Thank you for writing, Anita.

I understand how it could come across that way. Typically when I write to a forum (a “helping” forum) or talk with a therapist, I am thinking more about what are the obstacles to closeness rather than what is going well. That older thread was referring to the previous ex, not the most recent one. Regardless, in both cases, I loved them deeply. We had great times together and generally when we were together in person, we had lots of fun, communicated well, had emotional and physical closeness, tenderness, and worked together well (shopping, cooking, things like that). Strangely, and maybe coincidentally, the problems that arose in each relationships happened 95% of the time when we were physically apart, and thus it was profoundly difficult to work on the problems together. The first woman would refuse to see me for as long as a few months. The second woman limited our communication to texting only, on Monday through Friday, because she didn’t like to talk on the phone. My experience is, that when a couple doesn’t get together face to face to talk something over, fears and imaginings can escalate way beyond the reality.