Dear Moomin:

In your recent post, you shared that you remember as an early teenager, waiting for your mother to come back home from work, afraid that she may not come home, that she may not be alive anymore. You looked for a sign: how many cars pass by, so to comfort yourself.

In your first post, you wrote regarding romantic partners: “I get the feelings of utmost panic and fear as soon as I believe someone has rejected or withdrawn their affection“.

When you feared that your mother was no longer alive, you feared that her affection was withdrawn from you in a very final way, and in a devastating way, because you had only one mother, and you were not expecting a second mother. No one to replace your one and only mother.

When you fear that a romantic partner will withdraw her affection from you, or that she already has, it probably feels final and devastating, like the finality of death, and it probably feels like there will be no one to replace her as the source of affection. And that makes the fear overwhelming.

What do you think?

anita