Scared to fall in love

My father passed two years ago and he had schizophrenia as well as a slew of other mental illnesses and his inability to function became my job to take care of him. Yes, I had my mother’s help and she helped for awhile but then she and my father got divorced because she could no longer handle him and his illness. They got divorced and for the longest time she wanted nothing to do with him. My father to say the least was emotionally abusive, and I took it because he was sick and he was scared. So, it wasn’t necessarily his fault, half the time he didn’t even really have a complete grasp on who he was. So I didn’t blame him, but nonetheless it caused damage and pain. Now, I am in a relationship with a man in the navy, we are both young and realize this. We’ve been friends for almost five years now, and we’ve been together for almost a year now. He is the yin to my yang, I can be high strung, get anxious, at times am highly emotional, and over think just about everything. He on he other hand is calm, cool and collected at all times. He too had a less than ideal childhood, not necessarily the same as mine because there wasn’t really any mental illness in his family. But he understands what it is like to grow up without a dad really present in your life. My dad was there physically but emotionally he was gone, he had been gone for the majority of my life. I am scared though, I am scared that I am too broken, I am not whole enough for this guy. He’s nice to me, he seemingly has his life together, and I don’t. He seems so normal, whereas I, I know the evil that lurks in the world. I know how easily it is for relationships to fall apart and I’ve seen first hand what illness, drug addiction, etc does to a relationship. I worry that I am not good enough for this guy, he has been my closest male friend for years and practically knows me just as well as I know myself. But I find myself always waiting for the other shoe to drop similarly to how I always felt as a child.

**Tell him how you feel. You may be suffering form PSTD. I also do-when youre caring for someone for years-waiting for the other shoe to drop, it can cause all kinds of havoc in your system. Im in therapy for this now. maybe that would also help you get over a lot of things.
You are certaintly good enough! If this person is a good friend ( as you say ) he will listen :panda_face: **

I have been in therapy for years, since I was a little girl actually.I am suffering from ptsd but it becomes hard to share this with people because my friends tend to think that the only people that suffer from ptsd are people that have been in some sort of horrific incident - war, car crash, gun shoot out, etc. None of the tend to think that dealing with my father and everything that can with that could ever amount to real ptsd. I’m an undergrad and so my friend group tends to think of Cristinia Yang or Own Hunt from Grey’s Anatomy is what real ptsd looks like, and since I’ve never laid on the floor of a fictitious O.R. floor then I surely can’t be sick.

In the movie “Vanity Fair” this one guy says, “The only thing worth a damn in this world is loving someone and having them love you.” That said, relationships can be tricky, but this guy seems like a keeper to me. Red signs in a relationship are - has he ever tried to manipulate you? Does he ever have unreasonable expectations? I wouldn’t be too reluctant to get with this guy. If it’s a good relationship the problems will work themselves out. If not, at least you tried.

No, he hasn’t ever tried to manipulate me, he really is always looking out for my best interest. I’m just afraid that I’m too broken for him. That I am a broken person while he is whole, and that while I’m trying to put myself together he’ll get bored or tired of waiting around for me. That he will realize it is too hard loving someone who is still trying to figure out how to love herself.

I think you’re overthinking. You probably wouldn’t be hurt by a rejection from a bad boy, but if a sincere, nice guy rejected you it would hurt. What you need to do is decide if you love this guy. If you fall in love with a bad boy you will probably get hurt a lot worse. It would be tragic if you decided you were unworthy of being loved. That might start a terrible pattern in your life.

You’re doing what I did for the longest time. I’m engaged to a wonderful man who does nothing but look out for me and help me. The thing you have to remember is that he chose you for a reason. We’re all broken whether because of something inside us, something that has been done to us, or both. He’s getting something out of this whether it’s you smile, the way you light up when he does something special for you, or maybe he just like’s taking care of you. I know I like making C smile. I enjoy doing ‘cute’ things (or things that I think are cute or funny) for him.

He’s broken too. I assure you of that. We all are.

There is no way of me knowing this and it’s definitely a way out on a limb guess here but if he’s in the military that might have something to do with it. He has to be hard at work all the time. He has to discipline the people below him and take it from the people above him. I think that his friends from work must all pretty macho so it must be nice to come home to someone who is gentle and feminine.