[mulan]

I am sure stories like mine have been told many times aroud the internet.
I don't want to know if I am normal or what future has for me. I just want to know how to deal with it.

Here's the thing: I am 25 and I never had any sort of relationship. Never dated or had any boy interested in me (excluding the preteen one). So I am totaly naive about relationships and there aren't many people I know that are single. It just seems that everyone my age has their long-term relationship and is contemplating marriage. It is not even worthy to look at anyone with some romantic interest because they all are taken.

This all makes me feel very akward. It is like a big secret that I can't tell anyone... and it does says a lot about me... When people talk about their relationships I get very unconfortable because this is a world I know little about. It is like someone is talking about a distant country I have never heard of, adding the fact that I feel ashamed I am so unexperienced.

So basically I am a person unable to talk about serious human subjects. I feel ashamed by my feelings (any kind of personal feelings), I feel ashamed by my lack of experience and my knowledge is very limited.

I want to normalize this part of my life, I want to stop feeling threatened by people that have/had relationship or have no trouble confessing their feelings. I was hoping you could help me with that, maybe saying something about feelings and relationship that makes me understand it from the inside. Or just some advice.
Tough request, I know. Thanks.

I'm sorry, as I don't know what love is either. Hope someone else will give you an answer.

[here today]

I can relate to your post here and also one I noticed in the schizoid PD subforum. I. Was diagnosed a while back with PDNOS and my late husband was likely schizoid. I do believe he loved me but I was the one who reached out to him first.

I am experiencing some improvement, maybe, having worked very hard and found a meetup of people who are more like me than most. Yes I have problems because of the way I grew up and shut down parts of myself but I definitely needed an an environment where people could relate to my basic temperament and who I could also feel drawn to and therefore want to come out of my shell, at a basic emotion level and not just intellectual. That was shut down or frozen and no way on my own, or with any therapist I ever saw, that I could change that. Although it was definitely more "alive" when I was with my late husband.

Personality develops in an environment and it seems logical to me that it needs a healthy, accepting, understanding environment in which to "re-develop". But that seems not to be a common view in the mental health community so, for right now, it seems to me that we're on our own to try to find it! But, what are the alternatives?

[mulan]

Originally Posted by here today

I can relate to your post here and also one I noticed in the schizoid PD subforum. I. Was diagnosed a while back with PDNOS and my late husband was likely schizoid. I do believe he loved me but I was the one who reached out to him first.

I am experiencing some improvement, maybe, having worked very hard and found a meetup of people who are more like me than most. Yes I have problems because of the way I grew up and shut down parts of myself but I definitely needed an an environment where people could relate to my basic temperament and who I could also feel drawn to and therefore want to come out of my shell, at a basic emotion level and not just intellectual. That was shut down or frozen and no way on my own, or with any therapist I ever saw, that I could change that. Although it was definitely more "alive" when I was with my late husband.

Personality develops in an environment and it seems logical to me that it needs a healthy, accepting, understanding environment in which to "re-develop". But that seems not to be a common view in the mental health community so, for right now, it seems to me that we're on our own to try to find it! But, what are the alternatives?

It's hard to know that I am on my own and nobody out there knows a proved way to help me get out of this.
I am not sure if I have schizoid personality disorder or if it depersonalization disorder, either way, none of them as been much investigated.

I hope you continue to improve.

[eskielover]

This is not a simple topic & probably no simple explanation. Ugh, it took me over 54 years to start sorting out what I have been through & experienced all my life. These last 10 years have been real eye openers.

By the time I left my 33 years in a bad marriage the only feeling I realized I had felt all those years was ANGER...so understanding love was a real challenge.

Will go back to childhood because I lived with parents who had no idea how to emotionally connect at any level with anyone. Looking back at my dad who died in 1989, his behaviors point to his having been on the autistic spectrum. It not, his life he lived made his behaviors the same. Growing up it was always my mom telling me that my dad really loved me he just had no idea how to express it. Like thats the way to learn how love feels????

Add to that, my mom had self-esteem problems that never ever really went away....how could they with a husband incapable if emotionally connecting....but in her lack of self-esteem mind she had been sure no other guy would have ever looked at her, she jumpedat whatever level of attention he could provide & called it love....it probably was but a very dysfunctional way of expressing it.

So I grew up not even realizing how out of the norm my parents were they just seemed different than everyone elses parents but I had no silings or close friends to discuss stuff like that with so it just became normal to me....never to have any emotional connection other than fighting with ke parents probaly beause I sensed something wrong but had no idea what so it came out in anger toward them while not anyone else. Every time I resolved to not fight with them they would do or say something that just totally blew my resolution.

Never knowing what an emotional connection felt like but not knowing that I didnt made it impossile to connect with anyone other than on an intellectual basis....i turned my focus to school & grades beause I assumed that my parents lack of education was what caused their problem & I was determined to be NOTHING like them.

Little did i know or realize but being around the lack of emotional connetion kept me from learning how to emotionally connect to others.

Fast forward to the 70's, college, dating....still absolutely no emotional connection with anyone I dated & I would date them a few times & just get bored & not want to waste more time with them. I had a few good guy friends but friends I still didnt feel an emotional connection with....then I met a guy who bragged about his IQ. I was sure that he couldnt be anything like my dad...but right before the wedding all these red flags started to fly. Little did I realize that my mom liked him so much because he was just like my dad....but she assured me that he would grow up & mature when he was forced to by life. I logiced myself into going ahead with the marriage not even realizing that I had lost respect for him because of his attitudes & his behavior. So the marriage just ended up a continuation of the fighting I had done with my parents especially after he decided that sarcasm & putting me down wS somehow CUTE....lol..problem was that in reality he might have had a high IQ but I was smarter & excelled far beyond what he was ever capable of.....it also took me until almost the end of my marriage to realize that everything he did in life or for me was because he KNEW intellectually it was the right thing to do but was never done with any feelings. That was probably my first clue to what lack of emotional connetion really meant.

I hadnt realized it at the time because all the pdocs & T's I had were sure my depression was because of the loss of my computer engineering career. What none of us realized at the time was the loss of my career trapped me financially into my bad marriage...house upside down, no savings....it all went into hospital bills from all my unsuccessful suicide attempts....but no one got it though I was the one who kept leaving & coming back.

Finally my mom got sick with cancer & after going through a horrible trauma dealing with the home care person I caught abusing my mom & all the police issues involved, my mom died a month after that while I was sick in the hospital with anorexia triggered by all the stress. The trauma caused PTSD & I couldnt even go into my moms house for over a year after she died. I finally got her house sold & i took my inheritance money & RAN as far away as possible...2100 miles to a very small town where I knew no one & bought a little 10 acre farm I had always wanted.

Ok so new town, new people. I was finally able to be myself without being around people who werent capable of emotionally conneting. I started to get ivolved in the community & started to meet NORMAL PEOPLE....& I could feel their care for me. I didnt have to beg or plead or FIGHT for help. It was such an amazing feeling to experience people who truly emotionally connected with each other & with me. Experiencing that connection for the first time in my life, my T here said she never thought my walls would ever be torn down....walls to protect myself but also the wall that was created from not ever knowing what an emotional connection felt like.

Ok this being able to have & feel an emotional connection is the FOUNDATION of EVERY relationship that ever develops beyond just being an acquaintance. Yes, I got married without it but it was a totally EMPTY marriage & looking back it was from even before we got married because the foundation of emotional connection was NEVER there.

Deep lasting friendships grow out of emotional connection....LOVE in a marriage starts as a deep friendship out of an emotional connection then grows into LOVE when mixed with common interests, common goals & most of all, a CARING RESPECT for each other & not just doing things for each other because its the right thing to do but because it comes from the heart.

Lol, I think my first real feeling of love that hit me was after I moved here & I was laying on my bed surrounded by all my eskie dogs & Leo was giving me big doggie kisses on my face....that was when I first understood what having an emotional connection truly felt like.

It was after that i realized that the connections I was making with the wonderful people in my community were emotional connections & very close friendships were being formed....something I had NEVER experienced before & it was rather scary at first because it was such a foreign feeling.

I dont have plans on EVER getting married again....I havent even been able to afford to finalize my divorce yet..plan on getting that accomplished this year also....BUT if the right guy were to ever come along I feel certain that without a real emotional conection that I know how it feels with just normal people I will for the first time know how to emotionally connect for REAL in a marriage relationship....& I wont even persue a relationship that doesnt have that emotional connection as its foundation.

Dont know if this helped any or just causes more questions...please ask about anything that didnt make sense. Personal experiences dont always make sense to others as they do to the one who had them.

Love & relationships is the most difficult thing in ones life & if its not a 2 way street it will never work either without mutual feelings about each other. Emotional connections cant be MADE to happen & LOVE that makesa marriage work doesnt always grow out of an emotional connection....but that LOVE will never grow without both having it.