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I feel broken


NervousGirl

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NervousGirl

This is my first real post on here, I set up my account years ago and haven’t really logged on since. Not sure why I’m telling the internet my problems, but I am.

 

I’ve been comfortably asexual my whole life, I just plain never developed any interest in anything sexual or physically intimate with other people. I have always been perfectly happy and content on my own. I wish I had left it that way.

 

My family has always pressured me into being more “normal” (there’s some history of emotional abuse, I estranged them). My dad has outright told me my asexuality is the result of being emotionally damaged, and blamed it on being a sexual assault survivor (all kinds of wrong there, I know). They have never understood that I simply like being on my own and doing my own things.

 

Anyway I got influenced by various things into attempting to date and for a while I had “boyfriend” who I was happy to be around... mostly. I use air quotes on “boyfriend” because we didn’t really do anything specifically boyfriend/girlfriend. We got coffee a lot, talked a lot, but not much else. For a while this was fine, but he clearly wanted more, and arranging to spend time with him felt more and more like hard work. I have generalised anxiety disorder and have been relapsing with anorexia/bulimia for the past year. Emotionally I just about have the capacity to function vaguely like a human being, but I don’t have the capacity to invest emotionally in other people right now. Spending time together relied on having good days (which are altogether rare in my current mental state), and this couldn’t be relied upon so I kept pushing away. I also spent more time with friends or on my own before realising that being alone or with only one or two friends was helping me feel better where being with him made me feel stressed. It’s not that I didn’t like him, he was a nice enough person, but even with the relationship labels I didn’t think of him like that. It all felt alien and uncomfortable to me.

 

He eventually confronted me about pushing away and I explain all this to him, and he asked me where we were heading and I just couldn’t answer him. In my mind we weren’t heading anywhere because I don’t feel any of the things he was expecting me to feel. But not being able to feel them, coupled with my poor mental health, left me feeling rather inhuman. Which leads me here. Because I don’t feel anything, I’m sad more because I feel like a poor excuse for a human for being incapable of feeling these things for a genuinely nice person. I’m not sad the relationship is over, if anything I’m glad because I won’t have to work so hard to be someone I’m not. At the same time I just feel broken. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with who I am anymore, I’m not even sure I know who I am any more, and that brokenness scares me.

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It's okay. You're not broken, and you are perfectly entitled to your feelings. 

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I think we are all broken in different ways. Over and over. But unlike chinaware, being broken helps us come together in more and more beautiful ways. I am a sexual, emotionally articulate person. I feel lost that a wonderful man like my ace is in my life and I can't get over my sexual frustration and simply enjoy him to the HILT. What the hell is wrong with me? This is the best relationship of my life, and sex is really "been there, done that". Why the hell can't I see around it? I can't. I often feel broken and damaged in some way that I have a person who is like a gift to my life, and I STILL get whiny moods because I'm not getting laid. Seriously? Get a vibrator I tell myself. I get i too. But he is so fantastic, how to not desire him? And there lies the rub....

 

Another previous relationship I was in, that was also pure magic was two decades ago. We were both horny creatures, having at it on whim, as often as we liked. He was a senstive lover, caring human. But I am asocial and need my "space" and feel claustrophobic by people constantly trying to "take care of me", no matter how lovingly done and non-intrusively offered. The simple fact that there is someone watching, seeking opportunities to intervene with a value add makes me feel like "leave me alone to do my thing". We had a beautiful relationship. Very loving. His caring was never "forced" on me, so to say, but all through, I had this occasional claustrophobic attack, where I wanted to RUNNNNN. I thought myself broken too. I mean seriously, utterly devoted, sensitive, intelligent, physically fit, mentally agile HOT guy's center of the world. What is to not like? What was wrong with me? I felt broken then too.

 

When there are mismatches in our intimate life, we want there to be a "perfect" match so much, that we tend to get intolerant of differences in that space. The differences matter too much, we care too much, it hurts too much, everything is too much, because that person is close and matters to us. The design itself is broken. Or perhaps it is being perfectly human.

 

Hug. Take care. Love yourself. In all the broken perfection. Don't judge yourself too harshly. Make poetry from the broken bits, turn yourself into better and better versions. That's how we get even with that broken that keeps popping up.

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It sounds to me as though you've opened Pandora's box and wished you hadn't. I get the strong impression that women feel a lot more pressure to conform to social "norms" than men do. Maybe this is what flew out of that box you opened. I do think you did the right thing when you explained the way you felt to your friend. Asexuals make dreadful mistakes when they fail to tell sexual partners about how they feel regarding sex. You seemed content before you established the relationship you described. Why are you so upset now? What may be upsetting you the most is the fact you don't really know why. If you can find out you will have a tool to try and solve this problem. You absolutely don't owe anybody love. As far as I'm concerned the people I might love have to earn it first. I know what its like to disown a family. I believe my sister was a psychopath. She lacked the courage to try and actually kill me but she still managed to do quite a lot of emotional damage.  You are no more broken than I am - and I know I'm not. I hope you come to realize this about yourself too. 

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Humans are not defined by our love of sex. Humans are not defined by our romantic feelings or capacity even to "love" in a romantic sense, because if so, I'm not human, but I am very much human and very much complete, because the only person who can complete you is yourself. It's fine if you feel broken right now. We are not obliged to feel completely fine all the time, I would argue its our range of emotions and ability to express them and for them to be so unique that makes us more human than sex or happiness does. There is nothing at all wrong with sadness because its just another human thing that we get the 'pleasure' of dealing with. If someone was never sad, then they've never really learned what its like to experience important things like loss or hurt, and they've never had to fight for themselves and ask themselves questions that a lot of people don't like to answer. But just because you don't like the answer doesn't mean it wasn't part of you the entire time, so you might as well love it anyways.

 

It's completely fine if you feel broken right now. You're not under a time limit to "fix" yourself, because you don't need any external fixing anyways. Growth, changes, trimming of growths that are sprouting stress, maybe. People will come to you and decide that they must fix you by giving you relationships that you don't need or advice that you don't want, unfortunately. So, take your time in finding your own way and if you don't want to do something, well, don't. If it feels relaxing, or helpful, then let it happen. You have no obligation to do things that you don't truly want to, no matter how much normal society will quirk its brows at you. And that's about all they have the right to do anyways, so feel free to keep them in line.

 

I guess just... take a deep breath and let it happen. Healing for these kinds of wounds takes time, and care, and to change our perspective into something more pro-self that protects us while not feeling selfish is really, really hard and takes a lot of time, patience, and introspective reflection. No one is putting you on a time limit though and if they are, they can eff off because they're not allowed to: mental healing is a sacred, private or invitation-only process that results in a beautiful human being no matter what it looks like or how it has changed. 

 

So, good luck. Relax, breathe deeply, and take it small. And don't forget that the rest of the world is stupid and even though everyone else believes it doesn't mean its true, in fact if there's not torrential debate, we're probably all wrong because no one's bothered to fact-check yet. All the time and healing in the world to you :) 

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I also spent more time with friends or on my own before realising that being alone or with only one or two friends was helping me feel better where being with him made me feel stressed. It’s not that I didn’t like him, he was a nice enough person, but even with the relationship labels I didn’t think of him like that. It all felt alien and uncomfortable to me.

That's pretty much a telltale sign for anyone (sexual or not) that that person isn't a good match for them.  Everyone's got people that aren't good matches (even if they're otherwise still nice people), so there's no need to feel broken for it.  Not everyone is gonna have you feeling that way.

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Celyn: The Lutening

I think in your situation you should be selfish. Do what makes you happy or calm. Everyone else comes after, you can't care for someone emotionally if you need healing yourself. Just explain to the people around you that you need to work on yourself, and if they throw a wobbly, stuff them. You come first.

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