F) am in a relationship it feels like I put my life on hold and all my decisions and thoughts revolve around the person I’m with or our relationship.

The results are of course disastrous. I feel like I’m giving more than receiving, and start to blame the other person for it. I also feel a lot of resentment towards myself, because I’m putting my wishes and wellbeing aside to please and make sure that my SO won’t leave.

Seriously, it’s making me disgusted at this point. I have a good life, a good job, nice place to live with my dog, but it seems that romantic problems feel always so big that nothing else matters. If someone else would talk to me about the “problems” I have, I’d probably take them for immature.

Please, where can I start? Every time I try to put myself first it makes me feel so guilty and insecure that I’ll be left because of it that I quickly run back to my old habits.

EDIT: thanks a lot to everyone who took some time to answer this thread 🥹 I feel grateful for each advice you shared here. Just wanted to add: I’m already in a relationship, and I want to do the internal work to not repeat the same mistakes I made for the past 10 years in different relationships. I feel like I reached my limit and I need to do something

Long story short, I (32F) met my boyfriend (who has been recently diagnosed with ADHD - 35M) only few months after he separated from his ex wife. Their whole break up was kinda messy, and on top of it they had a trip planned with their families two months after we met, which made me feel very insecure about the whole thing—fact that I never hid from him.

I’m not diagnosed with ADHD, but I have a strong rejection sensitivity. Any sign of rejection can trigger me badly, so this combo wasn’t a good one. During that said trip he would for example send pictures where you could see her clearly in it, and this would only aggravate my feelings. I pointed it out and he said he simply didn’t realize.

Now, almost one year later, I’m still facing issues with things like that. Examples are: he never removed her last name from the doorbell or mailbox, and there are nail polish and other beauty products in the apartment that he apparently don’t see or ignore. And this feels like he’s dismissing what’ve communicated already. But knowing that this could be a trait of ADHD, I wanted to check other’s opinion to see if I’m missing something. Where’s the line between the unawareness and the disrespect?

TL;DR: is it ADHD or my boyfriend is actively dismissing how I feel?