Dear Notebook6:

You are welcome. “Sometimes it’s still nerve-wracking thinking that he might lose interest and now he got a new working environment that he will meet new colleagues/friends” – it is interesting, isn’t it, how your brain and body react to the idea that he would lose interest in you, as if him losing interest in you would mean injury or death to you.

For a little girl living with her mother, the idea that her mother will lose interest in her would mean, in the little girl’s mind, that there would be no one to feed her, no one to cover her with a warm blanket when it’s cold at night, etc., and all this would mean death to her. So, naturally, when her mother is repeatedly inattentive, depressed and/ or angry, the girl fears for her life and becomes a very anxious little girl, being anxiously attached to her mother.

Fast forward, the girl is now a woman, and she imagines that if some guy living in another country, a guy who is not a source of food and shelter, etc., that if he loses interest in her, then she’ll die, or experience some other physical catastrophe. This woman is experiencing an anxious attachment style.

I wrote to you: it is possible that he prefers a long-distance almost-relationship over a committed, in-person relationship, and you responded: “It might be true because he mentioned he needs lots of personal space before” – this means that he is likely to keep being invested in a long-distance almost-relationship with you and avoid a short-distance committed relationships with a different woman, a woman in the office/ hometown.

Your online therapist since March 2021 seems to agree with me, having told you that the guy “has been quite consistent and stable” in his communication with you. You also shared that you’ve been practicing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for the past month, and more recently, you started a gratitude journal so to improve your “sense of self/ self-esteem“. I wonder how a gratitude journal can help your sense of self/ self-esteem?

“Currently I’m suffering from loneliness after working from home for 2 years, most of the time there is nobody I can talk to, I’m socially deprived and have no life. Which can contribute to my neediness towards him” – yes, of course this would contribute to your attachment to your friend. Two years of working from home is a long, long time. Is there no way for you to socialize in-person with people?

anita