{"id":24233,"date":"2014-06-13T08:00:37","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T15:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=24233"},"modified":"2016-05-20T19:59:06","modified_gmt":"2016-05-21T02:59:06","slug":"40-years-after-our-fling-why-cant-i-forget-about-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/dear-gt\/40-years-after-our-fling-why-cant-i-forget-about-her","title":{"rendered":"40 Years after Our Fling, Why Can’t I Forget about Her?"},"content":{"rendered":"

That girl in your head\u2014she was your first love<\/a>, perhaps? And your first heartache too? You still have feelings for her, it seems, and I think that while she may have many wonderful features, she built a life with someone else, not you. You don\u2019t know what her life is from the inside, so it\u2019s easy to make it seem ideal. It may or may not be.<\/p>\n

Also, she dumped you<\/a> six weeks after you joined the military. First off, she might have dumped you anyway\u2014you first got together in high school, a time when relationships<\/a> can be flimsy and fleeting. It\u2019s part of growing up.<\/p>\n

Why do you wake up every day with her in your head? I\u2019m guessing it\u2019s not her so much as it is you and her together, the way you were 40 years ago\u2014young, hopeful, naive, the world opening before you. You shared the exciting spirit of beginnings, but I wonder how long that would have lasted even if you hadn\u2019t joined the military.<\/p>\n

\n\t

Find a Therapist<\/a><\/h2>\n\t
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The world seems closed to you now. You say no one loves you or knows you deep down. Your wife had two affairs<\/a>, and you have been having a kind of fantasy mind affair with that girl, the ineffable first-time perfect girl. She stands between you and your life. You are holding her in between yourself and your life. What you had together for a short time 40 years ago stands between you and your real life, and it is taking the place of your real life. It\u2019s time for you to dump her and live now. There\u2019s no do-over.<\/p>\n

Your two kids, you seem to suggest, are teenagers or young adults, and only interested in your money, not in you. Perhaps that\u2019s true, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m not sure you know, either, since you live with a curtain that blocks the reality of yourself in your life in this moment.<\/p>\n

Why do people torture themselves with visions of a perfect past, a wonderful experience, that doesn\u2019t exist? Why do you? Are you afraid of your life now, of looking at who and where you are now? Is it painful?<\/p>\n

Perhaps you\u2019re unhappy because where you are now is not where you would like to be. You can\u2019t go back 40 years, obviously, but you can look ahead to the future and see what kind of life you would like to craft for yourself, what you need to do to make it real, to build a life for yourself\u2014no matter your age\u2014that is rooted in the present so it can be satisfying and genuine.<\/p>\n

How can you do that? You can look deep inside yourself. You can go to therapy<\/a>, or to group therapy<\/a>, and dig hard and come alive.<\/p>\n

I wish you luck, love, and satisfaction.<\/p>\n

All my best,
\nLynn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lynn Somerstein, PhD, E-RYT, responds to our latest reader-submitted Dear GoodTherapy.org question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[625,542],"tags":[540,522,228,25,41],"class_list":["post-24233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dear-goodtherapy","category-featured-articles","tag-breakup","tag-dear-gt","tag-obsessions-compulsions-ocd","tag-psychotherapy-issues","tag-marriage-counseling-relationships"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}