ohh this is such a blah place to be. i have gone through something similar. i had the connection to fantasy t which would bring me comfort. but in a way it was something i used to avoid connecting to real t. when i started to see real t more, it was like fantasy t couldn't coexist and i lost that comfort and it was really hard and sad for me (grieving).

then because i could no longer maintain fantasy t and i was still avoiding connection with real t, i was in this awful middle place, similar to what you describe. and it is a hard place to be. i could see t was working at a connection and i was just incapable of holding on to my side of it. it's like this highlighted how awful i am. subhuman. broken. can't be fixed. don't belong in society.

we've had to do a ton of work on understanding exactly what it is i fear about connections and why. for me there is a deep deep deep fundamental extinential terror. which seems incapable of fixing - like it is who i am. and yet it is probably THE thing i've always needed to work on in t. just taken me 7 years to work up the guts and trust to be able to even look at it.

it's ok to feel angry, dissatisfied, wanting to quit, wanting to run away or wanting to hide. it doesn't make you a bad person. these are probably just ways that you protect yourself from allowing a connection. work on your connection problems in spite of how you feel - this is where true healing lies.

t and i have spent time on looking at what i do to prevent connection. one major way is by not looking at him, so we are working towards making me look. then we'll strip away the next defense and the next one and the next one. by not looking, by being angry, by doing all sorts of things, even though i am telling him all my inner secrets, i am still hiding from him. i am not letting him truly see me. i really think it is all coming down to vulnerability for me. i really liked the link dr muffin put up: http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown...erability.html

you've replied to me previously and said "being close to someone feels like I will be engulfed by the other, losing myself. "I" would no longer exist." so it seems perfectly natural connecting to someone would be terrifying for you. i am not sure how true this is, but i think it would be easy to get stuck in this phase. because it is how we want to be - holding our defenses up. i suspect that if we didn't work on taking down those defenses, then therapy would naturally progress to another phase, but it may not be a healing step forward. i think that to move forward we need to actively do the hard/terrifying/excruitiating work. which really sucks to be honest. and yet i have found tiny pockets of joy along the way and i can faintly glimpse the treasure that connection may bring.

i also wanted to mention trust. i too thought i had no trust with t but it wasn't quite right. we don't really notice this because it is kind of a backdrop, but we can trust t to be how t usually is. like think how weird it would be if your t suddenly came in dressed in a completely different style, or suddenly changed mannerisms or voice pitch or way or speaking. or suddenly moved the furniture around so the surroundings were unfamiliar. or suddenly had an accent. or suddenly started touching you (or stopped touching you). or a million other things. to a degree, we can trust t to be t. so even though it feels like you don't have any trust in t as person, it's not quite right, there is a degree of trust there. you're trusting t to be who you know her to be. i know there are much higher levels of trust possible, but i guess this is a start you know?

anyway, sorry this became a novel. i hope you find something in here you can relate to. take care.