Dear t:

“This is my first relationship… With him, I feel generally stable and normal… When we aren’t spending time together I am extremely emotional in ways I have never experienced before. It does interfere with the rest of my life: I have cried at work, cried in public, things like that… I’m not sure that either of us understand what actually is making me feel this way“-

– it is possible that your emotional attachment to your first boyfriend triggered a painful experience you had in the past, in context of a relationship with a parent, a parent (or a parent figure) who either abandoned you, or mistreated you otherwise?

When a child’s emotional attachment to the parent is somehow ignored or betrayed, it’s a painful experience that tends to awaken in the context of another type of emotional attachment in adulthood: the attachment to one’s boyfriend or girlfriend.

Do you think that this is a possible explanation to how you feel?

“We have had some conversations about this with him promising to try to improve“- he promised to improve in how often he texts you, how long he stays with you on the phone, how often he meets with you, things like that?

“How can I better manage this?“- I think that it will take understanding the reasons behind your emotional experience with him and then, exercise emotion regulation.

anita