Faking Happy I (Repost)

David made a statement to me the other day that shook me quite a lot. I cannot recall his exact words for the whole statement, but it was something like: “You have the ability to stay in long-term relationships completely unhappy, and no one knows it except for you. You assume that you have voiced or expressed your unhappiness clearly, but in reality you seem perfectly fine.” I felt the tears well up in my eyes, as I stared at him feeling the truth of those penetrating words. Those words have been swimming around in my head since he spoke them to me. My thoughts have been filled with the pierce of what those words meant to me. He was not being mean to me — he was stating the obvious to me. I thought that I had been expressing myself all of these years. I assumed that others knew that I was in emotional pain, angry, or frustrated. The revelation of people being unable to read me did not hit until he said that.

My best friend that I mentioned in a previous post, I was not happy with.

She and I were not good together. It was a clear co-dependent relationship that manifested because she wanted to escape her home life and I wanted a live-in person that I could talk to all the time. I was a teenager in desperate need of a person to help me with social situations. I did not know what a friend was either. I had damaged many of my friendships with my quirks and oddities or social confusion, and shutdowns where I would cut them off completely. Or my so-called friends treated me poorly, and eventually I figured it out and cut them out of my life. I did not know what friendships were supposed to look like. I did not have examples of healthy romantic relationships either. I assumed that since these people were with me all the time that they knew how they were hurting me, and that brought about feelings that they were doing it on purpose (some actually were). I would then take on the responsibility for their mistreatment thinking that if I could only do better or be nicer then they would stop.

I assumed if you were good and nice, you would win people over. Continued ... Faking Happy I