TL;DR: TRP makes us despair. And we'd take despair over the risk of opening up to love. Despair itself is safety.

Hope you're all doing well. Recently, I've had a great therapy appointment of which I learned the following:

With my girlfriend, I often have thoughts/obsessions that she is going to leave me. And when these thoughts come in, it feels like everything is falling apart. A breakdown all the way. During therapy I explored these feelings which were prompted by: "She's going to leave me for someone else; for someone in her past".

And as the feelings were going away due to what my therapist was advising me on, I noticed a part of me that was trying to prove my therapist wrong. There was a part of me that wanted to stay in that zone. I wanted to keep myself inside that sadness.

We explored this desire, and what we noticed was that the feelings, the judgements, the loneliness; it's all a way to protect myself.

I was trying to convince myself of "she really doesn't love you". Why? Because if I can have certainty that that's the truth, I:

  1. Can have certainty
  2. Never risk losing her love

If I open myself up to the possibility that she really does love me, then I am opening myself up to losing that love.

TRP is right next door to this phenomena. I took TRP because of the certainty and safety that it gives. AWALT, Women can't love, etc. It's like a warm fire. The theories and all the feelings they give are cozy as hell. They told me what I already believed and gave me an infinite amount of excuses to never trust and never open myself up to getting hurt.

TRP gives us sadness, loneliness, anger, resentment, despair. And all those things give us SAFETY.

(at least for me)

What do you guys think? Lmk