Dear Michelle:

It just occurred to me that your urge to tell him that you love him so to get him to say the same, this urge can be thought of as a compulsion and the thoughts: does he love me, does he not, etc., can be seen as an obsession, and therefore you have more in common with him than you may think: obsession + compulsion,=  OCD, or OCD- like.

What fuels obsessions in OCD is anxiety, and the purpose of the compulsions is to find relief from the anxiety. Performing compulsions bring about temporary relief from the anxiety, but the anxiety is soon back, and like you wrote, “it is a vicious circle”.

“I do know of a relationship he had about 12 years ago where he said he expressed it quite freely and often. So I wonder what has changed in him since then”- it is possible that, as the anxious that he is, suffering from OCD,  saying (pronouncing/ writing/ typing) the words “I love you” started to scare him at one point on, sometime between twelve years ago and now.

anita