::Trigger alert just in case::

I really hope some of you have some good ideas or methods to how to quell your fears and the thoughts in your head. Right now they are driving me mad like some outer force taking over my mind.

I recently started dating a really nice guy but only 8 months after my last break up. My last relationship lasted 5 years and was a real roller coaster ride, mainly because of my severe suspicion and constant need of reassurance. I honestly think I drove the guy mad and I didn't quite realize it until last year. I am convinced I can make the worst come out in people and this time I just don't want to ruin it. I don't want to drag him down to my level and break him into small pieces like I did the others. Problem is, they always have a hard time saying stop because they think they are helping you.

After my break up I felt as if I wanted to be single forever. I knew how unstable and how insanely jealous and suspicious I become as soon as someone comes this close to me and sees me behind my protective walls. I think I have some innate need for constant validation of all my feelings, especially the negative ones. In my family we always had to hide them away and never talk of them and somehow I think I am compensating through my relationship. Problem is, I am never satiated. I am trying to fix a hole in my childhood that can't be fixed.

Anyway, this guy is different from the ones of my past. He is stable, happy, positive. Basically, he is what I call in the greyscale. He doesn't need the same intimacy that I need, he doesn't need to be insanely close to the point you nearly merge. And I've always been extremely clingy and dreamy about guys in my life and always felt I couldn't live without them at all and that they were the center of all that mattered. Those thoughts give me a complete tunnel vision. Everyone else stop mattering and I feel as if conversations with others are pointless because they don't really know me, they don't see who I really am and don't know the person behind the mask. But I always show the guy who I 'am'. Or whoever I think I am. I just have such an extreme desire to be accepted for the broken person that I am and not for the mask I always wear. But at the same time I realize the sadness isn't really me, it can't be me. It isn't supposed to define me.

So because this guy is fine not being in either end of the extreme, say extremely intimate or intensely bad, I get so overly confused. I feel like he mustn't reciprocate my feelings because I feel more a friend and a stranger than a lover. I don't know what to make of 'fine' and 'good enough'. I feel as if things aren't either really great or really bad, they are nothing and mean nothing. I feel suspicious of him all the time, I tell myself he doesn't love me the way I love him or that he doesn't need me the way I need him. Yet at the same time I am ready to just spin around and walk away and I often think that I don't need him anyway, "whatever". I feel like I am constantly swinging between extremes. If I don't feel intimate enough with him I just end up on rock bottom. How the hell do I teach myself to just be fine with how things are?

I always look at him with these eyes that expect him to somehow prove himself to me, that I am good enough, that he is committed, that I really mean something to me, all the while I forget myself in the process. I forget I have a responsibility too to show him that he matters or else he isn't going to think there is anything to stay for. I make him expect that all encounters with me are a complete downer, that I am just going to question him with suspicion all the time while expecting him to constantly show me commitment and attention while I just sit around and play hard to get.

It is absolutely driving me nuts. Right now I feel clear in my head because last night was pretty bad. I was telling him that I feel trapped in my own mind, I can neither leave him for the fear of abandonment but being with him drives me utterly insane and I know I must be such a burden to him. I know I am exhausting him because I get so sad and he doesn't understand why and he can't give me what I need. I know that he isn't supposed to, I know my mood is my own responsibility, yet I shift it on to him as if it is.

I really want to know how you guys manage to deal with this. How do you rationalize with yourself, how do you convince yourself nothing is wrong and that he isn't going to leave you? How do you tell yourself that it is alright that he doesn't love you like Romeo and Juliet, but that the way they love you is the healthy and right way to do it?

Sometimes I convince myself that it isn't real love, that it is fake and the only thing that is real is when both of you don't need anyone else and you're the most important person in the world. I know it isn't right, I know it's not realistic yet I keep FEELING it. It makes me wanna tear my brain out of my skull. I just want SOME control over my rationality, over my feelings, over my opinions. Yet I shift all the time.
I tell myself all is fine and I feel fine, then some signal or warning emerges out of the blue and I feel like I am taking the greatest distance to him and that I don't ever need anyone, they can all bugger off.

I feel like I am going mad because I know absolutely no one in real life I could possibly confide in and who wouldn't just try and rationalize with me and tell me to just 'stop' and get over it. I don't know anyone who can possibly understand how this doesn't feel under my control and what an emotional mess I am. I hate myself for giving in and not having waited longer till I had been in therapy or other before I engaged in this relationship, but it is a done deal now. I feel stuck like in a prison because my mind can't either leave him nor stay. And I want to stay. He treats me well and he's, well, normal. I think it's a good influence yet my mind convinces himself that his 'indifference' is because he just doesn't care.

If any of you have any advice to how you convince yourself that you matter or how to feel you're enough with or without someone's acceptance, please, please tell me. I am desperate to hear from someone who relates. I don't want to treat him like he's done anything wrong when really it is me there is something wrong with. I wish I just knew how to regulate my own emotions.