Dear Lena:

You are welcome. Our teenage/ adult infatuations or attractions to others have a lot to do with our early childhood experiences. Almost everything does. I will use quotes from your share to suggest what I think happened with S:

“I felt connected to him in a way that’s really difficult to put into  words”- when we are young children we feel intensely. Our emotions are raw and pure because we don’t yet add thoughts and words to the emotional experience. There are no cognitive interruptions that dilute and weaken the emotional  experience. What you experienced with him, aided by alcohol, was that pre-cognition, early life quality of emotion.

“like we were showing each other the self that you normally keep  tucked away until you know someone well (and perhaps not even then)”- a young child does show her real self to others automatically, from birth . The child is not at all self conscious, not yet inhibited by later life experiences, such as rejection. What you experienced with S, at times, was that uninhibited, unhidden self, like a young child.

“He revealed deep-seated insecurities to me and I found myself sharing the same insecurities”- reads like he too had that young child experience with  you, aided by alcohol. (You found out that the two of you share the same insecurities because most of us people do share the same insecurities).

“I experienced this strange, heady mix of feeling like I could completely be myself around him”- I think we miss this experience of long ago, before disapproval, before rejection, before rules of conduct, when we were indeed ourselves.

“There was a dreamlike quality to our time together”- a re-experience of early childhood experience. It was indeed a dream. And you got  a glimpse of it. Intoxicating, isn’t it?

“the more I try to  let go and move on, the more I cling onto him. I really don’t know why”- I think the reason is that dream, that intoxicating magic of how it felt to be  a young child before life hit us on the face and spoiled that magic. You felt a bit of that dreamy experience and you want more of  it.

“I don’t know what it is  about S that makes me still think about him so often”- why S, may be the question, what about him brought the dream and magic to life?-

– alcohol helped. But other than alcohol: can be his smile, the look in his eyes, his mannerism, something about him remined you of someone in your life as a young child. Something you forgot, it being so long ago. But part of you remembered when you saw his smile, or his eyes, or the way he wiggled his nose.

If he experienced something similar with you, and I think he did, he awakened from that experience. You are still attached to the dream, is what I think.

anita