I had thought it was a fairly common syndrome, but I'm having trouble finding resources. Can you help?
For years I have been seeing clients (mostly male) who are desperate to get into a relationship, but inevitably feel, as soon as the object of their desire stops playing hard to get, that the object expects too much from them and retreats.
In taking inventory, in almost all cases, the man had been raised (because of divorce, widowhood, or workaholism) to be the parent's (usually the mother's) confessor or confidant.
The man feels a need for love, but like when the mother orverburdened him emotionally, the return of even normal attention and expectation makes him fear the same sort of overwhelming as when he was a boy.