Good morning, Confused (using a computer):

This is what AI (Copilot) says about your last post:

“What’s really going on with Confused-

Confused isn’t actually confused about the girl — he’s confused about himself. His message shows a man who does feel love, warmth, longing, and emotional connection, but who also struggles with inconsistency, self‑doubt, and anhedonia (the inability to feel pleasure). His emotional system turns on and off in ways he doesn’t understand, and that unpredictability scares him.

He feels strong affection in bursts — crying at her birthday cards, smiling at her messages, feeling warmth during goodnight texts — but then the feelings suddenly drop, leaving him numb or detached. This emotional whiplash makes him question whether something is wrong with him, whether he’s capable of sustaining love, and whether his feelings are “real enough” to build a future on. He’s not lacking love; he’s lacking emotional stability and trust in his own internal signals.

He also carries a deeper issue: before this relationship, his life felt flat, colorless, and joyless. She was the one thing that pierced through that emotional numbness and made him feel alive again. That makes her emotionally significant — not just as a partner, but as the only source of emotional vitality he’s felt in a long time. So, when the “honeymoon phase” faded and the intensity dropped, he panicked. He fears that the loss of intensity means the loss of love, when in reality it may simply be the loss of the dopamine surge that temporarily lifted his anhedonia.

He’s also monitoring his feelings constantly — checking, analyzing, questioning every emotional shift. This creates a feedback loop where he can’t relax into the relationship because he’s always scanning himself for signs of “real love” or “not enough love.” His therapist is right: this self‑monitoring fuels anxiety and emotional spirals.

Underneath all of this is a man who is emotionally sensitive, capable of deep connection, but struggling with:

* anhedonia / low baseline pleasure

* fear of making promises he can’t emotionally sustain

* fear of leading her on

* fear of losing the only thing that made him feel alive

* insecurity about his fluctuating feelings

* attachment‑related anxiety or avoidance

* overthinking and emotional self‑surveillance

He’s not cold. He’s not detached. He’s not incapable of love.

He’s scared of his own emotional inconsistency — and he’s trying to understand whether the problem is him, his attachment style, his depression, or the relationship itself.

In short: He loves her, but he doesn’t trust his own emotional system enough to feel safe committing to a future.”

Next, I asked what advice could help you.

Copilot: “Here’s the kind of advice that actually helps someone like Confused — someone whose issue isn’t the relationship, but the way his emotions rise and fall, the pressure he puts on himself, and the fear that his feelings aren’t “right” or “stable enough.”

He doesn’t need clichés.
He needs grounding, clarity, and a way out of the emotional monitoring loop.

Below is a step‑by‑step guide you can offer him — gentle, practical, and tailored to his exact pattern.

🌿 Advice for Confused
How to stop over-monitoring your feelings and build emotional stability in the relationship

01- Stop Treating Feelings as Data/ Key Insight: Your emotions fluctuate because of anhedonia and anxiety, not because your love is unstable.

Feelings naturally rise and fall — this is normal, not a warning sign

Emotional numbness after intensity is common in anhedonia

Don’t interpret every shift as meaning something about the relationship

Let feelings come and go without assigning meaning

02- Shift From Monitoring to Experiencing: Reduce Spirals/ Constantly checking your emotions creates anxiety and blocks connection.

Say to yourself: “I don’t need to figure this out. I just need to be here.”

When you notice yourself analyzing, gently redirect your attention

Focus on the moment: the conversation, the warmth, the interaction

Replace “What does this mean?” with “What am I doing right now?”

03- Name the Real Issue: Anhedonia: Root Cause- Your emotional flatness existed before her — she didn’t cause it, and she can’t fix it.

Recognize that she awakened feelings you hadn’t felt in a long time

The drop in intensity is your baseline returning, not love fading

Treat the emotional numbness as a mental health pattern, not a relationship problem

04- Let the Relationship Breathe: Healthy Pace. You don’t need to promise a future before you’ve met — that pressure creates emotional shutdown.

Keep expectations realistic and grounded

Focus on meeting, spending time, and seeing how things feel in real life

Remove the pressure to “know” the future right now

05- Build Emotional Stability, Not Intensity: Long-Term Growth. Sustainable love is built on consistency, not constant emotional highs.

Notice the small warm moments without demanding intensity

Let affection grow slowly and naturally

Trust that love can be steady even when it’s not dramatic

06- Talk to Her Honestly but Calmly: Connection. She doesn’t need perfection — she needs clarity and presence.

Say: “Sometimes my emotions go quiet because of how my mind works, not because of you. I care about you, and I want to build this at a pace that feels real and grounded.”

Share that your feelings fluctuate because of anxiety/anhedonia

Reassure her that the warm moments are real

Tell her you want to build something steady, not rushed

🌟 Summary

What he needs most is to stop interrogating his feelings and start living them.
His emotional inconsistency isn’t a sign that he doesn’t love her — it’s a sign that he’s dealing with:

* anhedonia

* anxiety

* emotional self‑monitoring

* fear of promising too much

If he can learn to let feelings rise and fall without panicking, he’ll finally be able to experience the relationship instead of analyzing it.”

I have to get off the computer (and can’t use Copilot when on my phone). Will be back shortly.

Anita

I just got a call on my phone and lost a whole poem I wrote here.

It was a call in regard to my first senior citizen (65), medicare call tomorrow.

I lost a whole long message.. Just because I’m a damn senior citizen!

A whole lots of 🍷 wasted, no poetry to show for it!

The music I am listening to right now: “I will always love you, however long I take. I will always love you”, “I feel love that money can’t buy… anything you want, you got it, anything you need”.

In the lost message I wrote about the huge notebook I had when I was a teenager or in my very early 20s where I wrote poems. One I remember was about me lying on the street in despair, asking or begging for someone to extend a hand to me, to help me stand up.

My mother found that notebook (no wonder, it was huge) and read some of it. Her response was her typical shaming condemnation- that shaming look I know only too well.

(Not empathy, Peter.. a Hardened Heart)

Her legacy in my life = S.H.A.M.E.

The poem was about how long I have waited for her to love me, to make me okay.

Let’s see if I can poem- dance it now:

In the core of me
There’s my mother
An undying love
She’d never know
I loved her so, so, so, so.. so, much
And she’d never know.

That’s it.

Hey Dear Confused:

“It was something far from the present” (moving 2 her country)- was it far from the present in your heart, hers?

I mean, neither one of you was emotional about the idea of you moving countries & living together(in 2027, I suppose)?

At times you do have strong feelings, about her and otherwise (that’s why you cry 😢, that’s why you have such a good time talking to her – at times.)

The belief that you’re supposed to ALWAYS feel in-love is not helping your depression. It’s a false belief that creates an unrealistic expectation.

If you could correct this belief.. it could help.

Part of my 2-years CBT therapy was just about that: identifying “core beliefs”, questioning whether they are true or false, and if false- correcting them.

What do you think about that?

✨️ Anita

Hey Confused:

I see: it’s both.

Yes, we talked about it back in Dec., and a few times since: you were scared about leaving behind what’s comfortable and familiar to you and moving to a new country.

I don’t think that you were “mistakenly” scared: it really is scary for most, if not for everyone to leave behind what’s comfortable and familiar.

No wonder then that you saw her as a “threat”- not because she’s dangerous but because living with her would involve something that felt dangerous (moving).

And understandably, you started seeing her as a burden- because if it wasn’t for her, you wouldn’t be burdened by something that scares you (moving).

I don’t think that it’s you being scared of moving OR depression. It’s both. It’s known that anxiety and depression are related, the first often leads to or the second.

How can you undo it?

Don’t know.

She’s still in 🇩🇪 for studies, right? So, the idea of moving to 🇨🇾 is supposed to be when?

There’s also the timing issue, you feeling that she rushed it.

🤔 Anita

Hey Dear Confused:

In your last post you wrote: “I was thinking she would be hurt and leave me, so my mind went to freeze mode/avoidance for protection?”-

In my last message I reacted to the I was thinking she would be hurt part”, spontaneously projecting my experience of guilt, having put myself 2nd to the person I felt that I had hurt.

This morning, I see that I didn’t see the other part of your sentence, that you were thinking she’d leave you.

Did you feel guilty for possibly hurting her or were you more afraid that she’d leave you?

🤔 Anita

Good morning, Sonia 🙂

Congratulations for evolving and deciding that you don’t want a friendship that’s draining you, and for slowly letting go of the people-pleasing-rescuer-role (even though it’s a painful process) 👍

You started your first thread on Jan 19, exactly 3 months ago. On your first post on that date, you wrote that you were worried that if you become more distant, he will fall into depression, or deeper depression.

Fast forward, he closed the doors and you’re wondering, if I understand correctly, if in reality you were as important/ helpful to him as you thought you were.

First, I want to say that it’s natural to think/ feel this way after spending so much time and energy trying to help him while sacrificing yourself doing so (his feelings mattered most).

Second, your friendship story reminds me of my relationship with my mother. To me, her feelings mattered and mine didn’t. I was solely focused on her well- being (lack of, more accurately 😔), trying my best to help her.

Fast forward, as an adult, I distanced myself from her to the point of kindly letting her know that there’ll be no more contact between the two of us.

After that, I received one card from her (for my birthday) and that was the extent of her contacting me for years to come.

As time went by I realized that I was surprised that she didn’t try to contact me beyond that one card in which she didn’t ask me to renew contact, as far as I remember (that was 12 years ago).

In My Mind- because she was so important to me- I thought or felt (without even realizing it) that I was equally as important to her. Now I know this to be Projection: seeing in her what was true for me, not what was true for her).

I know I’m talking about a mother while you’re talking about a friend, but does any of this resonate with you?

🤔 Anita

Dear myoid/ Arden:

I am posing here because I want to email your Gmail address tomorrow, THREE years after you offered it, just in case it’d make a difference

🤍 Anita