Dear willowtree00:

I think you did move forward and did so well. The feeling like being shot when you saw a photo of your ex with another man does not negate your correct evaluation that indeed you moved on.

You are alarmed by your reaction to seeing her photo, because, I believe, you interpret it incorrectly and so I would like you to re-consider your interpretation of your feeling when you saw the photo.

As you wrote, all along, during your sporadic contact with your ex you didn’t ask her if she was dating another guy because you didn’t want to know. You didn’t want to know all along because of this feeling you finally felt.

This feeling simply means you had a relationship with your ex, and for eight years, no less. You loved her, you were attached to her. These feelings for your ex do not expire the moment she becomes an ex. And they do not expire after a certain time, even when you successfully moved on. When you move on and are in a loving relationship with a new woman, the ex does not become non existent in your brain. The memories, emotional memories, are still there. The attachment is recorded in your neurons.

It is natural and … normal to have that feeling you had. It was automatic and not of your choosing. It is not evidence that you haven’t moved on or that you don’t love your current girlfriend. It is evidence that our emotional memories do not get erased. After all we keep emotional memories from childhood until we die.

If you agree with me, and let me know if you do, you will no longer be alarmed by the feeling you had; you will understand it for what it is, and continue to move on. Moving on then, is not erasing the past, but simply, moving on.

anita

Dear Willowtree00:

Yes, I do believe it is possible to have a bond with someone that will stay with you for the rest of your life, but I want to examine the word “bond”- once a person is out of your life, the person is out of your life. The bond you have then is a memory of a bond. The memory can stay with you for the rest of your life; memory as what-happened and memory of how it felt.

I do not believe there is only one person in one’s life, one true love and when that is over, you will never know love again. This is true at times but only because of lack of opportunities, lack of willingness, emotional shut down and such. Plus, we often look back at a love story distortingly, remembering and focusing on the loving parts, forgetting the long times of distress and lack of love or closeness. We forget.

Especially when we are lonely or unsatisfied in our current relationship, we look back with longing at a relationship that often enough was not that great. But we need the comfort of a …good memory, so we make it good.

What I learned from your last post is that your current relationship is not satisfactory to you, that you don’t see the future you would like to see. This gives me understanding as to why you would be invested in the past relationship, part of you still hoping for it to be resurrected. Am I correct?

anita

Dear Ed:

It really hurts you that she didn’t acknowledge in counseling with you that she had personal issues to work on, and then, when not in a relationship with you, and worse, when in a relationship with someone else, she acknowledges this.

Your deep bond with her is deep because, I believe, it is connected somehow to an early bond you made to a parent figure, which is our first deep bond. Somehow it is connected. No other bond can compete with that kind of depth. The way a young child is bonded to the parent, there is nothing to compare.

With your new girlfriend, sounds like a delightful relationship, existing in the Now. This Now can be so much better than the Then, if you let go of that desire for depth. Depth is not always a good thing.

What do you think/ feel?

anita

Dear Ed:

You are not close with your parents, but I bet you wanted to be close, at least at one time… and for a long time, you reached out, trying to connect. The emotional need and desire to connect with a distant parent is intense, for a child.

That “full spark”- maybe it has the same fuel as that child’s desire to connect?

anita

Dear Ed:

I am sorry you are so distressed, Ed. It would be a good idea,I believe, if you attended good psychotherapy at this time. The pain you feel is deep and is about things that way, way predate your latest findings about your ex girlfriend. That old pain is triggered and this would be a good opportunity to look into that old, childhood hurt.

anita

Dear Ed:

I hope the therapy session will be helpful to you and lead to more sessions.

You wrote that you welcome any other advice and comments, therefore here is more of what I already mentioned:

You wrote that you are not close with your parents, and that you believe your mother too fits the Aspergers diagnosis. I am assuming that the lack of closeness with your parents (definitely with your mother if you believe she had difficulty being close with others all along) is true not only to now, or recently but throughout your childhood.

Correct me if I am wrong at this point.

Then you wrote: “I think I was/am fairly accepting of how things were/are with my parents, I have no memory of wanting more affection or closness.”

I believe that every child wants affection and closeness with a parent or parents. I believe so because biologically it is necessary for the survival of the child, the young (in other mammals as well). I believe that you may not remember wanting closeness because, still as a child, you adapted to the lack of it by believing you don’t need it. It is less painful to believe we don’t need something we can’t get, then to be in constant distress of trying to get close again and again… and yet again, year after year.

anita