Dear Timepassages2070:

“I assume you think it would be a bad idea to press her for more information, correct?”- at this point, I think that it is a good idea for you to ask her specifically what you want to know. If you have the specific information that you need, maybe, just maybe..  you will stop obsessing about her.

“after all I have shared with you, don’t you think there is a missing ‘piece’ on her end?… this is all just her way of not addressing the missing ‘piece'”. You suggested three possibilities of what the missing piece on her end might be: (1) she started dating someone, (2) she felt that you and her were getting too close, (3) a combination of 1 and 2.

You are obsessed with the missing piece on her end. The missing piece on her end has no practical value in your life: you mentioned nothing about a plan to have an extra-marital affair with her, nothing about a plan to divorce your wife and marry her after she divorces, nothing of the kind.

Your obsession with the missing piece on her end is about the missing piece on your end, which is, I believe, your deep and unfulfilled need to be worthy of a permanent bonding vs a temporary emotional placeholder (“what triggered me here with B is that while I was viewing us as bonding.. to her I was more of a temporary ‘Emotional Placeholder'”, Jan 5).

There is a Wikipedia entry on Limerence that may interest you. The term limerence, coined by a psychologist in a book, is described as “a state of mind which results from a romantic attraction to another person and typically include..  intrusive and obsessive thoughts, feelings and behaviors from euphoria to despair, contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation… Limerence is characterized by internal experiences such as ruminative thinking, anxiety and depression, temporary fixation and the disintegration of the self..  these themes find relation to unresolved earlier experience… Limerence is characterized by intrusive thinking and pronounced sensitivity to external events that reflect the disposition of the limerent object towards the individual”.

anita