Dear Heartbrokengurl:

I read your past posts since Feb of this year to page one of this thread so to understand you better. Your shares are telling of how powerful anxiety is. I suffered from anxiety for decades and as I sit here, I feel it coming and going. I hope you welcome my input, although some of it may be difficult for you to read.

In your posts you repeat the same thing over and over again: reaching out to a connection with a man, finding comfort in it, followed by anxiety. Repeat.

The reaching out to a man is not different from a person reaching out to a drug to relieve one’s anxiety. It gives you a relief, temporarily, and then you need another fix. Over and over again.

It is a compulsion and so, your relationships, it is my understanding, were not about love but about this compulsion. I will explain: I don’t think it matters who the man is, for as long as you feel that comfort, you are drawn to him.

You wrote about this last man that you don’t remember feeling like this before, this great connection. But you did feel it for others, and quickly. You just forget.

So caught between anxiety and comfort, you are just not available for a mature, give-and-take, loving relationship. You are simply too worried most of the time and too exhilarated temporarily, and then too worried again, too caught up in this compulsion to really listen, to really share.

Again, I am familiar with anxiety and I see it in people a whole lot. It is powerful. You have my empathy. I see no other hope for you to heal but one: attend quality psychotherapy and persist in it.

The reason the current guy told you repeatedly not to worry is because your anxiety is very evident to him. I think it would be to anyone who is perceptive. Your anxiety will continue to make a loving relationship with a loving man impossible.

anita