Dear Merry:

The problem is not that you don’t love him, the problem is your anxiety: “My heart is racing like crazy, my guts are tied up in a knot and I am unable to eat anything.. the panic won’t go, it just won’t go”.

“I never had good relationships with my mother, because she has narcissistic personality disorder and manipulated me through childhood.. I .. had some severe issues with depression few years back, going down to suicide attempt and antidepressants. It was not relationship related”- it was not related to a romantic relationship, but it was tightly related to your very distressing relationship with your mother.

A child’s relationship with her mother is way more powerful than any romantic relationship in the child’s future, as an adult. To put it simply, your mother scared you, and the fear she caused you is behind what happened to you recently: “One  day I woke up with this thought in my head, that I do not love him or do not feel anything”-

– there is no real danger  in you  not feeling love for your boyfriend, and there is no real danger at all in you entertaining the thought that you may not love him. The real danger was with your mother, and that older fear is what is being activated in the context of your 7 months romantic relationship.

You are focused on the question of your feelings for your boyfriend, when it is not the issue. It will take you time, more time to process and resolve your relationship with your mother, so to lessen your underlying anxiety and free this or any other romantic relationship experience from that other experience, the one with your mother.

It is very possible that the pandemic/ quarantine anxiety, added to the old, overwhelmed you recently.

Let me know what you think, and if you want we can communicate further.

anita

Hi Merry,

Do you have a history of OCD? Your fears sound to me like ROCD (relationship OCD). The checking magazines and websites is considered a type of mental compulsion. I think you might want to avoid those, and simply try to ignore the thoughts by accepting them, causing them to lose power over time.  However, it would be for the best if you saw a licensed professional.