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Not Revealing My Feelings

SimonSays

Van Dweller
V.I.P Member
I've spent a lot of my life not revealing my feelings. Not telling someone how I feel about them, making it seem as if I didn’t feel anything at all. If someone was clear about how they felt about me, I could easily reveal I had similar feelings. But otherwise, if I had to make the first move, I got caught in my head, to the point where I didn't say anything.

It's not typically male to let the woman make the first move. It is rare to be asked out. But I always liked it when it happened. Anything else and I just felt overwhelmed by it all. I had to let go of the idea that I could make it obvious I was interested in someone. The best I could do was get to know them, as a work colleague. But the trouble with that is, at least for me, it interferes with the possibility there may be a more intimate connection possible. I could’t move from friend to relationship. I didn’t know how. I could’t help acting platonically even when I felt I wanted something more.

It’s a protection mechanism. The moment I'd give my heart away, I am on the road to heartache.

The idea of falling in love is great, and yet it usually becomes an issue. I lose something of myself because I need to adjust and adapt to the difference in the other person, as it makes it easier to be around them.

I always need time to reveal myself, so it requires a good level of communication first if anything more is going to happen. Talking to someone in the virtual world makes more sense to me, on a number of levels.
 
@SimonSays Sooo, like me. I was always the same. Could never let my feelings show.
They had to make the first move or asking me out. I just couldn't bring myself to do it.
We both worked at the same part time job at night and carpooled together after getting to know
each other better.
He was the only one I fell for the first day we met and it was several years later when we both
decided to quit the job as we had very full time jobs in our profession by then. He in construction.
I in pharmaceuticals.
He drove me home that last night and I sat there in his car when we got home just thinking...
Wow, I don't know what to do. I don't want to lose him, but, I don't really know how he feels either
beyond friends at work.

He was an Aspie also and we just both didn't know what to say outside of see ya around sometime
maybe?
The he grabbed me and gave me a kiss that gave me the first time I really felt the fireworks!
Next day I received two dozen roses delivered in a long white box. Holy Shamoly.
60f9f174e367c.png

"Hey, did you hear the fireworks last night?" "Yeah, kept me up 'til dawn!"
 
Yes here too. Finally told someone l had feelings but they seem to be on the fence and can't decide which side of the fence. And this is typical of us so no complaints from me there. But it's almost four years now. And l just want to slowly crawl back into my turtle shell of indecisiveness because it's safe. With new boundaries,and a voice now, l am falling into doing less in relationships. Is this old age,caring less after bad relationships? Is it just freedom from not having to be in one? That too, l guess.
 
I used to feel much more strongly about getting to know others slowly. I really had to get to know anothers character before I felt safe to reveal much about myself. But over the years I have discovered that people are very good at hiding their true character and so I still end up hurt. But it hurts more to be rejected after having spents years learning about a person.
These days I am much more inclined to be myself and hope that others reveal their true charcter right away. That way, if someone is going to be an ass I figure it out right away and don't waste any time on them.
 
Find in life, l continuously run into people who have mapped out a little road map of who l am or not. Alot of the rat race tries to push me into things l have zero interest in.

I need to do what l need now. Retirement has been the answer. You can't really push someone around who does nothing.
 
l continuously run into people who have mapped out a little road map of who l am or not. Alot of the rat race tries to push me into things l have zero interest in.
They can make as many maps as they like. The rats can push if they want. Nothing has to touch you.
You can't really push someone around who does nothing.
True. And yet it sounds like deep down you still think they can. So you need to resist. And what we resist persists. Which is why it feels like you are not at peace.
 
@Suzette

Wisdom words. And yet what were you afraid of back in the day? You can be you without having to first know them. So is it a question of attachment?

We get attached easily so we get hurt easily, because it seems to matter so much. Now it doesn't matter, because we can't make them be who they really are anyway, unless they're going to be. And somehow when it doesn't matter, it seems more obvious. I'm no longer giving my heart so easily.
 
As I've said before, my major dysfunction came as a teen and young adult. I was terribly shy, had social anxiety, cannot understand nonverbal communication, afraid of rejection, yet valued girls/women and never, ever, wanted to be disrespectful to them, so thought that the possibility of professing unwanted feelings was a form of disrespect. So, my inability to express my feelings was terrible until my mind used the flimsiest excuse to explode in oppositional behavior. I could never make that move to profess my feelings to a girl/woman or even ask them out innocently. [edit: Except in a very particular and unusual case]

I was also trained by peers not to express feelings towards girls. If I mentioned to acquaintences in HS how I felt about a girl their first reaction was surprise that I had emotions at all and wanted any relationship, and then it was inevitable that they would tell me why she is not a good match for me or, because I always fell for personality or smarts, they would make negative comments about her appearance. So after HS I was very reticent about expressing my feelings.
 
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and never, ever, wanted to be disrespectful to them, so thought that the possibility of professing unwanted feelings was a form of disrespect.
I understand this. You reminded me. It seemed selfish for me to have feelings, that she had no idea of, and here I am, dumping them on her, as if she now has to consider them just because I have them. That belief is heavy. No wonder it couldn't be overcome easily.
 
Indeed. A number of us have some very well developed defense mechanisms.

- Often for some very good reasons.
 
They can make as many maps as they like. The rats can push if they want. Nothing has to touch you.

True. And yet it sounds like deep down you still think they can. So you need to resist. And what we resist persists. Which is why it feels like you are not at peace.

Nope. I am still here. Still free. Perhaps our persona can draw others out. Perhaps people think l have answers l don't have. I walked on either side of the line in life. Met the bad, met the good. And l still am walking.☺
 
@Suzette

Wisdom words. And yet what were you afraid of back in the day? You can be you without having to first know them. So is it a question of attachment?

We get attached easily so we get hurt easily, because it seems to matter so much. Now it doesn't matter, because we can't make them be who they really are anyway, unless they're going to be. And somehow when it doesn't matter, it seems more obvious. I'm no longer giving my heart so easily.

I never thought of attachment before I began to learn about a.s.d. You might be right about the cause.
I certainly know I was afraid of rejection. And, lets face it, young people can be a-holes so I had a bit of rejection experience. :)
 
I'm actually a bit on the opposite end of that spectrum. Especially when I was younger, I had a tendency to always reveal my feelings. I would give them poetry, candy, love letters, etc. I would also just walk up and blurt it out. I would not recommend and this definitely created some awkward moments, especially because I had often not bothered to get to know the person first and didn't have important information such as 1) their sexual orientation and 2) whether they were already in a relationship.

That said, it has always been very, very difficult for me to approach someone. What drives me to do so anyway? The "what if?" I guess being on the spectrum means my brain is prone to fixation and I will definitely always fixate on the "what if?" What if I had asked him out? Maybe he was my soulmate and I missed him. I beat myself up and ruminate on what could have been. I know it's not the same for everyone but for me, the "what if" is worse than the potential rejection. The rejection hurts but at least I know. I may fixate on the embarrassment for a little while but then I move on. But the regret of having not acted can haunt me for years.

I don't know that there's anything that makes it easier except consciously weighing your options. What's the cost of action? What's the cost of inaction? What are the potential benefits? I think we do these types of analyses all the time but when we leave them in the unconscious, I think our brains (in their noble attempts to protect us) can warp things.

Unconscious Brain: "If Johnny asks Suzy out and she turns him down, I know Johnny will literally die. He'll just immediately melt into a puddle of misery or burst into flames or something. I better protect him by making sure we avoid this risk at all costs."

Conscious Brain: "If Suzy rejects me, I'd be soooo embarrassed...but if I don't ask her out, I miss out on the chance, however small, that she accepts. I'll also probably spend the next six months kicking myself for not having made a move...I definitely want to avoid that so I'm going to ask her out."

Maybe for you, not acting on your feelings is the better option but if not, perhaps talking yourself through it can help.
 
What drives me to do so anyway? The "what if?"
Right. What I found that made it easier for me was approaching someone without the intention of getting involved. Without wanting things to go in a specific direction. Not having an agenda. That made it easier to get to know someone without having to make something happen.

If it was a co-worker, there was time to see if something happened. If there was natural banter, or even flirtatious banter, then things were going in a direction and could develop into more. But it would still take time, so I'd have to be patient, rather than expecting something to happen quicker.
 
Desire is the source of all pain. Accept it if it happens and accept it if it doesn't.

The problem is that Biology doesn't want to cooperate with this philosophy. It wants what it wants.
 
Welcome to the club, is part of our nice condition, be emotionally close, socially inept, it a hard lesson that I learned in high-school, because I also had the disadvantage of having a facial deformity, so revealing my feelings was a weakness, when my Asperger began to show, it become more easy hide behind a wall and be nearly completely unemotional, the downside is that girls see me like I was an alien from another planet, but it part of having autism, the loneliness, the inability to connect with people, even with your own family, I not blame the girls from reject me.

Logically I was in the lower level of the gene pool, sure, I was very intelligent, even by my age, but my taste never equal theirs, I had various pulmonary sickness over the years, and even that now I am stronger that when I was a teenager, I not a jock, no woman would consider me a candidate to form a couple, and there is the little fact that I would never give them what they want for much I try, because I would never say the three little words that they want to hear.
 
Reading here, I see you, me and many others here fall in the same small but enormously deep.

Myself, I have not had many a relationship, partly I think because of my difficulty showing or sharing emotions and my tendency to not talk at all.

This has made me the one waiting for the other person to do or say something, guess it also has to do with a low level of confidence.

With my last relationship it lasted for almost a year, with us seeing each other very little and little talk. Never said how I feel or sat down to talk about things.

This is before I learned of my diagnoses. Think having been diagnosed as an aspie it might help in the future on how to deal with things or just be upfront about things. The only problem is that that would entail talking and sharing emotions.

Right at this moment, I’m not sure yet of how to deal with it or work with it.
 

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