Dear Michelle:

I appreciate the link. First thing I noticed is the 70%/ 100% item. In your first thread you wrote regarding your marriage: “I thought I wanted someone who just needs to understand me 70% and the rest I keep to myself..” On this thread you wrote about your travel: “just following my heart- 100% as you said, not 70%”

This percentage item is leading me to the following understanding: Your childhood experience was lonely, lacking intimacy with your parents/ others.  Your experience was “living in a vacuum when I was a child and possibly til now.”- vacuum= disconnected to others. This lonely experience explains your experience with sadness: “Sadness is a terrible thing for me” (previous thread).

The human tendency is to over-compensate, going to unrealistic/ ineffective extremes. When a person is overly hungry, the person is inclined to overly eat, which is ineffective because it causes discomfort and distress. When a person had a lonely childhood, a person is inclined to expect nothing but a 100% intimacy in a relationship, which is … not possible.

I don’t know the current state of your marriage. A realistic assessment of compatibility and intimacy possible is required, taking into consideration the over-compensation tendency.

You asked here, on this thread:

“Will this craving for deep connections always be part of me now?”- a need to connect is a human need. It doesn’t expire with age. The intensity of the need, the craving- as you become connected in the future- will lessen.

“And will I be able to reconnect with my mother? Re-build a bonding with my mother?”-

I believe that attempting to build a bond with your mother is a futile,  not at all helpful. I will explain:

I read a long time ago that the reason baby/ very young animals have those round faces and look so cute is so to attract the attention- and connection- from the adult parents. The child is very highly motivated to connect and reaches out constantly for connection, needing it for survival. When a child grows up without the mother’s adequate attention and connection, it is not because of lack of effort by the child (or by nature itself), but because of failure on the part of the mother.

All the years of your childhood, when you were as cute as you were, reaching out as desperately as you did, she did not attend to you/ connect with you. It is highly unlikely that now, at the age of 34 (correct?),  she will attend and connect with you (not in the ways you need).

You see, as true to yesterday when you wrote this thread, you are STILL trying to reach out to your mother, you are still trying to connect with her. It failed before, over a long, long time, with your very best efforts. Better give up on connection with her.

(There was no bond, so there is none to “RE-build”- it is the craving for a bond that you are re-experiencing)

You wrote: “I believe that’s (a bond with your mother) the first step to building healthy strong relationships with others.”- it would have been the first step if … it happened, the bond. But it didn’t happen and a childhood can not be re-created with a different mother… and so, the bonding needs to be with someone else.

Let me know of your thoughts and feelings about my input/ your life.

anita