I want to come back to this thread and read it more throughly when I have the time but in the meantime, I just wanted to say congrats to you, Marylin and I'm at a similar state in my life.

It's hard to figure out the boundaries with people when you're in a vulnerable state. defining that will help a lot. I'm working on mine.

I just posted a thread about how I finally see that this is a Recovery (copying from the other thread)...
My Therapist and I figured out that I have been in and out of toxic relationships for about 17 years. This includes only two Long-Term Relationships ( Toxic Partner No. 1 was a full on Narcissist. Toxic Partner No. 2 had borderline traits and was verbally abusive) but there was very little 'single' time in between and I didn't do any serious dating (and one of those that I did date was a Narcissist as well.)

I was always still absorbed with Toxic Partner No. 1 while 'single' and well up into my LTR with Toxic Partner no 2.

In short, I've never taken the time to truly recover. I realize now why this is so hard. I'm actually making a very holistic Whole-life change. Like someone who's been addicted- I guess - I'm recovering from co-dependency and toxic partners. Breaking the pattern in abusive partners is a kind of bad-drug and self-abuse recovery.

Maybe it's an obvious thing but for some reason this never clicked with me.