Any object relation brings with it a relation to time—to past, present and future. Complementarily, any relation to time carries with it a corresponding relation to a set of objects. Temporal relations and object relations beget and inform each other. Patients who mean to retreat from objects are faced with the more daunting problem of having to retreat from time itself. Beginning with Freud’s Chapter 7 and using clinical examples, this text argues that lurking behind conflicts about objects are conflicts about time itself, that for many patients if only time could be eliminated then all the disappointments associated with objects would also be eliminated.