Dear Kartik:

First, I will retell everything you shared, your story; second, I will give you my input.

What you shared: you are a 20 year old young Malaysian man, a gay man. Eight months ago you met a man who  is ten years older than you, and experienced “an instant connection” with him. This man didn’t want to hookup with you (even though he met you on a hookup website), “he just wanted to talk”. You and him had hours long conversations every night on topics “from food to politics and our problems and struggles”. After days and weeks of these conversations (texting and calling), you “started to have feelings for this person, really strong feelings”.

After two months of these conversations, you told him how you feel and he responded saying that there is nothing wrong with you liking him, “but he would like to keep things simple and he truly enjoys talking to me”.

During these two months (April-June 2019) of communicating with his man, you “have always felt very anxious and afraid that I will lose him”, scared that he will stop replying to your texts and calling you. You felt very badly, had sleepless nights, you were unable to focus on your work and thought of killing yourself so to rid yourself of this anxiety.

Sometime in about June, you told him that you “need time and space from him”, he told you that it is up to you, and what proceeded was six months where you “managed to move on and let go”, but yet you “couldn’t stop thinking about him”. A few days ago, December this year, you texted him. He responded to you kindly, and the day after the two of you talked for two hours, “There was just so much to talk about and we laughed and cracked so many jokes, I felt so happy and less alone”.

“But the moment I ended the call, the anxiety rushed back in”. You wrote: “I don’t want my anxiety and fear to ruin this friendship.. He truly cares for me and genuinely likes me.. he likes me and wants me to stay, because I am sort of his safe space where he is able to talk about anything”. You asked for “help and advice on how to overcome this rush of anxiety and fear that comes from deep within”.

Your childhood: you remember you and your father being very close. You remember him “taking me out to places and would always be by my side. Until one day”, maybe you were 3 or 4, “he just stopped”.

At home, your father and mother, “very hot tempered”,  started “to fight all the time”, being more and more physically and verbally abusive to each other and to you. Your father hit your mother, “even strangled her twice in front of me”, and your mother “would fight him back with her words”.  At times your father hit you too. One time he pushed you against a wall and scolded you, “as though he was talking or scolding a criminal. I did not feel like his son at that moment”. At another time, your father’s friend physically bullied you in front of your father, and your father “did nothing”.

At another time your mother “broke all of my favourite things right in front of me.. and kicked me once as well. But  mostly, she abused me verbally”. “Also I was sexually abused once when I was 6 by my babysitter, he molested me in the dark, in his room”.

Fast forward, currently, at 20, your parents are still verbally abusive, but not physically. Your mother still abuses you verbally when she is angry. You have a sister, and you “verbally abuse her, very badly. She does the same too, we abuse each other at home”.

You wrote that you have the habit of feeling sorry for yourself, wanting others to feel sorry for you; thinking about death and suicide daily, but not when you are with friends. Since you were 14, to “numb the pain, anxiety and depression”, you “run toward sex.. had countless one night stands” and you are “a porn addict”.

Now, my input: let’s look at the young child that you were. When your father took you places, “and would always be by (your) side”, that felt like heaven to that child, like a bright day with a pleasant sun shining, clear blue sky and green grass to run on with bare feet. It was the most pleasurable, precious experience for this little boy. You loved your father with all your heart, and he loved you back. That was an exquisite experience of safety, comfort, calm and happiness.

(Fast forward, you feel something similar when you talk to this older man on the phone).

And then, when you were 3 or 4, your father stopped taking you places and there were no special times with him anymore, no closeness. At home he hit you and he didn’t protect you when his friend hit you. You still loved him.. but he didn’t love you back anymore.

At this point your little boy heart broke. There is nothing more painful than a child’s heart being broken, because a child’s heart is so very soft, his love for his father is complete, passionate, pure, everlasting. When this kind of heart is broken, the pain is intense and overwhelming.

That clear blue sky and green grass I mentioned before, in the child’s emotional view- the sky is no longer blue, the grass is no longer green, color is lost and the world looks gray, the sky clouded, the sun is  gone, the child is cold and wants to die- –this is depression.

When your father pushed you against the wall that one time and scolded you as though you were a criminal, and you “did not feel like his son at that moment”- this was one very memorable moment of your heart breaking (there were many others).

It wasn’t just anyone who pushed you against the wall and scolded you, it was your father whom you loved more than anything in the whole world that did that- this is what it took to break this boy’s heart. “I did not feel like his son at that moment”- he betrayed the father-son love. When he did that, he exiled you to that cold, grey, colorless world.

It would have helped you some if you had a mother to be close to, to run to; a calm, kind mother. But she wasn’t that. She was “very hot tempered”, verbally abused you and once she broke all your favorite things right in front of you. When she did that, she too broke this little boy’s heart.

What happens to a boy with a broken heart, a boy betrayed by his father and by his mother, a boy living in an aggressive, hostile home, with two  parents fighting a whole lot?

The boy gets scared and remains scared a whole lot of the time— this is anxiety. And sometimes angry too. There is a sister, so you pass on some of the aggression to her, and she to  you. A hostile home does not breed a peaceful, kind relationships between siblings.

And so, this broken hearted, anxious and depressed boy gets to be 14 and his sexual energy is awakened. He is attracted to men. As anxious and as depressed as he is, he is still alive, and he still wants to feel good, to find that sun behind the clouds and bask in its warmth. So he seeks that warmth sexually.

And then, at 19 or 20, he meets this man, ten years older. This man doesn’t want to hookup, he just wants to talk, a whole lot. He wants to know how you feel, he enjoys talking to you, he values you. “He truly cares for me and genuinely likes me”, like your father did when you were very young. So you developed strong feelings of attachment to him, same that you had for your father (a feeling of togetherness and the safety in that togetherness, that blue-sky-warm colorful world), and so, you “felt so happy and less alone” when talking to him.

But when calls end, when not in contact with him, you experience again that broken heart of long ago, the anxiety and depression that go with a child’s broken heart.

— And now what, is the question, isn’t it?

I will attempt to answer that when you respond to what I wrote here so far.

anita