Dear all,

Thanks for being here. I’m a first-time poster and would appreciate some insight into my situation.

I’m 24 (an INFJ, if it helps), and I’ve been dating my long-distance boyfriend for a little more than a year. This is my first serious relationship, and I’ve learned a lot about myself and about the complexities of other people.

I’ve always been an extremely emotional people-pleaser, and I have an anxious-attachment style. These qualities were established in childhood experiences – I am repulsed by verbal conflict because I grew up in a volatile and emotionally violent household – and I’m currently trying to iron out in therapy. In general, I’m extremely quiet, shy, and a really really good listener, and I prefer to be in the background doing things to my own liking. But when it comes to making other people happy, I unfortunately put my desires aside and throw myself into helping them out. This attribute of mine has caused me more harm than good – I seek validation from others, constantly believe I’m not good enough, and listen to my own inner critic because I believe I deserve everything it’s saying.

I’m now in therapy trying to unravel these things, but practicing what my therapist asks me to work on – standing up for myself, saying what I need to say, and expressing my emotions outside the heat of the moment – has been a nightmare when trying to be vulnerable with my boyfriend. Because of my personal “people-pleaser” history, I began this relationship with a polished, if fairly bland, personality: I buried my emotions to seem “low-maintenance,” I went with my boyfriend’s plans rather than my own to avoid a “I didn’t really like that” comment, I agreed with his tastes to the point where I forgot what I liked to do, and I got angry at myself whenever I felt my manicured image slipping.

Now, I’m done with my passivity and am starting to embrace my personality and my ugly emotions more, but all the self-inflicted anger comes back during conflicts. Conflicts happen when I am triggered by something tiny my boyfriend does or says, causing me to explode. Bad feelings linger for days on my end because I don’t know how to explain what’s going on in my head in words, and I can’t let the feelings go. Early in the relationship, he used to get impatient and frazzled when I broke down, but now he’s become much better – just listening to me and comforting me when I cry and try to process what I’m feeling. He could definitely improve, though – he teases me a little about my emotional episodes (they happen around twice a month), and it bothers me – but I’ve brought this up to him, and I hope I’ll see some positive change there.

He’s shown no signs of leaving me, and his style of comforting has improved. Perhaps some part of how I feel is due to his teasing, but just saying “I feel bad” to my boyfriend requires hours of giving myself a pep talk. I feel horrible after saying how I feel, and I feel like a subpar human being that is unworthy of love, and that it’s understandable if he left me because who wants to be with this mess?

Finally, here are my questions: How can I love myself, flaws and emotions and all? And how can I stop overthinking everything I’m doing? I want to just go with the flow and be organic and relaxed, but I’ve been trying to be perfect for so long that I just can’t stop overanalyzing my every thought and action.

Thank you so much for reading!