Defining Love

I'm finally home, and glad to be home, even if I am home alone.  It is good to have autonomy, which I really do lose at my parents, with no car and no public transit and just life.

I've come to the conclusion that my dad and I define love differently.

For me, when I love someone, I want them to be as happy as I can.  If I do something they don't like, I get kind of frantic and hysterical, trying to make it right.  I'm meeting a guy from CM for drinks tomorrow and he wants me to pick out a place and I'm so flummoxed, because I so want to pick a place he'll like, and I have no clue!  (This is not a potential partner--he lives farther away than Bobby; we've been corresponding for a year, casually, and he is in town, so we'll have drinks, but nothing serious.)

My dad feels like being kind and careful with me is currently in conflict with his sense of inner, genuine self. This is so foreign a concept to me, I can't even understand it.

So how the hell do I deal with it?  How can I have a relationship with my dad where I have to do the taking-care-of me, rather than expecting him to try not to be mean.  (I should say, that he has said, at times, that he really doesn't want to criticize me, but he will mess up; at other times he seems to be really resistant to agreeing to censor himself.  I have told him that if I have kids (which I will probably try and do in 3 years), he cannot be critical of them and he has to follow through on what he says he'll do.  No telling them a drawing is lousy and no promising a trip to Disney Whatever and then changing his mind.  And he gets that for kids.  But he didn't get that for me when I was a kid and he doesn't get that for me now.)

I got a book on the "High Sensitive Person" (which is boring!) and hopefully I can look at some coping strategies.

But the other fact is that I'm not planning on going to my parents' house for Christmas next year.  I don't know where I'll go.  Maybe Bruges. Maybe I'll have someone I want to spend it with. But not my parents'.  And I really don't know when I'll see my dad again.  It may be a while.  He is not in my calendar for the next 12 months, and I seem to be scheduling my vacations out pretty far.  This last year, we got together 6 times (sometimes just for a weekend).  But I'm really thinking a break is in order.  We can love each other from afar for a bit.  I'm hoping this is a stage.  But he couldn't even be consistent with me in therapy.  The last session felt like it really erased much of what we'd done.

So I guess it is on me to protect myself.  Exactly what I'm so tired of doing.