Dear Alina:

It is not normal or healthy to have one’s heart racing every moment, every day and night when two people love each other because a heart attack or a stroke will result- it is not healthy to have the heart race on and on and on. And about butterflies- butterflies don’t live for long, a couple of weeks, two months (you can google butterflies, Wikipedia. and find out how long they live).

Therefore to expect the hear to race and the butterflies on an ongoing basis is not realistic. After a period of excitement with a new love, the excitement slows down and sometimes it is not there at all- for everyone!

I hope to read more about your thoughts and feelings and will reply when I am back to the computer, in about 13 hours from now.

anita

Dear Alina:

Even if it is only around your partner, to have a “constant racing heart” is impossible and quite deadly. To save your life, you’d have to end that deadly relationship. The butterflies as well, not possible at all times when you are in the company of your partner. Think of this: let’s say you are in the company of your partner and your stomach starts to hurt, you feel that you might have diarrhea. The moment you feel this kind of discomfort and your thinking is focused on it- gone are the butterflies. And if the heart is racing, it is to prepare you to run to the bathroom.

Now, imagine what is really happening in your case:  you are with your partner and your stomach is fine, but you start focusing on the thought: do I really love him? This thought is associated with distress, not the stomach ache but it is an ache of the emotional kind. No  wonder then, that the butterflies are gone and if the heart is racing, it is not the romantic, in-love kind of racing, but the distressed kind.

You worry that you don’t love him and because of the worry, you stop feeling that in-love feeling sensations.

Let’s look more in depth at what is happening: for a few months you liked a guy, for a few more weeks, you “always felt so crazy for him and I always wanted him next to me. I was obsessed”-

– obsessed, this is the problem. For a few weeks you were obsessed with the thought of wanting him next to you.

“I was obsessed, but, for a while now, I’ve been doubting my feelings… the question ‘Do I really love him?’ Came into my mind and I haven’t felt the same since”-

your obsession changed. First you obsessed on the thought of wanting him next to you, then you  obsessed with the thought: do  I really love him?

The Problem is you Obsessing. All the thoughts  you have regarding your obsession, all the thoughts trying to answer the question: do I love him? – all these thoughts belong to the obsession and will not help you. The obsession is like a giant vacuum cleaner that keeps vacuuming but nothing gets clean, all the dust and dirt remains. So you vacuum, vacuum, vacuum, and nothing changes. It is as if you and the vacuum become  one, you wake up.. and you just have to vacuum. No matter how the vacuum doesn’t clean anything, you are compelled to vacuum.

Your relationship is a very new one, and this man, you wrote, is “the perfect match for me. We get along so well” and so forth. The solution is to focus on what is perfect in the match and continue to get along, to make the relationship meaningful and healthy regardless of racing-heart-or-not and butterflies-or-not.

But suggesting the above, for the person who is obsessed is like saying: stop vacuuming, use the broom instead, you’ll see, it will work! But the obsessed person says: but I have to vacuum!

What do you think about what I wrote here?

anita

Dear Alina:

You are welcome. “I’m doubting my love for him and I don’t know how to get it to go away. Any ideas?”-

– Define love: what does love (for a man) means to you?

anita

Hi Alina!

I think what you’re saying makes sense but I’m not sure your issue or doubts are actually coming from anything being wrong with your relationship with your boyfriend, especially since your feelings for him seem to be rather huge. It’s pretty likely your doubts are more from you having a lot of fears around relationships based on your past. It probably feels weird to you, whether you realize it or not, to be treated well or to have a relationship be going generally well because your others have been so rocky, and to be cheated on by your first love would absolutely cause issues with trust and possibly fear of abandonment in future relationships (so you feel the need to leave before you’re left) if you never truly dealt with your feelings from that (which can be hard to do especially if you haven’t done it intentionally). Just as you were the one to make the mistake in the relationship that was going really well, you might have subconsciously sabotaged that one too because you might not be sure how to handle being in a good relationship due to some underlying feelings caused by the previous bad relationships.  I could be totally off here, but you just speak so highly of your boyfriend and haven’t really had many issues with him other than your own doubts, so I think it’s likely your doubts aren’t actually about him.

If I were you, I would give it some time. You guys haven’t really been a couple for that long, so you might feel better once you get through this initial period of doubt, and if you do have subconscious fears causing the doubts, those will subside as you start to feel safer in a healthy relationship.  You did say you’re long-distance right now, though, and those relationships are always pretty difficult. Will you be long-distance for a long time or are there plans to be closer together soon?