Dear Josh:

Regarding your date this evening, I hope you will see her in a casual setting, nothing fancy, let’s say a quiet diner. Don’t have her come to your place and don’t go to her place after the bite-to-eat, go home afterwards, alone.

Regarding: “I’m starting to think I’ve got issues on a much deeper level than I know.. why after a single date am I having such intense and emotional feelings about this…What’s been putting me on the brink of crying these few days is the thought that she’s gone. ‘She’, being someone that didn’t mean much to me to begin with”-

Having reviewed your March 2017 thread, I am thinking aloud (that is, typing): during the five year relationship with your ex girlfriend, you were in no hurry to propose to her. When she wanted to have sex with you, and you didn’t want to, you didn’t, and that happened time and time again for months. I don’t think she meant that much to you before she left you.

This one-date-woman of  late, she is the one who suggested that you meet, not you. And during the date, it is she who talked about future plans with you, not you.

I think that the desperation for your ex girlfriend and for this one-date-woman happened after the separation from each, not during the date/ relationship. The reason you were not desperate to please your ex girlfriend, as in having sex with her during the months of not bothering with it, is not that you were secure with her. It was because you didn’t want to be close to her.

“Growing up in the household I grew up in, I was under the impression that if only I didn’t verbally or physically abuse her, and was stable and supported her, I’d pin the right track”- “stable and support her”- yes, but getting emotionally close to her-no.

I think you avoid emotional intimacy with women, you don’t want that.

“when I come to the realization that I can in fact get with these women now, a wave of anxiety washes over me and I begin getting very uncomfortable. I don’t know why I get this way”-

-I think you had a bad experience as a child with your mother.

“the 800 lbs gorilla still sits by my bed ready to jump on my chest as soon as I open my eyes in the morning”- no woman is more important in a man’s life than his mother. When she leaves a heavy weight on a boy’s chest, that weight doesn’t go away just because the boy has grown into a man.

Do you want to tell me about your mother in your young life?

anita