Original Publication Date, 22 August 2021
Panel 1: Later that night, we find Elly looking in on Mike asking him why he's so quiet. He says that he saw Martha tonight.
Panel 2: It was weird because it felt as if they'd never got together. She says she still likes him but he feels nothing. This is because he has to see her as a person in her own right and he just can't do that because it diminishes him somehow.
Panel 3: He starts practicing "I thought I knew what love is but I didn't and no, it's not because my feelings got hurt" speech when he asks if it's all an illusion we make in our heads (which it is in his case because I'm not convinced that he ever actually met Martha to begin with) before asking what keeps people together if love is so easily lost.
This is about where
howtheduck is going to come along and explain that Mike's memory is faulty as he didn't lose Martha's love without a whole lot of trying. Five seconds after his feelings got hurt, the Human Doorstop decided that he didn't need Martha in his life because without her, he's free to be a gloomy dope sitting on a couch shoving popcorn into his pout hole. Panel 4: Elly's response is to jabber about finding it again and again. Since Mike has no idea who in blazes Colin The Paperboy is and why there was no one between him and John, he thinks that his mother is wise instead of the self-serving bullshit artist we know her to be. What I take this to mean is "Keep looking until you find a girl who doesn't upstage me or make me feel threatened."
Summary: It would be more honest to say "the fear of dying alone" because that's why she was 'destined' to meet John. As it stands, we have the lunatic fantasy of a boy getting (and taking) advice from his Mommy to contend with. It helps a lot that the boy in question wants to pretend that he feels nothing so he can not feel any sort of pain, regret or longing.