interesting reply

Dear B, I went through a similar thing. It
took about five years to get over. So I am going
to say things to you that other people might
not say. Other people may not have gone
through what you and I have gone through. I
am going to say things that may sound harsh
and dogmatic or unforgiving. You talk like an
addict. You concentrate on the feeling that she
gave you and how you've lost it and crave it
and fear you'll never get it back. You're living
without her and have nothing to replace her
with. Nothing else will give you that feeling.
She was your heroine and your heroin. What
you did when you were with her sounds like
what we do when we're high. You talk like an
addict who's white-knuckling it. You abused
her, as it were, the way one abuses a
substance. You took too much of her. You got
drunk on her. When she ran dry you needed
more. So you went out and got more. You
didn't care where you got or who you got from
or how it made her feel. What you felt for her
was not as much love for her as love for what
she contained, what she promised, what she
brought to you. You loved her like an addict
loves the bottle the whiskey comes in. You
loved the whiskey that she was. You loved the
high she gave you. Maybe this sounds harsh.
The phenomena you describe -- the
connectedness, the paranormal awareness, the
intoxication -- sound like the romantic love
that poets talk about. She understood you like
no one else. She understood you in a way that
could be magical or could be pathological.
Your love of this understanding of you, this
also could be romantic or could be
pathological. Your love of this one feeling is a
love of feeling understood. Addiction and love
are different. Love is hard. Addiction is a
better high. But addiction will destroy you.
Addiction will leave you wanting more. Just
look at you. You are still reeling. You are still
craving that future of limitless highs,
smothered in the butter of her endless
fascination. To dwell on this will only excite
more hunger, more desire, more self-
interested seeking after conquest and orgasm
and acceptance and adrenaline and intimacy
and release. You saw it yourself: As great as
she was, she was not enough. She was not
enough because it wasn't about her. It was
about your high. You were using her to get
high. To maintain the high, you found the high
wherever you could find it. In doing so, you
hurt her. You professed to not know why you
hurt her, because to admit why you hurt her
would be to admit that she was an object.
Since she was an object, in a sense you tried
to destroy her. We attempt to destroy the
objects of our addiction. In our delusion, we
see them as the cause of our addiction. I
suggest you consider the possibility that you
have a kind of sex and love addiction. There
are groups that deal with this. I suggest that
you consider the possibility that in being the
wonderful person you are, talented and
successful and creative, you are, like so many
of us talented and successful and creative
people, deeply flawed in the classic way,
flawed like Byron and Jim Morrison, flawed
like Shakespeare and Don Juan, flawed like
Richard Burton, flawed like JFK and Bill
Clinton, flawed like a rock star, flawed like
Sinatra. This flaw will not leave you in the
physical gutter the way an alcohol addiction
will. It leaves you in a cultural gutter, despised
by women and men alike, outcast, unable to
live within society's rules, unable take care of
your family. So it's a tricky thing to figure out,
whether you're just a red-blooded cocksman
or an addict. It's a hard thing to figure out. But
what you're telling me, this is what it sounds
like: Your psychological structure drives you
to seek a high through other people, and this
self-centered seeking of a high prevents you
from genuinely encountering the other. The
other will not make you high. The other will
not always be psychically connected to you.
The other will not always have the same
dreams. The other is genuinely the other. You
say, quite understandably, "I'm well
acquainted with the concepts of accepting
responsibility, grieving, growing and moving
on, I actually understand how to do all of that.
The problem here is that I don't want to do
that last part." Well, my friend, no addict
wants to move on. No addict wants to willingly
give up the only thing that makes him feel OK.
But it doesn't matter what you want. Nor does
it matter what you think. You think you know
how to grieve and move on. You think you
know how to do these things. But grieving and
moving on are not things that you do. They are
things that happen to you. You might know
how to walk in the rain. But you don't decide
when it rains or how long it rains or how hard
it rains. You just carry an umbrella and keep
your head down. Here is the other thing that is
paradoxical but makes it sound like an
addiction to me: You are so great in every
other way. What this says is not, "Gee, then
how could he be an addict?" but, "Gee, so of
course he's an addict!" The essential
characteristic is present: The split. The void.
The discomfort. The space between your
perfection and your craven emptiness, your
public satisfaction and secret craving, your
placid exterior and need for a high, your
intellectual competence and spiritual longing.
After years of Lacanian psychoanalysis, you
might actually be able to be with the woman
you love. But this also may be some kind of
dream akin to the dream alcoholics have of
one day drinking normally. It is more likely
that you will have to learn to live with a new
way of relating to women that is more difficult,
more nuanced and more centered in the give-
and-take between two independent, self-
governing individuals. It doesn't mean you
can't have sex and love. But it means that the
fundamental mechanism that you have
mistaken for love must be altered. She's gone.
She's gone and it's over. What you are left with
is yourself.