I can't get my feelings straight

HeartSupport Support
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So, I have been in a committed relationship with the same person for almost 9 years now. Due to depression (that I didn’t realize I had) I was never really able to develop an emotional attachment to someone before him and we had a really toxic relationship for the majority of it due to both of us having unresolved mental health issues.

The last three years has been a lot of progress toward being better toward each other and ourselves but it doesn’t feel like its enough. I am burdened by the scars of how toxic the relationship used to be and he has maintained a lot of the bad habits that I have been trying to work through and no manner of words change his habits for very long. I am under a lot of stress at home and at work (my job isn’t bad, I like it) so I feel like I can never relax. It has aggravated my depression and i am just kinda coasting through life because my mood is neither up nor down.

While all this is going on, my best male friend, who was my voice of reason and shoulder to cry on, has started flirting with me. It started off innocuous - just being silly and making jokes, but I worry that he is more serious than I thought. He helped me through a lot and is the one of the main reasons I stayed with my current relationship. We both have a lot of the same complaints about the relationships we are in and we are very similar so it makes me feel uncomfortable to be seeking friendship in the type of person I would otherwise be trying to date.

I’m having trouble maintaining the level of feelings in my current relationship because if this confusion and depression and I also feel like I might be wasting my life with the wrong guy. He is my only serious relationship and I am also financially dependent on him. We have built a life together that I don’t want to throw away but I also don’t want him to be stuck with someone who may not be happy. I don’t even know if I am happy in the relationship anymore or if it’s just my depression.

I don’t want to leave my relationship for my best friend but I am worried that my best friend is unintentionally putting this wedge in and now I can’t think straight about it anymore.

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Hey friend,

I am so sorry that you have to go through this struggle friend, I know it must be so hard.

What I will say is you cannot keep yourself locked in a relationship that you don’t feel happy in.

With it being 9 years I can truly understand why you would not want to end it, and the situation of finances, it’s like everything is already built- but please don’t let that hold you back from happiness. You deserve to be happy.

Some pathways I encourage you to look into is maybe marriage counseling, maybe sit down and talk to your partner with no distractions, and I highly encourage you to discuss how you feel with your friends actions with your friend.

Please know you are loved. You deserve to be happy. You deserve love. Please don’t lock yourself in this relationship because the future is blurry- you deserve to be happy and live a life full of freedom and true love and joy.

I believe in you. Hold fast.

With love,
Lyss (ur old pal Blurryface)

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You’re not stupid, your situation is complicated. Love and relationships and friendships are completely confusing and can make everyone look dumb, so you’re not alone. While I know next to nothing about love and finance, I cannot give you much advice. But for your depression, know that we are here and you can talk to us at any time, world ending or not, night or day.
We care about you, and I believe in you. Like @Lyss said, you deserve to have happiness and love. Don’t forget that, and don’t let anything think you don’t.

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@Confused,

Thank you for sharing your heart and what you are currently dealing with. It takes so much courage and strength to type the deep emotions on a keyboard and be vulnerable enough to share it with all of us, that to me is powerful!

I’m sincerely sorry to hear the raw emotional confusion you have currently with your relationship with both your best friend and committed relationship. It sounds like it is not helping the main issue which is working on the emotions and mental issues you struggle with. Obviously I don’t know the scenario and situation you are currently dealing with both individuals but if I was in your shoes I would, “Take a break” from both relationships. Why? Because YOU is what matters first and foremost. Nothing against them, but both situations sound to be distracting you from trying to work and improve yourself. When I evaluate my closest relationships, I want to know that each person has my best interest in mind. Meaning, they can see where I am struggling and where I need help and they sacrifice to support me in those things. Sacrifice may look like leaving their personal feelings aside to just simony be a support system with no agenda for the hope in helping you get a place mentally where you can get to the root of what you are dealing with. Again, not the solution, but I would start there.

I would also seek professional help as well as family or close friends. This may reveal or not reveal the root cause but digging deep into understanding your emotions and mental issues can start the process of healing or give you clarity on what is going on. From there, you can begin the process of getting help directly related to what you are going through, healing, recovery, etc.

You MATTER, You are STRENGTH, You are JOY, You are LOVE, You are WORTH IT! I hope this is helpful and just know we are all here for you in this forum. I would be more than happy to continually be a listening ear and support during this time. Please let me know how I can help! You can do this!

-L

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We have been working on it and we worked through a lot of major things with one of our mutual friends as an impartial party. We haven’t gone to official counseling though. I don’t know how to feel and it’s really difficult for me to be comfortable when I have so many deep seeded anxieties due to my partner having toxic habits in the past. I don’t feel like I have any privacy (he even put his fingerprint into my phone and I had to delete it because it made me feel so uncomfortable - especially since I have already told him my password and he had admin rights to my phone as the account owner) but it also feels like he doesn’t spend any time with me. I have talked to my closest female friends about it and they say I need a vacation from my life. Lol. And he has anxiety and depression too and his anxiety triggers mine and he makes me feel like shit all the time on the extremely rare occasion that we go out. I used to be super adventurous and wanted to spend my life travelling but he has repeatedly acted in ways that make me feel uncomfortable to go anywhere with him. I feel like I have to cater to him or his anxiety causes him to act in ways that make me feel awful.

It’s like there are three sides, the side that is this super sweet and caring person who would do anything to make me happy and does random sweet things without any signal from me, the side that says and does things that make me feel terrible, and the side that makes me feel like I don’t exist.

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That’s exactly how I feel. I want to get my thoughts straight but I can’t do it around them. But I also have no where to go in the meantime. I can’t live with anyone because I have no family nearby and I can’t take a break from work because I need the money. I have been under so much stress because I wish I could leave and take a break and get my thoughts straight but I can’t. I am stuck like a caged bird. I left my home state because of feeling that way growing up and I feel like I flew into another cage disguised as a sanctuary. My parents love him, he is a great person but he just makes me feel like I made a mistake. I don’t like making rash decisions and I am trying to think things through just to figure out the facts without emotion and the fact is that I can’t leave. With a financial dependency I can’t afford to live on my own. I have no one I can use as a roommate either. It hurts even more because even if I truly wanted to leave, I couldn’t

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@confused,

That is such a tough situation to be in! I know it can sound difficult to do, but remember this in reality is your life and nothing else matters. Is there any way to be able to relocate your job back to your home state? Just thinking about where your most strong support would be. Your life and well being and healing must be your number one priority right now. I know it may seem like too big of a task to accomplish, but you can do it and the process of healing can begin for you to become the woman that you know you are and deserve to be! Please let me know how I can be of assistance to you as well! Stay strong and fight! You can do this!

-L

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Unfortunately there is no where I can relocate for my job. I would have to change what I am doing in order to find another job.

Also, my home state is not where I would be most happy and comfortable and there are No job prospects. Lol.

I am smart and great at learning but I don’t have a marketable skill that i can pull out and get a job. I could learn the necessary things but I have no direction so i can’t point myself at something and do it because i don’t even know where to begin. Plus without a college degree, I am out of luck for most jobs unless I get certifications.

I thought about starting an Etsy to make money on the side to be able to afford living on my own but that isn’t guaranteed income so I can’t rely on that option.

At this point i feel like my anxiety is driving me to want to escape. Not that i have a reason or a direction, just that being here makes me feel stuck and there are lots of reasons for me to be unhappy so it just builds up on that dissatisfaction.

Plus we have three cats and they are all bonded and can’t be separated so one person would have to take all of them. I am their primary caretaker so that would make it impossible to find a place to live because the max number of pets for almost every rental is 2. Plus they cost a lot to take care of. And that also makes it impossible to find a roommate

And back to the best friend flirting with me, he is allergic to cats. Lol, deal breaker

I just feel like there is some serious dissatisfaction with how my life feels right now and it’s making me anxious. I have no reason to hate or loath my partner but I just keep feeling disconnected and disillusioned with the relationship. Like it’s easier to stay but I don’t know if I can maintain living in a way that makes me unhappy. Especially because we have been slowly building up this life from nothing but I still feel trapped like when we were so broke we couldn’t afford to go anywhere or do anything.

And when I talk to him about these feelings of being trapped, he shares the same feeling and says he wants to travel and go on adventures but then declines every opportunity. I used to love so many things but between everything that has happened the past 9 years, I just have lost all desire to do anything I want. I don’t even know who I am anymore because I have spent so long catering to someone else.

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The more I think about it, the more I am just willing to give up and not even try to think about leaving. But then when I think about stuff I want to do and he keeps turning me down or isn’t willing to try, then I just feel defeated. I’m so stuck that it hurts but I am so confused that I feel like it’s all my fault. Like why can’t I just be happy? Why do I have to make this difficult?

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@Confused,

Hi there,

Just checking in to see how things are going? Was just thinking about ya.

-L

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Things are okay. Just okay. My birthday is tomorrow so he is actively spending time with me and being more attentive than normal but I don’t have faith that it will last. I don’t even have plans for my birthday and I’m not sure what to even do because it’s my luck I will have to plan anything and I don’t have the energy to deal with that.

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All my mental energy is being split between my job and finally getting back into my hobby of jewelry making so I have been ignoring the problems in my relationship in favor of just focusing on myself.

I did talk to him about his toxic anxiety and how much he limits the people who spend time with him because he seeks to control everything and when he is thrown into a situation he can’t manage, he seeks to control and manage his immediate environment which means the people nearest him. I explained why that negatively affects the people that spend time with him. It started because I brought up wanting to go to a theme park but I know he can’t deal with them so I told him that I won’t go with someone who doesn’t like them because then it would no longer be fun for me. So it became a whole conversation about his bad habits in public and why I stopped trying to plan things for us to do to save myself from the stress

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@Confused,

How did your birthday go? Just wanted you to know that you are in my thoughts and prayers. Continually fight for hope and know that I and this community is here for you!

-L

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Birthday was okay. Went out for dinner and that’s it. I didn’t want anything crazy. The day after my birthday was awful, really bad depression episode. Cried myself to sleep and felt like absolutely garbage the next day. Ignored my partner for the whole day and came home later than usual. He was really upset but I told him that he probably feels about how I feel being alone every day and i hope he understands what he puts me through every single day. He spent most of the weekend with me and i talked to my friends about it. One said that when her lease is up in 8 months that I can find a place with her so I don’t have to feel trapped. My other friend offered me her guest room until I can sort my feelings out. They understand because one of them went through a similar theme with her ex fiance(whom we are all still friends with because he’s not mean - just stupid and not a good person for relationships). It’s so difficult when you just know that any good things won’t last because they never have before.

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And I really appreciate you checking up on me. I avoided this page for the last few days because reading about other people’s struggles made me feel so much worse about my petty problems.

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Heh heh fuck. So remember at the beginning how I mentioned that friend who was being kinda flirty with me and I didn’t know how to feel? Fucker admitted to having a crush on me since we met. Why that matters? I told him that if any of my friends ever admitted something like that, then I would feel betrayed and would cut them out of my life because it felt like they were only being friends with me to get in my pants. And now he is telling me about other friends of ours that were talking about trying to sleep with me when I wasn’t around. Ugh, I hate people. I don’t know what to think. I have never had to deal with this before. I’ve always been the ugly/awkward duckling and people always treated me like I was gross or they treated me with the same level of respect as any other friend. Wtf. Like i don’t even know how to deal with being flirted with or being the object of someone’s affection. Now my head is even more jumbled. I wish I didn’t ask for clarification on something he said. I hate this. I care about him greatly and now I feel like I have to cut him from my life to protect my sanity. He says he only cares about my happiness and respects my relationship but this is the same person who stood idly by when my heart was torn and bleeding from the same person I am currently with. My head is a jumbled mess now. He is one of the main reasons I stayed in my current relationship and I respected his opinion on things and now I just can’t trust him anymore.

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Confused,

Breaks my heart to read your post and your subsequent comments.

Not because your life is terrible – I’m not saying it isn’t either, rather I’m talking about something else entirely different…

My heart breaks for you because you are locked inside of this cell, you feel trapped in this cage…but you put yourself in the cage…you locked yourself in…and you hold the key but have convinced yourself there’s no way out. My heart breaks for you because you believe yourself to be a victim, but you don’t know who the real perpetrator is. You have an enemy within you that cloaks itself by blaming everyone and everything else.

I kept thinking, similar to others, what if you did this? Or what if you did that? And you know, 99% of all of those things are totally possible, totally plausible, but you rejected all of those ideas. It’s like subconsciously you enjoy the suffering. You enjoy being caged because it gives you a reason to receive pity, and pity is better than the pain of rejection or the pain of failure.

It’s like somewhere in your past, you must have learned that the only way to avoid the condemnation of others is to broadcast how stuck you are…imagine the metaphor of cages again…it’s like you were assaulted by these messages that you’re not enough, you’re ugly, you’re insignificant, you’re a failure…and those were so traumatic and you were so young and all you wanted to do was to feel like those things weren’t true…and you learned that if you were locked in a cage, it might mean that your CIRCUMSTANCES were what was causing you to be those things, and so you could dissociate from the trauma of others invalidating you…because you believe that if those circumstances were different, you would be different too, you wouldn’t be a failure, you wouldn’t be insignficiant, you wouldn’t be ugly, you wouldn’t be not enough, but you’re trapped here, and that’s why those things are true, but they’re not necessarily true about YOU, they’re true because of the cage you’re in. And that’s a much safer place to be, because by stepping out of the cage, you have to face those insults, those invalidations, that pain that has haunted you all our life…you have to face the way you feel about YOURSELF…you have to take off the security blanket of the excuses and blame that you are comfortable with and safe within your cage…you have to face life, face those lies, face that pain if you open the cage and step out into life.

And that breaks my heart, @Confused , because whatever those people told you isn’t true. You ARE what you hoped you would be. You are lovely, you are beautiful, you are important, you DO matter, you ARE significant, you ARE unique, you ARE creative, your life is noticed, you are seen, and you are cherished and welcomed and accepted and invited. You are all of those things. And these lies that have been like a cloud that’s constantly looming on the outside of your cage are just that: LIES. And sweetheart, if you were to step out of this cage, you’d see you don’t deserve what you’ve settled for. And you don’t need the cage to defend you anymore. Because those lies from your past hold no weight on you except that which you give it. You are deserving of more. You are deserving of the TRUTH. You are deserving of love.

So dear friend, I think it’s time to let yourself out of the cage. There’s more for you. There’s more.

-Nate

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I understand where you are coming from. I think things through extremely thoroughly and I don’t word things very well when I am emotionally invested in something. I am just stepping away from everything and everyone for a while. I think that I have spent so long feeling like I am in a cage of my own creation because my depression has been so bad and my stress so high that I have put myself into this ball of self pity and I just haven’t tried to improve my situation.

So that got me thinking that I really needed to stop focusing on the things I don’t like and just try to do things to make myself happier and try to improve things when they bother me. I spent so long resenting my partner because I felt that no matter how much I tried that I wasn’t recieving the same effort in return but I have realized that due to my depression, I stopped making an effort. I stopped putting energy into it because I felt so drained all the time.

I’m going to stop talking to my male friend because I was unintentionally using him when I was lonely instead of talking to my partner so now I think I just need to really try again. I am just going to step away from social media and everything for a while because I have burnt myself out with everything going on. I really want to get back into my hobbies and spend more time doing the things I once loved and with it cooling down hopefully spending more time outside.

Yes I built my own cage, yes most of the negativity comes from my own brain, yes my partner is a bit of a dick. I can’t blame myself 100% but I also can’t blame him for more than a small part of it because I know that I created this myself.

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@Confused,

I hope you are having a better week! I know it seems like so much all at once, but the fact that you are making productive changes that are going to impact your situation and overall health for the better is encouraging to hear! Every little bit of change for the positive is one step forward to not a destination but to a positive future.

I am also happy to hear about your break from social media as well. Social media has a timed a place, but ultimately it can become a distraction from reality and an inaccurate comparison of what is true and what is not.

You are worth so much and you are of tremendous value! Continue to make these positive changes and continually know that there are people here that are behind you in support and are rooting for you!

-L

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