Please Help This is All New to Me

I totally understand your terror. And I applaud your honestyMany people believe that "honesty is the best policy" in intimate relationships. Nothing could be further from the truth. Practicing this philosophy by speaking your mind at all costs may cost you...(Click for full definition.) in admitting how very scared you are. But guess what? You aren’t alone. Everyone is scared to death of leaping off the ledge of love. Most people just aren’t aware of or brave enough to admit the terror!  As an aside, I can’t tell you how many relationships fall apart precisely because one or both partners act on this fear. By act on I refer to the various behavioral operations that people employ to temporarily discharge overwhelming feelings. Some of these behaviors include distancing, withdrawing, cheatingSee Infidelity. to dilute the bond, picking a fight, etc. The problem with such behaviors is the fact that they are ALL relationship destructive. While the person who acts out may feel temporarily relieved by these distancing actions, when you harm your relationship you ultimately harm yourself because everything with do boomerangs back on us. If you hurt your partner; if you damage your relationship, you hurt yourself. The goal is to develop the psychic muscles to withstand the feelings. Sit with them, talk about them but don’t act on them. Developing these emotional muscles is just like strength training in the gym. At first you can’t bear any weight, but with time and practice you’re able to lift more and more. It’s the same with feelings. As you practice holding the feelings and not discharging them in action, you develop the muscle to hold more and more emotions.   

Now to return to your issue…Freud once said, “To love is to lose.” By this he meant that loss is the flip side of love. If we risk love, we risk the loss of that love as a result of abandonmentAbandonment is a legal term describing the failure of a non-custodial parent to provide support to his or her children according to the terms approved by a court of law. In common use, abandonment...(Click for full definition.), separation, divorceDivorce is a legal dissolution of the marriage bond. Many couples divorce themselves from each other on an emotional level long before a legal divorce is sought. As I say in my book, Till Death Do Us...(Click for full definition.) or death. We all can minimize the risk of loss from abandonment, separation and divorce by cultivating the garden of our relationships, using all the techniques that I teach.

As for losing a loved one to death, I know this one first hand. I lost my beloved husband when he died of a bee sting five years ago. Believe it or not, I actually discovered that relationships don’t end in death. Yes, I lost him in bodily form, and I grieve that loss, but I did find him again in spiritual form. My experiences with him have shown me that relationships don’t end in death. This what led me to create a new form of grief therapy that guides people to reconnect rather than say goodbye. But I digress.

To return to your fear of loving and losing…I think that you’ve always been scared of falling in love, which is why you haven’t allowed yourself to fall in love thus far. This guy caught you off guard. What started as a sexual hook-up has taken an emotional detour. You fell hard for this guy. But be don’t plan to fall in love anyway. As Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons, that reason doesn’t understand.”

I think that you’re your detour of the heart is just what your heart needed. It’s time that you embrace love and the fear that goes with it. Even if your worst fear comes true, and you lose him, it’s still worth taking the risk and the ride. In the end, we were put on this earth to love others fully.

I also think that this man you’ve fallen for is the perfect person for you. He’s scared for his own reasons (not the least of which is that he isn’t yet out of the closet). Your combined fears means that you both will be forced to take it slow. That’s fine.

Just stay aware, talk about the fear and hang in there. Even though your guy is as verbal as you are, as you talk, you will be voicing his unspoken fears, thereby helping him to fear along with you. In the end, love is the fear and the cure.

Keep me posted on how you progress. Congratulations.