Why do I feel this way?
I apologize for the length of this. This is a desperate attempt to get some understanding around a problem that has plagued me for years. What follows is a chronological account of things.
The way it looks to me? I simply can't have friends.
I am in my mid-30s and male. Every few years, I am beset by an extreme range of emotions. I feel elated, happy, sad, angry, suicidal, hopeless all at once. This conflict causes me extreme stress. I feel out of control and only have the most tenuous hold on my personal and professional lives as a result during this.
Around the age of 14, I decided to stop going to school. Most days were filled with a constant teasing that I finally couldn't take anymore. There wasn't anything particularly different about me. I was overweight and a geek, but fairly normal otherwise. But unlike some kids that might play hooky, I decided to stay home. So, for the next half year or so, I rarely left my room. My parents pleaded with me every morning to go to school, but I would not do it. Eventually, the state jumped in a said that I needed to go to school or into a mental health facility. I had been seeing a social worker for a bit up until that point, but after the letter from the state, I saw a psychiatrist who put me on an anti-depressant (Pamelor) and an anti-anxietypill (Xanax). He diagnosed me with an "anxiety disorder" and developing "agoraphobia" and placed me into a metal hospital where I spent seven months.
Up until my time in the hospital, I had very few friends. I had neighborhood friends but they quickly determined that they could easily push me by announcing they would "break up friends." This meant they wouldn't see me anymore and it always devastated me. At one point, I had two friends at one end of the block and another up the same block and they would routinely ping-pong me with that phrase. I don't blame them. I allowed this to happen.
By the time I had entered the hospital, I had zero friends. The only people I knew were on BBSs and I chronicled a lot of what was happening on a BBS I ran at the time. A couple of people took pity on me and I felt connected to them. Of course, I had to shut down the board when I entered the hospital so I never really knew them and never talked to them again.
Part of my program in the hospital was forced socializing. This was good and necessary, but wasn't easy. It led me to the first encounter with the troubles I have today. One of the female staff members came into my room one evening to socialize with me a bit. She wanted to pull me out of the room for socializing. I don't really recall the content of the conversation, but I do recall that I left the room and went into the Day Room. Nothing else really ever came of that particular conversation.
But I changed. Radically. I started to feel, the best as I can describe it, a "crush" toward this person. I would feel a whole mix of emotions: anxiety, anger, love (what I thought), hatred, happiness, attractive, desired, sadness, yearning, dread, etc., etc. I wanted to be enveloped by this person. To be swallowed whole, in a sense, and be secure. I talked about it very openly at the time, but my doctor and the staff members said this was my attempting to stay away from my true work at the hospital. I accepted that as an answer, but with the emotions it was very difficult to ignore.
Eventually, the person I had fixated on would leave the unit (hopefully not because of me). On one of her last nights, she spoke to me and told me that nothing would ever happened between us. Even though I knew this on an intellectual level up until that point, I didn't accept it on an emotional level until she said that. I bawled the entire night, but in the morning I was better.
I did not understand the trauma, however, which is why I experienced it again in short order. This time it was directed toward a very nice art therapy instructor. Unlike the previous person who really tried to push the conversation in other directions, this person listened to me about it and tried to have sympathy. In retrospect, she didn't understand it and it wasn't really her job to do so anyway. She just accepted that I needed to hug her and needed to tell her that I loved her without responding in kind. She, too, eventually left the unit and the last day she gave me a very large hug. I remember that moment distinctly because it was at the beginning of a group therapy session. We hugged. I sat down and cried so heavily I hid my face and kept on until the session was nearly over.
Shortly thereafter, through a snafu, I wound up in music therapy alone with a female instructor. I can remember the horror on my doctor's face when he came to get me for a session and saw me alone with this person. He made it clear to me and the staff that my being in that type of environment was very inappropriate and it would stop. It did. I left the hospital a few weeks later.
Leaving the hospital was very tough. I didn't really learn about self-esteem or relationships inside. Oh sure, I did, but it was the type of relationship where you could say anything and express anything without awkwardness or repercussion. Certainly not what one gets on the Outside. But I did get better. I was able to keep friends for extended periods of time. I learned how to speak up for myself and did better in school. I never gained long-lasting friends, but I was more normal than I had ever been. I even dated a couple of people casually.
Still, relationships -- friendly or otherwise -- were very rocky for me. For one thing, everyone I knew before the hospital never appeared on my doorstep again. I didn't try to find them either. So, I tried new folks but was always worried that they would drop me at any moment -- "break up friends," as it were. My two forays into casual dating had me wanting to become serious hours into the relationship. In one case, the person took it on and I nearly harmed myself. She desperately wanted to be pregnant to get away from an abusive mother. In the second case, the girl simply said, "Uh, no." I remember one other attempted date situation where I thought the best way to endear myself to the person -- or engender some pity -- was to tell her about my past. This, of course, freaked her out and she never spoke to me again.
Perhaps 4 years later, I was in a marriage to someone I had dated for two years. In general, I wasn't very happy with the marriage, but I didn't feel that way at the time. I felt a bit stagnant in my career and frustrated in general, but I didn't chalk it up to marriage issues. My wife's family was very sociable and happy and I worked in a firm where my brother-in-law happened to be a partner. (Total coincidence, for whatever it's worth.) My sister-in-law (my wife's sister) started to work for the firm, a very cute, attractive mother of three. She flirted with me and another person during most of the hours she worked. Nothing racy or provacative, mind you, but it was flirting. Even in retrospect, I think so and the other target of said flirting responded in kind.
At first, it excited me. I felt attractive, something which is very foreign to me. But eventually those feelings went directly into the "crush" type feelings I had experienced so many years before. I felt all the emotions as before, except something new that still hurts me today: shame. I hestiated to tell anyone and it took several months before I would go back to therapy. Of course, keeping it all in just made it worse, but letting it out did no better either. By the end of it all, I had spoken in therapy about it and with my wife.
I tried hard to get through it, but with no success and no answers. Every day, I would go into work full of extreme distress, timidly asking my brother-in-law if his wife were coming. If she wasn't, it was a greatrelief. If she were to show, I kept one eye on my work and one on the door and every single minute was agony. My boss noticed my distracted demeanor and I nearly burst into tears in front of him.
At some point, I lost the ability to cope. I spoke with my wife about divorce, which we both agreed to. I separated from her, quit myjob, and I moved to live with friends in a very remote part of Kansas. I ran away. Truly.
In Kansas I spoke openly about it with one of the friends there and told him that I felt fundamentally broken. I felt as if I could not have normal relationships due to some physiological condition that I could not resolve. While I did not ask him so directly, I requested that he assist me in commiting suicide. He declined, which was probably a good idea.
I was only in Kansas for a few months, moving back to take a new job. This was a pretty stable moment in my life except for one incident in which I happened to see the former target of my crush while driving one day. She passed in front of my car. I was driving, my boss was the passenger. He was a really nice guy and we got to know each other well enough that he knew I was having relationship issues. When I saw this person, I immediately broke into a sweat and lost my ability to think straight. I started to pull into traffic when my boss yelled at me to stop. I regained myself but felt emotionally shaken for days afterward.
About a year after moving back home, I met someone and we married in six months. I am married to her today. The relationship, while mundane and well past any infatuation, is normal. She's a good fit for me and I for her. Sure, there are things I wish she would change and things I wish I could change for myself, but I _think_ this is normal.
About two years after our marriage, I met a woman at a place I worked who was frustrated because her boyfriend would not commit to marriage. She confided in me through many late nights working with her alone. In time, I felt the crush and confessed to my wife what was happening. She felt threatened, but ultimately did not react badly. I explained it to her as an emotional problem -- which I suppose it is -- and she accepted my resolution to get to the bottom of it. Once again in therapy, this time with a different person, I worked on it to no avail. I eventually left that job and her for another job.
I have felt this way four times again since then. In each case, the person confides in me something intimate about themselves. They like me, so I think, and I respond in kind with intimate details, though more guardedly than in the past. Eventually I start to feel scared and then the feelings start in. In therapy, the best I've been able to come up with is to try to recognize the warning signs and to stay away from those people or situations. In one situation, with a person who was heavily complaining about not being around enough "men" when her husband was away, and nearly losing her skirt once while I was there, I was able to apply avoidance successfully. This was a business relationship and I had no need to make her a friend, so it was easier to compartmentalize it, I think.Still there was another who I attempted to take care of while she was dying of cancer. I didn't go away that time, but she did.
I think it a very big strength that I feel emotions strongly and that I can foster relationships with women that are, perhaps, beyond the norm for men and women. My best friendships are with people who can be emotional. In fact, despite my past, I seem to do well socializing nowadays. I worked for several years in my own business and made a lot of very loyal friends. I seem to connect with people and I don't know why. Today I just make friends easier. I take risks socially. I joke and speak publicly often. I got to parties and mingle with ease. I have friends and family who love me and, what's very new to me, I feel love from them.
But it feels like emotions -- what seems to endear people to me -- is what's destroying me when I feel crushes.
Today I am in this very same situation and am experiencing the full range of emotions. My wife and I have talked about it. This new target is a great friend. She loves me and has told me so. I try not to respond in kind. But it's the same situation. She's confiding in me about things that are intimate. They're just normal frustrations for a married woman with two kids. Nothing out of the ordinary. A little flirting, but it's harmless to her. I can feel the emotions building up in me, causing me stress. I am caring less about my work and am feeling weepy all the time. Each time I fall into this, the stakes are a lot higher. I have more to lose. But I feel that the only way I can cope is to run away. Again. I like her a lot and just want to be normal with her.
There are some common traits among the woman: They're typically unavailable (whether I'm unavailable or they are), attractive to me physically, caring in some fashion (though they may seem distant to some people), and they consider me a real friend.
Has anyone, for the love of God, experienced anything like this. Is there a way for me to cope? Can someone suggest a style of therapy that might help me? Am I doomed to be mostly friendless?
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posted by delmoi at 4:38 PM on July 6, 2007