Emotional pain is difficult to evaluate. My current conceit is that if I could guarantee being free from the regret, longing, & despair that I feel for the rest of my life, I’d probably sacrifice a limb. Maybe not a whole arm, but a hand. And I’m talking hacked off with no anaesthetic, medieval style. That’s probably delusional. If someone were somehow able to really offer me that, I’m sure I would puss out. But it’s hard to quantify. When it gets bad, it seems truly awful. But it’s not like I break down crying in the middle of the street, or scream. I’m kind of weirdly numb to it. I just carry on walking, as my mind unravels and the world around me seems increasingly hostile.
One of my biggest triggers is seeing happy young couples. Something about the closeness, the supportiveness, the mutual care, cranks my feelings of loneliness and longing up to 100. And suddenly it seems like that’s the only thing that matters in life, and I’ve put myself so far beyond it that it’s like a foreign country. And then the despair hits, and the regret. All those years I wasted on bullshit, when I should’ve been changing myself to become someone capable of being in a relationship. And now it’s far, far too late.
So what the fuck am I doing still breathing? This space that I’m occupying, this life that I’m taking up, could be filled by someone who isn’t tormented by regret, swallowed by despair. In my place there could be someone with hope, vitality, someone who actually enjoyed being alive. It feels wrong to even still be here, pretending to be alive. It’s like I’m a cancerous cell, infecting the world. And it’s all so pointless. All I’m doing by continuing is causing myself more pain. But then on the other hand, I’m also sparing my family great pain.
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I still don’t buy too late…. not for romance. Older, later on, I think it gets easier, the market loosens up. I mean, you don’t get the traditional bit, meeting while you’re younger, building a life from scratch and all that. I’ll tell you a secret, that’s actually really rare anymore. Most people are non traditional, picking up the pieces and making it work.
If it’s something you want though, seek it out. Geez my damn granddad, 96 at the end of his life, still romancing the little old ladies…. the man was unstopable. So, yeah, if 96 ain’t too late, then whatever age you are probably isn’t either.
Especially if you can become a stand up kind of person, the type that is supportive. That’s rare in this world. Most people are some variety of deadbeat. A drag on their partner. Later in life being a supportive partner is worth a whole lot, and that’s a learnable skill
I hope this doesn’t come off insensitive, rereading it…. just that I know a lot of older single people.
As dark as it is right now, I think you have a lot to offer. It’d be a huge waste to throw that away or ignore it. Life’s too short to avoid things you want, as long as those things don’t hurt other people.
I mean, if you don’t mind dating people who already have kids, sky is the limit. And not all of other people’s kids are little brats, some of them are decent or even pleasant to be around.
I appreciate the positivity, really I do. 99.9% of cases it would be well warranted. But… it’s not just about age. It’s about how mentally fucked up I am. And how little life experience I’ve had. My social skills are essentially frozen below those of the average teenager. I’m not your granddad – I don’t have his mind, or his experiences, or any of the things that allowed him to operate in the world as he did.
“Especially if you can become a stand up kind of person”
I really can’t. No matter what I do from this point on. The stuff I’ve done, and the stuff that passes through my head every day, means no one would ever accept me as I am. The best I can do is act, and I can’t even do that particularly convincingly.
“Life’s too short to avoid things you want, as long as those things don’t hurt other people.”
Even involving myself with another person seems like putting them at risk of great harm, if they ever find out the truth about me. I can’t risk telling people the truth, and not telling them seems deeply unfair and deceptive. The best I can imagine is some kind of disclaimer along the lines of “if you knew the truth about me, you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.” And I can’t imagine that’d be very appealing for anyone who’s not utterly desperate.
*shrug* no matter how broken a person is, somewhere out there is a person who is convinced they can fix them. Seriously, it’s a whole damn trope.
See Draco in Leather Pants; https://official-tropes.fandom.com/wiki/Draco_in_Leather_Pants
and it can work as an appeal factor, being dark and conflicted. Certain types of people, it revs their engines. It’s been a lot of my game during the periods I was single. Ladies, guys, everyone seems to go for it. They love a project. Just enough of a hint seems to be the key.
So, is it really harm if they come willingly? I stopped thinking so a long time ago. I don’t force anyone. If they make those choices……..
It’s a lot like my work. Some of our clients make poor choices, ones that we could catch but it isn’t our job. So we have to remind ourselves, it’s their job to make their judgements.
Harm is an action with intent to wound. Being less than is not an act of harm, it can’t be.
But, I don’t believe there’s a thought you could have had that makes you unworthy, we all think awful things it’s how we got here. As far as terrible acts go….. those may be as they may be. You’ve suffered the fallout from them already. You don’t need to serve any other penance for them besides that which life imposes on you in it’s natural course.
I want to see you bloom into the best you that you can be, it won’t be like me, or my granddad or anyone else. It’ll be something new the world hasn’t seen. Your limitations are part of that, sure. I’ve just got to believe there’s more to you than that. Maybe it isn’t obvious now, and maybe I’m full of shit, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.
but that agony is only there because there’s an unserved passion, a deep desire that you want to see satisfied. I know it seems easier to walk away but it isn’t.
“I can fix them” is indeed a trope, though it does seem to be significantly impacted by how hot someone is. I’m not dark and mysterious, I’m not an edgy bad boy. I’m just an awkward, dopey loser who’s done bad things.
It also seems to matter how bad the person/character is. In Harry Potter for example, Draco is an arsehole, but I don’t think he ever does anything to make him irredeemable. 1) He’s a child, and 2) he backs out when ordered to actually kill someone. So people are still able to think “I can save him.” In contrast, Voldemort, though some may pity him, is recognized as unsalvageable – he’s done things he simply can’t come back from: https://official-tropes.fandom.com/wiki/Moral_Event_Horizon
If you don’t give someone the info they need to make an informed choice, then it does seem wrong, especially if you know they wouldn’t choose you if they knew. Maybe a bit less so if I give a disclaimer, but to encourage someone to make a choice that’s bad for them seems antithetical to love. If you expose someone to risk of significant emotional harm without giving them the necessary background to make an informed choice, then it does seem wrong.
I don’t know. I desperately want to believe that there’s a way to make it ok. It just seems like it wouldn’t work.
“I don’t believe there’s a thought you could have had that makes you unworthy”
It’s not just thoughts, it’s the feelings connected to them. These are things significant parts of me want to do. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to, because I’m not prepared to accept the consequences, and I don’t want to feel any worse about myself. But they’re a deep reflection of who I really am.
“Your limitations are part of that, sure. I’ve just got to believe there’s more to you than that.”
There is more to me than that. But it’s close. I’m torn between – not bad enough to act like a true sociopath, not good enough to feel like I can involve myself with people normally.
Question: are you male? Asking because, well I DO break down crying in the street, a lot, not like I’m on the floor incapacitated or anything, I just cry a lot, all the time, and I’m very high functioning so I’m usually able to do all my mundane stuff like shopping or running errands, while also crying. Anyway, I feel like men in our society are socially conditioned to not cry. I have a few male friends who say they just can’t do it. So they process their sadness in that kind of numb way you describe. I doubt it’s healthy. But I also doubt crying uncontrollably is either, so… meh.
I think it’s really nice that you’re considering the well being of others, and trying to ‘protect’ them by not engaging in a relationship. But, you’re also taking away their choice in the matter, and that’s one of the worst things you can do to a person. Maybe it’s easier to take the option off the table, rather than suffer from potential rejection. That ol’ chestnut. But, call a spade a spade: that’s not trying to protect someone else…. that’s cowardice.
You clearly want a relationship. Don’t let your fear hold you back.
I am indeed. I believe other than a few tears shed at a funeral, I was 9 the last time I really cried in public . It was over something petty, so I felt doubly stupid. But yes, for men, it’s a sign of weakness. And if you signal weakness as a man, you leave yourself open to all kinds of threats.
Personally, I often cry in private. Rarely uncontrollable sobbing, but I’m the kind to get misty-eyed at a sad scene in a film. I’m an extremely oversensitive dude. But crying doesn’t feel good – it doesn’t change the underlying feelings of despair, there’s no relief afterwards. No internal pain is released. So I rarely fully give in to it.
It’s probably not clear from what I’ve said, but there’s serious things about myself I couldn’t risk disclosing to a potential partner. Things that they’d definitely deserve to know before getting emotionally involved with me, that would be absolutely crushing if they ever found out. So I couldn’t offer someone an informed choice on whether to be with me. All I could do would be to deceive them, or offer some sort of disclaimer that “there’s these awful things about me that I can’t tell you, but if you knew, I’m almost certain you’d run a mile.” And even if I could find someone desperate enough to accept such terms, it doesn’t seem like a good thing to put someone through.
I am also absolutely terrified of rejection, and that’s a key part of my avoidant personality. Even if I didn’t have such skeletons in my closet, I would be terrified of getting involved with anyone. I am absolutely a coward, in so many ways. But on this it does seem justified. When I hear women speak about how devastated they feel on discovering far lesser secrets their partners have kept from them, it just seems wrong to go into a relationship like that. I think I’d be constantly wracked by guilt, or on edge waiting for the other shoe to drop.
But thank you for your perspective, it’s always good to get different feedback on this, as it is something I’m constantly wrestling with. As you say, it’s something part of me very much wants.
Well, it’s hard to comment, not knowing the skeletons in your closet. Sometimes people are overly hard on themselves and think their discretions are worse than they actually are. Other times… their discretions really are that taboo. Ultimately it doesn’t really matter what I think, if you’ve already decided you could not share them with a partner. But question: are your skeletons an active part of your present life? Or are they in the past? Just because, if they are in the past, maybe they don’t need to be disclosed to future partners? I think it’s ok to start new relationships with a clean slate.
How do you feel about AI relationships? I’m sure there’s software being developed, if not already out there. I wonder if AI is scraping this website to learn as we speak…
Unfortunately, my core issues really are that taboo. There’s just no way that I could risk telling anyone (other than a therapist), and no way I could expect anyone to stay even if I did.
They are an active part of my present, though in a lesser way than they used to be. I have some boundaries now which I’ll hopefully never cross again. From time to time I make small efforts to further distance myself from it, mostly futile. But I can’t pretend I’m really a “changed man”. Though some of my actions have changed, most of the stuff behind it, in my mind, is strong as ever, and I can’t see that changing.
The idea of AI relationships leaves me feeling pretty empty. I know there’s already very rudimentary programs which some lonely people find comfort from. Good for them I guess. But even if it was sophisticated, proper AI, capable of really mimicking a human personality, the thought just has no appeal to me. Not sure why exactly. I think just on a basic level, I want someone with the same human vulnerabilities and frailties as me. And I guess I’d also want to be chosen by someone because of their own preferences, rather than because some instruction had forced them to. It just seems meaningless.
I tend to assume that as computing gets more powerful, every trace of data we leave online will eventually be collected, analysed, collated, to give a fairly accurate picture of who we are, warts and all. So I guess at some point my secrets will be known to the world. Which may be the signal for me to finally leave the stage.
Wondering: does your therapist agree with your stance, that you shouldn’t tell a partner about your indiscretions?
The idea of AI doesn’t really appeal to me either, but I think that’s because I still see it as ‘fake’. But that’s an unfair perspective, since I haven’t interacted with it much. I’m wondering if it gets to a point where it is truly sentient, could I have feelings for it? I’m not exactly excited by the robot revolution… more kinda morbidly curious, the way people slow down while passing a car crash.
I’m not currently seeing a therapist, as I hit a real wall with my last one in terms of letting go of these messed up parts of myself. I was never even able to get round to discussing my desires for a partner, as every session effectively became taken up by discussions over my failure to stick to the plans we’d agreed.
I’m guessing if I had ever brought it up with her, she wouldn’t have endorsed not telling a partner the truth. But she also heavily implied at times that it would be dangerous to tell anyone irl about the things I’ve done. So she probably wouldn’t have had a clear stance on it. It would’ve been “You should tell anyone you’re involved with. But also, you should be prepared for it to backfire spectacularly and destroy your life.” I don’t know whether she’d have even endorsed me having a relationship to be honest.
That was part of my issue while working with her though – there was a real lack of any positive or meaningful plan for my future, anything to work towards. It was all about the work of letting go of these twisted parts of myself, and me repeatedly failing to do so. Meanwhile I was incredibly depressed and stressed, dreading every session. Imagine spending an hour a week admitting the most shameful shit to someone, and there being nothing they could say to make it feel better.
It’s been nearly 6 years now since I finally gave up on working with her. I’m not going to say it was completely useless, as I do now have some boundaries which I haven’t crossed since. The level of shame I felt has kind of reinforced my determination not to go back there. But the whole experience was pretty tortuous, and I don’t think I could put myself through it again. Much as I wish I had someone I could chew all this stuff over with.
I’m not sure if there’s a specialized therapist for your particular issues who might work better? Therapy under the best circumstances requires shopping around, which is expensive…
If you wanted to talk to someone about this stuff though, isn’t that what this website is for? It’s as anonymous as it gets…. you could even make a different account if you’re really concerned about privacy. Or are you worried about judgement? I feel like people are pretty good about saying nothing if they can’t be constructive…. but its still a fair concern I guess.
My last therapist was a specialist on those issues. Pretty hard to get in touch with to begin with, as not many are trained in it. I passed on one guy they put me in touch with before her, but I wasn’t really in a position to shop around.
Not that I blame her – I don’t think she messed up at all. But I think she was used to working with people who had some kind of life, something worth fighting for. Who already had partners who knew what they’d done, and families that they were trying to hold together. Whereas I had (and still have) nothing. And no one in my life knows. So I didn’t have the same motivation to change.
I tried posting about it anonymously elsewhere a few times ages ago. It’s not that people were overly judgemental or vindictive… it’s just there’s nothing anyone can really say to make it seem ok. I wouldn’t expect anyone who wasn’t getting paid to engage with the level of detachment or rigour to make their input useful.
And putting it out into the world like that, even anonymously, somehow makes it more real. And the more real it feels, the more I hate myself, the more I want not to exist. I am worried about judgement, but more than that, it’s that I can’t really face it myself. And when it’s coldly laid out in a matter of fact way for the world to see, without any of the distortions that go on in parts of my brain, it’s not something I can live with.
Your previous comment sounded like you would like to unburden yourself. But now you express a lot of (quite reasonable) reservations. So you’re conflicted about putting it out there? Understandable.
As long as we’re dancing around this nameless thing that we can’t speak about, this is one thing I’m sure of: good people do bad things all the time. I’m inclined to believe you’re a good person, the fact that you’re showing so much remorse indicates that you do have a strong sense of morality. As long as you are doing your best to not do those bad things, and in some way try to make amends, I still think you’re a good person. Your struggle sounds really tough. The hardest thing to fight in this world is ourselves. But it sounds like you really did make some progress with your therapist, if there is a line that you no longer cross, that’s a win and you shouldn’t minimize it. It’s likely no one knows how hard your daily fight to work against your impulses is, so you likely don’t get much affirmation. So for what it’s worth – thank you. I’m sure your constant fight against your inner evil has real and tangible effects in the world, even if no one knows.
Yes, very conflicted about it (and most things really.) On the one hand I very much don’t want to be alone with this stuff going round and round my head. On the other, there’s no way to talk about it without being overwhelmed by shame, and nothing anyone can say that makes much of a difference.
I would say that good people sometimes do bad things for good reasons. Or somewhat bad things for selfish reasons. But they rarely do truly terrible things for selfish reasons. And my reasons were completely selfish.
I’m afraid I’m not a good person, much as I’d like to believe otherwise. I don’t think I’m a sociopath either, and I do have some sense of morality (which I often ignore.) But remorse isn’t the same as shame. I think it’s supposed to be more focused on others. And even if I had some way of knowing what impact I’d had on others, most of what I feel is centred around being too ashamed to live with what I’ve done. It’s about myself.
I can’t claim that I’m doing my best – if I were I’d probably still be in therapy. Or I’d have actually managed to stick to the treatment plan I agreed with that therapist. I’m basically doing the bare minimum to hold the one boundary that seems significant, so I can pretend to myself that I’ve changed. And to avoid feeling the way I did last time I crossed that line. Purely self-centred motivations. But I’m not going to minimize it. It’s the one thing I cling to to tell myself I’m not a monster. “I may be bad, but I used to be much worse!”
It’s not that I fight hard to work against my impulses – I just channel them in less potentially harmful directions. I still do lots of bad, shitty, shameful things. I’ve just learnt enough not to go that extra step. I learned it wasn’t worth it, from a purely self-centred point of view. That I could always feel worse about myself, no matter how bad I was feeling beforehand, and I inevitably would if I went there again.
Every now and then I think about going back there (though less and less as time’s gone on.) Usually when I’m particularly low. And I remind myself of that feeling, and remember that it’s just not worth it.
I also can’t pretend I’m doing anything to make amends. As I say, I have no way of knowing what impact I’ve had on others. So if there was harm done to individuals, there’s no way I could repair it. But if I wanted to donate to charity, I could. I’ve done my fair share of volunteer work over the years, but none of it was at all consequential.
I suppose I feel like no matter what I did to make the world a better place, it still wouldn’t make me acceptable in the eyes of others, or myself. Nothing would ever be enough. So what’s the point? But again, that’s a self-centred view. What I care about is my own need for acceptance, rather than whatever small good I could do in the world.
I’m going to disagree that good people don’t do things for selfish reasons. Everyone is motivated by selfishness sometimes. The terms ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are perhaps a little too binary…. it’s all a spectrum, and at some point it’s not constructive to lump everyone in these catorgoruies. Also, everyone fluctuates.
Sorry I’m a little low on bandwidth lately. But I still feel like you’re minimizing the progress you made. If there’s one boundary you haven’t crossed, that deserves credit. Maybe you feel the need to beat yourself up because you’re afraid that if you let yourself off the hook even a little, you’ll backslide. That’s fair. I just feel like there has to be a more moderate intermediary somewhere.
Good people might sometimes do shitty things for selfish reasons – they might cheat on a partner in a “momentary slip-up”, for example. But they generally won’t do truly terrible things, unless motivated by some greater purpose than themselves – war, religion etc.
There’s some things which in order to even consider doing them for selfish reasons, your sense of morality or psychology has to be severely messed up. And that’s me.
Agree that there’s a spectrum of “good & bad”, but there’s still a cut-off point for most people where “bad” becomes “unforgivable”. And that’s where I am.
But I appreciate the effort to persuade me that I’m better than I feel I am. That’s a nice thing to do, and generally accurate when it comes to anxious/depressed people.
I suppose I feel like I haven’t made progress because the thoughts and feelings that led me to act that way still seem strong as ever. All that’s really changed is the final decision-making step. Now I just have different outlets. Which is an improvement, don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t feel like real change.
I’m not trying to persuade you that you’re better than you are. I don’t know you at all, so that would be very insincere. I was just trying to point out that there is a grain of good in there, and maybe focussing on that is more constructive than focusing on the terrible things you’ve done. And even if having different outlets doesn’t feel like ‘real change’… well, who cares? I care more about outcomes than motivations, and if the end result is an improvement, again, I say take the win where you can get it, no matter how small. I’m not saying this to make you feel better actually….. I’m saying this because if your skeletons are as bad as you say, and all this has real impact in the world, and you are the last defence against yourself, well…. I have to root for you, right?
True, I’m not all bad. And you’re probably right that focusing on that would be more constructive. I guess I just don’t feel able to do that. It’s like a splinter in my mind that I can’t stop picking away at. On the one hand I have this awareness that something is very wrong with part of me, and on the other I couldn’t stand to let go of it, even if I was able to.
I suppose I’ve never really been able to resist focusing on the things I fear the most, on the negatives. I assume others must be better at it, but it’s like part of my mind just insists on fixating. I can’t bear to leave whatever it is alone. It must be resolved, even if logically I know there’s no way to fix it.
I get it. It’s a very common thing for depressed people, black and white thinking and focusing on the negatives and minimizing the positives. I just hate saying it so directly, because it sounds so oversimplified and trite. But it’s true. Unfortunately, even with self-awareness of this fact, it’s still hard to change the behaviour. I catch myself all the time in these patterns, sometimes a reminder helps.
Neurology is also a factor. This is actually a physical thing – neuro pathways get more and more ingrained, and with time it becomes harder to form new neuro pathways for new thought patterns to emerge. In the emerging field of psychedelic treatment for mental illness, apparently LSD is helpful is breaking old thought patterns and allowing new thought patterns to develop. That is why it’s useful, both in depression and also addiction. I attribute whatever insight I have to early use of psychedelics from early adulthood, way before this research came out. Have you looked into psychedelic assisted therapy? It’s not legal in all countries.
From what I read being “set in one’s ways” is indeed reflected physically in our neurology.
Yes, I’ve heard that all kinds of psychedelics are potentially useful in treating depression and anxiety. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time as a potential way of moving forward. From what I can tell it’s still very much at the research stage where I am (UK). I don’t know how hard it is to get into whatever trials are taking place. I’d also be very concerned that if I was in majorly altered mind state I might confess my past acts, and I don’t think that would be safe, considering how hard it is to find a therapist even willing to work with that stuff.
Which leaves me considering trying psychedelics on my own, which is generally not recommended. And then I have to actually obtain those drugs, which is not something I have any confidence in. I’m scared of attracting police attention for any reason. And I’m scared of the possibility of a really bad trip. So I put it off – it’s just another thing on a long list of “stuff I should try.”
It is a tough one. I’ve done psychedelics on my own before, but by then I’d already had some experiences with friends, so I knew what to expect and was capable of modulating my response. I probably wouldn’t recommend that to most people.
I have heard of people doing this with a ‘trip sitter’ – basically someone in the same house, but not necessarily in the same room. So you don’t engage with them, but if they hear you’re in distress they can run in and calm you down and stop you from hurting yourself.
You can also try microdosing to avoid a major mind alteration experience…. I think that also helps break down neuropathways. Like with all substances, I wouldn’t do it over an extended time period… a month on, a month off, that kind of thing.
But the ideal is a clinical setting. I really think you should look into those trials. I’m sure there’s vetting procedures if it’s only in research stage, where you can ask if the therapist is able to work with your issues. If it’s a no, well at least you tried.
Yeah, even the thought of a trip-sitter just seems way to risky. There’s no one I’d trust with it if I happened to be blabbing my darkest secrets in a compromised state.
Microdosing might be a good way to start, to get used to it, before building up to a higher dose.
It feels like the chance of finding a therapist running an academic trial on psychedelics who also happens to be trained in my extremely niche issue is slim to none. But I wouldn’t even feel comfortable asking most therapists about it. Of the 2 I have talked to about it, one explicitly advertised himself as dealing with the issue, and the other worked through the one tiny organization specifically set up to deal with the issue.
You should NOT think of microdosing as a way to build up to a higher dose. I personally think that’s quite dangerous. Microdosing is a low dose over a long period of time. You should NOT be upping the dose if you’re going to do this over a long period of time. My friends who got in trouble with microdising, IMO, it was because they did it for too long, and perhaps too high a dose.
Microdosing is maybe a way of changing those neuropathways without having to go through a serious altered mental state. So if you want to try it, I would say try it for a month, see if it helps. If it does help and you want to continue, I still think a month on a month off is the better way to do it.
If at some point you want to try a full dose, start with a half dose, wait a few weeks, then try a full. The reason why I think its a really bad idea to gradually build up from microdosing, is because the point of microdosing is that it’s a tiny enough amount that you wouldn’t even notice hardly any impairment. That’s why it’s a daily thing. And you should NOT be increasing a daily thing to dose which gives you mental impairment. First because you’ll not be able to function at work or anything like that…. but second because that’s how addiction starts, when you start doing drugs on a daily basis. Microdosing is not addictive because its such a small dose that you don’t feel much…. and you should keep it that way.
That makes sense.