Hello. I (20M) am a first year university student, a little older than normal because a took a year off for sports and a year off recovering from an accident and am having a pretty good time socially. I’ve got more friends than I’ve ever had before, and they all seem to care about me more than any friends i’ve ever had in the past.
This is all well and good, except none of these friends have any idea who I am. They often joke about how I’m “unaffected”. They all think I’m unfeeling, robotic, immune to sadness, nerves or fear and asexual, but thats definitely not true. I feel everything the same as everyone else, but apparently have no idea how to express anything. This has made it almost impossible to find a relationship (I’m 20, and have only had one serious relationship ffs), and even harder to find emotional comfort in friends.
I get nervous for exams, I get sad when I lose things, I feel attraction to people, I feel empathy, and everything else everyone else feels (i think) but no one knows this, and I’ve got no idea how to tell anyone without weirding them out or driving them away.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I’m surrounded by awesome friends who would do anything for me (and I’d do anything for them) but none of them really know me and it’s very lonely. The fact that I’ll never have another relationship again if I can’t fix this is just another thing on top of this.
Thanks
4 comments
You seem to express yourself well online. Maybe text and Snapchat and whatnot with them more?
Enjoy your friends! You are doing a good job already. Maybe ask one if them, one you are closer with, hoe you can improve a little.
Well, start straightforwardly. You can use phrases like “I’m nervous about this”, “I’m alright, yesterday, I lost my X, and now I’m sad about it”. You don’t need to dress it up to make it organic (especially if people know you don’t normally do it, or if they react to it, you can explain that people used to say you have no emotions, so you’re trying out expressing your emotions literally).
Radical honesty works a surprising amount of the time. None of the emotions you have described having are unreasonable emotions to have. I don’t think you’ll drive many people away, people get driven away by emotions when you can’t control them, not just by acknowledging them. If you express rage, to the point where people get scared that you might not be able to contain it, then sure, that might make people shy away, but even then, if you say something makes you angry but you show you’re in control, you should be fine.
You are a little older, so likely seem more “in control” to them just because of that fact. And if you still have lots of involved friends, don’t let it get to you if you seem to be unaffected. Just let them know “Hey I feel things pretty deeply, I guess I learned to keep my face cool under pressure” or something similar. (They might not agree, that isnok.) It may just be that they feel less mature and are trying to relate. I am glad you have a good friend group!