Hi Ladies,

I’ve gone through the wiki and a lot of the posts regarding love bombing but don’t see a lot regarding long term relationships..

I started dating my current BF very quickly after ending things with a very nasty ex. He was mentally abusive, he almost had every red flag you could imagine.. it took me quite a long time to end things as I was the ‘cool girl’.

My current boyfriend knew a little bit about him and when we started dating things progressed very quickly. I met his parents after 2 months, he said i love you in the first month. He said he wanted to marry me in the first month maybe.. fast forward two years, and i’m more and more regretting not taking things slower.

The only reason that things went as slow as I could is because I have an ‘excuse’ to take things slow. My parents are religious and from a completely different cultural background. I want to be able to respectfully introduce him to them ONCE we plan to get married. In my culture this is completely normal, I did introduce him to my siblings and other friends quickly to compromise because he started to get anxious.

The things that make me question him are the following: - He compliments me a lot, but I always get this feeling that its because HE wants to hear a compliment back. And when he doesn’t, he gets a bit upset. - He says that he loves me a lot, and sort of gets upset when I don’t say it back all the time. - as I said he quickly started saying I love you, and introduced me very quickly to everyone. He also said to everybody that i’m his soulmate. - when he’s insecure about something I also need to be dragged.. for example when he shaved his beard a lot of his friends were not so nice to him and started laughing and started joking about future children. In which he dragged me along with him, commenting about my face and how he hopes that they would not get X from me. - He is overweight and finally started working out, I give him plenty compliments but it never seems to be enough. He will compliment himself and would expect me to agree. He also says things like ‘you and I still have a long way to go’ in regards to fitness. When in reality i’m actually quite fit..

He mentions that when things are not extremely good with us, his whole body seems to be reacting. He gets nervous, feels bad and anxious. When we have fights(we don’t have a lot of fights) he reacts very heavily, he complains to his parents(which is fine) but then they start mentioning it to me, and I do not try to include them in these discussions.

I sometimes feel like a piece in his puzzle, like I’m holding back his plans by always trying to slow things down.

But the thing is, we also have a lot of good times. We laugh with each other, we can have interesting discussions. He does try to include me in his life and his house. He can be really sweet and it seems genuine but just very intens at times.

I don’t know if I’m just looking too much for red flags because of my ex.. or that I should be grateful.

Tldr: My bf can be intense with his emotions and I feel like a cold hearted bitch at times because i’m more reserved and cautious.