What went wrong?

All through growing up I had friends. However I always was the kind of guy to enjoy being with one friend at a time. I felt a need to have a certain amount of attention from each person I was friends with. Also, I found it harder to just make small talk. For me it was much easier to share everything with one person than just talk about nothing with a bunch of people. I always had several friends, I just spent time with each of them seperatley.
I suppose I should mention something about my family life. I am an only child. I was brought up a white, Christian, male in a small town in West Virginia. My parents were pretty great to me. They are still together. I used to think of myself as a "clean slate" kid, meaning that I had'nt had a rough or abnormal childhood and therefore would potentially be free of some of the psychological turmoil I had seen some others go through. As it turns out, thats not the case. If my parents lacked in any area (in my opinion) it was that they were pretty controlling. They were the kind of people who would rather do it themselves instead of trusting you to do it because you may mess it up. With this kind of thinking I began to withdraw myself from activities that required any amount of skill as I began to distrust my own abilitiy. I also began to withdraw from them and their conservative lifestyle. I found solice in the children of hippies. I loved their more relaxed, more creative atmosphere. I found myself in that culture but continued to carry around that distrust of my own ability. It is my belief that over time that distrust turned to apathy and that apathy turned into fear and fear is what has lead me here. But we'll get into that more later.
So I joined the Air Force when I was 18. I had no money for school and I did'nt know what else to do. Plus I knew I'd get to travel and I found it rather romantic. Turns out I stood out like a sore thumb in the Military due to my creative interest and liberal views. But I had friends, and a few really good ones. To be honest at that time in my life I was becomming more and more controlling. I tried to balance it with being more creative but the truth was that I was living like an old man. I did'nt want to stay out to late and I canceled plans with people all the time in order to have control over the time and place of our meeting. Looking back now I can see what a grip fear was begining to play in my life.
When I got out of the Military I started college. I had my first long term, serious relationship. It was with her that I first noticed the problem I was having making friends. Everyone around me seemed to love her and actually seemed put off by me. I suppose they saw how controlling I was with her. I don't reaaly want to get into the specifics of my controlling nature, but lets just say I wasn't the best boyfriend. And my controlling only got worse when I was unable to make other friends. I needed my girlfriend to fullfill all these roles. It was extremley intense and taxing for her. I would like to point out that I was not aware of what I was doing and never meant to be anything other than loving toward her. It just goes to show how much harm one can do without even knowing it.
Anyway it was at this point that things starting visibly unravelling for me. The more controlling I got the less people wanted to hang out with me and the less people wanted to hang out with me the more controlling I got. Why was I so controlling? I felt like I knew something other people didn't. Like other people were either wasting their time, or being dirty, or not thinking things through. Mostly I felt like people didn't pay enough attention to how their actions were affecting others. These days I've learned the error in much of my thinking. The next blog will deal with that awakening.