LDR: I'm not his first priority
He is my first priority: I only have notifications on for him, when I check my phone the first thing I do is check any messages or posts from him, I stay up til 2am for the chance to get to talk to him with the time difference.
I know he's busy with school and everything. He lives a very balanced life: enjoying his friends, family and me while doing his academics and any clubs or other obligations.
If I haven't heard from him in a few hours I feel sick to my stomach, especially when I see he's been active on socials. I feel dejected because I'm always putting him first, but maybe I shouldn't be. Maybe I need a more balanced life. Maybe it's tired to my insecurity in the relationship and feeling like I need to hang on tight so he never finds someone better and leaves. I feel like a burden, sending so many messages throughout the day, but I can't stop myself. I want to hold off and see how much he would message me or reach out without me so actively talking to him but maybe I don't want to give him the chance to show me anything negative.
I know exactly how you feel... I am in the US in an ldr with a woman in Europe. I miss her terribly. We have known each other since early June, but never met. She controls our relationship because she is a beautiful woman with 61000 fans on IG, mostly men of course. She says I am the one. So that is what I hang on to everyday. Thats really all you can do.
@insecureldrdependent It sounds like maintaining your relationship with your partner is the thing closest to your heart because his validation is very connected to your self-worth. It makes sense why you would go above and beyond to keep the love alive but your doubts about if maybe you should be more "balanced" hint that there's a need for healthy change. Your tone holds a large degree of anxiety and pressure about the relationship, it may be healthy to look into different attachment styles as from what you've described yours seems very anxious attachment towards your relationship but distant towards anyone else.
I relate to basing a large amount of your self-worth on how much one person values you but it's important to remember that they are an external being above yourself and no matter how much love they could possibly give or withhold from you, their approval will never heal your soul as self-love could. Another human being cannot be your entire emotional and spiritual fulfillment, it's too much pressure to expect that of them. No matter how much you give to them hoping that they will help you feel useful, needed, they can't make you happy if that relationship is predominantly what that you depend on to be happy.
Why don't you have notifications on for anyone but him? Is it possible you may be afraid of straying your attention from him and getting distracted from him?
When you stay up till 2am, are you anxiously waiting for him and checking your phone constantly? Do you do anything else to occupy yourself with aside from him?
Have you been this attached to any partners other than him?
Has he given you any reason to be insecure about the relationship?
Has past trauma given you reason to be insecure about relationships? What relationship patterns are you used to?
While it's true that one's partner may feel like the closest person to them because that's who we're most vulnerable to, whether it's showing our bodies or deepest desires, we cannot live our whole lives just for them because that's negligent of so many other beautiful experiences you can have in life. You mentioned yourself about a need for balance and I think that's definitely worth something to go further into thinking about.
Everything you've written here makes a lot of sense. For the part about relying on him for self-worth, I definitely feel my worth from what he thinks about me because I rarely view myself as beautiful or in general anything special. I think I don't understand why he likes me and stays with me and project that onto him. I convince myself if I'm not right beside him he's bound to find someone better and move on because if I were him, I wouldn't like me as much as he does. I technically trust him, but my insecurities prevent me from reaching 100%.
To answer your questions:
- I have notifications on for him so I never miss when he sends a message and is free so I have a chance to talk to him live.
- When I stay up, I'll try to be productive but I'll still check my phone often just in case and am thinking about it in the back of my head so I'm not really fully focused on what I'm doing.
- I haven't been this attached to others, but this is also my longest and healthiest relationship by far.
- He has given me no reasons to be insecure about the relationship. The only thing that we did talk about was the whole "liking other girls bikini pics and following a few models" talk and he was very understanding and apologized a lot for making me feel the way I did and he promptly unfollowed the girls. Besides that, he treats me super well and is very patient and caring. I never thought that anyone would genuinely care for me in this way.
- Cue the past terrible less-than-two-month relationship attempts that resulted in boy #1 not actually liking me but going along with it until he tried to cheat and I broke things off. Also at the time I was always making excuses for him to my friends because he would make racist comments, some even directed at me, and other rude and insensitive jokes that would cross the line. Boy #2 kept going back and forth on if he liked me or not and finally told me he was in love with my other friend the whole time. I said we'd just be friends then and went with some friends to drink. I went back to my room to remember that my roommate had asked for the room that night for her and her boyfriend. He then showed up at my door and said he was worried because I wasn't answering his messages and when he saw I was locked out he offered that I could sleep on his bed and he'd sleep on the floor and we could talk in the morning. Long story short he did not sleep on the floor and I was taken advantage of. I woke up and after realizing what had happened I left and blocked him. He then blamed him almost offing himself on me blocking him. He blamed me for being suicidal another time when I refused to write his entire term final for him. Not a great one and left me with a good amount. Boy #3 would constantly insult me and tell me how he wanted some "spicy" confident girl which is just not me. I've never felt more bland and lame then when I was talking to him.
Every relationship I have broken off, but it took me a long time to realize that from the start they just liked me because I was easy to manipulate and they could use me because they knew I would care. This current relationship is drastically different in many ways including that both parties put in effort (although I do more, probably due to feeling like I need to constantly be reeling him in) and are excited to show off the other and not embarrassed of them. He's a genuinely good person and I never feel judged by him which is a large factor in me feeling very comfortable and I feel like I can be the most myself with him more than anyone else.