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ITT: Building an emotional barrier.
variant
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Registered User regular
ITT: Building an emotional barrier.
Yeah I know, weird title.
So H/A,
I'm just now realizing that over the years I've been a total fool and tend to let people "get in" too easily, only to be disappointed. It's not exactly their fault either as I tend to be pretty open and let them get close, handing them the opportunity to do so.
This problem is especially apparent with every failed pursuit of "something more" with girl friends but I'm not sure if I want this to be a girl thread because it isn't an exclusive issue
I'm not sure how this will come off, bitter perhaps...
or maybe this:
But I would really just like to build up an emotional barrier, so that I don't get attached to people so easily.
Yeah I know, weird title.
So H/A,
I'm just now realizing that over the years I've been a total fool and tend to let people "get in" too easily, only to be disappointed. It's not exactly their fault either as I tend to be pretty open and let them get close, handing them the opportunity to do so.
This problem is especially apparent with every failed pursuit of "something more" with girl friends but I'm not sure if I want this to be a girl thread because it isn't an exclusive issue
I'm not sure how this will come off, bitter perhaps...
or maybe this:
But I would really just like to build up an emotional barrier, so that I don't get attached to people so easily.
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I think it would be better to try and find out more about your positive caring aspects and nurture those(Like if you're polite, keep being polite), while trying to learn more about reading other peoples intentions and mannerisms when it comes to their interaction with you and others. Different people have different comfort levels with care and emotion, you just have to find out as you get to know them.
In general it's probably best not to talk about very personal issues until you get to know someone pretty well.
Throughout high school I had an emotional bomb shelter that I am still trying to tear down nearly 10 years later. It's caused many friendships to go south or just never develop.
Perhaps some of the best advice anyone ever gave me about love was the following:
"You only have to get it right once."
The hardship you're going through is difficult, and I think many of us here have felt the same as you do. But don't give up.
There ARE people out there who you can trust. Even they may let you down sometimes, but that's because they're human: you will, no doubt, let them down as well at some point for the same reason. But don't shut out the possibility of finding those much more reliable people simply to prevent yourself from running into those who you shouldn't trust.
The same goes for relationships. By shutting the door to potential heartbreak, you also shut the door to the potential for a genuine relationship.
Both of the above scenarios are scenarios of risk: situations where you are accepting the possibility of temporary harm for the possibility of a more permanent or meaningful boon. The boon greatly outweighs the harms greatly in both of those scenarios, so don't be afraid of that potential for harm. You have been burned in the past: but when you find people you can trust, or a relationship you can value (and even spend the rest of your life in), it will make all of those prior failures seem like they were nothing at all by comparison.
What I'm saying is that you must keep searching. Don't give up.
This.
I was trying to say that above but couldn't seem to find a concise way to say it.
I host a podcast about movies.
For one, you have to realize that someone who really wants to be your friend will know their limits. If you tell them you're uncomfortable with something, a true friend won't give you shit about it.
Perhaps if you gave us an example of HOW you got burned, it might help us to give you strong counterexamples of what you can do in those situations?
No, not really.
Being too vulnerable, too prone to attachment, can leave you open to codependency, clingyness, drama, or people taking advantage of your good nature. (Even if they don't mean to take advantage.) It can allow your own emotions and your own goals and desires to get drowned out by other people's.
On the other hand, you're also partly right. You don't want to be too cold or too distant.
Which is why we need to have the right amount of both. There is an appropriate balance between being vulnerable and being protected. It's bad advice to make a blanket statement that being detached is bad because it sounds like the OP is out of balance and needs to start pulling his personality in the other direction.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
What in particular has led you to believe that you let people in too easily?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
In what ways have people burned you? Give us some examples so we can examine them.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Allow me to clarify. What I meant was that you can't form real relationships without the possibility of getting hurt. I didn't mean to suggest you can never be detached.
You don't neccesarily have to keep people at a distance. Remember that it's not that people don't care about your more inner thoughts and such, more that people in general aren't used to getting to know someone very fast, or hearing about a lot about them. People will still very likely want to get to know you in your life and go through layers of your personality, this is a part people like about getting to know each other. I know, it's difficult sometimes if you don't have a lot of strong connections, to hold yourself back from opening up yourself to new people, but you'll have more luck in my opinion if you slow down.
Try thinking to yourself(just don't overthink) about your good aspects and what people seem to respond to positevely when you're with them. Then think about the situations this occured in. If you can keep a nice flow of exhibiting your positive traits you'll be okay. It may be pretty difficult at first but that's part of getting to know someone, it becomes more natural as you keep interacting to where it may not feel as awkward, and then you can be a lot more open.
Let me just clarify, it's not the getting burned or whatever that bothers me, it's the fact that after it I'm still pretty attached and care for the person, even though I shouldn't.
A recent example would like (it's not a burn but still) my roommate moved back to Texas after graduating, I only knew him for about a year but I really liked the guy (no homo) and still miss him a month later.
Not sure if that helps so let me give a slightly older example...
I met this girl that lived an apartment over at the beginning of the spring semester, we started hanging out pretty often and I thought she was cool but after about a month of knowing her I started developing feelings for her, but I knew that she wasn't looking for anything (at least with me) because she would always say things like "I'm so happy to be single, I don't want to date anyone," all the time.
So I just kind of kept it bottled up for another month but then I thought to myself that I should just go for it and if she isn't in to it, fine whatever...
So I asked her to go for dinner to a nice restaurant on a saturday night, I didn't really say it was a date but I guess it was implied...she agreed (this was a sunday or monday), later that week we went shopping for groceries(on a wednesday or thursday) and she just seemed very irritable, I didn't think much of it and as we were at the door I asked her if we were still on for the dinner, she said "no, I'm not sure what this is to you but I really don't want to date right now."
I said that's okay, I'm happy to have her as a friend and we were off. However, as the semester went along she slowly stopped hanging out with us and by the end of the semester we had stopped speaking completely, i made an effort a few times to no avail and just gave up. I confronted her on aim of all places and she didn't think anything of it and said she was still my friend, I told her she has been acquaintance at best and that I don't want to speak to her, she said fine.
She ended up moving to go to a different college. But still, it's been another semester now and I still think/care about her (just as a friend, i think), and checkout her Facebook once in a while to see how she's doing (not stalking or anything).
Hopefully this gives you the perspective that was necessary to asses the situation...
Just too damn easily attached is probably the best TL;DR.
The things I have highlighted in green are things that I feel are perfectly normal, and any human being would feel the same. I have also underlined certain portions so that hopefully you'll notice the small portion of time you're talking about here when you feel like it's taking too long to cut people out of your life.
Note that I didn't put "only" in green in your roommate's scenario, because a year is not a short period of time. That is an entire 1% of your life, even if you live to be a hundred years old... which, statistically speaking, is not insignificant. Depending on how old you are right now, it could be quite a significant portion of your life thus far... and if you discount your formative years and just count from when your memories and conscious attachment to other human beings began, odds are the year you spent living with your roommate could be a very statistically significant portion of your conscious life up to this point indeed. As an example, let's say your earliest "social memory" (where meaningful memories of social relationships outside of your family begins) is like 8 years old, and let's say for this example that you're 18 right now. Then you've had about 10 years of "social awareness" in your life thus far. That means a single year represents 10% of your socially aware LIFE, which is extremely significant, especially since you were living with this person (possibly even in the same room if you were in a dorm). There is absolutely nothing wrong with missing him. Nothing at all. In fact, the fact that you do is a good sign that you're well adjusted and able to care about other people.
In the second scenario, you're talking about a girl you liked that didn't like you back in the same way. It's only been a semester since that incident. I think if you were able to utterly cut her out of your life (to the point where you didn't even think about her at all), that might be a bad thing actually. We're human beings, and social creatures by nature. As such, the bonds we make are not supposed to be easily broken. It will happen in time (if that's what you want), but attempting to force it to happen quickly (be it a month, a semester, or even a year) could prove more harmful to you than helpful.
My advice to you is to approach it from a new perspective. Rather than seeing your attachment to people as something weak that you must change, view it as a sign that you are a well adjusted enough person to be able to form meaningful social bonds (AKA you're not a psychopath). You must realize that this is a GOOD thing, ***NOT*** a bad one.
I hope this helps.
(As a side note, that's not exactly the same as lacking an emotional barrier.)
That's not too bad... missing somebody after they leave is natural. The only "red flag" I see in your post is that you actively pursued a relationship with a girl who you knew wasn't interested in having a relationship at the moment. You barked up the wrong tree. (God knows we've all done that before at least once.)
The best thing that comes to mind is to widen your social network. During the spring semester, how many other girls were in your life? How many other friendships did you have going?
Personally, I've found that the more isolated I am, the easier it is to get attached to certain people. Instead of investing a little bit of energy each into a lot of people, I invest a lot of energy into a smaller number of people.
A lot of threads come through H/A where a guy basically says, "I have a crush on this one girl but I don't think she feels the same way about me," and the advice is almost always the same: go out and meet more girls. Not necessarily with the expectation of a relationship, just develop more friendships and acquaintances with both genders but especially with other women. I think that advice applies to your situation, too.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Fall semester I was hanging out with two girls, both were really cool but not exactly my type so we were just acquaintances. Also, I rarely fall for someone, not that I'm picky, it's just rare that I click with someone on that level, let's just say it has happened only about two times before and I'm 21.
Friendship wise, I made really good friends with a guy I just got to know over the fall semester and will probably be moving in with him once school ends since we both got a job at the same firm in LA.
I dont see why you want to set up this 'emotional barrier' against other people. I mean the world is already a cold place as is. We live in a world where people are becoming afraid to say hello to one another. The last thing we need is another person who isolate them self emotionally. I say continue to do what you're doing, because it's the right thing to do.
Dont afraid of becoming sad. Happiness and Sadness are two faces of the same coin, you cant have one without another. The opposite of happiness is (IMO) boredom. Waking up every morning with nothing to look forward to will crush you. Trust me, I've been there.
I don't see anything particularly wrong, except that you could stand to get out more. Feral's advice is about as accurate and succinct as it's going to get.
somewhat off-topic:
Only I was listening to Silverchair.
Yeah.