My Complicated Relationship With Relationships

Relationships. Something we have to deal with on a regular, yet we often don’t think about it too much. As someone who struggles to not only form new relationships, but maintain them, I always wondered why. And I’m not just talking romantic relationships (though I do struggle with that), but even friendships. And the more I thought about it, I think I have an answer. So join me as I go back to school as I try to answer the question as to why relationships are hard for me.

As I said, I think I know the answer to why I struggle with relationships. And it began with my performances in school. So as many of you know, I’m an ADHDer, which means that I’m considered twice exceptional. That also means that I had a lot of expectations on me as I was expected to do well. And that lead to chronic lack of self-confidence and a massive inferiority complex. The more I heard that I wasn’t living up to expectations, the more I felt that I just existed to let others down.

That meant I ended up keeping to myself. I wasn’t anti-social, just that I found it easier to be by myself. You can’t let others down if there’s no one to let down, right? That was my mentality in university as I tried to figure out what I wanted to do. Which meant that a lot of my friends during that time were either people who knew me from high school or people who forced themselves into my life. At this point, I was fully into my “downplay my abilities” arc, which meant that I tried not to stick out. That meant I was halfway through abandoning music, writing wasn’t a thought in my mind, and didn’t want to try too hard in classes. So essentially I was turning into a chronic underachiever.

So I kinda want to go on a tangent here. Just because I wasn’t trying hard doesn’t mean I was intentionally trying to fail. Rather, between not trying hard and not knowing what I wanted to do, classes quickly overwhelmed me. And I couldn’t admit that I needed help or that I was struggling in classes because in my head that was just me admitting that I was failing to live up to expectations. So I just kept struggling, hoping that my ability to understand things quickly would help ease things. But when you don’t write notes well and suck at exams, your ability to understand things easily can only go so far.

Tangent aside, you might have noticed something else. I suck at communication. I don’t know if that’s because of my ADHD, or because I didn’t think people cared about me. All I know is that I bottle things. A lot. And that lead to a lot of outbursts and meltdowns. And that made forming relationships harder because I couldn’t trust myself around others. Or maybe I just didn’t trust others. Either way, I found it even harder to open up to others, especially new people. That’s part of the reason why I ended up dropping out of university and decided to try my hand at being a writer/musician.

Do you know what else needs relationships? Work. Who would have thought that you would need to form relationships while working? Not me, that’s for sure. When I started, I thought I could do everything myself (again, not being able to trust others). But I quickly learnt that even in fields that you don’t necessarily need others, you probably need to bring others to help you. And nowhere was that more apparent than in my writing. Between the covers and editing, I was woefully out of my element. And my inability to communicate made it harder to ask others to help me out.

This is not to make light of all the mistakes I’ve made over the years. As much as I write this from my own perspective, it doesn’t mean that I’m innocent in everything. Relationships are a two way road, meaning that both parties play a role in making it work. So if one side isn’t willing to put in the work, or doesn’t understand what the other person wants, then eventually that relationship ends up falling apart. That’s why I don’t blame others when relationships fall apart on me. Yeah part of me puts majority of the fault on myself, feeling like I didn’t do enough to make it work. But I also understand that sometimes I’m not right for the other person, whether it be as a friend or romantically (whenever that ends up happening). That’s just how life is sometimes.

So what does this all mean? That even if you look like you have everything together, or that someone might seem like a nice person, there’s more to them than meets the eye. As I’ve worked on my projects, and this post in particular, I’ve realized something about myself. It’s not that I don’t trust others. Rather, it seems like I don’t trust myself. And that’s something that’s hard to undo, no matter who you are. That’s why some comments which are meant to help someone can end up doing a lot of damage. Slowly I’ve been working on it, but I realize that if I want to form new bonds, I need to be able to trust myself and believe that I’m actually a person that others see good in.