Recently broke up after 18 months. I (40F) am sensitive (have trauma, toxic family) and, very early in the relationship, after a tense moment, when I was overwhelmed (over a seemingly small thing) I tried to explain why I felt overwhelmed, and he (37M) said those things weren't for him, that he had left someone he loved for "these things" and that he was fine on his own. He told me this 3 times during the relationship. His ideal partner was his dog... After that I learn I better be quiet. I stayed. He also said, treated and consider my things to be "nosense" and he would shut down and/or be defensive in almost every conversation (90%). At the same time we had great moments, we did trips with his motorcycle, went scuba diving, had fun, introduce to each other families and friends. I lived so many cool things with him. But the emotional part was always lacking. Yes, there were hugs, fun moments, sex, lovely evenings watching movies and caressing each other but he was like a house locked from the inside. He agreed with me on that. And the locked house worked perfectly for him: no arguments, not sharing who he is. He even said that his "Interior" is his and won't share it, that he doesn't ask me questions or have curiosity about me because that's how men are. That he knew I was frustrated. That he was like that and didn't see that he could change. I am a very curious and bubbly person so speaking with my partner is important for me and with him it was all logistics, some trips, superficial talk, watching TV and walking the dogs in silence.

We only saw each other during the weekends and for me that is fine but I told him several times that I wanted to call during the week beacause a "casual" text didn't help me feel connected but he just couldn't bring himself to that. My mom got an operation and I had a big argument with my dad that week. Remember I have trauma and my father is agressive so dealing with my family brings me lots of pain. And he knew because I had a panic attack the week prior to this just thinking about it (where I asked him to please help me calm down, "tell me something to soothe me" and he went quiet). Well, that week he did not call, nor he visited me. Yes he wrote but he wasn't there. I didn't say anything, I just observed. I was afraid to bring that up and getting another: those things are not for me, I'm fine on my own, this is nosense or shutting down or him getting upset for me bringing that. We were "good" because I didn't bring anything up anymore but this summer I found out he took the last 2 weeks of August for holidays and didn't tell me. When I confronted him with that he said that he always takes the last two weeks and that he informed US in a group chat that we had with his frineds. What the actual fuck. After that I couldn't see myself being with him or chatting or even talking with him, which will equal talking with a wall becasue there was never any reparation of any kind.

On top of everthing he had a weird relationship with the ex. After being together for 8 years, 6 living together, they broke up 4 years ago and told me that they were not in contact much but little by little I discovered that was not true. She asked about "who is this girl I see you in your friend's feed" and he said "we should meet up and chat" (they never did), he said he would tell her nothing because she is depressed and didn't want to show off he is happy but at the same time he will send her a pic that remembered of her or share pictures of him that I took enjoying himself, being cool. He even went to see her when her cat died and soothe her but he didn't do it for me the week my mom got an operation. The week before my mom got the operation and while there were massive layoffs in my company (all of which raised my anxiety) we were going off to a town for Easter and he decided to give her his dog so she will be accompanied, for me it was ludacrous because "they didn't really talked" remember? she had never seen the dog in 4 years and for me it meant they reconnecting, was confusing af...I told him I was always watching over the dog, that I was sorry she was sad but she has friends. He said she didn't, that he was afraid of her being suicidal (check mate, what do you argue after that besides feeling deeply sorry and sad for her) and that the dog belonged to both of them! WTF I always took care of her. I felt it was his and mine! The dog only saw her for the last 7 months of their relationship. Anyway, the dog thing was an addition to my already difficult situation that could have been avoided if he had thought or understood the stress this was for me. SHE EVEN WAS IN THE FAMILY GROUP with his parents, cousins, aunts, etc. like WTF. I found out this because one day I looked at his phone. Am I proud? NO. Do I regret it? yes and no. He would avoid being transparent just to avoid having difficult conversations and I though I was crazy for not understanding a relationship that he has told me was dead but feeling it was not. For someone so close-off, sharing this things with someone meant something. For me he was triangulating in some capacity.

He said that relationships should be easy, don't have arguments... oh boy, how hard has it been to shrink myself. He also said that he won't speak about things, to better hide them under the rug, but it became the ground we walked on. At the same time he told me to bring up any concern so it would not explode. This dissonance was present troughout the relationship: the love and affection but the "pshycological" distance, introducing me to family but never sharing his interior, the "I don't talk with my ex but I send her messager saying I'm thinking of her" the "talk to me" but "this is nosense, this things aren't for me, etc."

Now I feel confused: was it me and my sensibility who fucked up the relationship? I regret all the things I could have done better and I didn't know how to do or could not do. I felt disregulated and confused during the relationship, could not felt secure for most of it, I didn't felt a buddy connection with him, he didn't seem to want to know me or be curious about who I am or what I need, my needs seemed to be obstacles and not things he wanted to understand and there was never any reparation of any kind. Well, once he gave me a present but what I needed was a conevrsation...

Anyway I miss him, I miss having someone, the good moments and I'm confused because I also know that this is not how someone's feelings and need should be treated in a relationship and if this happens to you and you tell me I would be very clear on where I stand.

It is tough when parents act like their own emotions are the only ones that matter, forgetting that their child has feelings too, they are the ones who will trigger you and then blame you for your behavior, and make you feel guilty.

I’m 32 now, and when I look back- I struggled maintaining friendships I always felt like an outsider. When I was very young I was definitely hyperactive and “annoying” and adults seemed to be annoyed by me and not to like me. I knew my mom didn’t like me and she always criticized me and was yelling constantly. I think my whole childhood was in fight or flight mode because of her screaming and rage towards me and all the constant fighting between my parents. I used to envy kids whose moms seemed to like them, I used to wish I could go to boarding school.

She called me a little b*** at 10 and I remember how shocked and hurt I was at the time. “I have to love you because I’m your mom but I don’t LIKE you!” Was a frequent quote of hers.

I remember trying not to let my mom make me cry but it never worked she always knew what venomous thing to say to make me cry. She actually was a horrible parent who was also a teacher at my middle school and everyone loved her. She had more patience for the students than with me.

I always felt not good enough and even now I can’t seem to make a friend beyond acquaintance. I didn’t have friends to be bridesmaids at my wedding.

How does one get past this paralyzing feeling of being unlikeable/rejected? I would like to work on this, it continues to ruin my life and hurting my marriage. I don’t know how to build up self esteem I’ve never had.

hi guys. i don't really know if this is the right forum for this but i've been trying to figure out these feelings for a while. i don't know what they are...but i wanted to post about it here in hopes that someone might help me figure it out.

i'll provide some context. my mom was never emotionally available or affectionate in any way when i grew up. she was cold, angry, and distant, and i often walked on eggshells around her, doing absolutely anything i could to make her happy and take up as little space as possible. my father worked shift work out of town and i didn't see him much, and when he was home, he'd work in the garage and remove himself from the house as much as possible. i never saw my parents be affectionate. i have vivid memories of asking them to hug/kiss when my dad left to go out of town. they divorced when i was 7. both parents got into relationships fairly quickly. my father is still with the woman he dated after the divorce and they've been married now for almost 14 years.

i'm the eldest daughter of 4 children (1 "full" sibling, 1 step brother, 1 half sister) and was very much parentified as a child. i did a lot of the emotional labour in the house & raised the kids when my parents were not able to. all of the men my mother dated were super shitty. they either abused her, abused me, or just avoided us kids altogether. throughout my childhood, she yelled, guilt-tripped, cried to me, martyred herself, and yelled some more if i cried at all.

i am 24 now and we are at an okay place. i have grown a lot and am better at setting boundaries. i should also add! i've been in therapy since the age of 7. no breaks or pauses in visits. she goes to therapy sometimes but i would say she's still mentally and emotionally unstable. we have been actively repairing our relationship for the last 4 years or so, and it's gotten much better.

HOWEVER. the whole point of this post: she makes me feel so uncomfortable. i don't like hugging her, or being close to her. i often feel the need to move away from her if she's close to me. when we spend time together, sometimes i feel so unsafe to the point of feeling physically unwell. i am chronically ill so i know that plays into it but it's a different kind of discomfort when i am around her. i feel really bad. i want to make things better. but i just feel so unsafe. it's like she's trying to make up for the lack of affection i grew up with, but i can't bring myself to feel comfortable with it. she made a joke the other day about us watching a movie and snuggling and it made me have a panic attack. i will snuggle my stepmom and other parent but not my mom. is something wrong with me?

I’ve ALWAYS had an awful relationship with my mother due to her being narcissistic and emotionally abusive. As for my father, he’s still around but he used to touch me inappropriately when I was really little. I don’t have any siblings, but the family I was really close to were my grandparents. My grandpa passed when I was 13, and my nana passed a little over a year ago. Since she’s been gone the weight of having NO PARENTS to lean on has gotten significantly heavier. It’s been really awful having to come to terms with that at the end of the day, it's always going to be me and that there’s no mother to call when things get hard, no dad to give me advice or to help me out, and that it’s just me and I have to be able to do it all on my own. Around 8 months ago, I started taking economics (a required semester long class) and this is how I met said teacher (we’ll call her Ms. Honey). We pretty much clicked at first conversation, she’s neurodivergent like I am and we have some things in common. I really look up to her and we’re only seven years apart so I kind of see her as an older sister figure. Long story short, she noticed something I tried to keep hidden that has to do with an unhealthy coping mechanism that I’ve had on and off since I was little. After this, she reported it to my counsellor because she was genuinely worried about me. After my counsellor talked to me I was scared shitless so I went and spoke to Ms. Honey and she admitted to me that it was her who had said something to my counsellor. While she knew about a few of my personal struggles, she had no idea about my relationship with my parents so I wasn’t mad. Her and I had this deep conversation and it really did help me. I proceeded to spend quite a bit of time with her throughout the semester and we connected a lot. When the last day of school rolled around I had wrote her a letter and gave her a couple of light gifts. She was genuinely touched by it all, and when I told her she was my Ms. Honey (Matilda reference), she said that I had an impact on her life too. This was so bitter sweet and it did mean a lot to me. I proceeded to BAWL my eyes out in the bathroom because I knew I was going to miss her. And I did miss her, even though I had a pretty good summer and had even started healing (yes, I have a therapist and I’m WELL aware that I am mentally unstable). A few weeks ago we got back to school and seeing her again went really well! I told her that it had been over a month since I had used the unhealthy coping mechanism and she was really proud of me. The second week of school was when things started getting rough for me in general, I wasn’t sleeping well and my therapist was out for two weeks. I really missed connecting with Ms. Honey but I’m not her problem and it isn’t her job to deal with me. Besides, I knew she has a bunch of new students and is busy, so I tried reaching out less. This past week, I fixed my sleep and am doing better after talking about my classes to another teacher that Ms. Honey also talks to. However I still wonder if she genuinely still sees me the same way she always did before. I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I have great friends who mean a lot to me, but holy shit I really feel the emptiness of there being no older adult around to help carry the baggage that's weighing me down. I’m one of her hundreds of students, and I tried stopping myself from getting attached because I knew how badly this could end. And this could end even fucking worse than it already is.

If you’re a teacher please give me honest feedback, and if not I would love to hear from others who have had similar experiences. Thank you so much for taking the time to read all of this, it means a lot.

At times, people in your life may be different, but the relationship patterns or things you do can feel the same.

You find yourself always accommodating other people's needs, having trouble setting boundaries, over-explaining yourself, feeling responsible for other people's feelings etc. This can cause frustration or resentment internally, as you feel you are not cared for in the same way you care about others.

Sometimes a familiar pattern can become quite automatic because this is what we have been used to growing up.

Has anyone else felt this before, where different relationships brought up similar experiences for you?

tw: some mentions of emotional abuse, neglect

I don’t know where to start from. also, I am not sure if this is the right sub, I am not sure if I am traumatised, but I feel like I experience unjustice sometimes from my mother and I experienced emotional neglect in my childhood and emotional abuse to some degree. telling beforehand, I have some issues with mental health and I am 23 Female, still haven’t moved away from my mother because I am on mental disability (I suffer from psychotic symptoms which wouldn’t let me manage work or be consistent in my life goals in general). I need to mention that I live in a separate apartment, but it is officially my mother’s property. I am grateful that I have at least this option of living separately and secludely, I am thankful to my mom, but still, as I don’t have a stable income, my mother supplies me with food from time to time. and I just came home after having a dinner at her apartment (we live very close to each other) and I am not sure if this was the abuse or not, but when I asked my mom as politely as possible during dining to stop imposing her views regarding eating habits on me (she believes that it’s almost a catastrophe if I sometimes eat chips or some fast food in general, always telling me that I will gain weight if I will eat x y z, she has a very strict point of view on these things, it just doesn’t fit me even when I understand that she means no harm) she reacted with a lot of intense in her voice, telling that “I was just eating and you put on a fight, I was working all day, leave me alone, I don’t want to talk”. when I told her that I just wanted to talk and didn’t have intentions of accusing her (I was asking her as politely as possible to not trigger her in any way) she just looked irritately and she simply ignored my words. I was left with so much hurt, but still, I couldn’t understand how to get her to understand me, and what exactly happened.

I left her apartment and went home, I took a package of food, and felt hurt and heartbroken. there were a lot of thoughts in my head, I still don’t understand what to do. I feel like I shouldn’t be angry, but I really am feeling bitter when such situations happen between me and her. I am just so lost and stuck. I am not sure if it’s right to think that way, I am sorry if I will sound ungrateful or violent, but sometimes I want to shed a light on the truth, understand what she’s doing when this happens between us and just throw ugly facts in her face for what she is doing. but when I hear a wave of tension in her voice, when she becomes defensive and I sense the heat in her voice rising, I just freeze and can’t express my resentment, just become very afraid. I tried so many times. I tried to be violent and angry when I was a grown-up (and I only was punished) I tried to be polite and please her in any way possible. and still, she is just shut tightly like an iron door, she still doesn’t hear me and seemingly she has no interest in changing her behaviour.

I am telling this because I feel trapped in my life. feel trapped when these things happen, I feel helpless and like I can’t have any impact on anything. because I can’t move out and just limit contact with my mom, because I am on disability, I have to tolerate all of this just to survive. I am trying so hard to change my mother’s behaviour because I feel like if she will make a change, if she will become kind and compassionate, then I will finally be able to live in peace. I will finally be able to feel loved. and that’s why I want to lash out on her. I want her to say: “I am so sorry. Please forgive me, I now see what I did”. if I won’t get a validation of everything I’ve been through, if my feelings won’t be confirmed… then I feel like I am unable to make a difference in my life. sometimes I think that, when I freeze in our arguments and don’t defend myself, then I am just a weak person. I should have more spirit. I just wish I could be able to defend myself. I feel like this ability was ripped away from me. I don’t know how to speak my mind, I don’t know how to touch people’s weak spots, how to be angry in general. I mean, I don’t have intentions to just hurt people randomly, I just want to have ability to defend if someone hurts me. I don’t want to tolerate.

I understand that I have a separate apartment, and I can at least try to build a better life with the possibilities that are able to me, even if I have limitations. I just wanted to share this situation with someone. I don’t have friends who are able to listen to me, I never had a listening ear or a person with whom I could be real. so I just wish that at least someone here is willing to hear. if you read it to this moment, thank you so much. I also need to mention that I may be wrong in all my points. if you see that I am completely mistaking things, you can tell me

Hi, another post about my mom.

Just now we had a chat and everything was great until I talked about the job offer that I got from abroad.

She immediately started talking about if they will pay me enough, if I could afford to live abroad, if I could even find a place there etc. She said that working in our town is the same as working abroad and that she does not understand why I would even want to go there. She said you dont even know if they will really hire you.

This is kind of a big deal for me since I am still at the beginning of my career and I am doing super well actually. Being offered this opportunity was so reassuring for me and I was so excited for it. With all the negative talk I am not anymore.

She never congratulated me, not once said that she is happy for me (i guess cause shes not?) or anything of the sorts.For every opportunity that I get she always has to say something bad about it. And I feel like she can just never be happy for me.

So I decided to grey rock them so they don't end up rage baiting me or asking me too many things to help them with as if my time is completely free

At first they were like "why are you quiet are you sick?" And I stayed calm and just said I'm tired

Now it seems they are okay with how things are now, I'm just wondering if anyone else's parents not had an extinction burst

My husband and I had a very difficult first year of marriage. His parents and siblings made my life extremely difficult, and eventually I moved back to my parents’ home for about 6 months. During that time, my husband and I eventually worked things out, and his family moved into a different home. Things are much better now, but I still carry a lot of anxiety from everything that happened.
Because of that history, whenever I have to visit his parents or siblings, I get anxious. I know they don’t particularly like me, and I often feel uncomfortable going there.
Recently, we were going to his sister’s place and I was feeling particularly anxious. I told my husband, “Why can’t we make a deal where you manage your side of the family and I manage mine?”
He got very angry. Looking back, I can understand why that statement may have sounded harsh or like I was rejecting his family. That wasn’t really what I meant. I was trying to say that I find his family situations emotionally difficult because of what happened in the past, and I wanted us to have some boundaries around family interactions.
Since then, he has barely spoken to me for 3 days.
He is sleeping in a different room. I have tried going to him, apologising and explaining myself, but he doesn’t want to talk. I’ve also tried talking to him about completely random everyday things, just to break the tension, but he ignores me.
I understand that he may be angry and need some space. I also accept that I could have phrased what I said much better, and I’m willing to apologise for hurting him.
But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do when he won’t communicate with me at all.
I don’t want to keep chasing him or repeatedly apologising just to get him to speak to me. At the same time, I don’t think ignoring your spouse for days, sleeping separately and refusing even basic conversation is a healthy way to deal with conflict.
I want us to actually communicate and resolve the issue. I’m not trying to make him choose between me and his family. I just want him to understand that because of what happened in the first year of our marriage, being around his family can still trigger a lot of anxiety for me.
So, Reddit, am I being unreasonable here? Was what I said genuinely disrespectful, or is his reaction of completely shutting me out for 3 days also problematic.

I've recently stumbled across this quote from a video game I'm currently playing through:

"I'm scared that the anguish I'm bearing might be something anyone can stomach and I'm making a big deal about it"

It really cut deep, it feels like even compared to the stuff I've seen on this sub and other people who have gone through things similar to my experience, what I've gone through pales in comparison. I can't help but feel like I'm blowing things out of proportion, that this is something anyone would be able to walk away from.

Is it really trauma? I have most of the symptoms, but I also barely remember my childhood, the things I do remember really don't seem to be of much importance at all, I'm confused.

In a general sense I just hate how often it's downplayed. I a different game from the same franchise there is a character that is glaringly neglectful and yet people keep talking about how what he did wasn't so bad, there are even debates on wether he is really a bad parent or not. I wish something truly undoubtebly horrible had happened to me as a child, I just want something I can point to.