lostloverfound

Most of the time when folks reach out to me for a consultation, it’s because they have made contact with their Lost Love. They have been communicating online. May have met for lunch or a drink, “just to catch up”. Only to find that all of their waking and non-waking thoughts are now filled with Lost Love. They ruminate about their past history, and obsess about the next contact with Lost Love, otherwise known as LL.

They play out scenario after scenario in their daydreams, which are now taking over their minds. They can’t concentrate, eat or sleep. Emotions are all over the place, and all of them are intense. Oh, and then there’s the renewal of sexual desire!

I’ll get a frantic email, stating “Please help, I think I’m going crazy!

My response is this: “Take a deep breath, now take another. You are not going crazy. You stumbled upon a trigger that has released this relationship from your past, because it needs your attention. “

Confusion during this time is massive. As is the inability to focus or to make decisions. Day-to-day things like your job, children, and marriage are of course requiring your participation. Yet, you have none to give. You are present physically, but absent from your life in every other way. Friends call and want to plan a get-together, and you find an excuse to not go. You begin isolating so that you can remain in your obsessive daydreams with your LL.

There are of course many issues at play here. The first one being Mid-life Transition, a normal developmental stage that we all pass through. Some pass through with ease, and others with tumult and crisis. (Think the chaos of puberty, and now you’re doing it again.)

In fact, most people experience their first love during their late teens and early twenties. And when we reconnect with that First Love, we revert back to that stage of development. Becoming a late teen in a middle-aged life. We become self-focused, self-centered, think we have all of the answers, and in the throes of sexual desire. What could go wrong?

There are many layers to these Lost Love Reconnections. These reconnections can quickly move into an emotional or sexual affair. There is real love there between these two lost loves. It’s been there for their whole adult lives, living in storage, just waiting for a trigger.

*A Note to Therapists”: These are not typical affairs. They are based in Abandonment Trauma. The decision to ‘let go’ is traumatically painful. Managing the abandonment trauma must be addressed as soon as mental health is stabilized.

If this sound like what you are experiencing, feel free to reach out for support.