I’ve been intellectually precocious for most of my life. I’m smart, maybe even very smart. (Obviously humble too.)
Ideas have never intimidated me, and I think I can consider most ideas without much emotional baggage to get in the way. Mainly because I keep my emotions at arms length. Or securely locked away from my consciousness.
Emotions, though, are relentless.
I’m currently experiencing quite an emotional upheaval. There are many reasons for it: My business, into which I’ve invested much of our retirement savings, is under significant stress, so I’m feeling anxious about that. I can’t dispel the anxiety without support, and I recognize that I don’t have much emotional support that I can comfortably access. So I am questioning my relationships, which brings more anxiety. I feel lonely and sad. With much of my current situation in flux, my future is uncertain. Which feels even more stressful.
I’m not in a good place. I don’t like feeling stressed, lonely, and sad, but I’m not sure what to do about it.
I am where I am largely of my own making.
Some of it comes naturally. I am generally shy to those I don’t know, so it takes time for me to establish emotional connection. I am both reserved and a bit self-centered, so in my relationships I tend not to reciprocate with proportional emotional intensity.
Some of it is conditioning. My family moved every 2-3 years as I grew up, and not just down the block. From Illinois to Maine, to Ontario, Canada, to Chile, to Vancouver, to Tucson, to Denver. I don’t have lifelong friends. I had to make new friends every time we moved, and since I am shy in new situations, I felt emotionally isolated a lot during my formative years. Isolation is familiar to me, and it feels like my default state. It is comfortable. My parents – and theirs – kept tight rein on their emotions, so the examples that I saw showed me that emotions must be leashed. Like everyone, I feel emotions, often strongly, and the intensity of my most powerful feelings terrifies me. If I can’t control them, I feel like my emotions might destroy me.
Some of it is choice. My wife is my opposite. We complete each other, but we don’t mesh well. Natural tendencies and habits developed over 30+ years of marriage have left raw friction points and hidden fault lines in our relationship, and trust is not complete between us. Where she reaches out broadly at times of emotional stress, I withdraw into myself. There is no small amount of pain and resentment (though our marriage is not just pain and resentment). And I have no one else I share my feelings with either. I withdraw to avoid emotional intimacy, because I lack confidence in my ability to manage my emotions in important relationships.
The combination of nature and decisions, initially by others and then by myself, have left me here. And here no longer works very well for me. I don’t want to feel stressed, lonely, and sad, but I wonder if I have missed the window to make that work with my current relationships and if I have enough runway left in my life to make it work with different relationships.
And I’m not sure how I will decide.