왜 애인이 없는가!

몇년전부터 고민? 궁금? 연구? 해 오던

왜! 나는 [이나이가 되도록] 애인이 없는가?!

라는 질문에 대한 답을 일부분 얻은 것 같다.

1. I am power hungry, manipulative, and passive-aggressive.
The driving force in all of my human interactions is the desire to be in control.
I am afraid to show my feelings to another person because it means I am making myself vulnerable to that person. I am so afraid of losing control -- of myself, and of my relationships -- that I refuse
This is not exactly new but I didn't realize that my desire to be the one in control/power was so prevalent in everything that I do. (도대체 무슨 일이 있었길래 이렇게 된걸까???)

2. Growing up, I've only seen dysfunctional men.
This is something new and something I really didn't realize until my therapist pointed it out to me.
My paternal grandparents were the most dysfunctional individuals and my father's family overall was the most dysfunctional family one could imagine. My paternal grandfather was not present for my father's entire childhood and adolescence and suddenly showed up one day when my father was already in college.
Consequently, my father never knew what it was like to have a father and of course he never had the chance to learn how to be a father. I don't think he was a 'bad father' and I know he genuinely tried his best but I grew up watching him struggle with his role in the family because it was obvious that he himself had no idea what he was supposed to do in the position of a husband and a father. His overall level of physical and mental well-being has increased in the last several years and recently he's been improving at an amazing speed. (He even wrote me a shockingly long email to cheer me up last week.)
And my brother is... well, someone I had to and have to take care of.
I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents when I was very little, but my maternal grandfather was already retired when I was born. So even though he is one of the most humorous persons I've come to know I guess I never learned to respect him for doing serious work. I learned only a couple of years ago that he was a hotshot researcher at a nuclear power plant when he was young. But he fell very ill when my mother was in middle school or high school and after then he hasn't had much 'career development'.
So naturally, because I've never seen a 진짜 멋있는 남자 as I was growing up, it makes perfect sense that I cannot take men seriously and that I am sarcastic about the possibility of having a relationship with a man. 그 누구를 만나도 실망하게 될꺼야, 라는 두려움이 앞서는게 당연한걸지도 모르겠다.

So what can I do to remedy this?
이렇게 평생을 살 수는 없잖아...-_-