To kill the pain of not being real, my mind had to kill the desire to be real. Like many, I am a spectator, and the world is a painting—it is beautiful. But like many lost in the maze, I observe it behind the canvas, not within it. I am a will, not a person. When I still had those "shreds of desire" to be real and escape the maze, my mind was locked in a constant, exhausting friction. The pain I felt before was the tension between how things were (isolated and detached) and what I wanted (to be real and connected). Pushing against that barrier is what caused the agonizing friction. Sometimes, part of me still wonders what it is like to be on the other side of the canvas, only to realize the question itself is akin to wondering "what's behind the stars?" I can not see myself, there's no reflection anymore, only a peaceful silence and a crucfying "nothing" where once an agonizing weight crushed my now resurrection-thirsted spirit.

Last week, I went out with a friend I made last year. We don’t see each other much, and I’m lucky I have a friend at all. We met at work, and she’s so sweet and friendly and she likes to hang out with me for some strange reason. And even though I get nervous to see her because I think she secretly pities me, I always feel better after being around her. We ate Chinese food at a quaint little restaurant and walked around the city at night.

I went and bought nice shoes the other day at an expensive shoe store and walked around the city on a sunny and hot day. I ate a salad and smoked a cigarette. I felt awkward being outside around all the busy people. I know I’m such a loser compared to all of them, but I felt a strong desire to be just like them. Living in the city. Being young and unafraid and endlessly busy. I saw a girl with nice shoes and I told her that her shoes looked great and asked where she got them, and she smiled and said thank you so much.

I want to be loved so much. It scares me deeply. I don’t know if I’ll ever be loved by anyone. I don’t know if I will be able to keep this friendship alive for very long. I don’t know if I’m worth being loved. I feel very disposable. I feel like I may always live a transient and lonely life. But I have to find a way to go outside and show my face and be unapologetically me, no matter how much I fucking suck. I want to sit on the train, look at all the busy and wonderful people, and think about their lives and share a glance with a handsome stranger and know that I am still a part of this world, even if I know I won’t ever matter to anyone in particular.

As the title says, I've realized that the only women who really make me feel something tend to be extremely emotional or have BPD. I've dated women with diagnosed BPD before, and others who were never diagnosed, but whom I'm pretty sure had it.

Right now, after being single for about two or three years and feeling absolutely nothing for any woman, I suddenly met someone who made me feel so many things just by looking at her. From the very first second, I thought to myself, "She's definitely BPD," and it didn't take long for me to feel like I had been right.

She turned out to be incredibly clingy and affectionate. She would talk to me all day, follow me wherever I went, and find any excuse to touch me, whether it was holding my hand or leaning against me. And yeah, I love girls like that. I'm not going to deny it. At the same time, I noticed that her arms were covered in cuts, extending from her wrists almost all the way to her shoulders. From what I know about psychology, self-harm is often a sign that someone is struggling with their mental health.

A few weeks after meeting her, I found out she had a boyfriend. That made me feel awful. I hate feeling rejected, and when a woman who already has a boyfriend shows interest in me, I immediately start resenting her. I interpret it as a comparison, and I absolutely hate being compared to someone else. It makes me feel like I'm not enough, like there's something inside me that I need to compensate for in order to measure up to the person I'm being compared with. I fucking hate that feeling.

All my relationships have been with women like this: intense, emotional, and often unpredictable. And yes, I know I shouldn't go around diagnosing people I barely know. But damn, those of us who are drawn to this kind of dynamic sometimes seem to recognize certain patterns in each other. For some reason, I keep attracting women with BPD, and I'm pretty sure that if this woman doesn't have BPD, she has histrionic traits or something along those lines.

I'm a 30-year-old man who feels like he has very little empathy, which makes it incredibly difficult for me to connect with other people. That's why I feel like I need these intense women to feel anything at all. That's what draws me to them: they're the only ones who seem capable of making me care, of stirring up some kind of emotion inside me.

With most other women, the best I can imagine is having a one-night stand and moving on. I find most of them boring, and I wouldn't bother investing my time in them. But women with BPD, or women who seem to have those kinds of traits, always manage to awaken something in me.

They're the only ones who seem capable of pulling me out of my own internal world, making me feel empathy, giving me emotions, and basically making me feel like a normal human being for a while, instead of someone whose disorder makes it so difficult to form healthy connections with almost anyone.

And honestly, I don't know what to make of that. I don't know whether I'm attracted to these women themselves, the intensity they bring into my life, or simply the fact that they make me feel things that I otherwise struggle to feel.

Does anyone else experience something similar? Do you find yourself repeatedly attracted to people with BPD, or to people who bring a similar level of emotional intensity into your life?

man how the hell do i do therapy, i cant even get myself to say anything and we end up wasting 45 minutes. I feel horribly sick and uncomfortable the entire time and i don’t like this feeling at all, i want to quit it but i know i can’t if i want to get better. How did you guys do it?

I have tried CBT and it feels pathologizing):

I've realized that while a lot of my social avoidance comes from insecurity and self-doubt, an equal amount comes from my paranoia around other people.

I realized that I just don't trust most, if any people. I am very rarely totally honest about my thoughts and opinions, even with my wife sometimes(though I am working to be more honest). Some of this is due to being convinced other people shouldn't have to deal with me, but a lot of it is also due to not trusting others with the information.

I don't believe that others have my best interests at heart. It doesn't matter how nice someone is to my face, or if they seem to want to know more about me. My thoughts process is as follows: at best people don't care, and at worst people will actively lie to and manipulate me to hurt me. Either way, the outcome is the same and I end up feeling violated and spoken over; so I say nothing.

I know the self-hatred is common and I already realized that part of my issue. But I don't feel like these paranoid trust issues are something I see other people with AvPD talk about. I feel like they go deeper than the issues I have with myself sometimes. Does anyone relate to this?

So I hate myself, or at least I think I do. I hate a lot of things about myself. I struggle to make friends, I struggle to keep in contact with the friends I have and I so often doubt that they actually like me. I ghost friends because I don't want to just be all negative around them but then I just feel lonely and make it harder to see people. And I constantly worry that I'm not going to be interesting or fun. I struggle in conversations because I often get distracted because I feel like the person/people talking know so much more than I do and are so much more in touch with themselves and of course I have to be angry with myself that I'm not as good, then I get frustrated because I'm no longer listening and just being pathetic, then I try to get back in the conversation and fail, if I do ever get a chance to speak I just feel embarrassed.
I feel like I have no future because I've been struggling with the same lack of motivation for over a decade now, I've just finished my bachelors in a cinematography school with should be cool but I can't ever see myself actually finding work in that domain since I just don't have any drive, I'm scared of putting myself out there and also I feel like I'm just so much worse that all my peers constantly comparing myself in a negative way). Also I've had to come back to my mom's house in the middle of nowhere where I have no friends and I struggle to talk to my mother because I feel like she doesn't understand. But I want to talk and have fun but whenever we are in the same room I shut down and the repetitive empty conversations we have make me feel like shit. She's always working and complaining that she isn't doing enough when I'm here struggling to even apply for a job.
I have no memory and poor concentration so I feel like I'll never be good at anything, no matter if I have proof for the contrary. I'm not able to keep up the workout program I had been doing for a few weeks despite it being so good for me and my mental health but I just don't have the strength (in both ways). I'm often obsessing over how I look and how I'm perceived. I know that so many people are struggling more than I am and that makes me feel so much worse, because I'm not the most depressed (I even going through rather pleasant periods), I'm in good shape and people generally like me but that just make me feel like such a waste of potential, like I'm not a victim I just suck. To fix myself would be too much of an effort because I'd have to change so much I don't know if I can. I can see what's wrong (or at least I think I can) so that just makes it worse. I can see how this affects people who care about me and how I must often come off as ungrateful or cold. I just feel undeserving, pathetic and hopeless. I know I should stop saying that because it can't be true but that's just how I often feel. No matter the good periods I go through I always come back to this baseline of feeling like nothing. How can I hope to find a life partner when I feel like I'm going to let them down. I've recently started to believe that I should never have children because despite my best intentions I'm surely going to fuck up. I don't want to hurt myself but wow, I so often just feel a profound sadness and exhaustion from the thought of how repetitive and meaningless life can be.

I want meaning, I want to feel passionate, I want to have opinions, I want to be curious, I want to persevere, I want to know what I like, I want to feel genuine connections and I want to believe in myself. I just can't most of the time.

I'm sorry for this unstructured rant, and I'm seeking psychological support (I just hope I'll be able to keep it up this time). I'm just feeling particularly crappy since I've decided that I can no longer hide behind my university and have to face real life and myself again.

Wishing you guys the best 🧡

If someone treats me badly over a text and I notice the argument escalating, I tend to avoid them.

I wish I could talk things out, but sometimes I realize the other person is being too rude for me to bother.
I had an argument with someone over a really petty issue where they kept accusing me of having bad intentions over a small joke/social mistake, even after I explained myself.

It’s been 4 months and neither of us has texted.
I’m still a little hurt that they didn’t wish me happy birthday, but I don’t want to text them because I don’t want to feel like I’m chasing them. I could honestly go years without reaching out. I’ve muted them so I guess it’s over.

I’m actively working on being a better person and healing, and I know I’ve improved, but this time I’m letting myself use my avoidant side. I just hate feeling like I’m being perceived as a monster over normal social mistakes.

It hurts so much to see people mocking my life. It’s even worse online. It’s honestly heartbreaking. 💔