Dear Alina:

I hope your mother gets better soon and comes back home. If she has weak kidneys, she will have to change what she eats and drinks, how much she eats and drinks, so to make her kidneys’ job easier. I hope you update me soon about how she is doing.

I hope you feel better soon as well. Do let me know how you feel throughout the day/ evening.

First, I will quote and summarize what you shared yesterday:

“In my mind, I know I’m in  love.. but I don’t feel any physical feelings that are openly showing me I’m in  love, and it worries me… What  I mean by physical feelings is the feeling of being sure you love someone, being sure you want them, being sure they’re the one. I don’t have that, I only hear it in my mind…I feel like I should feel a stronger physical feeling and happiness instead of wanting it badly inside my head“.

You wrote that if you found out that you don’t love him, you’ll  be shattered because this relationship, you wrote, “has been the healthiest I’ve ever had.. and I want it to last… If I lost him, I’d change forever. He’s my best friend, my safe place. We have the same goals together, we have a lot in common… Losing him would be like losing a lot of  myself because he has helped me become a happier and better version of myself”.

You wrote: “My question is, just because I don’t have any physical feelings toward him, does that mean I’m not in love?.. Am I just unsure, in love blindly, not in love, neutral, or anything else?”

Second, my understanding: you are a very lonely girl and this boy is your only meaningful connection to another human being. He really is The One, that is, the Only other human you feel  connected to. Your emotional life is like a desert and he is the only source of water.

We humans are social animals. Alone- we get scared. Together with another in a meaningful way- we feel safe. You are afraid to lose that safe feeling, this safe place you  have with him.

In our brains we have an emotional  part (I’ll call it the Heart) and a logical part (I’ll call it Logic). In your case, what happened is something like this: you used to live in a two room house (Heart and Logic), this was the healthy way of living. Then while you were in the Logic room, the Heart room got locked and you got stuck in the Logic room. You sometime go close to the locked door of the Heart room and  look through the key hole. You see a little bit of what is inside, but not  a lot.

And so, you are stuck in the Logic room, thinking and thinking .. and thinking. But your understanding of yourself and others is limited no matter how much and how long you think because you can’t see enough of what is happening in the Heart room.

Being locked outside the Heart room is called disassociation. Being stuck  in the Logic room, thinking and thinking is obsessing.

You wrote about being sure that you love him, that he is the one: “I only hear it in my mind“- you only hear it in the Logic room where you live.

“I feel like I should feel a stronger physical feeling and happiness instead of wanting it badly inside my head“- inside your head means inside the Logic room. Inside the Logic room you know that you love him, but because you can’t go  inside the Heart room, you can’t be sure. To be sure of most things, we have to have access to both rooms, not one or the other.

The “physical feelings” you are talking about are in the Heart room and you can only see a bit of those through the keyhole. To get that sure feeling, that physical feeling, you have to go inside the Heart room.

But how can you go inside the Heart room when it is locked, is the question. Is it?

anita