I'm not discounting your feelings or situation, but dude... you're twenty-eight years old! The first 18 or so, you lived your life according to other people's rules, standards, and goals. Then you went to college (probably) for 4 years or so (probably), so you have had six whole years of being a real person. Cut yourself some slack, man! :-) I'm 20 years ahead of you, don't know you from Adam, and don't know anything about your situation beyond what you have posted here. So I am totally qualified to give you advice! So here we go... What I see in your post is someone who isn't comfortable with himself. You aren't connected to YOU. You haven't spent a lot of time alone. You haven't done a lot of introspection. You don't really know what your internal drivers are. At 28 I was ending my first marriage, working a high-paying job in the tech industry, riding my motorcycle to work every day, living in the Haight-Ashbury, and kind of a wild man. My life was full of noise and action and activity and busy-ness. It took me about 10 more years to slow down enough and let the dust settle enough to realized that I was afraid of being alone. I had no identity outside of the work I did. I could not just sit alone and read a book, or be quiet, or just sit in the forest and stare at trees. I had to be DOING SOMETHING to always keep me distracted from the fact that I didn't really have an identity. I didn't know who I was. Therefore, I didn't know what value I could be to someone else, and that made me a bad partner in a long string of short relationships. Lots of frustrated women who could see my potential, but couldn't help me get comfortable with myself... so I'd eventually slip away. My Advice: Here's what I suggest: Sign up for a yoga class, and commit to doing it for 6 months. Sounds weird, I know. But you are young and fit. The best way to remain in shape, and in tune, is to do yoga regularly. It helps you keep flexible (and you have NO IDEA how important this is going to be later on in life!!!), it keeps a strong core, it helps you find physical and mental balance, it gives you some quiet time to be alone with yourself and your muscles and your body, and it mellows you out. You can also do it anywhere, at any time, for stress relief, or stretching getting off a long plane flight, or whatever. Yoga is magic and everyone should do it. By doing yoga, you will be focusing on yourself in a healthy way, spending quiet time alone in your head without family or digital distractions, and you will get to lean more about your physical self, as well as your cerebral self. When your mind has time, permission, and space, to wander... you never know what you might find in there! Yoga is also a community. A healthy community that cares about each other. And hugs one another. And shares honest feelings. These are things you are missing, as well. It's not a cure-all panacea, or anything like that. But I think it might help someone in exactly your situation... and lead to long-term health benefits that you will be VERY grateful for later in life!
Unless you make the mistake of signing up for hot yoga, in which case it means breathing in the smell of people who don't wash their clothes enough while listening to Whitesnake for an hour.Sign up for a yoga class, and commit to doing it for 6 months. Sounds weird, I know. But you are young and fit. The best way to remain in shape, and in tune, is to do yoga regularly. It helps you keep flexible (and you have NO IDEA how important this is going to be later on in life!!!), it keeps a strong core, it helps you find physical and mental balance, it gives you some quiet time to be alone with yourself and your muscles and your body, and it mellows you out.
Mis-read that as Whitehouse at first and suddenly wanted to do yoga.
Invite 30 people to a rustic barn setting, they set up their mats and chit chat. Fit bodies and water bottles. Suddenly a pulsing and staccato kick drum blares from overhead. the doors behind them slam shut. A sweaty man lights a hay fire in the middle of the room. megaphone squaks unbearably He paces back forth, pushing up his dad glasses. "ASSUME THE LOTUS POSITION" "SERENITY IS A LIE. SERENITY IS A LIE. SERENITY IS A LIE HOLD FOR THE NEXT 30 SECONDS AND DONT FORGET TO CHOKE." "YOU IN THE THIRD ROW GET LOWER! THIS IS WHY YOU NEVER BECAME A DANCER!!"
I'm sold. Especially on the part where yoga is a community. I've never heard that before. And the flexibility being important in my later years is something I'm probably neglecting. I am now stronger than almost anyone who doesn't strength train, but I'm about as flexible as a dead branch.