Dear Mia:

You are welcome. I hope you heal and learn from your experience with this man, and from earlier life experiences that led you to being so anxious and therefore clingy, demanding and angry in this online/ phone relationship.

I am glad to read that you are speaking to a therapist today, and I hope you will be seeing regularly, for a while, a competent therapist who will help you gain insight into the origin of your “pretty severe fear of abandonment”. I assume this severe fear of abandonment expressed itself so far in your life in many ways.

Maybe you avoided in-person relationships (?) for this very reason: being afraid of being too close. Maybe a long distance relationship felt safer.

I had lots of shame and regrets for many years. But because I have been deeply engaged for so long in healing and learning, the healing and learning have replaced the shame and regrets.

anita