Hi Brock,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and reading what you wrote, it sounds like your focus in the last few years has been on your family. The question I have is who do you confide in when things are not going well in your family? Sometimes when we place a lot of emphasis in one particular relationship (e.g. family, work, romance), it can put a lot of pressure on the relationship because your happiness becomes dependent on it. When that occurs, every minor issue becomes a big one and you become obsessive about everything that happens in the relationship, wondering what you can do to make it work. Eventually, the relationship will collapse under the weight of this pressure because the harder you push, the faster the other person will run. If you ever felt frustrated about being the one who does all the work in a relationship, you will know what a crappy feeling that is.

So rather than focusing on the relationship, a suggestion I have is to work on yourself. Cultivate friendship with other people as it provides an opportunity to debrief, get support and see things in a different perspective. Find your purpose so that you are not just playing through the mechanics of life. People that are deep into their passions and purpose are far more attractive than those that settles for mediocrity.

As the saying goes, the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. Here is a good article on this point:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/heidi-priebe/2015/09/the-most-important-relationship-in-your-life-that-youre-probably-not-paying-enough-attention-to/