Dear N:

The advantage of being in the pit (“It’s like a downhill spiral and this is the pit”) is that you can relearn about people and life, relearn a whole  lot.  I am still in this very process.

An example  of relearning  in my life:  you wrote that you know that your friends are happy because during a summer vacation, they were  “gushing about boyfriends and new apartments and  houses and stuff”- the happiness you witnessed was their talking about relationships that in practice may be full of trouble a lot of the time,  but during the vacation, they talk and get excited talking. See the difference?

Same with apartments and  houses, the  happiness you saw was in the talking. Are  they happy when  they pay the bills, when the  mortgage interest goes up unexpectedly or when  they hear their neighbors playing loud music etc.?  The happiness you saw was in the talking/ the gushing.

And now  for the rest of your recent post, you wrote: “I  was in relationships in title, meaning.. they called me their girlfriend but they didn’t  care much about how  I felt to really  listen and  understand where I’m coming from with problems… I don’t  want to  be a buzzkill. I  don’t really rely on them when I’m feeling down, just when I’m neutral or  feeling okay”- we relive our childhoods. In context  of your parents, your title  was daughter, but they did not “really listen to me… instead of recognizing there’s something that upsets me they  just wonder ‘why focus on it…” (quote from last year thread).

So you interacted with  your parents when you were neutral or okay, not when you felt  down, best  you could; you adjusted to them, and you behave ever since the same adjusted way with others.

You wrote about  your family members, currently: “they get kind of  annoyed with it so I get it out in spurts and then try to stay cool and collected most of the time”- what you shut down and  put away, your genuine feelings that annoyed  your parents and were a buzzkill to them, those feelings don’t stay put away. It  is in their nature  to come  “out in spurts”, to escape their prison from time to time.

Regarding guys, or dating possibilities, I have  no doubt  you need a  man who will  listen to you, who will be interested  in hearing you, not annoyed. A man with whom you can share all your feelings without locking away  the potentially annoying/ buzzkills.

Problem is, even if you do come across a man  who wants to hear the locked-in feelings,  it will be very difficult for you to let  them out  in an easy flow. You are too used to push them down and … watch them helplessly coming out  in spurts, like magma erupting from a  volcano, the pressure having to ease.

So it will take effort and practice to express all, to not be  afraid to do so, with a man interested in listening.

anita