My mom was a textbook narcissistic person. She was an emotional vampire: she would say and do things to upset me on purpose, then smirk at my reaction. She also sabotaged my normal growth: "You're old enough to lift weights? Guess you're old enough to pay for your own bus rides!" And getting her to apologize for anything? You're going to get gaslit instead. I also have mild autism, so she would mock me for the problems it gave me and never gave constructive advice.

The (well, a) major issue here is that I have no mental image of what positive feminity is. Whenever I get rejected by a woman, whether she was being polite or not, that experience gets added to the negative image that was already tainted by my mother. This image gets recalled every time a woman shows sexual interest in me, making it difficult to focus on her individually and giving me anxiety.

My dad wasn't much better. He obviously had a very, very low self-esteem and projected it onto everyone else. Anyway, I haven't talked to either of them for a year. I'm currently 23, driving a cab to pay for college.

Also, I'm loving the community. Way superior to rape apologist cringe.