Couldn’t find any venting communities on Lemmy, but if one exists please direct me to it. I’m fairly sick right now so I could have just missed one in my dazed state.
I’ve been dealing with a problem lately. Technically not just lately, but my whole life, but for the past few years it’s something I didn’t have to worry about.
I’ve always been a fairly popular person in whatever circles I take part in. People like me. They like my personality. They like my appearance. My friends value me extremely highly. All that’s great. But when it comes to relationships, I always flop on my face.
Some people find me really attractive but don’t want anything serious. Some people do want something serious, but get scared off the second they see what’s hiding under the hood. Others just prefer me as a friend and would rather not complicate that with a relationship. But practically zero people both want anything serious and find themselves able to handle me and my mental issues.
There’s only been one person ever who I ever had any semblance of a successful relationship with, and that was my first ex. We dated for two years, fell deeply in love, but still in the end broke up because of mental issues making being together too painful to deal with.
I’m just so afraid I’ll never find anyone. I found the first person in the world who could handle my emotional outbursts completely unfazed recently, and she just wanted to be friends. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to have a friend as amazing as her. I’m just living in fear that I’ll never be able to find somebody who can handle and understand me like she can, who does want to be anything more. I just want people to stop leaving because of my over-tuned emotions getting in the way.
And yeah, yeah, I know, “you don’t need a relationship to be happy” and whatever. That’s not the point. The point is I practically don’t even have the option of a relationship in the first place because nobody can handle my deeper issues. I’m on numerous meds. I’ve tried therapy, and am still trying. I’ve done all I can on the road to self improvement and the only thing left I can do is find somebody who can handle what issues remain, and it doesn’t look like that’ll happen. It feels like I got a million romantic options and zero of them are good ones.
I know there’s only one real solution, and that’s to keep trying, and keep looking. I just needed to vent about it because the process of doing so is making me feel like shit and giving up would make me feel even worse, as if accepting that I’m unlovable.
My significant other for the last decades struggles with various mental disorders. What you describe reminds me of us. She never really managed to get proper therapy so far as well. We’ve learned some things the hard way, but we’re happy and solid now.
For me at least what hit the hardest was not being trusted or being repeatedly accused of betrayal. This stuff seeps into my slightest cracks and blows up my own insecurities about inadequacy. It’s a good thing you recognize these episodes. Could you just pull out of the situation when you feel one coming, request alone time? Defuse it, then come back to your loved one. That’s what she does. I know to respect the alone time, no matter when it is needed. It’s important for your partner to be aware of your struggles, but expecting them to accurately dismiss what you express on account of issues is not sustainable long term in my opinion. It’s too hard to apply and too likely to backfire.
You’re popular, amazing people have already crossed your path, there’s no reason for it not to happen again. So prepare for making the next one the best one.
Separating myself and being alone works to an extent. If I’m not breaking down yet but know I’m starting to get irrational, I find if I don’t allow myself to say anything, and simply remove myself from the presence of anybody who could be hurt, I can often abort the episode entirely. However, that doesn’t always work. Sometimes it makes it worse and I have to bring myself back to them and straight up ask “hey, this thing you did made me feel like you might be trying to betray me. Why did you actually do that?” Answering that question makes it much easier to dismiss my anxieties.
There’s also a strategy I’ve deployed with my first ex after our breakup, since we’re still friends and they have a very similar set of disorders, where we have times we allow each other to have controlled blowups at each other, knowing explicitly that that’s what we’re doing. It makes it easier not to blow up at other people. The only rule is we never do it at the same time. Being able to shout all kinds of horrible things and have somebody just go “yeah, whatever, I get it. Do your thing.” is extremely therapeutic for both of us.
We also, after we’re finished blowing up, go over what we said and analyze whether it was rational and how to avoid similar thoughts. Realizing fully why something doesn’t make sense makes it easy to dismiss later so we don’t fall down the same irrational path the same way later, and have fewer blowups over time. It’s a powerful tool to be able to go “I’m feeling X way about Y thing, but I’ve felt that way before and determined it was irrational, so it can’t magically be rational this time.”