Dear Luz:

You are welcome.

You wrote earlier: “I’ll go on a few dates with the wild, exciting type, berate myself for being attracted to him”. You berate yourself because you hate yourself when you feel like you felt as a  child: needy of someone else: “I’m already finding myself obsessing over him… glued to my phone in the hopes that he’ll text. And I HATE it. I hate that a simple crush has the ability to turn me into this lovesick school girl. I hate that my life is so unexciting… I hate that.. And I hate”.

And, you are “scared of  just being perceived as too.. needy”, “shy and scared of rejection”.

You hate the child that you were, needy, scared. I imagine that as a child, you were bored/ anxious  a lot of the time, sometimes very anxious, otherwise mildly anxious. Life was a combination perhaps of fear/anxiety and meh. But  once in a while something exciting happened, and it was a joyful break from the usual emotional experience.

“I’m that girl that always attracted to the.. guy who is scared to be emotionally vulnerable and never wants anything serious”- I think that the child in you doesn’t want anything serious, because anything serious, for her, means that usual.

“I’ll either spend months (or years) in a relationship with someone who is ‘safe’ but I’m not really in love with..”- someone safe is someone unexciting, it feels like being back to that usual.

“or I’ll go on a few dates with the wild, exciting type”- these are the exciting breaks from the usual.

“I hate that my life is so unexciting that a couple of texts.. makes me jittery like a child on Christmas morning”- the usual year long emotional experience is disrupted by wonderful once a year Christmas break.

A couple of weeks ago, he texted you at night, his text was a break of excitement, you were  “really excited”, then you met him that very night and got a most intense break of excitement (“like the crush came back ten-fold”).

Following that night, back to the usual emotional experience of life, and you crave the next break of excitement, “thinking about the next time we’ll see each other”.

“there’s always been a part of me that wants that passionate, intense, overwhelming love… I’ve scored highly on tests I’ve taken for sensation seeking.. a part of me that enjoys fear, adrenaline rushes, new experiences.. I’ve definitely done some risky things.. and have enjoyed it. It’s a strange mix of qualities lol”- not strange at all, to crave exciting breaks from the usual combination of anxiety and meh, perhaps a mild depression.

I am thinking that you perceive “a healthy, stable relationship” to feel like that usual I mentioned here repeatedly. And therefore, a healthy, stable relationship turns you off.

You are welcome to let me know your thoughts/ feelings about what I wrote here.

anita

Dear Luz:

“There’s a part of me that’s just angry at… that part of me that is scared”- imagine a child being scared and the parent getting angry at the child for being scared. What is the result? The child getting even more scared and shutting down.

Clearly, the solution is that the part of you that’s angry at the scared part needs to be very gentle and very patient and kind with the part that is scared.

Now, what is the scared part scared of? It is scared “to show my pain and scars to another person”.

What is that pain and scars, would you like to show it here, on your thread, using words, describing it?

anita