Hello whoever...

I have been living in Buenos Aires for just over a year, and am in a relationship with a complicated and wonderful woman, who has a dire need to be alone, and who reacts hypersensitively to manifestations of neediness which unfortunately - for both of us - are rather common with me. My Jungian analyst calls the needy part of me The Blob; it can absorb entire universes... There are issues from my childhood, with my mother, that left me wounded and traumatized.

I often get into a nervous anxiety state that borders on panic, when I feel I "need" to talk to her... and that is precisely when I can't get through. I'm well aware that she herself can't solve my imbalance. But still, part of me wants her to, and this is totally uncomfortable and miserable for me and I get ants in my pants in a serious way and can't relax. I concoct catastrophic scenarios, all of which involve (when I force mysefl to face them) rejection.

I need to have other contacts than her. I need to treat myself with love. But there is this ENTITY in me, this mother-complex I think, that really really loves to scare me, and...

it's a kind of addiction. When I'm with Marita, I feel "better" - like my problems are on hold. And yet, I also find I work very hard to stay focused on her and to avoid wandering into my weird hangups.

At this very moment I'm struggling with a compulsion to call her - even though we have a date tomorrow and I know she's hyper-busy (Which immature parts of me really resent and suffer from - but I know these are my own demons), and the irrational fear behind the compulsion to call her is that she'll reject me if I don't, whereas the reality is that when I call her from a weird place, THAT is what pushes her away and increases the chance of ultimate rejection...

I have been taking sudafed for the last several days - ostensibly for congestion, but frankly I know that I use it for the lift and the energy, and I have decided today to toss the remaining pills away. I know what I'm up to, and I know what I'm looking for, when I don't face it, is a way to end this relationship and undo all the success I have found here, and I am reaching out for help and commiseration by writing this. I scare myself, to quote Dan Hicks...

I just love to scare and scare myself, and I also hate it. The part of me that hates it and wants release is moving my fingers now on this keyboard.

It doesn't help that I transferred $1,000.00 - practically everything I had in my account - to the account of a student of mine (whom, in all honesty, I do trust, and who I know will not stiff me - but it's scary) so he could get me dollars to pay my rent. It is virtually impossible to get dollars in Argentina. And my rent is in dollars.

Hoaracio, my student, is not going to steal from me. I know this. But I'm on pins and needles about it.

So there's that scary background too, and I'll gladly read anything anybody says that can help me get centered and remember how far off-target I am when i get like this.

Hard for me to affirm: that the money will come through, that Marita will come through, that everything is OK...

If you can help, I'll be grateful.

Thanks

Bob Haskell