[nolabound]

I'm 23 years old, I graduated college last year, and I still realize that I can't seem to find it in me to trust people with relationships. I don't actively go out of my way to buff anybody's attempt to get close to me, but for some reason I still prefer to remain with my own thoughts over weekends, and when it comes to dating I'm probably considered a nightmare amongst the women in my past.

I rush things, I get into a short-term "thing" that resembles a relationship. I take girls out to dinner, show them the best time I possibly can, behave like a gentleman; I think all I do is act, to get where and what I want as soon as possible. At one point I developed a pattern simply because I had done it so often, and of course it was something I could brag about to the "boys." But now that I've graduated college, I see that I'm just going to burn bridges like it's out of style; old friends and past romances I leave behind because I don't think the energy is worth committing.

I don't want to place blame anywhere but myself; I truly believe that I am responsible for what I've become, because I could have always sought help in the past. I generally find the idea of going outside of my own thought bubble to be repulsive, because I treasure my independence stubbornly, and to my own detriment I now believe. However, I want to know what I need to do or say in order to move past my ghosts.

When I was 9 years old, my mother, a paranoid schizophrenic, abandoned me for drugs and said some things that were disturbing to me even at that age. She basically claimed that I was not her child, and that my father's then-present girlfriend was actually my mother; what disturbed me most was that I knew she was legitimately trying to desert me at that point. My father was in the military, and did his best trying to raise me as a single parent, but was not very nurturing and emotionally immature as my aunts tell me. Not the dynamic couple I would have preferred to be raised with, but I simply moved on. I spent about 8 years with my father, which was a constant emotional roller coaster. At one point, I was convinced he loved me, then I was convinced he hated me. I hated being at home after school; high school was paradise and an escape from reality at home, until I moved out of country. My father and step-mother asked me what I thought about leaving, I told them I would rather stay, and the response was a brief "too bad, we're leaving."

My father had already deployed to Iraq, and when he returned he was worse than ever. I hated being around him because he was angry with me all the time, and always unsatisfied with anything I ever did. Grades were never good enough, I never worked hard enough, my chores were never performed to his standard. I felt like I was being treated like one of his privates at basic training (though I wouldn't dare to say it was even close in extremity to BCT), and I hated it. I would call family to tell them I felt like I was being treated unfairly; I was calling other family members to tell them I was dissatisfied with my own dad. Naturally, this angered him even more, which I now understand as a very military standard (you never seek help outside of your chain-of-command, or you step on all of their toes in the process) but I never felt comfortable addressing him with any of my grievances. When I did, I was usually met with sharp verbal responses that I could never handle a little bit a constructive criticism. I could never say that my father was physically abusive, especially after reading some of the stories online and in books, or have witnessed in my day. But to say that my father never struck me would be an outright lie.

So my father and I arrived into our new home out of country, which I loved. I found a new lifestyle that I quickly fell in love with, and began exploring outside of my typical sheltered living; which made my parents nervous. I felt they mistook my social development for wild and irrational behavior; they were convinced I was drinking all the time, and drugs were apart of my daily routine. They became paranoid, and things got even worse than when my father first got back. It got to the point that I loved being around these new international students so much that I would leave for school at 4am just to be away from home, and he eventually became suspicious that I was outing for more drugs at such an obscene hour. I never disliked my father so much at any point in my life. One night I came back late from a night of partying, and my father purposely dead-bolted the door so I couldn't sneak into the house. He opened the door, refused to let me in, and I told him to **** off. He openly struck me and we got into a fight in the middle of a street in a foreign country at around 1am. He told me he didn't want a son like me anymore, and I told him that I wished he had died in Iraq. Probably things you shouldn't ever expect to retract from memory, but I truly hated his life at that point.

Things have gotten a lot better now, but there are still often times where I don't have the desire to talk to my father or step-mother, and I've never had the desire to re-connect with my mother. These things worry me about the person I will become now that I'm truly independent and on my own; I can talk to my father now, but even at 23, I can't simply concede that what I felt was simply the result of raging teenage hormones. I still think I was treated like a chore and not a member of a family, so I'm especially thoughtful of the type of individual I want to become; the latter years of my college life were relatively healthy, in my opinion, largely because I had little interaction with my parents.

I don't know if I need to reconcile with my past in order to move on, and start feeling re-attached to people, but I feel so distrusting because I would let my father say hurtful things to me and then subsequently open a small portion of himself when he realized he had gone too far. I think hate is a strong word for my parents, but I can easily say that I wouldn't shed a tear to learn of my mother's death because I hold so little esteem for her; if she had passed away, I could have always envisioned the life we would have had together, but she threw that opportunity away. My father is only just above the curve because he did come to my rescue when my mother abandoned me, but I still have trouble determining whether or not I actually love him, because there are other family members that I know I love unconditionally.

I guess I'm just wondering if I need closure, which I don't think I've ever truly had, or if I just need to move on with life and slowly build habits that encourage me to stay connected with people. The people I should have been able to trust with anything in this world were, in my opinion, the first two to hurt me beyond what I could ever have anticipated. If anyone has any thoughts, or similar experiences, please let me know what you did to move on. I hate to delve so deeply into the soapbox, but it's probably my first time every opening up to any kind of resource; if there's anything you'd recommend, please let me know. And yes, even the "man-up and grow a pair, we all have issues" will still be welcome.

[healingme4me]

It sounds like you've already manned up. Sounds like you have deep insight into your personal history.

Sounds like asking, what do you need to move forward in order to have a healthy romantic relationship? And what role does having a mom that abandoned you to drugs play? I see it as two paths, insecure/needy/clingy or closed off/unavailable/fear of vulnerability/commitment. How to balance the equation? And you're asking, which kudos to you

My oldest has had two close friends, similar mom stories. They aren't adults yet, but are both hard to say no to. That's one aspect to be mindful of. I personally feel, that's the biggest trait to feel mindful over. A romantic relationship is about companionship, first and foremost. A nurturing type is perhaps most compatible, yet, cautiously without overstepping those fears of vulnerability and ingrained fear to trust.
I guess to work on would be those fears, that may not have happened yet.

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