As I wrote in my earlier post, I broke up with my girlfriend of 1 year a couple of weeks ago.
And the past couple of weeks I have done a lot of very painful introspection about what went wrong.
My past couple of relationships have followed a very similar pattern:
- meet a wonderful person who is also an introverted type and fall madly in love
- spend more and more time with that person and start neglecting other important things like friends, family, staying fit, working on my social anxiety, etc
- start to feel more and more anxious in social situations because I am spending too much time at home with my partner
- fail to explain to my partner how i am feeling and how important it is to get out more and challenge myself socially
- commit to moving in with my partner even though i have gnawing doubts in the back of my mind about the relationship
- this compounds all of the problems above and again I fail to properly communicate
- despite the fact that most of these problems are of my own creation, start to withdraw emotionally from my partner and feel increasingly confused
- eventually, break up with my partner, causing her extreme pain and confusion
There is obviously a problem here. Firstly, because of my social anxiety, in the past I have tended to date girls who are also a little withdrawn and shy. Now, there is nothing wrong with this, and in fact, it may even be appropriate. But one problem here is that I am self-selecting people who will not be pushing me to challenge myself socially, reinforcing my own excuses for inaction.
Secondly, because of my lack of social confidence and communication skills, when I started to feel doubts about relationships, I have tended to stay quiet and hope that things will just get better on their own, often with disastrous consequences.
I’m not saying that people with social anxiety cannot have very fulfilling and successful relationships. But in my experience it is very tricky. One of my goals this year is to really get out a lot more and expand my social circle and the variety of activities I am engaging in. Not until I am truly happy that I have made some progress on this front will I be ready to enter a relationship again.
Because as they say, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
