Basically, the thread title says it all, but I need to flesh this out with the story to see if this resonates. My parents did say they loved me when I was a small child, but not much after this time. I am a hetro male and seek a loving relationship with a woman. I've never had a proper relationship in which I have loved her, or she has loved me.

I was beaten as a child many times by my father. Once, my dad worked me over so hard that I 'think' this activated the "death feigning state" in my Dorsal Vegas nerve. My mother failed to protect me, which may have effected my view of women!

Later, my brother would tease me then hide behind my mother. In my mind, my mother protected him, I felt so much pain. She went to embrace me, and I flinched and pushed her arms off me and ran away. This may have made things worse - but WTF I was just a kid.

For those who don't know about the Vegus nerve, the research of Stephen Porges has revealed that rather than there being two states that our nervous system can be in, there are actually three (see "3. Death feigning state" in my notes below this section).

I view the world and the people within it from my brain, and less so with my heart. From my early memories I noticed that there were situations in which people showed empathy to others, but I couldn't work out what was going on so I had to learn "learned behavior" simulating the reactions of other people, because I felt nothing myself.

I am in my late forties and I still find myself doing this. Classic example; someone tells me that they have just learned that their partner has been diagnosed with cancer. My auto-reaction "Oh my god, I am so sorry to hear that". My real thoughts "So f*cking what, I want my life to get better".

I have never experienced real intimacy with a woman, while talking, walking together, looking into one another's eyes. These are situations in which this could happen with other people, but not with me... as if this capacity to send & receive these heart-based magnetic signals have been beaten out from the bandwidth of my consciousness. My bandwidth is perhaps therefore less broad than a normal person.

Update: I have now achieved some intimacy through partner therapy. See bottom of this page: https://psychcentralforums.com/sexua...-woman-4.html]

I walk the earth for well over 40 years. I watch other people hold hands and kiss one another. Despite being a student for many years, socially active, friendly and outgoing, it has never happened to me. At a distance I see others and feel a terrible pain of loneliness, jealousy, rejection and later - rage. But just a few times in my life, I am confronted with a woman staring into my eyes looking for a reaction (or perhaps a magnetic signal), I feel nothing.

[SIDE NOTE: I have since been informed by a therapist that when I do ever come in close proximity to women, this “feeling nothing” is actually the feeling of “No Feeling” which ironically is not the absence of a feeling at all. And that it has been constructed by my mind to protect me from emotional suffering. Under this feeling of “No feeling” may lay the feelings of suffering that I experience when I view happy couples from a distance.]

It is as if all of the couples around me aren’t really aware of the magnetics that they do actually transmit and receive… in order to end up romantically connecting. I start to think that the nervous system may be the TV antenna that is the transmitter / receiver for the power of love (and probably other magnetics of consciousness). Only their TV antenna wasn’t smashed and twisted out of shape by a tyrannical parent.

I longed to be able to read the minds of every couple I saw, so I can work out how they met, and where, and who said what. I would listen intently any time couples revealed where they met, it never sounded particularly special, and to my surprise - hardly ever in a night club, which is where I spent so many nights in my twenties.

I loved nightclubs so much back then. I became good at chatting up women, but the energetic weakness in my core didn’t propel me to any sex.. just occasional drunken kissing and dancing.
.. It was (and still is) as if my head was energetically separated from body (cue the Poly-vagal theory, see below).

If I did spend the night with a woman, it was a disaster - never got hard. Read my thread here: https://psychcentralforums.com/sexua...any-woman.html

I continue to focus on therapy, incl my surrogate therapy (see IPSA surrogatetherapy.org) in which I’ve experienced healing and great success, but this has been put on the back burner due to the Coronavirus lockdown. Who would have thought that kissing could potentially spread Covid-19 :/ I also continue to receive energetic healing, incl. cranial-sacral work, etc, to work on my nervous system. This is how I learned about the Poly-Vagal theory.

Thank you for reading. Does any of this resonate? Or… is this you?

Oh yes… as promised, my amateur description of the Poly-vagal theory and the dreaded Dorsal Vagal activation state below. Please feel free to correct me where I’ve misdescribed it:

The vagus nerve splits into two branches, the newer / mammalian "ventral vegus nerve" for social interaction, and the ancient / reptilian "dorsal vegus nerve" for [regulating heart, lungs, etc (?) ]

1. Rest and digest. The nervous system is relaxed.

2. Fight or Flight. The nervous system is suddenly hyperactivated to deal with a threat, like a predator jumping out from behind a bush and starts chasing you.

3. Death feigning state (Dorsal branch of the vegus nerve activates, Ventral branch goes to sleep). The predator has now overpowered you, despite your best efforts in Fight or Flight mode. It holds your body firmly in it's enormous jaws. Your nervous system changes gear suddenly. Your body is limp and lifeless, no movement, as if you are dead. Connection between the [most ancient parts of the brain (?) ] and the body (via the vagus nerves) are minimized. The predator is chewing on your body but you don't thrash about because you are desensitized due to this state. As you’ve stopped moving, the predator loses interest and drops you down on the ground. A few minutes later, you open one eye and spy the long grass just a few feet away, your nervous system has changed gear from 3 back to 2. You sprint into the long grass. Lucky, you barely made it.

Reptiles snap out of it easily (they don't have the Ventral branch). Mammals (incl. humans) are more complicated due to the need to switch back over from the Dorsal vegus nerve to the mammalian Ventral vegus nerve (used for social engagement) but get stuck between the two states, hence the problem!