Quote Originally Posted by psteve
This may actually be the root of the problem...
Stick with weed. :jointsmile:
Agreed. I think the main issue here is making poor choices personally, rather than a relationship issue.

When I was in college, I was dating a 40 year old. For YEARS. It was a nice relationship- he was never ANYTHING but respectful to me- but looking back, I know that the relationship may have been fine, but my reasons for being in it WEREN'T.

When my parents got divorced when I was 5, my mother moved the family far away from my father, and I always had the feeling, however illogical, that he had abandoned us.

As an adult, with 10 years' perspective on that time in my life I can say that I was NOT in a healthy place emotionally and REALLY should have been talking to a therapist THEN, rather than waiting until now to do it. I was stubborn and was like, 'what the hell, I'm having a good time', without looking honestly at WHY I was attracted to older men to begin with.

In the long run, that relationship hurt me in pretty serious ways- from beating myself up over having fallen into the father-figure trap knowing I'm too smart for that, to always looking for men with whom I CAN'T have a real relationship because that was the precedent I set myself in my teens, to being depressed over having wasted all that time when my friends were having meaningful relationships with guys their own age, to whom they are now married and stable, and here's me, struggling to pay a mortgage on a single salary, single, and going, SHIT. Dating isn't all that much fun in your 30s.

May I also venture that fellas like P4B are hard to come by. [Psycho, you may feel free to edit, rearrange, and read in whatever puns you like into that statement ] And that there's a WORLD of difference between 18 and 24.