Hey Confused:

I apologize, Confused. I got Confused 😕: you started talking to her a year ago, not ten years ago. I confused the 10 years ago when you served in her country with having been in a LDR for 10 years.

A few days ago, I confused you with another member, thinking you’re 25 (I am beginning to worry about my memory declining).

You brought up fear of commitment. The term refers to a person feeling anxious, trapped, or overwhelmed when a relationship becomes more serious or emotionally intimate. Common signs include pulling away when things get close, worrying about losing independence, feeling pressured by labels or future plans, and idealizing the beginning of relationships but struggling with stability.

There are commonalities between fear of commitment and the fear involved in insecure, disorganized attachment, and I think that your fear comes from the latter. Earl y experiences where the caregiver was both a source of comfort and fear (e.g., unpredictable, frightening, neglectful, or unsafe) leads to people (in general) * wanting closeness intensely, and feeling terrified of that same closeness, * sudden emotional shutdowns, * confusion about their own feelings, * approaching and withdrawing in cycles, and * feeling unsafe even in loving relationships.

It’s not just fear of commitment — it’s fear of connection itself, because connection was historically dangerous.

Fear of Commitment is usually about long-term responsibility and expectations, often linked to the need to be independent, or to past romantic breakups (it’s like feeling ‘I am not ready’), while Fear of Closeness (Disorganized Attachment) is about emotional intimacy feeling unsafe, linked to early relational trauma. (It’s like ‘I panic when someone gets close’).

The simplest way to put it:

Fear of commitment = fear of the future of the relationship.
Fear of closeness (disorganized attachment) = fear of the experience of intimacy itself.

One is about responsibility. The other is about safety.

In my Jan 4 post, I copied AI’s input in regard to what you shared about your childhood. Here’s part of its input: “Children learn what ‘love’ looks like from their caregivers. When love is mixed with chaos, fear, or inconsistency, it often leads to insecure attachment… when closeness feels unsafe… pulling away when someone gets emotionally close, feeling smothered by intimacy… Wanting closeness but fearing it”

And in regard to your experience with her, this was part of AI’s input: “The moment she became emotionally available, his system panicked- He said: ‘I was the chaser until things got steady.’… When love is uncertain, they chase. When love becomes real, their system panics. Why? Because real intimacy = real risk.
Her poem, her confession, and the conversation about the future likely overwhelmed him.”

What do you think, Confused?

🤍 Anita

Hey Confused:

The two (disorganized attachment & the dorsal vagal nerve shutdown) are related, they’re not mutually exclusive:

Disorganized attachment develops when a child’s caregiver is both a source of comfort and a source of fear.
This creates a deep internal conflict: “I need you.” and “I’m scared of you.” That push‑pull dynamic can overwhelm the nervous system.

Disorganized attachment = fear of connection.

Dorsal vagal shutdown = the body’s freeze response to overwhelm.

The two terms are different, but they often show up together because early relational trauma shapes how the nervous system reacts to closeness.

🤍 Anita

Hey dear Confused:

“I was thinking maybe it was limerence and it crashed me so hard?”- I think so, now that you bring it up, yes.

Limerence is an intense, obsessive infatuation marked by intrusive thoughts about the person, emotional highs and lows based on their responses, idealization, craving reciprocation, anxiety when uncertain, and difficulty focusing on anything else. It fits what you’ve been going through!

“The dopamine crash would explain my depression as well.”- I am reading that limerence is basically the brain in a dopamine‑fueled, uncertainty‑driven loop.

Dopamine creates the feeling of craving, desire, anticipation, excitement about a possible reward, etc. It creates an “I want it feeling”, not “I’m satisfied feeling”. Limerence together with disorganized attachment can create a powerful emotional storm, which is what you’ve been experiencing.

“I wanna try and love her for real without limerence though. How can I do that? haha”- I am reading that breaking the limerence loop is about interrupting the dopamine‑uncertainty cycle that keeps the brain hooked. Uncertainty is the gasoline that fuels limerence and Clarity is the fire extinguisher, it kills limerence faster than anything else.

Fantasy creates confusion because it’s built from hopes, guesses, and “maybe.” Reality creates clarity because it’s built from what actually happens.

Here’s a writing exercise that may help replace fantasy with reality:

Take a piece of paper and write two short lists. On the left, write “Fantasy” and describe what you’ve been imagining she is like — the things you hope she feels, the perfect moments you picture, and the story your mind keeps creating.

On the right, write “Reality” and describe only what she has actually done — her real actions, real words, and real level of effort. When you finish, read both sides slowly. This helps your brain see the difference between what is imagined and what is true, so you can step out of the fantasy and back into reality.

You can do this exercise right here, on this thread, typing vs writing. I’d be interested to see it.

🤍 Anita

Hello 👋 Confused:

I don’t see Fantasy in how you describe her. So, now I am leaning more on the problem being your disorganized attachment and LDR challenges.

I sure hope for Clarity to replace Confusion.

I think that what seems to me- your disinterest in exploring the origins of your disorganized attachment (your childhood experience)- to be a problem.

It’s okay though, whenever you are able and willing to explore the origins, that’d be fine.

I know that if I didn’t explore my troubled childhood experience, no way would I have the peace of mind I am experiencing now.

✨️🤍✌️ Anita

Hey Confused:

I have no doubt that it’ll take you way less time than it took me to replace my Confusion with Clarity.

When you grow up in an unsafe “home” (I place quotation marks around 🏡 home because the word HOME is synonymous with SAFE).

Anyway, our childhoods aka our Formative Years are.. where our minds are formed, our beliefs, our struggles, our trauma.

I was dissociated from the child part of me and therefore floated through decades-long stagnation.

It took sort of going back in time and rescuing the scared, desperate, neglected, overlooked Anita the girl, so to be.. self-contained, no longer so very.. dependent, emotionally, on other people.

No longer and never again giving other people so much power over me. No longer having a shaky, poor self-esteem depend so heavily on what other people think of me, or say/ express to me.

🤍✨️👋 Anita

Oh, O didn’t finish my thought there: when you grow up in an unsafe (no) home, day in and day out, month after month, year after year,

There’s an unsafe corr, or “home” (not) within the soul, within deep inside.

And when that takes place, we give others way, way, way more power than they deserve to have in our lives.

🤍 Anita

That seems logical but still doesn’t make any sense in my mind (probably because i havent touched it yet and i find myself very self-sufficient)

Yes we do, im guilty of that in my life.

Alright, enjoy your offline time, thank you very much anita, goodnight 🙂 (hopefully way less soon)