Relationships should cause anxiety if you’re doing it right. By which I mean intimacy with someone outside of your control, an actual separate person, is a scary thing. Many people sidestep the anxiety by relating to an internalized image of the other instead
I’ve also learned to be choosy about my relationships. My friends are the people I feel very comfortable talking to and hanging around with, trust, and feel loyal to. I don’t spend time nourishing relationships with people who bore me, let me down, or behave in ways I really can’t endorse.
Being hurt does not make you right.
Remember that your senses are what you see, feel, hear, smell and taste. Don’t put your layer of interpretation on it. What did you see? I saw Y turn their back to me. That’s the fact. The interpretation is “Y is cutting me off” or “Y disapproves of me” which then sends you into alarm bells. Keep it to the facts. Say the facts. “You’re turning your back to me? Is something wrong?” Listen to what Y says. Trust that it’s the truth.
What if you took it as a valid question, and asked yourself about it with curiosity and gentleness, instead of jumping to judge yourself? Because obviously, there is an answer–there was something about this friendship that was so compelling, you still miss it years later. You wouldn’t be acting like this without a good reason. If you’re willing to actually ask yourself instead of trying to push that grief and longing away, the knot might loosen enough for you to untie it.
You mention life stress right now, and that might be a big hint as to why this ghost has come back to haunt you lately. Quite often if you find yourself longing for something that you don’t rationally want, it means there’s something emotional that you feel is missing from your life. It isn’t actually about the thing-you-are-longing-for; it’s about what’s going on in your life right now. It’s like feeling thirsty when you’re dehydrated, or craving food when you’re hungry.
So when you look back at the positive aspects of your relationship with Shauna, do you see them replicated in your life right now, or are they missing? Do you ever get to feel really special and important to someone, or like somebody really understands your sense of humour? Or is there someone in your life who’s dragging you down so you feel neglected and unappreciated?
This has totally been a challenge in my life. Not about fights in particular, but about living way way WAY too far up in my own head and then needing to deal with the disparity from “in my brain, which only I can see” vs “in real life, where everyone else lives.” I had imaginary conversations where I try to anticipate how things will go, consider possible ways a relationship could roll out, what my boss might want to say to me, and so on.
To say “this is just a thought” is not to say that the thought isn’t about something real. Obviously there are big global problems, and a great deal of apathy; a sense of worry or dismay is understandable. And if you are surrounded by people who just don’t seem to care, it adds a social dimension to the distress: “Am I crazy? Are they stupid? Why isn’t everyone worrying like I am?”
But when you call a thought a thought, when you recognize it for what it is, when you learn to co-exist with it, you discover that distress is sort of self-limiting.
I’d also like to suggest that your depression may be contributing to your angst on the subject. When I was suffering from depression, what would have been an ordinary social contact, regardless of whether it was from a casual acquaintance, or from very close friends or family, could turn into a huge crushing weight because I could either respond (which seemed to require an unbearable amount of effort, in the throes of depression) or ignore it (guilt guilt guilt guilt guilt).
If you’re stepping into a relationship with psychological hurdles involving anger and jealousy and disgust, you’re making a bad decision. You know what’s awesome? Getting involved with a person and not having to deal with any of this. It’s totally awesome. Go find yourself some of that and just leave this situation before you write another seven paragraphs about someone you’ve known for forty-five days.
“Dear Mr. A: Please, as a sign of respect and love, have the courtesy to trust me with open communication of your wants and needs. I respect and care deeply for your wants and needs and hope for both of us to have adequate emotional satisfication with our interactions (here’s hoping you feel the same). That can only happen if we share our honest thoughts, and each pledge to care about same”.
Also, and I mean this kindly, you gotta stop casting yourself as the victim rather than the hero of your life story. Your life and everything that goes on in it is your responsibility. It wasn’t your friend’s responsibility to make sure you had something to do still even if he canceled on you. All he had to do was apologize and let you know his plans had changed. You chose to treat this as you being a victim situation. How many other parts of your day do you spend in victim mode? Start catching yourself treating your life in those terms and see if you can do the opposite and take a proactive rather than reactive or subtractive attitude about it.
It is never, ever, ever about you. Ever. Nothing is personal unless you take it that way.
Then when reality comes around it stubbornly doesn’t align with my anticipation. Sometimes, like your SO not-blowing-you-off, it’s a change for the better. But you’ve already been dealing with this fictional unpleasantness, or you have bought and paid for this misery ahead of time so now you get to experience it live versus in anticipation.
I get that you’re conflict-averse and that’s feeding into this. But you need to (a) internalize that the minor & quick questions/assertions actually head off the big conflicts and (b) structure some of your behavior with the foreknowledge that you’re bad with confrontation and feeling rejected and head stuff off at the pass.
You needn’t accept everything you hear. But when you disagree, do you seek clarification, pose thoughtful questions, and ask for examples? Or do you respond angrily and deny defensively what you’re hearing? If you want to know what people think, you cannot deny the reality of their perceptions, even when you disagree. Only as people test your tolerance will you slowly build a reputation for a willingness to hear and accept candid comments.
What <user> said about the gendered expectations of empathy rings true for me. As a woman in hetero relationships, to expect mutuality in empathy and emotional care-taking has often been a source of conflict. It’s completely draining and when I am unable hide the fact that it’s draining, then that also becomes a problem. Resentment builds when your attempts to take care of yourself bring out your partner’s insecurities and turns into another thing to manage.
I think Ask Polly’s biggest truth for me is the idea of accepting your flaws. Otherwise you’ll live in fear of your true self. It seems rather exhausting to me. We’re all flawed. We all fuck up.