My boyfriend and I have been together for over a year and a half. He is incredibly sweet and sensitive (sometimes annoyingly so). However, I feel like I will never be able to fully trust him. By this, I am not talking about my fear of him cheating on me; rather it is the fear of being taken for granted. Before we were together, we met and became friends. He was dating someone else at the time, but our connection was strong. Him and his "girlfriend" barely talked, touched, or even got along. It was apparent that there was no interest between them and there was nothing to define their relationship other than the "boyfriend/girlfriend" title itself. Even so, he continued to "be with" her for the next year; yet at the same time whispering me things that were suggestive of him and I being more than just friends. At that time, everyone knew I was crazy about him and made fun of me, discouraged me, and ridiculed me for it while he stood safely under the facade of only liking me "as a friend". I had faith in him and was constantly let down. The only reason we are together now is because I had threatened to not talk to him anymore because it hurt me. He promised to be with me, and after more hiding and faking to please the crowd, did.

Since we've been together, he has been like an angel to me. Always supportive, caring, compassionate, accomodating, and everything I sensed in his true character since the day that I met him. Everyone is so supportive of our relationship. His family loves me, my family loves him, and no one has ever seen either of us this happy. Even so, I feel like the rocky start of our relationship made it so I would forever have this poison within it; the poison that makes me feel insignificant, unwanted, and unworthy - all those feelings I had felt before we were together. The feelings I felt after a year of guessing what I really meant to him.

I had long thought that I had let go of these feelings, but since moving 6 hours away to a university, they recur more often and I end up saying things to my boyfriend that completely undermine all the wonderful, caring things he has done for me. He has been so patient with me after all of the hurtful things I've said in lieu of my insecurities. This in itself should be enough to convince me of his love, but why can't I shake these feelings of insignificance? Of being taken for granted? It sometimes get so bad that I start crying during making love and then I get scared of the thought of intimacy. It's like a constant paranoia.