Just not feeling it and what I feel isn't good either and I want to know why

December 11, 2009 9:28 PM

You're dating someone. Something just doesn't feel right in your gut. You feel uneasy. What could be all the possible reasons for that feeling?

You keep going over it and over it in your mind. What is missing? What is wrong? They treat me good, so why do I feel unsure, scared or concerned? It's that feeling that no matter how much you want to trust and feel free to love, you're not feeling it. You can't find any apparent reasons that you shouldn't be feeling totally confident and sure about the relationship, but you still don't. Even over several months, the feeling never goes away. You just can't seem to trust the person you're dating and you keep having that nagging feeling in your gut. You've had solid, trusting relationships in the past, so you know it's not you. What could it be?

posted by VC Drake to Human Relations (31 answers total)

I'm not sure what that feeling is, but I do have one thing to say:

Trust it.
posted by sarahsynonymous at 9:31 PM on December 11, 2009

Couldn't it simply be that you and this person aren't a good fit? Treating you well is only part of the equation -- you also have to have that chemistry, that "x-factor".

If you think about it, "treating you well" is something that one would also expect one's parents, friends, and the average stranger to do to you -- but those relationships are all very different. So "treating you well" isn't the one and only ingredient of a relationship. Something about how you and the other person mesh is also an important part.

Maybe you're just not meshing. That's nobody's fault when that happens, that's just the two different ingredients you each are don't work well together. Like chocolate and pickles -- both perfectly fine on an individual basis, but the combination....no.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:32 PM on December 11, 2009

it's you, it's them, it's a fear of something real, it's a fear of something fake, it's a visceral reaction, it's the effect of over thinking it, it's pheromones, they remind you of someone else, you know what it is - but you feel petty for that being the real reason, it's just plain not the right person for you and you don't need a reason or a cause to feel that way.
posted by nadawi at 9:33 PM on December 11, 2009

You know that inevitable feeling of relief you get once you finally admit something's not right and get yourself out of the uncomfortable situation? Shoot for that.
posted by thejoshu at 9:34 PM on December 11, 2009

Yeah, it is a can of worms, I agree. I can't figure it out. Maybe you guys can.
posted by VC Drake at 9:38 PM on December 11, 2009

Sometimes, it's gayness. Other times, you're just not that into them. I'm confident that these two possibilities account for 99.999999% of cases such as you describe.
posted by clockzero at 9:42 PM on December 11, 2009

I would tend to agree with sarahsynonymous. If it feels wrong, then it probably is. Either that, or you're psyching yourself out in some sort of self-sabotage move. Really, none of us can answer that question for you, but it seems to me that those are the two possibilities.
posted by Gilbert at 9:42 PM on December 11, 2009

Sometimes, it's gayness.

Or, if you're gay, closet straightness. Or something.

I agree with those who say trusting it is more important than understanding it.

If it happens in every relationship, it's something else. But we have instincts for a good reason.
posted by rokusan at 9:49 PM on December 11, 2009

You are, unconsciously, picking up signals from this person that you have been trained to identify with untrustworthiness. Body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, speech or writing patterns -- people, in general, are pretty good at picking up on subtle behaviors like these and basing opinions around them based on past experience, even if they don't know they're doing it or why.

I've been working in retail for a while now, and every so often I just get a vibe from a customer that makes me think he's going to steal from my store. I've unconsciously picked up some signals from that customer that I associate with shoplifters. Sometimes it's true, sometimes it's false, but when I get that feeling I always act on it. I call my manager over, I make sure nothing's missing when they leave the fitting room, I pay extra attention to the other customers in case they're working as a team.

You've been dealing with people for a while now. For whatever reason, this person is setting off the alarms bells in your head. Pay attention to them.
posted by clorox at 10:04 PM on December 11, 2009

Had you just started dating, I'd have suggested that it could be anxiety over the relationship or something like that, especially if the feeling was mild and intermittent. (I've had this happen before--when it went away, it wasn't a problem, and when it didn't, I either broke up with them or wished I did.)

However, since it's been "several months" and the feeling's been persistent, I advise you to get out. It's a bit like the old joke:

Patient: "Doctor, doctor! It hurts when I do this!" (demonstrates some kind of gesture or motion)
Doctor: "Well, don't do that, then."

Bottom line: being with this person doesn't feel right, and you've been in the relationship long enough to rule out some kind of transient phenomenon. It sucks not to know why, and you have my sympathy as a fellow why-seeker, but I'd cut my losses now if I were you.
posted by tellumo at 10:44 PM on December 11, 2009

Your situation may be different to mine, and I hope it is, but trust your gut. I had an uneasy gut feeling with my ex and ignored it for almost a year an a half, to my detriment. I learned that if something feels a bit "off", it usually is. Think about what topics to do with him make you feel weird, and it might give you a clue. Good luck and look after you!
posted by Chrysalis at 10:48 PM on December 11, 2009

I was just talking with a friend earlier tonight, and we were talking about how sometimes we miss the warning signs in someone we're interested in. And how we think we get so good at looking for red, orange, and yellow flags in someone's else's behavior. What we noticed is that this is a moving target, a red herring, an ever-increasingly trickier mask to unveil.

The constant is us. We should really be looking inward for the signs of danger. How somebody looks on paper is nothing compared to what types of feelings and reactions they inspire. You're the best evaluator of how healthy and beneficial any particular person is when they mix with you. Judge by what feelings and reactions they bring out in you, not by some objective measure of how the world or another person should feel around them.

The person you're with shouldn't make you feel uncomfortable, test your boundaries in a negative way, or trigger the behavior traps that you've struggled with in the past. EVEN IF YOU CAN RESIST THOSE TRAPS. You don't need to be with somebody who challenges your sense of peace and well-being.

Searching for the cause of your unease can also be a red herring. Sometimes you learn something about yourself and that's great. But you can get there with all the information you have right now.

Put another way, do you really want to be in a relationship that has an overall feeling of doubt, unease and insecurity? Go be with somebody that makes you feel light, fun and sexy...or whatever it is you like your relationships to feel like. Life's too short.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:00 PM on December 11, 2009

What about the possibility of confirmation bias? Something - who knows what, it could have been any of the (absolutely valid) reasons already listed above - disposed you to feeling uneasy about this person, and once you started looking at them with that niggling little idea in the back of your mind, perhaps it's been influencing how you have been interpreting them ever since.

I would imagine this happens all the time, but I can think of a specific example when something similar (though less serious) happened to me with a coworker a few years back: this person (Person A) didn't register on my radar at all for the first few months I knew them - they were neither unpleasant nor pleasant, just someone I occasionally interacted with - but then a friend in the same office made some casual comment about finding Person A incredibly irritating. I brushed it off at the time but somehow it got into my "filters" and suddenly I started picking up on things that Person A did or said that made me think maybe my friend was right. As soon as I was consciously aware that this person could be a little irritating (can't everyone, though?) it became a self-reinforcing loop and before long I got to the point where I inwardly winced whenever I had to spend much time with them.

My point isn't that this is all in your head - there were reasons my 'Person A' could be considered irritating, after all, and I would never say that we should disregard our instincts, even if we can't articulate why we feel a certain way. I just want to suggest that if things have gotten to the point where you are consciously aware of feeling that you shouldn't trust this person, and that feeling has been going on for several months already, it might be difficult to get out of that loop. I would imagine that we all do things that feasibly could give someone else an inexplicable case of the creeps or be interpreted as a sign of untrustworthiness, especially if that person is already consciously or unconsciously expecting us to do those things; as iamkimian said above me, regardless of the reason, life's too short to be with someone who causes that reaction in you.
posted by DingoMutt at 11:20 PM on December 11, 2009

I find it odd that you have had "solid, trusting relationships in the past" and you're asking for advice on why this one isn't working out. Is it the same reason that those other ones didn't? Were they even solid, trusting relationships in the first place?

Did something actually, really happen that is making you feel this way? For example, were you snooping through emails, or did you intercept a text from an ex, or did he/she say they were going to be somewhere but they weren't? Did the S.O. go behind your back? What gives you the right to be suspicious (other than your own insecurity?) If your S.O. *did* do something, and you're still sticking in there, then you're being a ruh-tard.

I'm thinking that you're trying to dig, and you keep hitting soil, and because you haven't found a bone your "master" must have hidden it somewhere crafty! So you keep digging!

If you don't like it/can't handle it, leave.

DingoMutt's advice +1. It's pretty good.
posted by Khazk at 11:54 PM on December 11, 2009

*If you don't like it/can't handle it, leave, for the sake of the other person. (It's not really kind to pretend that you're in a relationship, eh?)
posted by Khazk at 11:57 PM on December 11, 2009

It's your intuition telling you, in the only way it knows how, to not continue this relationship. I have no scientific evidence to support this assertion, but there you go.

It's only tangentially related, but I seem to recall there being something about this in The Gift Of Fear. The concious mind overrides whatever the intuition is trying to tell one about the situation, so it moves the warning to a physical level. Or something.
posted by Solomon at 12:06 AM on December 12, 2009

I came to say what Solomon did - you have intuition for a reason. The Gift of Fear is an excellent, excellent book on this topic. Intuition is, in a way, fear. Unless you are a terribly nervous person and you feel the way you do now in every relationship, take this as a warning sign.

Even if it turns out that the other person is wonderful? Honestly, what you're describing does not really sound promising for a successful relationship.

I think it's time to move on.
posted by Amanda B at 12:46 AM on December 12, 2009

If you're uneasy about someone, but don't know why, then I'd say it's not about the other person - I would say instead that you aren't really familiar enough with your own feelings.

No, that's not right. Too "blamey". What I mean to say is that this is a PRIME opportunity to learn more about your own feelings, values, triggers and stuff.

You don't have to go about life being triggered and uneasy without knowing how. I would suggest not continuing this relationship as a scientific experiment in unease, however.

In my view, the gifts fear gave me – including anger – were all utter shit gifts. Really. I took all these "gifts" right back to the store and exchanged them for a nice boxed set of self-control, self-knowledge and serenity. If you're afraid, then you are in the dark. Get out of the dark. Then get some light in there.
posted by krilli at 2:57 AM on December 12, 2009

Did you feel this in your other solid, trusting relationships? If not, I would end it - it sounds like it would be too much work to try to keep going.

I feel this in my current relationship, but it has nothing to do with my SO. In my case, it's because most of my relationships, romantic or not, I was way too trusting and the person ended up hurting me.

So at times the boyfriend seems "too good to be true," and I get paranoid easily. Could this be the case here?

I did my fair share of snooping before I realized that this really was a decent guy and that I likely had trust issues... but the kicker was when I was trying to analyze these recurring dreams I had about him and he just came out and said, "I just think you don't trust me."

Not recommending snooping -at all-, just added that in case you were wondering how I knew he really wasn't up to something.
posted by biochemist at 3:41 AM on December 12, 2009

It could be a vicious cycle, where you have a little feeling of mistrust or doubt for some random reason (pretty natural at the beginning), and then you worry about feeling like that. A tough thing about relationships, especially in the beginning is that they become Pollyannish situations where natural doubts and fears are kept to yourself. Then, when you don't tell the other person, it just gets worse because you have been hiding your feelings.

On the other hand, I've had relationships that consisted almost entirely of trying to figure out why the relationships wasn't working. So maybe this is another vote for trusting your intuition.
posted by ropeladder at 7:45 AM on December 12, 2009

There's a guy I know, I've known him for about ten years. He's decent-looking, well-spoken, educated, intelligent. Yet there's just ... something about him that makes me very, very uneasy.

He's never behaved inappropriately to me, nor have I witnessed him behaving badly to anyone else, but I would rather walk 5 miles in a blizzard than get in a car with him. If I read in the paper that he'd been arrested for being a serial killer, it wouldn't surprise me. Yet if someone was to ask me what he's done to make me feel like this, I couldn't say, other than it's just a gut feeling.

If your gut is telling you that this isn't right, I would say trust that feeling.
posted by essexjan at 8:16 AM on December 12, 2009

Agree- besides the obvious "he might be a nut" possibility, the other possibility is that you are engaged in self-doubt. Rationally, you see no reason why you shouldn't feel romantic feelings for this guy, but in your heart, you just don't. Instead of trusting that you just aren't that into him, and not really wanting to believe it, you are trying to find a reason why.
posted by gjc at 9:39 AM on December 12, 2009

Judge by what feelings and reactions they bring out in you, not by some objective measure of how the world or another person should feel around them.

This. Sometimes people look at their own relationships from the "outside" -- well, this person is nice enough, they have a job, they are reliable, they look okay, why am I complaining, what will I say if someone asks me why I ended the relationship, I won't have an answer. Or the other way -- the world might think my person is weird, or looks funny. But we live our relationships on the inside of them. We have to assess them primarily by how they make us feel from that inside perspective. (With the caveat of course that if everyone who loves you is totally freaked out by your choice you might have to double check yourself but that's another thread.)
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 10:23 AM on December 12, 2009

To echo ClaudiaCenter, maybe you're trying to be a "good girl" and stay in a perfectly nice relationship with a perfectly nice guy because that's what you are supposed to do - even though you don't like the guy any more than you like a nice co-worker.

Find someone else. Or be single for a while instead of looking for true love.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 11:10 AM on December 12, 2009

Have you ever seen a dog bristle at someone who appeared completely nonthreatening as far as you could tell? If it's a dog we know and know he doesn't normally respond to people that way, often we'll pay attention and take the dog's opinion into consideration. I think these responses you're having are basically your inner dog growling. You don't have to know why to give it weight. The last relationship I was in where I got that feeling, I broke up with her and within a month she'd been arrested for DUI and possession of cocaine. I was glad I trusted my inner dog.
posted by notashroom at 8:11 PM on December 12, 2009

Don't ignore gut feelings. They're your subconscious mind telling you something. Don't ignore your subconscious, it's much smarter than you.
posted by Neekee at 9:04 PM on December 12, 2009

Nthing everybody else. Don't ignore your gut. You'll likely never know why you feel uneasy, but if you don't usually feel this way in relationships, something's up.
posted by timoni at 10:51 PM on December 12, 2009

I really appreciate everything everyone has written here. It's all right on the mark and it's helped a great deal. I could mark them all as best answer.

The best I could come up with for the source of that feeling is that (1) some people, as nice and generous as they may be, just give you that uneasy feeling, (2) just not a good match and (3) likely has other very secretive romantic relationships.

Just so you know, I did stop seeing him.

I can't live with that feeling. It becomes unbearable.
posted by VC Drake at 9:09 PM on December 13, 2009

Recently, someone I was dating was very subtly trying to undermine my self-confidence. He was so subtle, that when I brought it up, I sounded crazy. He insisted that he was totally into me and suggested that I was insecure. I have had other good relationships in the past that ended due to circumstances (not lack of love, trust, etc.) so I KNEW what we had was not real. Even so, I hated to break it off because he had it all, cute, smart, funny, good job, etc... but never felt GOOD about myself while dating him. When we finally broke off, I felt a lot better

I gained insight from reading baggage reclaim. Take the male-bashing with a boulder of salt.
posted by Goodgrief at 2:12 PM on December 14, 2009

Goodgrief, that sounds so familiar. I like the way you put it. That's exactly how I felt and it does make you wonder when the guy has it all too. It makes it that much more confusing.
posted by VC Drake at 7:47 PM on December 18, 2009

I love Baggage Reclaim. Thank you!
posted by VC Drake at 8:11 PM on December 18, 2009