This has been on my mind recently and I thought this may be the best place to get advice. I don't think I ever learned how to develop healthy releationships. I don't mean romantically, but just everyday releationships, aquintenances, friends and co-workers.

I thought about it recently and I came to the realization that I tend to be the person people around me expect/want me to be. I mean we all show different sides of ourselves to different people, but this has felt like more than that. It evens effects how I feel about some issues and how I think about things. To me that doesn't seem quite right. I feel I should have my own opinion on things and that should be irrevelent to who is around me. We don't always tell the truth or share our opinion, but I feel like my opinion should not be affected by others that are around me.

I have a bad tendancies to keep people at arms length. Sort of very cautious to reveal how I really deal about things and hestitent to make a connection. It isn't alway by choice, sometimes I think I just do this out of habbit or sub-consciously. Maybe I am too pessimistic or maybe I just see the world as a dangerous place. Paranoia possibly. It makes it hard to develop friendships and more than working relationships with people when I do this.

When I do find someone interesting, I want to jump in with both feet so to speak. This works out two ways. They do the same and things are intense and awesome, or they hesitate and I feel, rejected I guess and my feeling turn on them. I completly lose interest in them and go to complete avoidance of them, like they don't exist anymore.

I don't know where I picked up these habbits or why I do this. Maybe it was some emmotional neglect in my early years, I don't know.

How do I learn how to, be more reasonable and less neurotic about this? I know there may be no easy answer for this, or maybe no advice people provide. I would just like to have more meaningful friendships in my life and I seem to be the one who prevents that from happening.