How do you feel when a guy is kind of clingy and possesive? I’m the jealous type and I get suspicious and anxious women im dating or want to date don’t message or text me back right away.
I often wonder if I have some type of borderline personality disorder, im so immediately afraid of abandonment. Like immediately I assume the worst if I’m not messaged or texted back right away.
Erroneous and somewhat misogynistic thought often says that women are the ones who are clingy, im here to tell you this is not the case lol. I’m just as clingy and workable moreso than any women I’ve me
I’ve gotten some good advice in other threads I’ve made, but I’ll be more specific here.
If I don’t know them, avoidant. If I do, scared.
Work to communicate your anxieties, but also to manage them. Don’t try diagnosing yourself, particularly with something as complex as BPD, speak to a professional and see where you go.
Also find hobbies/keep your hands busy, people have lives and so should you/aren’t always immediately available.
And stress less. Anxiety/abandonment/jealousy/possessiveness/control/etc will fester if you let them, don’t feed the beast.
Good luck
thanks for being honest. I’ve had women im dating tell me that I sometimes intimidate them when I get jealous Im a fairly tall dude like I’m like 6’1 so I imagine for a woman who’s more petite than myself that would be scary.
Let me clarify I’ve never ever put hands on woman or screamed at one or anything. Just argued over my jealous suspicions
I pretty much work, get off,ndo some reading and then I’ll start wondering “hmm well she said she was just going out with friends”. I need to check in on her.
Wouldn’t dare diagnose myself just think maybe I should speak to a professional about it, thank you though.
Preciate the thoughtful response.
Appreciate your honesty. I wasn’t saying I was virtuous or anything for not yelling at or hitting someone. Just didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea that I commit domestic violence on the regular, or at all. Sometimes stuff is lost in translation.
Obviously I recognize all this behavior is largely negative so Im trying to examine it with the help of my friends on hexbear, and then do some ruminating on my own.
I would resent being expected to be constantly available and quickly responding no matter what I’m doing. If I’m busy, I’m not looking at my phone. There’s a good chance I won’t even see the message till hours later. Being in the position of having to choose between 1) constantly checking my phone so my SO won’t get pissed if I don’t immediately respond or 2) ignoring my phone as usual and expecting to have a fight over suspicion/jealousy later would frankly end the relationship for me. You’re turning yourself into a chore and lack of trust is a dealbreaker.
It’s good that you’re self-aware enough to know that you have an issue. I really encourage you to work on it with a therapist if that’s something you can manage financially. Remember that your SO isn’t a possession, she’s a person with just as many interests and distractions as you. She isn’t at your beck and call whenever you choose, she isn’t an NPC that stands still with no thoughts until the player character initiates a conversation.
I don’t date men, but I also think this issue is gender agnostic tbh. Having things going on in your life is important. If you’re genuinely in the middle of something, how would you feel if your partner was upset that you didn’t stop what you were doing to respond? It’s really important for your partner not to be your entire world. There may be other things going on as well, but that’s definitely a big part of it
I could definitely be projecting but I think this is a result of internet brain. You get used to the dopamine kick from all the constant little notifications and so when you don’t get an immediate response your brain thinks something is wrong.
For me, the solution is to spend less time online/texting and just call people when I want a reply. I also sometimes get overwhelmed texting people back so I try to remind myself that there are plenty of other people who feel the same way.
if I didn’t reply instantly to your 400 texts in a row what makes you think I have free time for something as interruptive and intrusive as a phone call? that better be an emergency, not a habit of boredom/anxienty.
At best, anxious that I’m going to do something wrong, like take too long to answer something. At worst, he’s going to follow me around and every bit of info is going to be used to track me and bother me wherever I go.
Yeah this is what I’m told I feel bad that I would make someone feel that way because of something im doing wrong.
In the context of mental health and getting your various social needs met (which this is all about), I’m going to avoid talking about right and wrong. Yes, there is consent and all that, but if you spend all your time thinking about this it’s pretty easy to ride the line while still engaging in harmful (to both yourself and your, um, mark) behaviour.
If you’re asking this on a terminally online communist forum, you’ve probably already tripped my description above. I’ll try to keep things relatively clinical, but be aware that I’m only able to do this because of the interpersonal separation I have from your situation.
I think young men are more likely to be prone to this sort of behaviour for a few reasons. The behaviour itself stems from attachment trauma followed by a neutering of social means to feel secure in your attachments. To expand on my hypothesis for why young men are more likely to suffer from this:
- Men (and boys) are more likely to have emotionally surface level relationships. This is a cultural thing (which I’m assuming about you, no matter). Masculine relationships tend to focus on hobbies and material life changes, there’s a lot less discussion of feelings and relationships. Why this is the case doesn’t really matter, what should matter to you is that you are not getting a lot of social needs met by these relationships and thus see romantic relationships as your only way of seeing those social needs met. You can’t change the world or even just Western Masculinity, but you can work on your personal relationships to make them more emotionally open.
- Men are seen as “more manly” for being in a romantic relationship than women are seen as more “womanly”. Therefore, men have a higher drive to be in a mediocre relationship than women do. Ironically, this means its easier for women to actually stay in a mediocre relationship. This also means men are more desperate for a romantic relationship at all.
- Men have different expectations in dating. Women do have an active role, but especially at the start its less explicit. The immediate risk of rejection is higher and less able to be rationalised (I see a lot of people here mentioning rejection sensitivity). While women are at much higher risk of being victim to abusive or violent behaviour, but I could see some men not wanting to raise the risk of rejection (again), and wind up being clingy in an otherwise “fine” relationship.
There are also a number non-gender-specific things that encourage this behaviour:
- Rejection sensitivity is present in a few mental affects. ADHD and Borderline Personality Disorder are both examples. BPD (borderline, not BiPolar, which I constantly think even though I know it’s not) itself leads to:
- Attachment Trauma. Your early relationship experiences inform how you feel and behave about later relationships. If your parents were negligent or flaky or randomly violent, it’s likely parts of your brain fear rejection and abandonment way more than is healthy. This feeds into all other points pretty universally.
- probably others idk I’m drunk
Now, I don’t want to say that any of these are “wrong”. You don’t have to self-flagellate because you want a partner. What IS important is being aware of whichever feelings are affecting you and causing these behaviours which likely are not (in the long term) helping you achieve your social needs. Are you afraid of abandonment or being alone? Are you afraid of being laughed at by your male peers? Do you want more hugs and cuddles than you are currently getting, or afraid of losing access to the current supply? etc etc. Once you understand why you are behaving a particular way, you can then work on the behaviour realistically.
I also realise that therapy gets recommended a lot and that it’s not always realistically accessible. I also don’t really have a good prognostication for each thing, sorry. Not at the moment anyway.
