Dear miyoid:

I suggested to you in my recent post (and earlier) that you suffer from severe separation anxiety (starting in the context of you as a child, with your mother, and currently, as a young adult with your boyfriend). TeaK, a member, posted today for the first time a reply in another thread, Stuck in letting go and worries. She explained attachment theory so well that I asked her if I can quote from her reply for you, hoping that it can help you understand the concept better. She agreed, so here is the quote:

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with the attachment theory, which talks about different attachment i.e. bonding styles between the parent and the child, which then affect our adult relationships as well. If we had secure attachment with our parents, we won’t be that clingy and needy, and will be able to give the other person room to breathe, so to speak, and allow them to have their own interests and hobbies, which might not always involve us.

If we didn’t have secure attachment, there are two scenarios: 1) we will either become very clingy and anxious, constantly fearing that we’ll be left alone, or 2) we become afraid of intimacy and closeness, and want to be left alone, especially when the other party is clingy and insisting on intimacy. The first is the so-called anxious attachment style, which would be yours, and the second is the avoidant attachment style, which seems to be your ex boyfriend’s style.

I too was the anxious party and literally thought I would die when my boyfriend threatened to leave me. I felt like I was falling into the ground and disappearing. I thought I won’t be able to survive without him…

Fortunately, I could work through my fear in therapy, and realized that when I am obsessing about him, it’s the small child inside of me scared of being abandoned. I realized I won’t die without him, and it made things easier. From then on, I wasn’t clinging on to him so much, wasn’t controlling his every step, I could allow him room to breathe. And the result was that he didn’t feel threatened any more and spontaneously got closer to me. As I stopped clinging on to him, he stopped resisting and running away. Now we’re married”.

anita