u/ekpyrotica

I feel really ashamed to say this. I'm 38F and I grew up isolated and do not have friends myself. I am dating a wonderful other woman who is extremely outgoing and is on multiple Discords and basically always has something social to do when she wants. She tries to include me but since I don't know how to socialize I just stay quiet. (I don't even know how to talk on Discord).

I am in therapy and I am trying to build social skills but it has been extremely difficult for me and I have made very little progress. I was isolated as a very young child so I believe I have some developmental social issues myself, which makes me feel very hopeless.

I'm not asking for advice on how to better socialize, I have gone over that a million times and I'm currently working on it in therapy, but my problem is.. I feel extremely envious of my partner. I'm not jealous, she is very good to me and makes time for me and is really quite wonderful. I don't think she spends too much time with her friends or anything like that. I just feel basic, petty envy. It hurts inside my heart when she can have 5 different conversations at once and I'm not capable of having 1. I know I should just accept we had different upbringings and not everyone is equal in every way but I can't stop the pain I feel when I'm standing by her and she's basically speaking a different language and I feel like I'm useless compared to her.

We have talked about this and she says I just need to keep trying, but I don't know what it even means to try.. I don't think people can really understand what it's like to not be around other humans until you're 17. The only reason my girlfriend and I can date is because she spent years pursuing me and slowly getting me to come out of my shell to her. Most people are not willing to do that. I feel very alone. Does anyone have any advice on accepting how I am and not letting envy crush my heart?

So I am trying RAIN technique again and I always get stuck on the same step for the past decade - I can recognize emotions, not fight them, but they just stay around and intensify and won't leave. Whenever I read about this, people just kind of act like eventually it just magically goes away. What am I doing wrong? By "allowing" the emotion I'm trying my hardest not to actively engage it and just let the emotion ride its course, but it just ends with me sitting for an hour crying... are some people just unable to do this?

I need to assert myself more instead of just doing what others want, but I'm getting lost in the weeds and details here. The problem for me isn't that I can't be assertive (I can be at work about something I'm knowledgeable about, for instance). But when it comes to emotions, things I can't really be sure about, I feel like I'm just clobbering the other person over the head with what is basically my opinion.

There are obviously times when I am wrong, when my emotions are deceiving me, and I don't know how to tell those apart (at least in the moment) from valid, real emotions worth standing up for. When asserting your feelings/opinions/disagreements with those close to you, how do you manage to have conviction when you only have a limited perspective? How do you know you aren't being overly assertive?