Good boundaries or plain avoidance. I can't tell. Please help.

[GreenManOnTheWall]

I started seeing someone a couple of months ago. We bubbled as neither of us was already in one.

Something doesn't feel right and I don't know if its because my boundaries are getting better or whether its because I'm just avoidant but something just doesn't feel right.
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He's quite complimentary. Not OTT but he has said nice things about me. They're nice to hear at the time but afterwards it just doesn't sit right with me. He said last night that there are many things he thinks are wonderful about me but that just feels insincere. I'm not curious about what they are. I just changed the conversation. I don't want to hear it.

I feel like I'm on a girlfriend conveyor belt and he's saying nice things about me because that's what you do and he's said it all 1000 times rather than because he means it (they include personal to me compliments and not just generic ones). I feel I'm in a mental line up with his exes. It feels a bit contrived.

We had a brief exchange last night when he made an obviously joke compliment and I joked back it was my best quality which led onto a brief chat about what we did actually like best about ourselves. He told me a couple of genuine things but then added that he often received compliments on his smile and his cock.

I wouldn't tell him about compliments previous men had paid me if they had. I don't know if it was a joke. Or if he was fishing for a compliment or if he was putting me in my place. He's only been lovely to me.

Am I picking up on something or am I avoidant?

Wrt your heading I don't think that this is about boundaries, this is about you not being able to properly recognise your emotions and therefore not being able to listen to your feelings. So more to do with you lacking emotional intelligence (please don't take offence). Your feelings are there to guide you, and boundaries follow on. Boundaries are you putting in place what you want and what is appropriate wrt your feelings. It would help you to be more self aware and more aware of your real feelings, I think.

I have to tell you I would read his behaviour as him being really just into the sex. "women compliment me on my smile and my cock" would make me burst out laughing, and I would probably enjoy banter in the pub but would assume that he did not want or could not have the sort of relationship I'd want with a man. Him referring to your porn shoes is a bit like referring to your boots as fuck me boots. I might shag him all things being equal but I wouldn't be expecting a genuine relationship out of it. But check it out with a male friend who would be honest with you, see what they say. My male friends used to interpret things for me, and they were quite good at predicting things. Could you tell your male friend what he is saying to you and see what he thinks?

Actually scrub that about checking with a male friend. It was a brain aberration, it is terrible advice. Far better for you to learn to trust your own feelings about it.

I stand by what what I said about you learning about yourself more. Also that his porn shoes and complimented dick comments would lead me to believe that he only wanted or capable of something fun and casual, but it is not possible to be sure just from your posts, you would need to be the judge of that.

Trust your feelings!

I'm 46.

Like I say, a lifetime of this. Too much now to even begin to unpick.

Like I say, a lifetime of this. Too much now to even begin to unpick.

I think that the fact that you start threads like this means you are interested in unpicking things, though, as you seek advice about unpicking things. It is your choice how you want to deal with things, but it is worth bearing in mind that there will be many, many people, probably most of the adults around you, who have been in your shoes, who have had experiences which led to low self esteem and difficulties with intimacy, and the evidence out there is that it is possible to unpick things and learn to deal and process and move on at any time, if you wanted to do that. But it is very much your choice.

You could live that many years again, there isn't too much to unpick if doing so helps.

I'm assuming he's not replied.

If you want a meaningful, fulfilling relationship with someone else in the future you should look at what bits to unpick first. I'd say, although I appreciate it's the thread that runs all through, your sense of self worth.

If the fun, commitment free sex gives you more pleasurable experience and joy that within a relationship there's no reason you can't go out and (safely!) get as much as that as you want. But that is likely to dry up before chances for a commited relationship will

*If I have feelings or am supposed to be a girlfriend, I feel like they hold the power. They have the power to hurt me. They might be thinking things about me that would upset me if I knew.

If it's just sex, then I don't care what they think about me and I assume that if the sex wasnt what they wanted, they wouldn't bother.

I'm far more confident when it's just about sex. I flirt more; I'm a more 'sexual' being. I feel that at least then we're both being honest with each other.*

I recognise all of this - I think it's a much more common way of thinking than is really talked about. Self-defence was at the heart of it, I knew I could please men and myself in the moment but I thought that if they ever really got to know me they'd run a mile.

A lightbulb moment for me was talking to a male friend and realising how much of that - the fear of being vulnerable and being hurt - was behind a lot of men's approaches to casual sex as well.

*A lifetime of stuff, tbh.

It's one of the reasons I haven't been for therapy. There so much. And it's all intertwined like old balls of wool.*

That's the reason you should go to therapy.

This is a bit "do as I say not as I do" because I haven't been to nearly as much therapy as I should have, and insofar as I've got out of all of the above thinking it's been by weird accident and having the right people in my life. People who became friends who had a similarly fucked-up family background, who taught me it wasn't something to be ashamed of or that people would judge. DP who was emotionally as cool as I was (so I didn't feel overwhelmed) but who also made it clear to me he loved me way before I realised I loved him. I actually remember making a very rational decision in my head to give being vulnerable in a proper relationship a go, almost like a scientific experiment, because it was something I hadn't allowed myself to do before and I wanted to see what it was like, and it felt safe to do so. So it wasn't that I necessarily learned to reconcile sex and being loving, it was that I rationally realised I had to if I wanted to be in a LTR, and then rationally decided to see if I could. I realise how strange it sounds written down!