My girlfriend left me more than a year ago. The longer I was with her, the worse I felt. We split at a low.

She has a new boyfriend now and lives with him.

He is not my problem. It's also not her.

It's my inability to connect with others to have meaningful and respectful relationships. And she reminds me of this inability.

We are still in contact vie email. Her emails are meaningless, no spark, no attraction. She could be an aunt.

The longer I was with her, the longer I felt pressured to enforce my boundaries, which she always tested.

When I happened to contradict myself once, she treated it as a victory. She became more and more mean and I thought about the times it wasn't like this, trying to get them back, because I have literally nobody else to talk to.

The last one is the problem. Fears make it hard to connect to others.

Therefore, her roles were lover and friend. And she only wanted the lover and protector role in me, but not be my friend.

Friendships with other men were always a fight for dominance, like the constant bickering and trying to outdo each other.

Just to not appear gay. To me, being gay is having sex with men or having a desire for it or kissing men or having a desire for it. I lack that desire.

My best friendship among men is talking to each other about everything and everyone, without sparing out topics that are "not manly" like fear and sadness and without constantly putting each other down to appear manly.

I cannot do that with a pet, if you now suggest getting a dog.

I vividly remember having attended meetings of a hiking club. Thinking back, they were all about putting me down. Even each other. They called this friendship. Nobody helped me get on my feet, nobody cared about my well-being.

If someone abused me verbally, everybody was quiet and then someone started talking about something else like nothing happened.

Also not in my family. It took me years of even finding more or less reliable sources of how to create comebacks.

Not to mention how to fight back physically - I am still not really able to do that, but at least more and more willing to do it.

I wasted years, because nobody cared and I lacked the resources - the library is a joke for this. I assume that useful information would be against the law and is therefore not available.

I want that group of friends that helps each other out mentally, like saying things like "you know man that's awesome what you do". I did say that a few times but I didn't get anything similar back.

My own way includes women. But I want to have more of the good and less of the bad behavior.

I have this dream of a woman that backs me up.

There is just too much information out there that is not helpful to achieve this.

Is going out and talking to women a good means to do that? No, because I have no idea who I will meet. It is pure chance.

Can you relate to some of this?