Am I protecting myself from further heartbreak?

I'm eighteen, nearly nineteen and I have been in one serious relationship. All my life I have been emotionally played with. My first love when I was sixteen broke me by sleeping with my best friend and nearly getting pregnant with his baby. More recently my recent relationship with my now ex girlfriend. We got together on the 7th November and I was working 75+ hour weeks only being able to see her on weekends, at first she was ok with this. Then she started to get a bit lazy and not putting effort into travelling. We both live in the same city. On the 11th December we were going to see a film and she was going to meet me there. I got all dressed up, casually smart, then as I went to walk out the door, my phone went off. I received a text from her saying "I can't come tonight, I can't get to the cinema. Sorry." She said this despite being 10 minutes away and being fully able to ride on the motorbike there. My heart sunk because I was in pain, tired and exhausted from the manual weeks week I did. That week I worked around 70 hours and was working overtime the next day. She wouldn't put effort into seeing me so I saw her once or twice before Christmas then not again. I decided for the best to break it off on the 29th December. She apparently was really upset that I ended things but a week later her best friend told me that she was in another relationship already. Which made me thing whether she was seeing this other person behind my back.

More recently I've met someone i'm absolutely comfortable with. Her family love me, I spend a lot of time round their house, I get on with her brother and sister and her parents. When I'm round their house, I treat it like my own. However, she wants me to commit and start the relationship, but I feel I cannot physically commit. We're always arguing and fighting (not physically, but verbally) She has her own issues, as do I. In fact I have quit a bit of baggage.

I've been thinking what is stopping me from committing and I've come to a conclusion to what it may be. When I was a child, my father kept promising us things (I have 2 brother 1 sister) he kept promising he'd take me out, that we'd do something. Only 3 times did he keep those promises. Now I've not heard from him since I was fourteen. Could he be the key to my commitment issues?

I want my own family sometime, wife, kids, house etc of my own. I would be happy to get in a relationship but I don't want to hurt the person I am with therefore refusing to commit.

Any help or opinion I would appreciate greatly.

Thanks,
Benjii

If you are in love with her, you will naturally want to commit. Doesn't sound that way to me. You are not committing because you have been hurt emotionally in the past by your exs who were not faithful to you and by your father. You know how it feels to be left disappointed when a person fails to be faithful to their commitment. You don't wish to do that to this new girl. You don't want to be that person who hurts others. So you are not committing for those two reasons, you are not yet in love with her so that means you might not stay around and you don't want to hurt her like how you were hurt in the past. That's how I see it.

Thanks Bonfire, that does seem quite plausible. You're right, I don't want to hurt this new girl, I care for her, even if it is just as a friend I don't want to ruin what we have. I've told her no matter what happens we're staying friends so we're not losing each other as friends. Thank you so much for your reply, it's greatly appreciate.

I would suggest going to see a therapist to talk this over. Not that you have mental issues or anything, but just the fact that you have already psychoanalyzed yourself and are wondering if your father's behavior has caused you to view relationships and trust in certain ways means that there is probably something to it. Therapy will help give you methods for working through those thoughts.

Good luck.

Thank you Devon, I will consider it.