Discovering my emotional problems through a relationship

Completely unrelated to finance, just needed somewhere to get this off my chest.

From a very early age - and from the few times I even saw my parents together - I knew that my parents were in a completely loveless marriage. My father had multiple affairs (that I knew about) and was never home. My mother was suicidal. She tried her best, and I really love her, but she was certainly not emotionally equipped to handle aspects of motherhood. As an example, she would say sometimes that she was going to go kill herself and then drive away - leaving me in the house alone for hours as a young child. Obviously that has deeply impacted me. She also still has a drinking problem which has been hard to see over the years. 

So, needless to say, my childhood had some very negative aspects. Still, many others had it worse growing up, and I’m lucky - for example - that finances were never a problem in my family due to my father’s job. None of that brief synopsis of my life was actually the point of this story. It was just to build up to something that happened a few days ago. 

I’m a sophomore in college now. In high school, I did not have any real romantic experiences. When I got to college, however, I quickly (within the first semester) got into a very serious relationship with a girl. This relationship moved very quickly, and by my second semester we were completely living together and spending almost all of our free time together. In many ways, it was great to be that close to someone so quickly. In many other ways, it probably was very unhealthy, ie we would promise each other that we would marry each other and spend our lives together and have kids etc etc. Anyways, as anyone reading can probably tell by now, we broke up like 2 days ago (friendly breakup, but initiated by her and not what I wished for). 

I’ve had terrible role models for love in my life. My mom literally told me that I should just cheat on my partners and not open up to them (not even joking about that) because "it's a worthless endeavor". I think part of the reason I became so obsessed with my girlfriend in the first place was because I wanted to prove that I could build a long-term relationship built on love, contrary to my parents, and she represented that (she was my first-love and it felt symbolic)

While the breakup is still fresh, and incredibly painful, this specific relationship is actually also not really what I wanted to write about. I think I’m a fine looking guy, and I know I’ll find other meaningful relationships in my life. But really my main concern is just how anxiously attached I know I get in relationships. 

A few weeks ago, someone was talking about psychological attachment styles in relationships. Never heard of it before, but it's clear in retrospect that I developed an extremely anxious attachment style. According to some random website that I just googled, it consists of “Low self-esteem, strong fear of rejection or abandonment, and clinginess in relationships”, which exactly describes how I am. I hate the idea of being clingy in relationships, but I am extremely clingy. I have a constant fear of rejection and virtually no confidence which prevents me from reaching out to people (my ex-gf asked me out and approached me first - I would not have ever made a move). I always need constant reassurance and affirmation to feel okay, and honestly being away from the person I’m dating stresses me out.

Needless to say, I’m kind of fucked emotionally. I want to be able to have normal relationships like my peers and not need my girlfriend to be my mother as well, but it’s incredibly difficult for me and I honestly question my ability to achieve that. 

I also want to be able to have a long-term relationship that actually succeeds where one or both partners don’t actively cheat on the other or hate each other after having kids (WSO is probably the wrong place for that haha). I question whether that’s even possible though. Yeah, everyone likes to say “oh 50% of marriages end in divorce”. But what percentage of the marriages that don’t end in divorce are actually just loveless, dried-up shells of relationships?

The hedonism of college was not and is not for me. And yes, I was a part of it for a little bit of time, but I just can’t do random meaningless hookups. I need someone to hold on to (or really someone to hold onto me). 

I’ve seen a psychiatrist on and off for years, and while it's helped in certain areas, this area really hasn’t improved.

I’m not looking for self-help, I honestly just needed a place to dump this. And actually it’s made me feel quite better just putting it into writing which is something I’ve never done before. 

Anyways, if you actually read to the end then thanks for listening.