you sum it up very well alex... and your analogy of the dance is a good one i think. But i am not able to dance either. He twirls away and i just stand there.. maybe fall to the floor... generally walk off stage and pretend i never had a dance partner to start with.

i can't allow him to care without allowing myself to care... and i can't do that in a complete way. Too risky, too hard, no skills. Can't dance without holding out my hand, or allowing him close.

object constancy... you mean as in me not being able to see him as a seperate entity, an individual in his own right? If that is what you mean then i am not sure how you are seeing that in this... maybe because it hurts when he leaves? Is that part of that?

what i feel, and i know little of formal theory, is that i see him as an individual, seperate... but too much so. To form a relationship of trust would mean allowing contact, a break in that sphere of individual identity... i am me within my walls and he within his, seperate. Closeness would mean a bridge or a door of some sort.

it hurts when he leaves, but rather than wanting to cling and prevent him from leaving, i am more inclined to build my walls thicker to prevent me from giving a rat's *** whether he leaves.
it's still childish... sort of like "fine, be that way, don't need you anyhow."

but it does hurt... because i work hard to change and so i work hard to remove bricks in the wall as he suggests and guides me to do... but i have no skills to deal with that afterwards.. it's just an open hole in the wall.

i already know it will take a month or more of 2xweek appts for him to get near where we had been. i know it but can't seem to help it. i never knew how bad my trust issues were before i started working with him. Now i know but don't know how to not do it.

dead to you... hmmm... yeah, something like that. He just becomes one of the other billions of people on the planet. i miss him, but i can't remember what he looks like.