Dear Daniel:

You are welcome. This is what I figure this morning: your parents have been in the habit of over-reacting to non-positive events in your life/ to your low moods, getting very stressed and unhappy, and they either over-react to positive occurrences in your/ to your elevated moods, feeling hopeful and happy, or you are afraid that they will over-react to these and end up getting disappointed, stressed and unhappy.

You adjusted to your parents’ over-reacting by under-acting, that is: you appear neutral, best you can, stable, predictable, laid back, not low and not high, somewhere in the middle. The idea behind this adjustment is that the more stable you are, the less there is for them to over-react to. This adjustment makes you non-spontaneous and (for lack of a better word) boring in the context of a romantic relationship.

Here is evidence that your parents are overreacting: “Basically I think I have always had a degree of anxiety coming from my parents as they can be stress heads… they are natural worriers about their kids/life in general and they so much want what’s best for me and my siblings that I guess they can be overly invested in our lives… sometimes how much they actually care is almost a bit suffocating as I feel like if I choose the wrong partner or make a wrong move ultimately I will let them down… I think my parents sometimes see the emotions I may be going through or the disappointment I may be going through they really feel it & live it“.

Here is evidence of how you adjusted to their overreacting: “Basically the feeling is like this silly sort of analogy… I am like a book you pick up, read the blurb and the review and it looks pretty good nothing wrong with it at all, you start reading and have a good impression of the story but eventually it bores you and you put it down & never got back to it… making people comfortable/laugh & being laid back… do women feel just a down to earth guy who seems stable is boring?”.

You asked me sometime along the way: “Do you think that I need to be more alpha male or whatever the term is to maintain a girls interest, do women feel just a down to earth guy who seems stable is boring?“- I don’t think that trying to be more of an alpha male is a solution. I think trying to be less laid back, less predictable; more spontaneous, and more alive: more reactive to your emotions is the way to go. In other words: do some undoing of the adjustment I mentioned.

You wrote: “I sort of feel like I am responsible for other people’s feelings as well and have to fake how I feel“-do you fake feeling less so to minimize over-reactions in others?

I am guessing that you do what everyone does: projecting our parents into romantic interests, and in your case, expecting the woman you are dating to over-react if you.. do not under-act. Does this make sense to you?

anita