* Dear Valora (and John):

I am restating my input following reading your post:  sometimes the in-love feeling is permanent, that is, the person will experience that feeling repeatedly and for the remainder of one’s life if the relationship is no longer ongoing, that is, following separation, or if the relationship is ongoing but full of separations and reunions.

If the relationship is stable, the  person feels safe  in it, then that intense in-love feeling changes into something else.

My position is the same regarding this: I believe that the intense, euphoric in-love feeling is a reactivation of the abandoned or lonely, scared child’s longing for his or her mother/ care  taker. That longing is often lifetime, and when triggered via a romantic relationship, it  can last and last, and be  specific to a particular person.

I am aware  of the element  of sex, or passion (your word) that is added  to the experience of the  parental relationship, an element that does  not exist (although Freud disagreed) in the parental relationship.

You wrote: “I’m not sure that it can be likened with a parental relationship”. But  notice  what you wrote to John: “take your ex girlfriend off the pedestal.  Really, truly.. take her down from there…  you still have her on the idealistic mental pedestal… stop idealizing the relationship… Keep taking your ex off the  pedestal… That day when I had that realization was the day I took him off of that pedestal I’d had him o n, and that was the day I started  healing much, much more rapidly”-

The parent is on the pedestal for any young child,  naturally. Seeing the romantic partner on a pedestal is evidence that a romantic relationship (with the added sexual element) is a reactivation of the parental relationship and the longing that was there.

Back to John, I suppose it  is possible that he will feel this feeling for his ex girlfriend for the rest of his life, repeatedly.

Many posts ago, John shared  about his mother abandoning him, simply not picking him up from preschool, I think it was, and being gone to another state, leaving him behind. It  is that longing to her that is the longing he has been experiencing for this woman, the topic of his thread.  If you read thoroughly through the many posts of this thread, as I have, you may see too that the relationship itself with this woman was not of quality communication, of a team work, of a mutual understanding and learning. As a matter  of fact, the communication between them was  poor.

For John, the relationship was strictly about that in-love feeling alone. Something about this woman activated his longing for his mother, something as simple as her smile or the excitement in her voice when she was amazed how big a seal was, as he shared.

John grew numb to his mother over the years, angry at her or indifferent. He forgot how desperately he longed for her as a young child. He forgot how intensely he needed her before he grew numb to her. It is that early desperation for his mother that got activated in this past relationship.

His longing  is mostly not about this woman. It  is  about his mother.

anita