Can’t make sense of it

[pastelshades]

Now that I think of it I can’t remember a time, even as a very young child, that I didn’t feel achingly lonely. I think I found ways to distract myself, with varying success. But I remember the emptiness gnawing at me constantly.

In those days we lived in the tropics and the nights were deep black and boiling like a thick soup. Aged 8 I once woke at midnight and felt this awful suffocating sensation, just this inkling that I was completely alone in the world, a sort of desolation. My parents were asleep, as were my younger brothers. I walked around the apartment in the darkness and felt I was totally alien to other people, another species, and that even if I woke my parents I couldn’t explain to them the dread and horror I felt. Maybe it was shame, I don’t know. It was just this nebulous murky feeling and I was afraid.

It seems I’ve been feeling this way ever since, even though I’ve learned to tune it out slightly. I did what was expected of me, excelled in school and went on to university. Landed a successful job. But interpersonally I was in hell throughout and still am. Rationally, I have some idea why, and yet there’s still a part of me that can’t make sense of it. It’s only now, after almost 5 months of suffering from long covid chest pain, cut off from normal life, that I feel that part making itself known. The emotional pain is so acute, it feels as though I’ve been given a kind of crystal clarity into how dysfunctional my life has been, but in a subtle and barely noticeable way.

I knew as a child that if my father approved of me and was distracted by my good qualities I could do what I wanted in the background without his knowledge. As a child I loved the feeling of lying, cheating and stealing, all the while convincing my father that I was dutiful and well-behaved, a star student. If he ever found out what I got up to in secret there would be screaming and enraged beatings and having my mouth washed out with soap. This somehow made it more appealing to go against him, even secretly. I felt I had to do it, to win some way. I loathed him yet adored him, craved his attention and did everything he asked with military precision. I was an expert at predicting his moods and doing what he wanted. He rewarded me with money and gifts and holidays abroad. The older I got the more confused I became, and the more I hated myself. It felt like I didn’t exist at all except as an object to serve him, and he didn’t even really want to know me at all.

I once made the mistake of expressing disinterest in my schoolwork to him. I was 11 years old and being relentlessly bullied at school, to the point where I was self-harming and almost suicidal. He flew into a screaming rage and called me horrible names. There were many incidents like this where I’d accidentally say or do something he didn’t like and he’d completely lose his mind with rage and scream at me, his eyes mad and bulging and the veins throbbing in his head. It terrified me, I lived in a state of constant fear. The stress gave me a chronic stomachache to the point where my parents had to take me to hospital. I remember seeing something in the news about a little girl who was so afraid of her alcoholic father that she would hide in cupboards to avoid him. I often wished I could do the same. That said, he wasn’t always raging. He’d play with us and joke around and you’d almost forget what he could be like.

I feel that the terror, hurt and dysfunction of a childhood with an easily enraged, controlling tyrant of a father has done me immeasurable damage and left me hopelessly confused about relationships and men. I am almost 29 years old now and have never had a relationship longer than 6 months. I tried to make it work with men who pursued me but it ended badly each time, and the emotions accompanying the failing relationships were so painful it felt like being set alight. Sometimes it was so bad I felt like dying. It made me want to abandon all efforts to look for someone to be with, it just didn’t seem worth it. Without dating I felt sane and level-headed, not endlessly consumed by a whirlwind of negative emotions. So I avoided it until I was pursued again.

Somehow, the men I wound up dating all resembled my father. They were distant, mercurial and only seemed to want me as some kind of prop. Or they thought I was someone I wasn’t. Something in me immediately tried to be what I thought they wanted. Occasionally though, I’d feel these waves of pure hatred wash over me, hatred for them. I just felt this disgust and dislike of them, their habits and characters. I realise now I didn’t like any of them really. I wasn’t attracted to their personalities or, in some cases, even their looks. I still don’t know what that feels like, to be properly attracted to a person. I ask myself why I dated men I disliked and I don’t know. It has happened again and again throughout my life. I’m starting to question whether I like men at all, or if I’m just gay and in denial. It occurs to me I have no idea who I really am and what I want.. I think the way I was forced to simultaneously hold wildly contrasting opinions and feelings about my father all whilst being made to deny his abuse has led me to choose men who display the same traits and also elicit the truest of those feelings in me.

I really hate my father deep down and feel such animosity towards him for treating me the way he did when I was a child. He’d say such evil things to me that messed with my head. He couldn’t bear it if I wanted attention and he wanted to be alone, he’d snap angrily at me to go away. He told me I was stupid, fat and ugly, and a cow for saying and doing things he didn’t like.

I worry so much that I can’t disassociate this negativity and fear of my father from men as a whole and from relationships, and am doomed to repeat the same patterns. With one exception, every man I have dated since my early twenties has turned out to be some kind of liar or creep. The most recent was someone I met online and was friends with for a year before he made a move on me.

Everything about him seemed fine at first, except for his distant behaviour. The stupid thing was, I never really liked him or wanted to date him, I was just so horribly lonely by that point that I thought I might as well. It went smoothly for the first few months, purely because I did whatever he wanted without complaint. But I noticed early on if things didn’t go his way, like if a waitress made a mistake with his order, he would angrily snap at her. Or if he forgot to pack the shoes he wanted, he sulked like a petulant child. And more often than not he refused to spend time with me, saying he needed “me time”, instead spending it with his two adult brothers and their mutual friends. After a few months he didn’t seem that interested in sex, or in me really.

Then came the frequent pressure to attend his friends’ large social events as a couple and to spend time with his family. When one weekend I declined because I wasn’t feeling well, he began a campaign of silent treatment, withholding affection and passive aggression, at one point snapping angrily at me about nothing. When I confronted him about his behaviour he lied, gaslit and blamed me. He accused me of saying things I never said. He was nothing like he was when we first dated. It came out that he had wanted me so as to fit in with his friends and brothers, who’d all been in longterm relationships for years. He only wanted someone to show off and make him look good, for me to slot into his life effortlessly and obediently, without requiring too much attention or commitment from him. I broke things off over the phone and blocked him. The whole thing was horribly painful, even though on a level I knew we weren’t compatible and it wouldn’t last. I just really wanted someone to share my life with and I couldn’t understand why he refused to compromise on even the most mundane things. It’s clear now he was barely invested in me at all, and people like that don’t care about compromise. Really he was just like my father, who I knew didn’t care for me outside of how you’d care for an object in your possession. This man never wanted to know me nor liked me for me. But I somehow thought we could continue dating; I hated my disinterested father yet still we maintained a (distant) relationship.

I can’t help but feel I’m doomed to repeat these types of experiences with every man I date. I know there’s something wrong with me for it to be this way, to feel such longing for closeness, yet relief in avoiding relationships because that way I can avoid feeling the awful disgust, anxiety, shame and self-loathing being close to a man inevitably triggers in me.
And yet the longer I spend alone, the more horrible the ache is, and the loneliness and bitterness I feel when seeing happy couples disgusts me. I want what they have, but it feels impossible for me. I know I have to try, but it confuses me. I just can’t make sense of it.

[greendreamdays]

Hi pastelshades,

I've never been able to make heads or tails of healthy relationships either. I'm not even sure what it would look or feel like. The first and only person I've ever dated was someone who very intensely pursued and love-bombed me. I never had that kind of attention before and I didn't realize I was starving for it. I had never felt so loved, it was like I was dying of thirst and she was an oasis in the desert. I wasn't romantically or sexually attracted to her. We just seemed to fit. It wasn't until many months into the relationship that I started waking up to the fact that she was covertly abusive in much the same way my parents were. It was very confusing for me because when I was with her it just felt right. There were no alarm bells, or if there were they were immediately silenced by my own self-doubt and insecurity of perceiving alarm bells as accurate indications of danger. I knew my internal compass was out of whack, so of course I would be afraid of being close to someone. I just had no idea that I might be afraid of being close to someone BECAUSE they were dangerous or otherwise unhealthy and manipulative not just because I was unnecessarily self-protective.

I haven't trusted my judgement about relationships since. I am attracted to very few people so when it happens I am extremely suspicious and make no moves towards them until I learn more about them. In my experiences attraction, especially intense attraction does not necessarily indicate grounds for a healthy relationship. But that's as far as I have gotten. I don't trust my judgement and I trust other people even less. I sometimes want to fling myself at any person who seems remotely interested in me and kind but I do the opposite instead. I pursue no one and save myself the pain and uncertainty. Both extremes I'm trying to navigate. I'm sorry I don't have any answers or words of wisdom for you. I feel very much in the same boat. I would like to be in a relationship at some point, I just don't trust myself yet to be able to discern who is a healthy potential partner or to cope with the highs and lows of a relationship. I don't pretend this is a good or healthy thing but it is so much easier to me to be alone than the agony and chaos of a relationship.

[pastelshades]

hi greendreamdays,

Thank you for your post. Though I'm sorry you've had similar experiences, it means a lot to know I'm not the only one who feels this way. You put into words things I've felt before in relationships but never been able to express or even been consciously aware of.

I have also experienced lovebombing from partners, many times and you're right, even if you're not attracted to them it feels like having some infinite thirst quenched. I know now it's either an abuser's tactic or the behaviour of an unstable person, not proof that someone genuinely likes me, but I still can't help but be drawn into it. It gives me a weird sort of high, having such intense attention. I think it must be something to do with my parents being emotionally absent/neglectful. I never got what I needed emotionally or felt "seen" by them, so when a stranger pays attention to me in this unhealthily focused way, I feel almost "loved" and like I can't get enough. And yet, every relationship I've ever had that involved lovebombing ended with them behaving completely opposite; showing themselves to be sadistic abusers who were deliberately cold, cruel, manipulative and withholding. It's horribly confusing because it feels so normal and comfortable being with these people. It's like waking into a living nightmare finding out who they really are beneath the false niceties.

I can relate to the internal compass thing. It upsets me that I can avoid letting anyone close because I fear intimacy, yet when people who actually mean me harm lovebomb, I somehow justify letting them in. It makes it impossible to tell what's appropriate behaviour and what's not, I don't have an internal guide or set of values about such things. I only have vague memories of advice therapists and friends gave to me over the years. I learned from my father that I was to let people treat me as they wished. I find it very difficult to stand up for myself or assert any kind of boundaries.

I feel the same, on the rare occasion I meet someone I'm attracted to, I do nothing to indicate that to them. It's almost as though I assume that the very fact I find them desirable means there must be something "wrong" with them, and in the most recent case unfortunately, after observing his behaviour over a period of time, I was proven right. I think part of it is related to avoidance- if I associate with people who are emotionally unavailable or wounded in some way, there's no threat of real intimacy and I feel "safe". It's also familiar.

I often think about relationships; those of my friends, family, acquaintances and even strangers. I wonder how they managed to find someone. How do they make it work? How do they do it without feeling completely and utterly deranged by the feelings evoked in them? And if they feel in any way like I do and still maintain a long term partnership, how do they enjoy it? I find it so hard to imagine myself in a relationship that I genuinely want to be in; that is, one that doesn't feel like a chore or a form of spiritual torture, or both. I realise I have felt this way since I was a teenager, but since recent life events, it suddenly seems to me deeply sad. I feel that I have to do something about it, even though the thought is terrifying. I don't want to be alone anymore, I don't want my life and happiness to be dictated to me by my parents' ignorance and cruelty. Why should I deprive myself of a chance at love because they couldn't face their own issues and projected their feelings of unworthiness onto me? There has to be someone kind and genuine who will like me for who I am and who is willing to work together to maintain a healthy relationship. Even though I don't really trust myself or other people, the loneliness is becoming so painful I can't bear it. Probably not the healthiest place to start dating from, but I'm trying to set up therapy beforehand. I want to be able to say to myself: even if it was painful and confusing, at least I tried.