Lovesick

Have you ever been so in love with someone that, when you think about them, sometimes you can't breathe? You feel dizzy and groundless? You feel every cell in your body go flying in their direction? Something like divine music plays in your soundtrack? 

From the William Blake Tarot by Ed Buryn

Lots of other wild responses, too. The world lights up. Everything reminds you of that person. "They would love this! They would be angry about this! They need to see this!" 

And, in spite of the free falling unconditional admiration and reverence for the Beloved, there's also intermittent crushing jealousy and possessiveness. Hatred for all of their exes. A hostage-taking level of grabby attachment. 

That describes my state of mind, in part, regarding a certain person. It's been unwieldy and confusing in a lot of ways, since I lack skills (either chronically or specifically at this time) to "handle" such intensity. It has been unbidden. When I have tried to contain the adoration and love, it just boils over, repeatedly, without me even turning up the heat. I can see why all of the myths of falling in love include that aspect of "Cupid's arrow," a vector force that arrives as if shot from the outside, through the heart. 

A few people have hurled little bits of "sanity" my way— why not give it some time? Why not be single for a while? Why not get involved with someone who is available? If what the two of you have is real, it will still be there! Why, thank you. Very sound! But irrelevant. 

Fortunately, my counselor is more along the wild, archetypal, roller coaster/learning experience side of things. He seems to distance himself so he can size me up, and he keeps discovering that I am surfing these tsunamis fairly skillfully or at least usefully, and we talk more about how rather than whether or not. He also knows that whether or not is moot. 

There's something Olympian and absolutely amoral about the experience. Not immoral, mind you. Amoral in that totally indifferent sense. Outside of the categories, not to sound too Nietzschean or whatever. 

So where does the "sick" part come in? According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the phrase dates from 1520, and has always meant "languishing in amorous desire." So in a couple years, it'll be the 500th anniversary of the phrase in English. Of course, the concept has been around a long, long time. But it is that "languishing" aspect that probably infuses the "sick" part of the phrase the most. So distracting! There are times when I just can't get anything at all done, thinking about the Beloved. Languishing indeed.

There are some other troublesome parts of this kind of immolating love. What a growth experience, to face and have to find a way to deal with my tendency toward codependent patterns in general. Enmeshment, obsession, terror of abandonment, suffering in comparison, feeling unloved and unlovable, experiencing a lack of contact with sharp pain and distracting ache. All of the wildness. All of the precarious, contingent elements. 

I keep expecting my inner gyroscope to kick in. I keep expecting to feel confident, on solid ground and with an ordinary amount of hope for the future. So far, Aphrodite is kicking my ass. It's getting a little better. As my relationship with myself grows, the sense that I will be all right no matter what the Beloved decides or does is definitely growing. This is growth for me. I have been in controlled, safer partnerships for decades, where I always felt like I would be okay if the partnership ended. With A, even in the darkest passage of not having a home anymore, I still knew that, essentially, I was all right. 

This falling in love has knocked me totally off center. It is truly precarious. The etymology of that word is worth copying and pasting from the Online Etymological Dictionary:

1640s, a legal word, "held through the favor of another," from Latin precarius "obtained by asking or praying," from prex (genitive precis) "entreaty, prayer" (see pray). Notion of "dependent on the will of another" led to extended sense "risky, dangerous, uncertain" (1680s). "No word is more unskillfully used than this with its derivatives. It is used for uncertain in all its senses; but it only means uncertain, as dependent on others ..." [Johnson]. Related: Precariously; precariousness.

The weird thing about what I am working through these days is that the Beloved offers strong verbal and behavioral evidence of meeting me in the wildness of this kind of love. It is not one-sided. I am not in a position of being abandoned, ignored or ghosted. Yet, no matter what reassurances the Beloved offers, and no matter how much evidence I try to gather and how much rational self talk I try to engage in, I still feel this searing doubt and pain of loss. 

Obviously, this is a reflection of how I have not "allowed" myself to be in love like this since I was 17 and had my heart stomped flat. A reflection of the unhealed gashes of other primal experiences of a lack of reliability, of bitter betrayal. A lesson in working through attachment dysfunction, which, in a wide variety of ways, has largely poisoned my relationship style— not simply in romantic or sexual relationships, but across the board. A reality of mine, not even related to the Beloved. 

Although grossly oversimplified, Hazen and Shaver's classic 1987 paper that translated childhood attachment styles to adult situations of romantic love offers some structural categories that are "fun" to think about. 

The three basic attachment styles, learned in the family of origin, are:

Secure attachment

Anxious or ambivalent attachment

Avoidant attachment

This New Age-ish site offers very clear summaries of the three styles.

Secure Attachment

– Securely attached adults support and respect one another. They form a relationship built on mutual care and trust. A securely attached relationship involves compromise. Each partner establishes and maintains boundaries. A securely attached person is able to give generously of themselves, while maintaining their self-esteem and sense of identity. Children learn to form secure attachments when they experience them at home. They practice them throughout childhood by forming and maintaining friendships. Securely attached people are able to trust their partner’s affection and maintain realistic expectations of the relationship. This kind of attachment is found in healthy partnerships. (Editor's note: may we soon see a day where the word "healthy" is never used metaphorically again).

Anxious Attachment

– Anxious attachment occurs when one partner is desperate to engage in a fantasy relationship. They fear it will not happen due to abandonment issues or a lack of healthy connections throughout their childhood. A person who experiences anxious attachment is unlikely to trust their partner on a deep level. Instead, they live in constant fear of betrayal and abandonment. They are afraid to be alone. This fear causes them to attach to their partner very quickly. They put emotional expectations on their significant other that are unrealistic and unlikely to be met. People who experience this type of attachment expect to be completed or rescued by their partner. They seek safety and security. This type of attachment is not conducive to an emotionally healthy relationship.

Avoidant Attachment

– People who have been hurt repeatedly, or who never learned to attach in a healthy way as children, may form an avoidant attachment. In these relationships, one partner has a fear of intimacy that prevents them from connecting to the other. They withdraw emotionally. Although they may have deeply affectionate feelings for their partner, they are unable to express them clearly and respectfully. They might withdraw in a dismissive way, which involves distancing themselves from the relationship. They may throw themselves into work, ignore their partner, cheat, or disappear entirely. Their avoidance could also manifest in a fearful way. They may deny their feelings, refuse to commit, or avoid emotionally heavy situations. 

I am capable of all three styles, sometimes even within a single day. I bet usually someone whose predominant style is avoidant hooks up with someone whose predominant style is anxious, or two people trade those styles endlessly. My general mode in many romantic and sexual relationships for the past 40 years has been avoidant, although I have slipped into the anxious attachment style a few times and gotten very badly hurt. I have sometimes thought I was engaging in secure attachment, when it has actually been avoidant. Avoidant attachment can feel secure for me particularly because I am sufficiently protected from getting hurt. I also am in a position of power and control when I am avoidant, and that can seem secure. It's interesting to think about where power resides in the three styles— equally shared, surrendered or rigidly held. 

Obviously, if you are given to analytical and structural thinking, such categories and intersections can provide hours of fun. 

Essentially, since I am intensely in love with someone who is often unavailable, all of the out of balance (sick) dynamics that come up for me can be traced back to attachment versus letting go. Codependency itself can accurately be described as an attachment disorder. "We admitted we were powerless over others— that our lives had become unmanageable." To hit bottom by having to concede to my innermost self that I am powerless over others must mean that I have been addicted to trying to have power over others. Definitely disordered attachment. 

In this way, "lovesick" gains a lot more dimensions than simply "languishing in amorous desire." Languishing in a set of interconnected attachment disorders as well. Truly precarious, in the sense that Ben Johnson would approve, since the "dysfunctional" attachment styles are *entirely dependent on the other person*. 

So the work I am doing, whether I like it or not, is to let go. In particular, I want to heal so that my alternating anxious and avoidant strategies do not poison the well.