Luksa,

I wanted to chime in on this also because you are not alone. I went through a terrible divorce 10 years ago (that I did not want) and since then, I have a fear of getting too close to anyone. It has been a huge struggle for me.

I met a wonderful woman about 1 ½ years ago and the relationship went too fast. After about 3 months, I started getting scared that I would lose my independence, that maybe she wasn’t the right one, etc, etc. We even broke up for a while and that in of itself was extremely painful. I broke up with her completely out of fear.

After being apart for about 3 months, we decided to slow everything down and to try again. We decided to work on being friends and not see each other quite so often. We decided to continue our individual lives but also date each other. That has helped me a lot. (And given that she would do this for me, shows me how much of a sweetheart she is.)

I am not going to say that I still don’t have relationship anxiety though. I can be with her and having a wonderful time and then bam, something hits me and I get scared. It is almost like I want to run and get away. I can’t really explain it and I never had this problem when I was married.

There are some good books out there. She’s Scared / He’s Scared is wonderful and you should read it.

In my research I have found there a lot of people with relationship anxiety.