Dear Pedro:

If your girlfriend is a  good partner to you and your relationship with her has been healthy, then your anxiety is not about whether you love her or not.

“one day, we were talking and out of nowhere I felt that I didn’t love her anymore. Nothing at all. I didn’t care much at the time”- nothing unusual about this, a feeling of love is not a permanent condition. The feeing of love, like all feelings, come and go and keep changing, much like the weather: sunny, then cloudy, then rainy etc.

This is why you weren’t alarmed at the time (“didn’t care much at the time”), because it happened before, nothing unusual.

But “in the days that followed I felt enormous anguish, anxiety like never before”- this anxiety is not about the question of whether you love her or not.

Your anxiety is about something else- maybe your work situation, maybe it’s about your family, maybe the pandemic.. maybe it’s because of something that happened when you were a child.

What do you think?

anita

Dear Pedro:

I think that the fear in the core of your anxiety is not about whether you love your girlfriend or not. Fear has a way of attaching itself to where it doesn’t belong. For example, when you were a child, and saw your mother arguing with your father, you were probably afraid at the time. And if they argued often, you were often afraid. Finally, that fear stayed in you permanently, as anxiety. Sometimes you feel it, sometimes you don’t feel it, but it’s always there.

Fast forward, your fear attached itself to the question of loving your girlfriend or not. But that’s not where your fear belongs, or said differently, that’s not what your fear is about. It is about your parents arguing.

I will soon be away from the computer for a few hours. If you want, tell me more about your experience as a child, at home, with your parents. When I return, I will reply to you further.

anita

Dear Pedro:

“out of nowhere it happens to me to stop having a feeling.. I swear I don’t understand this”- it seems like out of nowhere, but it comes from somewhere, and even though you don’t understand it now, you can understand this, and I can help you understand. I will need to ask you questions so to help both of us understand your situation.

What you shared is that you live with your parents, that you “literally grew up with them arguing”, “sometimes even with violence”, that you feel sorry for your mother and angry at your father, and distant from him. You are also distant from one brother.

1. I didn’t understand this sentence: “My greatest strength in the middle of all this will have been my brother”- can you explain it to me?

Regarding your girlfriend, you shared that sometimes she gets upset, but she doesn’t know why and you don’t know why either.

2. Can you give me a couple of examples of her getting upset: what did she say and do when she got upset?

At one point, “she started getting weird and asked for a break”.

3. How long ago was it that she asked for a break?

4. Did she ever explain to you why she wanted a break at that time, and why she was distant from you for about two months?

I understand that English is not your first language, so please take your time (no need to rush)  and write to me as clearly as you can.

anita

Dear Pedro:

You are very welcome, I appreciate your gratitude. Here are my thoughts this morning:

1. Regarding your fear of “Love Suddenly Gone” (title of your thread), this “huge fear of not feeling a love for her again”- in nature, animals feel fear when they perceive danger. For example, when a deer notices a mountain lion approaching, the deer feels fear and runs away. The danger is: to be eaten by the mountain lion. It is the same with humans, naturally we feel fear when we perceive, or believe that we are in danger.

Anxiety is fear about something that is not real-and-present danger. A mountain lion approaching a deer is real and present danger. So  is this pandemic- a physical and economical real and present danger.

But not feeling love for your girlfriend- there is no real and present danger there. This is why your fear of not loving her is part of an anxiety condition.

Try therefore to relax best you can. If you don’t feel love for her today, and tomorrow and .. ever, what terrible thing will happen? .. What is the danger???

Your feelings themselves (and lack of feelings) are not dangerous, so try to make peace with your feelings. Try to make peace with not feeling love for her and try to make peace with your fear, as well as with all your feelings, whatever they are, at anytime, anyplace.

2. There is no moral requirement that you feel love for her. It doesn’t make you a bad person for not feeling love for her. No one is taken to a court of law and charged with a crime of not feeling love for anyone. You don’t owe her to feel love for her. You see, you don’t choose your feelings, none of us choose our feelings- we feel what we do, we don’t feel what we don’t, it just happens. We choose our behaviors, not our feelings.

3. Your girlfriend  (who may be your ex girlfriend), at times she felt upset at you (a feeling) and hardly spoke to you (a behavior). You asked her if she was upset and she lied to you and told you that she was not upset with you. But her behavior showed that she was upset: for a whole two months she kept a distance from you, not telling you anything about how she felt. Maybe she still is at times dishonest about how she feels, maybe you know inside that she may get upset with you at any time and stop  talking to you. Maybe this .. weak but ongoing fear of not-knowing the next time she gets upset is what killed that feeling of love in your heart.

4. The pandemic is a situation that is adding to the fears we already had before the pandemic. Fear is an emotion that is more powerful than love: when there is too much fear in our hearts, the Fear sorts of kicks out the Love out of our hearts.

5.  You asked: “Will it be better if I leave this house?”- as I understand it, she is living with you, your parents and brother. Why is she living with all of you and not in her parents’ house???

Take your time, Pedro (no rushing), and let me know what you think of 1-5 above.

anita

Dear Pedro:

What I did understand from your recent post is that your girlfriend doesn’t live with you, but with her parents (good thing!), and that you were with her Sunday, it felt “like it was the first date”, but then your thoughts that you don’t love her returned.

I didn’t understand your first paragraph because you didn’t write it clearly. If you want to take your time and re-write it, please do and I will reply to you further.

anita