No real connections to anyone

I have this sort of "schpiel" if you will, I'm a late Millennial-Early Gen Z cusper. I grew up during the internet age and the age of mistrust and distrust. I grew up not keeping friends very well because I was a socially awkward kid, and my parents constantly moved me to different schools and states a lot. I never got to make any good friends for very long, and I never really got to make any connections. Also, with my mother not allowing for me to hang out or play with other children and judging everyone, it was hard for me to ever hang out with anyone. I was constantly abused back at home, and life with chaotic and unstable in the household with my mother constantly divorcing and remarrying herself to new men. Even when I did have friends, I ended up sabotaging my friendships. I often feel like there's nothing there, no spark or connection to people. Like some barrier is dividing me from that person. Now that I'm older I find out I have BPD, Autism and ADHD and had CPTSD as a child. I had a sick and ****ed up childhood. As an adult, I do not have any friends. Everyone either has kids, wants to get high or do drugs, wants to get pregnant, etc. I've had people ghost and block me, and I've lost alot of people along the way. Even the current people I keep in touch with don't even consider me as their friends, these are women. Also, men that I'm friends with objectify me for my looks and for their sexual desires, and it irks and hurts me. It's hard to want to make friends when neurotypicals are constantly willing to hurt you, manipulate you, take advantage of your disabilities, bully you. What kind of **** world are we living in right now, and what the hell is wrong with my country and generation?

I have a lot of the same problems. No real friends since high school. I've been diagnosed with just about everything and as of now, I don't even know what I am diagnosed with. I'd guess it would probably be Bipolar, BPD or schizotypal with extreme social anxiety, depression and CPTSD. I've never been tested for autism but with how hard it is for me to socialize and interpret social cues, I might be. Anyway, I just thought I'd share that you're not alone with what you are going through.

BubonicPlague’s quote:

“Also, with my mother not allowing for me to hang out or play with other children and judging everyone, it was hard for me to ever hang out with anyone.”

I think this is the key. Once your mother controlled you in such a way, it’s tons of hard to break the walls around you.

Hello, I didn’t greet you first. I wanted to point out the above.
I’m sorry you had such an undeserved childhood and I also wanted to tell you that I understand why you struggle to establish connections with the world outside. I sometimes can’t understand what happen to some mums and dads. They don’t know how much damage can cause on their kids.

How are the things going in therapy? If you don’t mind tell a little bit about it.
I hope you can elaborate your relation with your mother with your therapist.

you say `no real connections` and say that there are men that you are friends with. I am confused.

Also, have you personally ever felt sexual attraction?

Even the people I stay in touch with in social media I still don't really trust. I've had men that I keep in touch with that view me as an object.

I am in a real relationship. I have "some" connection towards my partner but it's not really as strong as it should be.

I was sexually abused 12-15, by an ex family member, my teen stepbrother and my mom told me not to tell anyone what was happening at school or to authorities. Even though my mom is divorced she still supports him, which I hold a grudge against my mother to this day. I don't have happy moments of my childhood because I was emotionally, psychologically, sexually and physically abused growing up, even my needs and emotions were neglected.

In my teens I developed a pornography addiction and then 18 was when I gave into my social naivete to have sex with different people. I was used over and over again by other men who didn't want a relationship with me, and would lie so they could use me for gratification.

I enjoyed it at first because I was hypersexual, but then over time I started getting hurt emotionally and then I didn't really care for it that much anymore.

I'm in my first healthy and real relationship now, and it's been 5 years. I hope to marry him soon. We really are committed and love each other. My relationship with sex is alright, I think my partner and I have become more asexual with the both of us as the years go by. We get pleasure from emotional bonding more than anything.

My therapeutic services where I'm at are tanking pretty bad right now, and I've been so out of it that for nearly a month and a half now I've been trying to recover from illness. I don't see my clinic until October. But I honestly think so far that services have been unsuccessful for me. I honestly don't know where I'm going while continuing with her, they won't let me go through emdr because I have poor memory issues, and can't even remember nearly three fourths of the things that we've learned. I tried doing therapy with my mom and then the family therapist sided with her and made me quit therapy saying I wasn't ready, but really it was because my mom said she wasn't going to change or do anything to make our relationship better for us, and blamed our problems on me.

I see. So you are saying self-contradictory things about your relationship to the current man. You saying that you have "some" connection to him but not as nearly much as should be, and yet that you have been together for 5 years, that you plan to marry him soon, and that you love each other and get pleasure from emotional bonding. So I am a little confused as to where the feeling of a lack of connection is coming from if everything (except for maybe sex) is basically wonderful.

Regarding growing asexual with him, here is where therapy (maybe joint) would be helpful, to make sure your being the victim of abuse by step-brother, betrayal by mother, and your unfortunate early sexual experiences with men would not interfere with the sexual satisfaction with the current man whom you plan to marry.

We did have a relationship counselor for a while which has helped us, but our last one left the agency we were with. We will have to wait for someone else to come along.

The mental health care system is at it's worst right now in Arizona ever since the pandemic hit.

I am sorry to hear that and hope that someone good will come along for the two of you.

Yes, it's very difficult to find a full, all encompassing explanation as to 'why' it is this way BubonicPlague, and I totally understand that seemingly endless inner dilemma. The ultimate answer I don't think can be gauged by we humans, so I tell myself that it's simply the way people are, and I myself prior to my journey of self growth have (and often still do) fall short of the mark. But finding that connection, that one true friend (to begin with) is still always a possibility. I meet nice, considerate, thoughtful people quite frequently and so I'm at the stage now where, from that point, it's just a matter of nurturing the initial connection and inviting them to hang out, do something cool together (which I did today and I'm very happy about that). So just don't lose hope that things will fall into place for you. Yes, let those frustrations out though, the tears even. That is very normal.🙏

My bad. I didn’t express myself well. I didn’t mean to work with your therapist and your mother to fix up things with her.
I meant to re elaborate the relation. It’s normal that when someone has been controlled by their attachment figures since a kid, this kid develops dependency on these figures, so it prevent them from having real and healthy connections with others. You named it. Mistrust.

I’m sorry you have so many difficulties to access to a good medical service.

Not having a circle of friends is a huge deficit in any human being's life. It's part of how we are meant to live, since we are social animals. We're also meant to be part of an extended family. Our ancestors, going back to the stone age, evolved as members of a family clan and as members of a village. You have neither. Your mother's pattern gave you no stable family connection. And, what's worse - you got victimized by a relative. Being geographically uprooted all thru childhood is also not what humans were built for. So you are unmoored socially. There's no circle of support. The task of remedying that is beyond huge. I can relate somewhat. I moved thousands of miles from family, which I'm paying for now. Building friendship has never come natural to me either. So I cope with an unnatural degree of isolation.

One big thing you have going for you is that you've found a significant other. That's a major accomplishment. You can build around that. I don't say that's easy. And it can be an extremely slow process . . . fraught with setbacks. I've lost some friends due to some moving far away. People don't stay put. I'll try to think of positive advice to give and come back here with it.

Here's one thing I have found. Young men who are single and looking for a partner really have little interest in forming platonic relationships with attractive young women. There's been lots of threads in this forum started by women who became appalled when some male friend they trusted to keep things platonic came on to them sexually. I think we have to accept certain realities of human nature. I think couples do well to look to befriend other couples. The problem there is that you have 4 people who all have to like each other. A couple who appeal to you may not appeal to your partner. A couple might like your partner and have less interest in you. So it can get tricky. Still, I don't think socializing for a couple can ever be the same as it was for those two people when they were unattached to each other. You do become sort of a package deal.

To conclude, if you're saying that the world is a messed up place, you'll get no argument from me. Interacting with other humans can be very disappointing an awful lot of the time.