Come closer…go away.

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I’ve begun to experience some powerful feelings for someone right now.   It’s hard to describe, since I haven’t met this person and most likely never will (which is perfectly okay).   The feeling is a bizarre mix of low-level limerence (but that’s not quite it), empathy, and friendship (affection), but really, none of these really describe it.  The closest way I guess I can describe the feeling is the transference feelings one sometimes develops toward a therapist (and I do have those too).

Idealization of a person is something that comes naturally to me as a borderline.  I know it’s idealization because I don’t know them very well and haven’t seen their flaws.   I’m a person who prefers to live out romantic fantasy in private, because the reality of an actual relationship never lives up to the perfect fantasy I’ve constructed in my mind (even though part of me longs for a real connection with someone in the physical world).   This individual seems to be a kind of a mirror to me right now, similar to the way my therapist also is mirroring me.   But in no way is this individual in a therapist role.   I consider myself friends with this individual, but I have to be very, very careful because I can tell they need a lot of space–and I don’t want them to know how strongly I feel.  It’s a delicate push-pull balance–a kind of dance, almost:  to maintain a balance between my desire to get closer and possibly overstep boundaries (and get hurt), and not giving enough or even pre-emptive rejection of someone I like due to my own deep fear of rejection.

I’ve talked about this with my therapist and he thinks this is good practice for me and is a sign I’m beginning to connect in more meaningful ways and learning to be mindful about it at the same time.  But it sure isn’t second nature yet.   In the past I always either became obsessed and overwhelmed people by trying to get too close too soon, or avoided them (in spite of my strong feelings) to not have to experience possible rejection.  There was never any in between.

11 thoughts on “Come closer…go away.”

  1. My husband and I have been married for over 12 years and we still have trouble with the “come closer, go away” dance at times. But at least it’s not anything like the first year of our marriage. Oh man, that was rough. We both have PTSD and back then, he’d had very little treatment for it.

    During our first year, I spent so many nights sleeping in a motel or in my car at a Wal-Mart parking lot when I didn’t have the money to get a room. He finally checked himself into a veteran’s hospital for an intensive PTSD treatment program. That made all the difference. I had already been through a clinic for my PTSD, shortly before we met. After we were married, we got some good counseling, both separately, and marital counselling. Otherwise we would never have made it.

    PTSD is very hard on relationships.

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      • Love starved. That was me, for most of my life. Trying to satisfy my desperate love hunger has gotten me into some horrible messes. I didn’t lose that terrible neediness until I became a Christian at the age of 49.

        My aunt is 76 years old and she has been jumping from one man to another man since her husband died in 2006, after 45 years of marriage. She goes on all these online dating services, goes out with someone a couple of times, and the next thing you know she is posting on FB about how happy and how in love she is. Until all of a sudden he does or says something wrong, and then she’s out looking for the next man. It hurts my heart to see her living like that. Especially because she’s behaving just like I did after my last divorce. Except that I was 30 years younger!

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          • I know. In my earliest memories of her, she was a teenager. Beautiful, smart, sweet. I call her my aunt-mom because she is more of a mother to me than her sister, my momster, is. But my aunt definitely has issues, like everyone else in my family.

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      • Oh, but my stepdaughter is the opposite extreme. Her abusive cheating narcissist husband hurt her so bad, she has stayed single most of the time since their divorce 13 years ago. She goes to work, comes home and reads or watches a DVD. She works on a military base and guys are always asking her out, but she finds something wrong with all of them. It’s sad. I think my stepdaughter’s way and my aunt’s way are two sides of the same dysfunction.

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  2. It sounds like you are very self aware which is great. None of us are perfect. I like your thought process. I definitely can relate to going into relationships with people a little too quickly. Yeah in the past I have done that too often and got hurt easily but I have learned from those experiences and don’t rush into relationships anymore. All the best 🙂

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