Broken cycle no longer serving me

Hello,
I have just found this forum and feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the dynamics pointed out I relate to that have played out in my relationships. I am sick of the same cycle repeating over and over. Wash and repeat. I always wanted to think I was just with the wrong person and now I do realize the common denominator is me. Just wish it didn’t take me 40 years to realize. Either way, I wish to address this and come out the other side if possible.

With past relationships, sometimes it felt like they knew too much about me and it was safer to find someone else. Im now feeling like I don’t know if I can open up to anyone again after seeing how I willfully sabotaged the past. I’m feeling a bit lost and broken at this point, wondering if I’m simply just meant to be alone.

I tend to crave being alone when in a relationship, but then feel intense bouts of loneliness that I suppress as much as possible when I go thru my shut-down periods. I sometimes see other people in happy relationships and feel ashamed that I’m incapable but usually just try to keep my emotions turned off.

I know the way I treated my exes was wrong. I hate that I did everything I did but I also try never to think about it. I don’t like to think about it. But reading this forum it’s abundantly clear that until I address this stuff I can’t have a relationship.

I’ve been in love maybe twice. The first time I was a bit naive, right out of college, and perhaps let myself get kind of carried away. Looking back I don’t think we were very compatible or maybe this is a distancing/denial strategy of mine.

I am also only just finding out my usage of friendships and work is a coping mechanism to avoid intimacy and that avoiding in itself is a trauma response. That was kind of hard to absorb. I have spent a ton of time nourishing friendships and making sure my partners knew those were my priority. I do not know why I did this. I could have had both friends and a relationship but it was like I was just fighting against closeness, treating it like an enemy, and taking that out on unsuspecting partners.

I am generally not emotionally intimate with anyone- definitely not my family, and friendships always felt safe to me because they were not close, but now I’m feeling shame that I pushed my exes away because i was intensely trying to avoid them.

I always thought their needs were too big, now I am realizing that their needs were reasonable and healthy. It was my need for space that was too big. I made the problem (me avoiding) bigger than the relationship itself. That’s really depressing to come to terms with.

I was so wrapped up in this avoiding past trauma stuff I let my whole life slip away from me. I always needed to be doing things on my phone, sms-ing with friends about bullish-t, making various plans with friends, movies, my long-hours job which I tend to be a people pleaser and very competitive and crave recognition at or I would feel like shit, my iPad, online sports betting, and I admittedly up until recently had an unhealthy addition to pornography and communicating with near anonymous women off websites (cybersex) that I have put a stop to because I don’t want to continue wiring my brain in that direction. So anyway, I did anything within my power to avoid connecting and communicating. Some days I would just completely shut down for no reason. My college ex remarked it was like “a human was there, and then the next day it was just a wall.”

I can be really good at moving on from people. I miss my exes but then I try to convince myself it wasn’t right for whatever reason I can come up with and lean on that full force, but then I tend to feel bouts of sadness later on. Half the time I don’t know what I feel at all.

I also definitely sexually deactivate from people who get close to me, it’s like a switch flips. Until recently I was good at blaming the other person for this, in my head. The problem has only recently become more apparent as mine.

I used to engage in casual sex and if we had sex i never wanted to see the person again. With people i like i wanted to see them again but after 6 months it became really difficult for me to continue sexually with them because it felt like I was doing something wrong. With my last ex I finally worked up the courage to suggest a couple things mainly centered around fantasy stuff and watching porn with her and that actually tended to go well. As long as it was the mostly physical part of the sex but then I would feel myself deactivating afterwards and need to recluse for a bit until I felt safe again.

I did love her and wanted to meet her needs. But I also had a hard time usually communicating more about sex stuff with her because as I get closer to someone in a relationship I feel scared to talk to them. I wanted to go to a therapist with her but was both scared of the therapy itself with her and also suggesting it to her. It’s too late now to try with her as she is gone.

I can see how this came from childhood as we were not really supposed to show emotion, and our mum was a bit frightening and cold, she also went thru a stroke which left me scared of dying and losing people. My father had some anger issues and did physically hit me a couple times and I was sexually touched by a female relative on Thanksgivings when I was young that I feel like I’ve blocked out. My parents divorced when I was a teenager and I never felt like they loved each other. My sister is younger and anxious and deeply depressed. We don’t really talk, except exchanging info about mum’s health.

I sometimes feel angry at myself for not responding to the open and collaborative dialogue my ex tried to establish with me and pushing her away instead. Why can’t I have intimacy and why do I keep pushing people away? Why was I so resistant to actually “repairing” problems or bringing things up and just feeling afraid all the time. Am I just destined to be alone with these “coping strategies” of mine my whole life because they are not so fulfilling anymore.


I wish I could open up to people in dating sometimes but then I just end up telling myself they’re not the right person, this is an awful cycle and I saw a therapist already and I don’t feel any differently. She was not an attachment therapist though. Actually the only useful bit of info i got from her was that the way I treated my ex differently when alone and when in public and also not claiming her publicly was a form of abuse/ gaslighting that made her question reality because of the incongruence in my actions there. But I feel I have grown up a lot since then. Most of my friends have also moved on to have fulfilling relationships and families including my ex.

Some days I feel like the abandoned broken toy soldier that no one wanted and some days I just feel nothing.

Am I dismissive avoidant or fearful avoidant? Are there forms of therapy that work better than others? I don’t want to continue living like this and feeling broken and shutting that part of my life out forever. I am 40 now and have given up on having a family. Thanks for reading this.