DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’m 20, and I’ve never been in a relationship. I feel like I’m wasting time, though I never really interacted with women outside of my family, thus I don’t know how a relationship/love feels like.
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My father keeps pushing me to do it, sometimes even making fun of me, besides the fact I’m in college and also applying for an internship program. Never had any problems in school either, besides my overall distancing from others.
All of the friends I had during middle school were already dating and/or working while I was just a nerd, spending most of my time at home, alone. And that still hits me, to this day.
I’m not gonna lie; I didn’t make any friends until I was, like, 8 years old? (Some psychologist said that making friends during childhood is highly important for a healthy mental development). And plus my parents started arguing (and eventually the divorce process) when I was in my early teens, so maybe this contributed to my problem with (the desire for) relationships and talking, sharing with people in general.
I have done therapy before, which also involved my parents, but it really didn’t solve anything – except that the doc suggested that I would develop attachment issues due to my parents’ divorce and my chronical loneliness, which makes me dangerously depressed from time to time since then.
What could I possibly do to fix this? Sometimes I just won’t sleep, will feel physical pain in my chest, have a breakdown, cry a lot, smash my head on the walls or beat it with my hands…
Did I really became the person the therapist suggested I would?
Attachment Failure?
DEAR ATTACHMENT FAILURE: Holy hopping sheep s--t, AF, it’s not very often I feel like I need to tell someone you deserve better parents and a better therapist but… Jesus, you deserve better parents and a much better therapist. Like, it’s really unprofessional for your therapist to say you would get some form of insecure attachment, especially if they weren’t doing anything to, y’know, mitigate or prevent it. I don’t know if that’s something they said directly to you or just in your presence but either way that’s the sort of thing that doesn’t make me raise an eyebrow so much as watch them shoot off into orbit and clip the ISS on the way to attempt landings on Europa.
OK, let’s back up a moment and roll it from the top. First and foremost: you’re not “wasting time” just because you’ve not had a relationship at 20. You’re not on any particular timeline, you’re not expected nor are you “supposed” to have dated by a specific age outside of other people’s bulls--t expectations. The idea that you’re “supposed” to have had X number of girlfriends or lost your virginity by Y year is entirely made up. It’s fake, it’s bulls--t, it’s complete trash and you can and should discard it completely. You’re on your own journey, with your own goals, challenges, ambitions and priorities and milestones, none of which require that you either have sex or date by a particular age. The pressure you’re feeling is real, don’t get me wrong… but that pressure isn’t based on anything other than what other people insist is “right”.
And while we’re on the topic, your father is not only not helping, what he’s doing is the opposite of help. The pressure he’s putting on you is bad enough, but mocking you for it just makes it worse. Shame is a demotivator; it makes you less likely to succeed, even less likely to try again after you fail and only serves to discourage you from ever making the attempt in the first place.
(I’m going to be honest here: this s--t gets my hackles up and there’s a part of me that feels like the best response to his mockery would be to verbally slap their lips off. And I’m very good at that.
It would be the opposite of helpful and it would only escalate things in the worst possible ways but Jesus tapdancing Frog…)
So here’s the thing: your tendency towards isolation and not even attempting to date are the least surprising things based on what you’ve said. Quite frankly, I don’t think this is a bad thing. You’ve got a lot of pain that you’re carrying around right now and I think that needs to be addressed before you worry about dates or girlfriends. It’s a hell of a lot easier to make that journey when you’re not dealing with a sprained back and two broken ankles, after all.
Let’s start with the most important thing for you to take onboard: you are not broken, you are not sick, nor are you irrevocably socially handicapped because you didn’t “make enough friends” as a child. I think that your previous therapist was, at the very least, profoundly irresponsible by talking about attachment issues with you or within earshot of you. I think you’ve allowed that and the bit you’ve read about early mental development to take root in your brain and it’s f--ked you up. And I want to be clear: those aren’t signs that there’s something wrong with you, those are things that you’ve latched on to that confirm what you already believe. It’s not that they’re right and true and correct and you’ve missed some important milestone, it’s that those are the tools that you use to smack yourself in the balls and then you blame yourself for feeling pain. But that’s why we say that feels aren’t reals; what you feel is absolutely real, but the fact that you feel it doesn’t make it true.
So no: I don’t think you’ve become the person your previous therapist said you would, nor do I think you’re hopelessly behind or wasting time. I think you’ve taken other people’s bulls--t onboard, and the fact that it hurts makes you afraid that it’s true. And it’s not. What is true is that you’re dealing with a lot of pain and big, complicated feelings that I don’t think you fully grasp and you certainly don’t have any good outlets for.
So I know that right now your life is very busy, between college and trying to get into an internship, but I think you really need to talk to a different and better therapist – by yourself. Right now, you’re in luck; being a college student means that you’ve got access to your college’s health services department and they should have counselors and therapists available. If they don’t, they almost certainly have contacts and people they can refer you to. I would highly recommend you take advantage of those resources while you can; this is a time in your life when access to mental health care is going to be a lot easier and cheaper than it will after you graduate.
You’re carrying around a lot of pain and a lot of self-recrimination for things that honestly aren’t things you should be blaming yourself for. It’s ok that you didn’t socialize much in high-school. It’s ok that you haven’t had a relationship. It’s a shame that things happened like that, but that doesn’t mean that you’re bad, deficient or broken; it just means that you went through a lot of s--t and you did what you felt was necessary to get through it as best that you could at the time.
So I think the first thing you need to do is simply forgive yourself for the way that you lived your life up until now. It’s not that you’ve done anything wrong, but that forgiveness isn’t for some nebulous “sin”, it’s for the blame you’re carrying around. Forgiving yourself for it and acknowledging that you made the best decisions you could at the time is part of how you stop carrying the burden of that needless blame around. You know better now, and so you’ll make different decisions going forward. You can acknowledge that you wish things had been different without beating yourself up over the fact that they weren’t.
The next thing is – as I said – to hie thyself to the therapist’s couch and to make that a priority. That crushing pain, that tendency to lash out physically to hurt yourself? Those are things that need to be dealt with. They’re not going to get better on their own, and they’re not going to be constrained to the long dark nights of the soul, to those times when it’s the hour of the wolf and you’re stuck in a maelstrom of remorse and self-recrimination. It’s going to start bleeding into other parts of your life and f--k up the things that go well too, because that’s how pain works. So getting to a therapist, unpicking those knots, easing those scars, debriding and cleaning those wounds, setting those bones are how you’re going to heal – an important part of making your overall life better.
Once you’ve started progressing on your healing – not “when you’re finished”, but on your way to being in good working order – then I think you’ll find that you’re in a much better place to start socializing, breaking out of the old ruts and routines that you’ve been in and start working towards dating and romance. You don’t need to rush; trying to get to it before your ready is the emotional equivalent of Luke rushing off to confront Vader before he finished his training. It may feel like the right thing to do at the time, but it’s only going to make things harder and slow things down even further.
But more importantly, you don’t need to rush because nothing is going anywhere. Friends will be waiting for you once you’re able to join them. Love will be there when you’re ready. So for the moment, love yourself enough to heal your wounds. Everything will be much easier and much better once you’re not in so much pain.
You’ve got this.
All will be well.
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Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com