I don’t know why it’s something I think about so much. Guess despite how I feel about relationships, I’m still lonely. Feels like a sick joke that my brain simultaneously can’t stand the thought of being with someone but constantly laments how alone I am. Not that I’d even want to have people around, I prefer being alone. It’s a choice. I don’t like people knowing me, don’t like them knowing anything about me. Don’t really care to know anything about anyone else either. Never been the type to have any friends or anything. I’ll try, when I start a new job or something but I can only put up with it for so long before I have to move away, delete all my social media and disappear again. 

Anyway, I guess it’s come up again not too long ago because I was talking to this girl, she messaged me here on Reddit. We were talking for a while, guess she related to things I’d posted or something. After a couple months I realised she was dancing around the fact that she had feelings for me. Maybe part of me even had some for her, I don’t even know. But once I realised that I didn’t really know what to do. Talking to her, she was one of very few people I didn’t immediately hate. I still had days where I just wanted her to leave me alone and I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but it was at least bearable enough of the time that I kept talking to her for months, I guess.

She never got to tell me she had feelings for me, if she ever even would have. I stopped talking to her before she could. That’s what I landed on after days of conflicted feelings about what to do. Part of me wondered if I did have some feelings, if maybe I should bring it up with her and try to work on it or something. But then I thought that if I have so many messages telling me I wasn’t attracted to her, then at least part of me mustn’t be and therefore I’d just be settling for her to kill my loneliness, which is unfair for everyone involved. 

I’ve never been in an actual relationship and the thing is, I think I only like the idea of them. Only like the handful of “scenes” that pop into my head when I think about them. But to get to those moments, you have to go through a lot of stuff in between, in fact the in between parts are most of it, and I think that’s where I know they’re not for me. Thinking about real relationships, what they actually are day-to-day, it makes me physically sick. I live with my mum and her husband right now, and watching them together just disgusts me. The way they talk to each other, the things they talk about, the things they get excited about, it’s all so pathetic. It’s fucking sad. My throat tightens up when I hear them laughing in the next room. And it’s not just them, being around anyone in a relationship makes me feel like that. It’s why I can’t go to weddings. And that’s the stuff I’d have to be able to endure to get to the “scenes” I fantasise about all the time, so that’s how I know I’m not meant for a relationship.

Another thing it made me think about, something that comes up every time I have a close call with a relationship like this, is that I just can’t be attracted to someone who’s into me. I don’t know why, don’t know what it is exactly, but as soon as I figure out someone has a crush on me, it’s an instant turn-off. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, it’s like the dynamic shifts and they feel beneath me, like they’re smaller. I guess I’d need to feel like someone was my equal to be interested and then having feelings for me feels like it puts them beneath me. Maybe that sounds bad, just don’t know how else to word it. But I guess, weirdly enough, I can only be attracted to women who don’t like me back, or at least would never admit it. I’ve always had a thing for cold, emotionally unavailable girls and maybe that’s why. 

A lot of the time it feels like a girl being nice and caring towards me is also a turn off. And while that’s mostly true, I don’t think I could ever be with someone long-term who was kind and gentle, I also don’t think it’s entirely true. Going back to those “scenes” that play in my head, some of them involve being emotionally vulnerable with each other, but it’s reluctant, I guess, or some of them involve being cared for but it’s more unspoken. So I think it’s more that I can’t handle someone who’s always expressing their feeling to me and when they do, I need to feel like I’ve earned it, like if they do love me on some level, that I earned that love.

Anyway, there’s probably some psychological reasons behind it all, guess it doesn’t really matter though. Brought it up in therapy a few times, but as with all things in therapy, it never seemed to go anywhere and I honestly don’t even know where I would like it to go. Think at this point I’d just like someone to flip off the switch that makes part of me feel like I want a relationship at all, so I could just live on knowing they’re not for me and never having to think about any of it ever again.