Dear deestrout:

You wrote: “I can’t figure out why I keep doing this and why I can’t let him go”. Right before this very sentence you gave the answer to your own question: “Every time I think I really truly can’t take any more of him and I break up with him, this overwhelming feeling of loss and regret consumes me and I just want to snuggle up to him and breathe him in and never let him go”.

Your answer to your own question is that you can’t let him go because of your overwhelming feeling of loss and regret and the desire to “breathe him in and never let him go”.

When you met him at the party sixteen years ago, you felt very much alive with him. With the boyfriend before him (the biological father of your child) and with the man you married later, you did not feel alive, excited.

I think this is what Jason means to you, feeling alive, not numb, not compromised or compromising. What do you think?

anita