Sexual Aversion Disorder?

So many people have left that it feels scary to connect with people; that seems like a way to invite more abandonment and therefore more pain.

What about people in your family? It seems from other posts that you have a lot of conflict with your mother. Perhaps this was true growing up as well--So that you learned by repeated experience in childhood that people who are close will be sources of pain?

What brought you to say that just now?

Something I just remembered: a thread I made a while back about what feels to me like an inability to connect with people even platonically, or what feels like it. Someone suggested I may have a strong fear of intimacy, and somehow I failed to put the two together now that I think about it...

My mom says she's thought I was "****ing weird" since I was about 10, and prior to that I seemed to prefer my father's company, at least until he died. My mom's and my relationship started going downhill in preadolescence and, while I might take practical worries and bragging to her on occasion still, I don't trust her with emotional matters. Even now, I've tried telling her things (sometimes for the first time) and there's just a barrier there, just getting blown off or downplayed or misunderstood completely. So I don't bother much, I have the internet for that.

I've never had much family outside immediate relatives. Most extended family is estranged. Our "world's smallest family" was supposed to be super tightknit and close but I never felt it. So I guess you could say there was conflict, of sorts.

Because I have been writing a lot these last couple posts, and I guess I worried it was annoying?

Maybe conflict wasn't the most accurate word. Maybe you were put down so much, dismissed, criticized so much, that you learned that intimacy meant humiliation and pain.

It is not annoying to me. If people don't want to read your posts, they don't have to. Personally, I like to read them and I don't care about the length.

See, I feel like that's an exaggeration, especially because things only started getting troubling in preadolescence, it's not like I was mocked every time I asked a question as a small child, or even hurt in any way. And it escalated with age, actually peaking in my late teens.

"Intimacy meant humiliation and pain"? Again, so damn dramatic. I mean, I wish I could say I had some childhood psychodrama, but compared to others, I don't. It feels wrong to act like my upbringing was bad or neglectful - though really, it sometimes seems like I was taken care of physically, but mentally or emotionally didn't get what I needed, or thought I needed.

In terms of people leaving: one parent is dead and I now identified that I felt "emotionally abandoned" by the other, valid or not. I also bounced around schools so much I saw no point in making friends since I was just going to leave them; and I recently remembered back when I did have friends as a small child, I was often envious of them and felt inferior in some way. So...I'm not exactly set up well for human connection.

Fair enough sorry for overdramtics, but still I think we are onto something helpful.

I'm very sorry for the loss if your father.

It sounds like it was right aroubd the time of his death that your mother became more difficult with you. I agree that moving around a lot interfered with learning how to be close with others. So loss, ongoing hurt, isolation combined over 10 years could very well combine to make you fearful of close connection with others, and of revealing yourself to others.

But online it seems you feel safer sharing of yourself. To what do you attribute that?

Supposedly there's something called the internet disinhibition effect. I call it "I have no boundaries on the internet", or just a sharing addiction. I find it incredibly liberating and addicting talking about myself, feeling known in a way I just can't in real life. I know for a fact I say too much at times. There's a distance online, a hazy barrier that makes it easier to say just about anything.