I feel like my partner and my friends don't want me around

I feel like I have hit a brick wall with my partner!

He came round last night to use my wi-fi but couldn't work out how to log on to it. I tried to show him but he won't let me help. Then he started getting frustrated because he was trying to upload a score-card for golf. I then asked if he wanted a want a drink, he said he didn't. Then he wouldn't talk to me so I just stayed quiet.

It's his birthday this week and I asked him where he would like to go to celebrate and he just said 'I'll let you know'. It's like he is waiting to see if a better offer is coming from elsewhere. It all feels so wrong. All I want is someone who talks to me, asks me how my day has been and asks how things are from time to time!

I don't get it. It's like he's shutdown and that's it - no reason, no nothing. I am beginning to feel like he's waiting for me to dump him. I have asked how he is feeling, what he wants from our relationship and if he see a future with me and he just shrugs his shoulders. I just want to know where I stand.

I know I can't change him, he's in his late 60s and has never married or lived with anyone. My sister has been frank with me and said she thinks he's just using me for sex and that he has absolutely no respect for me.

I have been married before and my first husband said I talked too much and he could not get a word in edgeways. So now, I just shut up - I don't know what the right amount to talk is anymore. I asked my Mum if I talk too much and she said that I do. She said 'You need to shut up and listen to people'. The thing is, I have tried that but it's still the same - I ask an open question and then wait, but nothing. I just feel so horrible.

I suspect all my friends think this way too. No one rings me up anymore to ask me to go out or do stuff with me. I'm fed up of doing all the asking and when I do ask most of the time they can't or don't want to. I feel like shutting myself away from the world and never going out again. I dont have any close friends like others do. I see them doing all this girly stuff and no one ever asks me to join in. I have two friends whom I've known for years, whose children (who I've known since they were born) are getting married in the summer but I wasn't invited to either wedding or evening reception. I was quite hurt, especially when friends from the same circle, who were invited to both, expected me to contribute a large amount to both presents. I just got them a voucher on my own in the end.

I don't know if I should go for counselling for my own issues instead. I just feel like I haven't got anything to live for anymore. I just want to stay in bed all day. Sometimes I just want to move away and start again somewhere nice but I can't afford it.

I know this will be of little consolation, but many people feel or have felt as you do now.

What jumps off the screen is the sense of resentment and unfairness that things ‘are what they are’ but not what they should be.

It sounds too like you feel you’ve taken quite a few knocks from people giving you the benefit of their opinions regarding how you speak and behave. You feel you’ve taken on board what they’ve said and tried to make the changes they’ve suggested but still won’t meet you half way by being more inclusive and caring towards you.

Now, it’s an achievement to take critical feedback on board and to try to make changes. Lots of people find that difficult and some find it impossible. Taking stock of feedback can be a big positive as it can provide opportunities for reflecting on what we do and how we do it. However, the flip side is that sometimes you end up feeling more and more defeated by other peoples’ comments and start believing you’re just not good enough. It’s a bit of a slippery slope really and I think that what’s happening here.

Feeling excluded is one of life’s most painful experiences. Sometimes, when we’ve been hurt, quite understandably, we do everything we can to avoid it happening ever again. It’s a completely natural response and people do it to greater or lesser extents all the time. So, I’m wondering if just maybe you sometimes veer between taking onboard every critical or dismissive comment or action and adapting yourself to other’ people’s ideas of how you should be? And then, when that feels too painful, do you perhaps withdraw and seem unavailable or disinterested so that other’s don’t engage with you? The logic here is that if you don’t engage, you can’t get hurt - but of course, that’s not the what happens and you end up feeling more rejected and marginalised than ever.

Without the tiniest shadow of a doubt, I would recommend that you take up your suggestion of individual counselling. I say this not because I think you have ‘issues’ as you put it but because, like very many people, you might have lost sight of who you are and how to get that across to others.

Your partner behaves indifferently towards you and you constantly yearn for his approval and interest. Perhaps the same happens with the friends you mention. At the moment it sounds like you feel you’re maybe waiting for them to make the first move.

One idea I’d like to share with you is that the powerlessness you feel maybe gets in the way of feeling able to let those people who behave so indifferently (and in some cases cruelly) know that what they do is unacceptable. It’s difficult to take a position like that when you fear that it might result in further rejection. Counselling could really help you rediscover ‘you’. It could help you get across to others how you feel in a positive way that builds your confidence sufficiently to let those people who don’t meet your needs step aside in favour of those who do.

I would also really encourage you to see your GP about the lows you’re experiencing because sometimes in situations like this, it’s about getting as much support as possible.

There’s nothing odd about what you most want. It’s perhaps just a question of you truly believing you deserve it.