“Why are we here?” asked the therapist.

Sarah answered. “He keeps telling me he loves me. It’s too much, too soon. We’ve barely known each other. I think he’s moving too fast.”

The therapist turned to me. “Khashy, do you agree?”

“Yes. Completely.”

“You do?!?”

“Of course!”

“Then why do you tell Sarah you love her?”

“When I say I love you, what I mean is that since I met Sarah, my living experience is characterized by an unusually persistent constellation of bodily sensations, including abdominal fluttering, cardiac palpitations, sensations of breathlessness, and autonomic arousal, accompanied by mental formations such as thoughts, emotions, images, memories, and anticipations, arising spontaneously and recurrently in association with my mental representation of Sarah. 

These phenomena emerge through a dynamic interplay of perception, memory, imagination, desire, and attachment, giving rise to patterns of approach, longing, and occasional aversion, with a frequency, intensity, and persistence that I rarely experience in relation to other phenomena arising within the ever-changing field of awareness.”

Sarah stared at me. The therapist was silent for a while.

Then she turned to Sarah. “Can you work with that?”

Sarah considered the question, still staring. “Yes. I can.”

We left shortly afterwards. Outside, Sarah took my hand.

“I love you,” I said.

She squeezed my hand.

“I know. I think you have a condition.”