Am I seriously too damaged to have normal, healthy relationships?
I’d really like some outside perspective on this situation, because I recently received a message from a friend that made me seriously question whether there is something fundamentally wrong with the way I handle my relationships.
I’m basically someone who is very slow at replying to messages. It’s not that I deliberately ignore people or try to punish them. It just happens that I don’t reply for days, and sometimes even weeks.
I’ve also noticed that when I’m not doing well mentally or emotionally, I tend to disappear even more. I withdraw, stop communicating, and often don’t reply even to people I genuinely love and care about. At those times, I simply don’t have the energy to talk or explain myself. Then, when I feel better, I come back and continue the relationship as normal.
I have several friends where this is actually mutual. One of us might send something, the other person replies a few days later, then one of us disappears again for a few days, and when we talk again, we simply pick up where we left off. We still love and care about each other, we meet up, and we’re there for each other. I’ve always considered this a completely normal way of maintaining a friendship.
However, I recently received this message from a friend, and it really made me think:
“I think I’ve been more than fair. I’ve already tolerated too much from you. I’ve overlooked too many things. I don’t even know if this can be called a relationship anymore. Friendship doesn’t work like this for me. [...] You’re very sweet, and I loved every single minute of our conversations, but I don’t think you’re someone I’m willing to spend my time on again. You’re too damaged, and you project that onto other people. I choose the people I have around me carefully. I think you should practice accepting other people’s decisions. You’re an intelligent person. There’s no anger on my side, I simply don’t want to be friends with you anymore.”
What really hit me was that they didn’t simply say, “This way of communicating doesn’t work for me.” They said that I’m “too damaged,” that I project it onto other people, and that I’m not someone they consider worth spending their time on anymore.
What also makes this situation difficult for me is that when they told me that my communication was a problem for them, I offered to talk it through. I didn’t say, “This is just how I am, deal with it.” I told them that I understood if this was hurting them, and that I was willing to work on it and change.
I also suggested that we actually talk about what each of us needs from a friendship and try to find a way to make those needs compatible.
So my attitude wasn’t that I didn’t care about how they felt. Quite the opposite. I was trying to understand their needs and find a compromise that could work for both of us.
Despite that, they decided that they didn’t want to continue the friendship.
And now I’m wondering whether I really am someone who is fundamentally incapable of having healthy relationships.
Because objectively, I understand that it isn’t necessarily fair to someone if I regularly take days or weeks to respond. I also understand that if regular communication is an important part of friendship for someone, they could easily interpret my silence as meaning that I don’t care about them.
At the same time, for me, a lack of communication doesn’t necessarily mean a lack of attachment or care.
If I love someone and they’re important to me, that doesn’t automatically mean I want to talk to them every day. And when I’m struggling emotionally, I tend to completely withdraw, and at those times I don’t necessarily distinguish between the people who are more or less important to me. I simply withdraw from everyone.
But now I’m wondering whether this is actually a pattern that I need to seriously work on.
Is this genuinely a major relationship problem on my part? Or is it simply that I have a much lower need for communication and should surround myself with people who have similar expectations?
And I’m also wondering: if I recognize that my behavior is a problem for someone, offer to work on it, and suggest that we talk about and negotiate our needs, is that already a healthy way of approaching the situation? Or does the fact that I’ve functioned this way in the past mean that I have a deeper problem with forming and maintaining relationships?
Where is the line between “this is simply how I communicate” and actually neglecting or hurting another person?
Because I can completely accept someone saying:
“This doesn’t work for me in a friendship, so I don’t want to be friends anymore.”
I think that’s completely legitimate.
But whether that automatically means “you’re too damaged to be capable of healthy relationships” is a different question.
What do you think?
Does being someone who tends to disappear, especially when they’re not doing well, and who can go days or weeks without communicating genuinely indicate that they’re too damaged or incapable of healthy relationships — even if they love and care about their friends, enjoy spending time with them, and are willing to talk about it and change when the other person expresses that it’s hurting them?
Or is this simply a communication and coping style that is compatible with some people and not with others?
And please don’t just reassure me. If you think I’m in the wrong here, I genuinely want to hear that too. I’d rather get an honest perspective on how this looks from the outside and what you think I should actually work on.
