Dear Mefisto:

You are like a child left alone, a young child abandoned by his parent. Clearly to me, your attachment to your recent and previous girlfriend takes on the nature of an attachment of a child to his mother or father, “primary caretaker.”

Nothing unusual about that and very, very common. You see your recent girlfriend in the most positive light just as a child see his mother or father in the best possible light (“My dad is the strongest!”) and like a child left alone, all alone, by a parent- temporarily or not, but for a long time, you are hurting that kind of pain.

Everything starts with that first relationship and when that first relationship leaves or left a wound, then future relationships are greatly affected, often repeating old scenarios, re-experiencing the wound- the wound starts bleeding again. That is the wound of being alone as a child.

Maybe if you connect this experience you are having now with the experience you had as a child- the experience still very much imprinted and now re-activated in your brain, it may help. To accept the pain, not only of this ending but the ending that left that wound in you.

There is the pain of this relationship ending and there is the pain of the other mixed in. As long as the wound is there, tending to bleed again.. and again, you will be a bit TOO needy of the next relationship as well. As in TOO MUCH of anything, that too much need in the context of a relationship will operate against you and against your next relationship.

anita