1. Intro
2. It Is Not Just Communication
3. Is It Sex?
4. What Does It All Represent?
5. But what is passion?
6. So what do I do with this?
7. Conclusion

Intro

Figuring yourself out is like working a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle: first you gotta build the outline and then you work in chunks and sections. And when you get stuck on one of those chunks you move to a new chunk. The goal isn’t to start in one place and fill the whole puzzle from that starting point, it’s to get a better overall picture and make it easier to come back as needed. Sometimes you feel so stuck you put it down for months or even years, but you keep coming back to the table and finding more matching pieces. And when you’ve finally solved it, it feels good, it feels oh so good.. and then you catch yourself eyeing the next one on your shelf.

Except most people are probably more like 20,000 pieces or more, or multiple puzzles even, but the approach is the same: outline, section, move when stuck, persist.

I am almost 40 and I am still making huge revelations about myself. I probably will be when I’m pushing 60 too. My outline has long been in place and I’ve put together many sections and started on many others. The ADHD pieces helped me figure out the trans pieces helped me begin the BPD section, helped me figure out the wife pieces, and so on. People are complex and this analogy is starting to get stretched to its limit, but I’ve been coming back to that BPD section for the past decade-ish since I first learned about it. Putting together my anger issues was step one. Learning about what BPD is came on the second pass. Doing some basic DBT to get through a nasty scenario half a decade ago was next. And now I’ve been really digging into the attachment side of things.

As I alluded to in my last post, I think what I’ve discovered about myself really supports the realization that my hyper attachment to specific persons is actually an obsession over the relationship I have with that person. It took some finagling and wrestling of ideas to really get at it but I still didn’t have a singular word I could point at until I described it to my therapist.

It Is Not Just Communication

The one aspect I’ve known for quite some time is that all these obsessive relationships (hereafter referred to as a Favorite Person or FP) had bad, incomplete, or worsening communication. Emotional distance was a big factor too, which I consider to be part of communication. And then there’s my wife and S (point of clarification: my relationships with my wife and S never developed into “Favorite Person” or hyperattached territories), who are extremely good communicators and I never had any confusion or misunderstanding about their feelings or thoughts. The exceptions that prove the rule. Everything is clear and direct. Sometimes I have to poke at my wife or seek reassurance from her but she will always answer, meanwhile S actively gave that to me unprompted; I never had to question what was going on between us at any time. In fact, S was often so excited to simply tell me about her day or something she was feeling that I was never left in the dark about anything. Waking up to happy little texts from her about what she was up to made my whole day.

But most of my other FPs either had bad communication from the start or communication quality declined over the course of the relationship. This was particularly notable with J where it seemed like the relationship started open and strong. Hell, I still credit her for helping me figure out how to open up and talk more readily while taking my time to put my thoughts together. Moving in together in Chicago somehow caused her to talk to me less, but that got better when she moved on her own to California.. for a short time. It got bad again, but we were locked in on me moving in with her.. and that’s when it all crumbled. She could not (would not?) tell me what happened to cause such emotional distance between us once the geographical distance has been closed. Every attempt I made was met with some new reason or story or metaphor that made no sense. Everything was couched in murky layers or television tropes. Nothing she said sounded to me like it was actually about us. There was no clear and direct communication of “I” or “You” statements.

I never even received the most basic of apologies for her sudden distance and dropping me. When I finally walked out because I just couldn’t take it anymore, she never once attempted to reach out. The simple act of reaching out would have communicated a kind of desire, or at least that she missed me. It certainly has in other situations. All I can assume is that J didn’t miss me at all.

Now, five years later, I don’t know if I wish that she had reached out, but I do know that it’s been long enough that I do not want her to say a word to me ever again.

And yet, I still love J, and it still makes me sad. This is what I meant when I said “I’m going to be sad forever”. It never goes away. Meanwhile, I know S missed me, our last words to each other were “I love you,” and the boundary she set was because she could not emotionally handle me breaking up with her and then coming back into her life randomly. I’ve never said a word to her since, because that was the directive given to me. I still love her, and I will honor that boundary until the end. And I’m going to be sad forever about that too.

And that’s okay.

I’d rather feel all of the sadness I’ve felt if it means I get to keep that happiness that went with it. Forgetting, or even forcing aside, one or the other paints an incorrect picture of what I experienced. I would rather keep it all together, as one atomic thing, integrated.

But the frustrating thing is that’s not the full picture of what’s going on with me. Some people actually did start communicating way better as time went on but things didn’t get better and my obsession with the relationship didn’t wane.

Is It Sex?

This was a new one to put together, and I figured this out after a really good semi-anonymous sexting session one night over a week ago. I was also a bit high that night and thus extremely in my head. While I was cleaning up in the shower it just fucking hit me like a brick: Every one of my FPs has been a sexual disaster for me. To be brief, in order of FPs:

• mutual youth and inexperience
• started good then faded
• she lives in Australia lol
• never, expressed desire then completely pulled away from me before anything could happen
• started okay, then suddenly nothing
• none, and no desire was expressed

And once again, wife and S stand out here: sex is/was.. well, the note I have here says “reliable,” but what does that mean? Um, so let’s start elsewhere first. Sex is/was incredible, very intimate and emotionally connected, variable based on needs and limits, and I know that I am desired.

Reliable. I guess what I mean by that is that it wasn’t something I was guessing about or worried about. In fact with my wife I’m the one going on hiatus at times as my sexuality¹ changes yet I always knows she desires me. She works with me through those changes and we get stronger for it every time. Our sex is safe, I am allowed to change and try new things and she’s always there excited to get close to me. S was long distance so we didn’t have a ton of time in person, but there was a lot of desire and communication and expression in our sex that made everything feel safe. We explored a lot of things that were new for both of us and it was just so so wonderful.

It sounds to me that in describing “reliable” I just expanded on the other traits I listed right before. Perhaps that is what reliable sex means to me: It’s safe, it’s there when we both want it, it’s fluid, it’s connected, and desire is loud and clear. It’s reliable. I never have to wonder or guess or hope or pray.

But this also didn’t feel like enough. I struggled with this nagging in the back of my head. Reliable sex just isn’t the full picture, much like clear and direct communication isn’t the full picture. It’s another puzzle piece, a really important one that I just found, but this section remains incomplete. And even high in the shower in the middle of epiphany I was catching myself with “but.. what is it about sex? Sex must represent something, right?”

Thankfully I had therapy the next day.

What Does It All Represent?

I was describing that sexting encounter to my therapist as well as the realization I had about sex (we’ve already talked a lot about communication). I was talking about what all of it meant to me and that I couldn’t figure out what sex was representing when she interjects with

that sounds like passion

and I just sat there silent staring into the middle distance, putting all the pieces together while she kept talking. I do not truthfully recall the rest of what she said in that moment. My brain was on fire, stringing connections between everything I’ve ever known, felt, and wanted. Suddenly everything was making sense.

What does open, clear, and emotional communication show me? It shows me passion. What does healthy, reliable, emotionally connected sex show me? Passion. What does it mean when someone seeks me out to tell me things just because they want to tell me things?

Passion

What is it when someone regularly expresses through their actions and words that they desire me?

Passion

What am I feeling when we’re connected and intertwined and close together in all ways?

Passion

It’s passion. That’s what I’ve been missing. That’s what I’m always trying to give. That’s what I’m always seeking. That’s what I need. That’s what it’s always been this entire time! And in that random stranger sexting moment? There was indeed actual passion. My wife and S, passion. Everyone else? None.

At least.. none that I could perceive..

Earlier this year one woman and I briefly reconnected. We started working through the pain we both caused each other and began forming the bones of a new friendship. Passion might not be the right word for that dynamic, given.. everything, but it’s also not exactly the wrong word. When J didn’t reach out, that communicated to me dispassion. When L was reaching out and accepted my reaching out, and then everything that happened for the next couple months, that communicated a kind of passion.

But what is passion?

You ever encounter a word that you know what it means in feelings and experiences, but you can’t explain it using other words? I experience that a lot. I had to look up the definition of passion. This does feel a bit embarrassing as a writer, to be honest.

intense romantic affection

Well, yah I definitely want the person to be attracted to me and desire romance.

sexual desire

Also yes, please, but I’m certain I could do without sex with a partner if passion was expressed in other ways (e.g. physical contact, intimate time together, regularly talking (deeply or otherwise), shared hobbies).

a strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept

Oh, now we’re starting to get somewhere. I don’t really like the idea of “devotion,” but the rest of it hits. Enthusiasm and excitement, for me, for us, for what we are and could be. That’s so important to me.

an object of desire or deep interest

Yes, yes that’s it! I need to be desired, I need people to show interest in me. This will be reciprocated because I deeply desire and am deeply interested in the people I love.

When my wife talks to me about her hard feelings or shows me reassurance when I need it, she’s showing desire to connect with me. When S would text me about her latest scripting or programming stuff, or excitement about finding new music, she showed desire for me to be a part of her life. That is passion. (There’s obviously more that each person does and did, but describing all that would triple the length of this post.)

Everything has its opposite though. When someone refuses to communicate with me or even avoids being around me, that hurts on some embarrassingly deep level in my core. It makes me feel alone and empty. Feeling this dispassion usually results in two reactions that I’ve talked about before: trying to chase or pull that person in closer, or pushing them away. This is, obviously, an unhealthy defense mechanism; a BPD trait that I’m still working on.

So. That’s what it is. I need passion. Love, to me, in all its forms is passion shown and acted upon. I love passionately and I need to be loved passionately in return. When I have that passion I feel safe and secure and the FP attachment does not form. Reciprocated passion helps me form healthy relationships.

So what do I do with this?

Let’s get the big hope out of the way first: The FP does not go away. I am not suddenly over my FP nor am I prevented from developing future FP attachments. I’m sorry, I wish that could be the case.

What I do get from this is a massive new understanding of why these attachments form in the first place. I get to understand myself better. I now know what I’m looking for in a relationship and I can better see the signs of an FP attachment developing. I can use this information to communicate my needs and advocate for myself, so that I can transform that FP attachment and the relationship itself into something secure and healthy. Or I can use this information to back out of a situation that might get unhealthy when I know that I will not be given the passion I need… That thought makes me sad and I don’t like ending this section on a sad note, but I don’t have anything else to put there. Either I can work to make the situation healthier, or I can back out to prevent it from getting ultra toxic.

Conclusion

I’m not “fixed.” I’ll never be fixed. If anyone is waiting for me to be fixed, please just let that idea go. However, I am gaining more knowledge about myself. This new understanding of myself gives me more control over emotions and reactions that have always felt entirely out of my control.