[eskielover]

Its interesting because in my younger days after graduating from the university & holding down my computer design engineering career, I had very few friends. Growing up as an only child, I didn't enjoy groups of people so I never hooked up with the groups as school.....I was sort of on the outskirts of all the groups & friendly with everyone, I just wasn't into the group friend environment. I had one close friend growing up & we did everything together & her family ended up being the only friends my parents actually had also. (looking back I realized this not long ago).

Went from living with parents to married at the age of 21. Life was narrow as my H was not sociable & didn't make friends with people.....at best acquaintance friends he never connected with (looking back just realized this lately also)

I was involved in many activities with my music performing but have realized that all the activities I was involved in, I would pop in, practice or work with the people, then pop back out into my own very private married life. I was the one that brought any activities we had into our married life through my involvement in activities but had my very private married life that actually had no real friends involved....very much just like my parents life.

I never really got to know the parents of our daughters friends & only slightly got to know my neighbors in the last house we lived in. Even in the first house that I ended up being treasurer of the HOA, I was always busy with career & the tasks I needed to get done & really kept people at a distance since H wasn't really into having friends either, I honestly had no idea what REAL friends were like & had no idea that my lack of connection with people wasn't normal because it was all I lived around all my life.

I never had people I could just share thoughts & struggles with or just talk about the normal things in life. I played racquetball at lunch with the guys I worked with but there was no talking time, I enjoyed a ballroom dance group through work but again the focus was dance, not socializing beyond that. We had 2 couples we enjoyed doing things with....both had kids our daughters age. We would celebrate holidays & birthdays with one family & we actually went on ski weekends & invited the other couple to ski with us at out condo in Jackson Hole one winter....but the connection was only during the time we were together.

The only person I made sure I kept contact with was my mom but that was out of duty & was always so stressful because you never knew what might get her upset & then just hang up.

It wasn't until I finally left my marriage & moved 2100 miles away to a place where I knew no one that I have finally been able to emotionally connect with the people around me. Most are my age. I still am involved in so many things that I have different groups of friends in the different activities I'm involved with but it's been a learning curve to understand that calling & touching base with friends is normal. It's amazing to have people to talk to who share their struggles & I realize I'm not alone with my struggles. People to share my thoughts with, people who I learn things with. People that we just get together on the spur of the moment (flash party) or call up to just go out to dinner together & REALLY get to know them, their thoughts, their cares, their worries, & I feel safe enough finally to be able to open up about myself.

There was so much I didn't understand about my past that I've spent the last 9 years figuring out & putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Being surrounded by people who care & will just stop by my door if they haven't seen or heard from me in awhile.

Growing up, I never shared my questions or concerns with anyone....I pretty much had to figure everything out on my own, not having any siblings in the house. It's kind of amazing at this age (63) having wonderful close friends who are open with their thoughts & concerns to share. I realize that My thoughts & experiences are so much more normal than everything I had lived around for those 54 years before moving here.

It's been an awesome experience to learn even at this age what normal emotional connection with others is really like. It magnifies & seriously points out just how dysfunctional parents $ H really were but it's amazing to realize that the internal stress I was feeling living in those environments wasn't because I was the one with the problem & that even though we have lived over half our life in dysfunction, what is really inside of us can come out given that we end up in an environment that encourages us to connect & to let out who & what we really are.

It's been a learning curve & a friend who encouraged me to call & talk & not just let her call for fear I would bother her. It's been wonderful learning how do deal peacefully when thoughts & ideas end up in conflict.....no need to just fly off the handle & explode the way I did with parents & with H because in reality I had been pushed to my limits by them before ever getting to that point & by that time I had no desire to be civil. It's just awesome to have people in my life capable of good discussions who really know how to communicate....again, this new experience has highlightes just how dysfunctional all the people have been in my past life.

I wasn't sure when I moved here if everyone telling me you can't just move away from your problems because they come with you....but I realized first off when I moved here that I felt a peace in my life I had never felt before ( even before getting involved in the community & getting to know the wonderful people). The thought hit me at the time that the problem must not have been internal or the feelings that I had would have moved here with me....so that was the start of my realizing that there must have been a problem with the environment I had been living in. Just like growing up, I never had problems at other homes I went into or around people who weren't my parents but they still claimed it was me with the problem that only existed around them.

I love having the ability to grow up even if it started at the age of 54. My H always bragged about the fact that he would NEVER grow up.....but that was his problem....he never grew up mentally or emotionally & it was like being married to an educated child that thought he knew everything but in reality was just an incompetent "know it all" brat. After doing research I can pretty much put my finger on the cause of both my H's & dad's behaviors though not a formal dx, everything I read is word for word the experiences I had with them & explain the environment I grew up in& lived in as a married adult & like our Pdoc we both went to said....his problems went beyond just adult ADD but at the time he didn't bother to Dx more than that right at the time I left.

We are never too old to heal from our past & to make a new life for ourselves. For the first time in my life (though I still haven't been able to afford finalizing the divorce), I feel like I might actually be capable of emotionally connecting with someone if the right guy ever came along. I'm just not into dating & have enough social activities to keep me more than busy & not missing what I never had in the first place, but I finally feel like I know myself & my ability to really emotionally connect with other people....I always thought it was me who was the one who couldn't connect but have found out it was learned behavior because it was what I was surrounded with for all my life. It's nice to know that I am capable of connecting with others at more than just a superficial level....so I hold out hope that if the right guy were to come along in my life that it would be a possibility I didn't believe existed before....but I am so happy in my single life that there is no driving desire or need for marriage unless the right person does come into my life. It's just nice to have others my own age to share thoughts with & to realize that my thoughts are just like others....I always thought I was so much different from everyone that no one could possibly think the thoughts or wonder the questions I wondered. Kinda nice to have ME validated as being more like others than I ever imagined.

[Skeezyks]

Hello eskielover: Thanks for sharing your thoughts...

[xraychick01]

I hope one day I can feel the way you are feeling right now. The way you describe yourself from years ago is exactly me today. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. It gives me hope

[eskielover]

Ah, xraychick......I'm sorry you are experiencing that. I'm glad that I can give hope to you.

I know I went through a really black hole period in my life from 1994-2003 where I felt so trapped & was sure there was no way out other than to die & heaven knows, I tried & tried & even hoped that since the OD's didn't work that maybe the anorexia would. It was sad because during those years was when I finally got my horse that I had wanted all my life & started raising my gorgeous american eskimo dogs, breeding & showing. No one could understand how I could have so much that I wanted & still feel so depressed. Everyone blamed in on the loss of my engineering career in 1994. I also realize now that I didn't even have an emotional connection with my horse or my dogs which even though I had them was still an empty feel.....just felt like something was seriously missing in my life but at that time, I couldn't put my finger on what it really was.

Only lately did I realize that my career was my only REAL escape from the bad marriage I was in that had no emotional connection.....but I didn't even know that at the time so they had me convinced that I was just OVERREACTING to the loss of my career.....all the great mental health professionals couldn't help me figure it out because in my own mind the life I was living was normal. It was the only thing I knew & there wasn't any REAL ABUSE that I had lived through so they had no concept that what I was living with was so absolutely dysfunctional when it came to any emotional connection.

I am so thankful to God that I survived through those years so that I could get to this point in my life. It is such a wonderful feeling to love life after so many years of not liking it, though no one around me ever realized that I felt that way including myself until that really dark years in my life.....& I didn't realize that was how I felt before until I had something to actually compare those past feelings to.

I mean really how do you know that something is missing when you have NEVER experienced it.....until you finally do experience it then it becomes more obvious.

I saw red flags before I got married & wanted to back out of the wedding but I really didn't understand what the red flags were all about, they were just a gut feeling that there was a problem & I got talked out of those feelings & then I rationalized my own self out of them convincing myself that my H was educated with a good college degree so there was NO WAY he could possibly be like my dad.

Growing up I put all my values into education as being the solution to everything. I thought my parents problems were from lack of education, not that there was really something wrong that was causing them to be that way, so in my mind, education SOLVED every problem. It was my ticket out of what I had been living around all my life......LITTLE DID I KNOW at that age. Yes, education IS IMPORTANT but it's NOT the solution to every problem like I believed it was growing up. My dad was basically anti education & believed that it would corrupt one's mind.....all the more reason I was determined to get my education & have a career that would make me even more independent than I already was.

[xraychick01]

My parents divorced when I was 2. I spent most of time with my mom and step dad and only saw my biological dad every other weekend.

At my mom and step dad's there was absolutely no emotional connection between us. We did our own thing, didn't really talk much about issues or problems we were having. I don't remember ever really hugging my mother and never hugging my step dad. No one on that side of my family says "I love you." It's completely void of any emotion or connection.

My dad is completely different but only seeing him every other weekend I still seemed to pick up my mom and step dad's way of life. I feel so closed off and not emotionally connected to anyone. I don't really know what it's like. Maybe that's the reason for the void or empty feeling I have inside of me. My own boyfriend broke up with me because he felt like we didn't have an emotional connection any more. He said "any more" so he felt like in the beginning we had that connection so I guess I am capable of it. I just don't really know what it feels like so I don't know when it's happening.

What a sad life it is. I feel like I don't have the skills or ability to connect with people on an emotional level. I really don't even know what it means.

This break up left me broken down and sad and miserable and pondering my life. I want more. I want to feel more. I want to love life. At the moment I don't love life. I just live it. It's nothing special.

Your story really resonated with me and I hope one day I can find what I'm looking for.