Dear Elle:

You are welcome.

“I have a hard time putting myself out there and making true connections with people (outside my immediate family)”- upon first reading it reads like you mean to say that you do have “true connections” with members of your immediate family members, but that you are unable to make such true connections with other people. Such first understanding fits with: “And yes, apart from a short blip, the majority of my life I’ve been single”.

About the reason you’ve been single, you wrote: “As much as I’d love to have a significant other, the thought is very anxiety-provoking and stressful to me. Putting myself in that kind of situation is scary for me to consider”.

On second or third reading of the first sentence I quoted above, I figure that your connections with your mother and father when you were a child were “very anxiety-provoking and stressful to (you)”, and this is why the thought of re-experiencing that is so scary for you to consider.

I am not referring to your post childhood relationship with your father, reads like it greatly improved. I don’t know anything about your current relationship with your mother. In your relationships with your parents having been very anxiety- provoking, I am referring to your first decade or so relationships with each one and both.

anita