This is all excellent and I am glad to hear it! Both men and women with interesting childhoods feel compelled to dominate and eat up the time of other people. It makes them feel wanted and this is important to them. This isn't healthy in the long run and it sounds like you've realised that.

As I said to SC below, relationships aren't the measure of success or failure - there's nothing inherently wrong with either being in a couple, a throuple, or single... success is learning from each interaction and applying that learning to your own life. Failure is repeating the same unhappy pattern.

If a relationship begins for you now, then it sounds like it will be an equal partnership with clear boundaries... because it seems like you don't need it to feel validated and you won't get lured into codependency. You are a whole person willing to share your time, not half a person waiting to be slotted into the psychological gaps of another.

More power to you. Always good to read the successful learning. :o)