I never act on any urges to interact with people. To my primitive brain, interaction with people, outside of normal transactions, feels intensely scary to me. I have very few female or male friends because I feel more comfortable keeping me at a distance. I hate the unpredictability that people bring into my life and want things to be stable. I feel like inviting people close into my life is extremely dangerous for me personally. Many times, I find that I must be signalling that I want human interaction because I tend to get pursued by men quite aggressively. I find ways to discount the men as they are pursuing me because their interest in me feels dangerous and unpredictable. As I pull away after establishing intimacy, I find that they pursue harder because they are confused by my signals, and I turn them into aggressors. A little background, my mother was immature and resentful when I was a kid, which is why I avoid female friendships – they feel too emotional and volatile and I don’t want to have to babysit another woman with her crazy feelings all the time. I genuinely fear men – I’ve had various assault experiences earlier in my life and my dad was distant. I keep men at an arm’s length to manage them and predict them. I’ve had interest in me shown by good men, but I can’t let them close to me. I know these are my habits, but I don’t know the exact thoughts are causing the behavior. I can only see the behavior right now. They are keeping me safe, but probably not as happy (or sad) as I could be. I don’t really want to feel the sadness that intimacy brings, but I want a relationship. Prior intimacy didn’t go too well for me as you can see. I’m not sure how to overcome this. Even though I’m even keel, I’m afraid to feel more than this. Almost immediately when I start to feel something, I turn to weed or alcohol or overeating.