Dear jenny:

You shared that you had a 5 year long distance relationship with a man who broke up with you, or in your word, dumped you last year for the 4th time. A month later he contacted you and kept contacting you for 9 months while you “picked 1 out of every 7-8 calls”, telling him to stop contacting you.

You’ve done some reading and you are “convinced that he is on the higher spectrum of selfishness and lack of empathy”. When you told him, again, a month ago to stop contacting you, he called you names. You “believe he’s now gone, for good”. Problem is that even though you know that he is wrong for you and that you cannot have a future with him, you are thinking about him 24/7.

You wrote: “When I tried introspecting why, I realized that it’s because I don’t WANT to… a part of me still wants to carry a part of the relationship.. I don’t want to be completely happy because it would mean the relation is no longer relevant and important and is meaningless. How crazy that sounds… I’m scared that I’ll forget about him, a part of me wants to carry it in my heart”.

This is how I understand what sounds crazy but is not at all crazy or bizarre- in your heart there is a strong emotional attachment= Love. Think of your Love as a bird, and your heart as a tree. In the tree there is a five year old nest-for-two. For five years, when the bird needs to rest, that where she goes- to that nest for two. It is not the greatest of nests, it is not smooth and it pokes the bird’s skin, causing her to bleed a little, here and there,  but that’s where the bird is used to sit; she is not aware of any other nest on the tree. She is not aware that she can build a new nest, a better nest, elsewhere in the tree.

Your Love is attached to a team-of-two: you + him. I think that you are afraid that if the team (nest-for-two, you and him) is gone, your Love will be gone too (the bird will die). You don’t want your Love gone, so you don’t want to lose that nest.

Does this make sense to you?

anita