Dear XenopusTex:

Congratulations for finding yourself less agitated and more soft spoken overall! And for realizing that the expressions of your “fiery temperament” may be the reason for her (anyone’s) withdrawal from you. Before you wrote that she is bi-polar like, that she is unstable, basically.. and she may very well be. Her withdrawal from you may be because of both, her issues and your expressed fiery temperament.

You wrote in your last post: “What I am trying to figure out is why others I know are successful in finding SO’s and I am not” – well, seems to me that the answer is in a recent post where you wrote: “I too expressed a disdain for people… Lived many years as a bitter person, ready to either lash out at people or just withdraw completely. I buried myself in diversions from dealing with people,” and in this post: “Now I can see that scaring someone. Perhaps that explains things.” Expressed anger, aggressiveness, hostility does scare people.

You wrote that your usual or permanent (?) facial expression is grave. Well this is far from an invitation to people to connect with you and coupled with your verbal expressed bitterness, that seals the deal for social isolation.

It is a good plan for you to indeed not become vulnerable and open to a whole lot of people, because they are likely to hurt you somehow. And that was indeed your childhood experience. So I repeatedly stressed the need to be selective with whom you open up to and the need to do it gradually with a selected few, one at a time, I suppose. You open up a bit, wait for a response. If the response is hurtful, unsupportive, you withdraw. If the response you get is empathetic, supportive, inviting, you open up a bit more. Then you wait etc.

Choose with whom and choose the timing and relax that grave face with just one person at a time, one to one. Bit by bit, and evaluate after every such bit. Then continue, with caution.

anita