There was no shortage of tough love...I definitely made demands and set deadlines, but the very fact that I had to push him like that was a testament to his passivity. I discovered that he was the kind of person who expected things to fall into place for him, for them to not be that difficult, and he saw himself as a victim of his circumstances. When I saw that, I began "the process" of breaking up.
I'm in a similar situation now where I'm dating someone who's in school, and probably will be for the next two years or so, but his personality is very assertive. Still, I don't want history to repeat itself. At about the same time I broke up with my ex, I also stopped being a martyr for my family members. Since then I've been pretty paranoid about not falling into that role again.
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