A really interesting discussion broke out recently in the Surviving Partner Limerence community, about the phenomenon of denial.
Some limerents flat out refuse to accept that there is any problem with them having a limerent object in their lives while also being married. They seem to consider it reasonable to be emotionally attached to a third party as long as “nothing happens”.
In other cases, the fact that this relationship is upsetting to their spouse is dismissed as the spouse’s problem. “We’re just friends. You’re being unreasonably jealous.”
Another category seems to be a simple denial of the facts. “No, I’m not obsessed. LO means nothing to me. You’re imagining things.”
Now, of course, there are lots of layers to this phenomenon.
It’s true that people have very different attitudes to emotional closeness in friendships and whether that closeness conflicts with the expectations of long-term monogamous relationships.
There’s also the sexual element. Most people would feel very differently about a heterosexual partner sharing intimate feelings with a same-sex friend versus an opposite-sex friend.
It’s the age old “can men and women be friends?” debate.
But, really, I have to admit that I generally assume that denial is willful distortion on the part of a limerent.
The emotional overwhelm of limerence can’t actually be mistaken for close friendship, especially if there is erotic desire bundled in.
Their claims of being misunderstood or of “only being friends” are an addict’s attempt to protect their supply through lies and misdirection. A deliberate denial of reality.
But… I do also hear from some limerents who are infatuated with someone – often an older mentor – that they do not feel sexual desire for. They just desire emotional intimacy. Perhaps it is genuinely difficult to make sense of this longing for closeness if it doesn’t feel the same as the desire the limerent feels for a sexual partner.
So, perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps there are other possible explanations for why the limerent and their partner are seeing things so differently.
Changes in cognition
Limerence is an altered mental state, and that bring with it changes in the way that the brain processes information.
At the most basic level, the euphoria of limerence is so powerful a natural reward that it can become addictive. The LO overshadows all other concerns in life. That means that you care less about the things you used to care about, and more about securing LO contact than anything else.
But, it doesn’t stop there. The hyperarousal of limerence changes our cognitive processing. Our thoughts race, we make new connections between ideas that seem novel and exciting, and the whole world seems more vibrant. Limerents often become more energised and optimistic during the euphoria phase of early limerence.
So, it’s not ridiculous to speculate that maybe there are also changes in the way that limerents process other psychological drives too – like loyalty, duty, fidelity and compassion.
They are so preoccupied by the urgent drive to bond to LO that nothing else has the emotional impact that it used to. It’s like if you placed a delicious cake in front of a starving person and then asked them to ignore it while they explained linear algebra to you.
Even the most dedicated maths teacher would find it very difficult to concentrate.
But, to extend the analogy, would that mathematician deny they were hungry? Or forcefully assert that they didn’t want to eat the cake?
Impaired self-awareness
Denial is a recognised phenomenon in addiction research. It manifests as a failure to recognise the severity of the obsession, its negative consequences, or the need for personal change. Denial is linked to treatment avoidance, and also to relapse after treatment is started.
Trying to disentangle the causes of denial is tricky.
It’s partly a psychological defence mechanism (to avoid confronting the problem), partly due to the changes in reward processing due to incentive sensitization, and partly due to other neurological changes.
Addictions do lead to changes in the function of key regions of the brain involved in behavioural monitoring, executive control, and decision making. This can lead to deficits in insight and self-awareness.
In the case of drugs of abuse and alcohol, the neurological changes can include direct damage to the brain, killing neurons that will not recover. In the case of limerence, it’s extremely unlikely that actual physical damage to the brain will occur, but functionally the way the circuits operate can be changed.
What this all adds up to is a state where addicts are not able to make good predictions about the consequences of their actions, rate the severity of the damage that’s occurring, properly understand their motives, or properly rate the importance of competing commitments.
So, denial can reflect genuine deficits in insight and self-awareness, not intentional deception or pure emotional rejection of reality.
What it all means
It seems likely that limerent denial has more complexity to it than simple attempts to avoid admitting the truth, or gaslighting a partner into doubting reality.
But, in my own limerence experience, while those cognitive and emotional changes were certainly noticeable, they didn’t override my perception of reality.
It was more like my executive brain had taken a break from running the show, but it was still there observing and could be prompted into action in extreme situations.
As I put it before: some internal force seemed to be able to sedate my executive brain. It was a kind of warm feeling of agreeable surrender – a strange mood in which I knew I was willing to behave irresponsibly.
However, I always knew at an intellectual level that I was behaving irresponsibly.
I never struggled to accurately perceive reality.
So, my end for this post is to ask the community here at LwL (especially those in long-term relationships): did you ever go through a period of denial about your limerence?
If so, what did it feel like?
Did you really believe nothing was wrong, or did you always have a sense that your behaviour was irresponsible too?
Dr.L,
This one seems tailor made for me. I wrote more than I meant to, so a
TLDR first: I strongly attempted denial to myself near the beginning (for maybe a couple of months), but never so it fully worked. And then I was not in denial after that.
Long version – (you like your lists, so I will break it into four phases):
I would say the only denial came early on. There was a ‘mission creep’ phase where I gradually pushed out the boundaries with LO (eg emotional depth of what we’d discuss, how much time we’d spend together and where/when). I think by doing that slowly, it was a kind of attempted denial – like “moving this next little brick isn’t going to hurt anyone”. On some level I was aware what I was doing, and that it was wrong, but I was almost trying to dupe myself into believing it was OK.
At the euphoria stage, I would say denial had gone and it was like you described it of yourself – “I knew I was willing to behave irresponsibly for a while”. The ‘for a while’ is crucial here. I knew by then that it was having detrimental effects on my relationship with SO (I was quite emotionally absent) and that I couldn’t go on treating her like that indefinitely. I entertained a lot of thoughts at this stage of whether it was even fair of me to stay in my relationship. So it definitely wasn’t denial by then, but cycles of giving myself ‘temporary permissions’, emotionally-speaking, then feeling guilty about it.
The guilt of what I was doing caught up with me eventually, as I thought it would. Intellectually, I then wrote off any thoughts of anything ever happening with LO. But there was then a long spell where I couldn’t get her out of my head – a bit like your cake and algebra example. Even though I’d recommitted to my relationship by now and stamped out seeking so much LO contact, the cake was always there in my head. And that was happening even though I didn’t want it there by then. I wonder if this might be common in other limerents, and also an insight that might be of some interest in the partners’ community – some who have wandered and got lost are really trying to find the path home. And it takes a lot of time to find the path if you can’t go NC. Another poster on here said to me: “the body has to catch up with the brain, and it will eventually”. That’s what happened with me and I see it in a lot of the other regulars’ stories too.
There then followed a slow journey ‘back home’ phase with the LO occupying less of my time and thoughts, to a plateau now where it is still there but just as a low level background hum. My SO has noticed and commented on the change by saying things about how I’m more present and considerate – this despite me never disclosing my LE to her. If I were a gambler, I’d bet she kind of knows on some level, but prefers not to have it all ‘out there’. I recognise that others will vary and that disclosing to SO is the better advice for many couples.
“Did you really believe nothing was wrong, or did you always have a sense that your behaviour was irresponsible too?”
WRT LO #4, I knew the line I was treading after I pushed the first boundary and LO #4 gave me a green light instead of shutting me down. That story is well documented throughout LwL.
I thought I could walk that line until I found one day that I couldn’t. LO #4’s relationship collapsed, she reached out to me, and things became very complicated very quickly.
But, I never was in denial about the situation. I never forgot where my loyalty and duty was. I knew the relationship with LO #4 was going to end at some point. A crash was coming. It was a question of controlling it and getting out with the least amount of damage, to me, my marriage, and LO #4.
There wasn’t an ideal way out but some exits were less destructive and retained a small measure of dignity. I wanted to exit with LO #4 feeling that encountering me was a good thing vice a bad thing. When she broke NC, I could have stayed away but I made the mistake of re-engaging her and pushed the issue. That was a mistake.
I didn’t disclose to my wife until 3 years after LO #4 and I said goodbye. I wanted to clear the mines that remained. It was tough but my behavior in that time supported it was a dead issue from her perspective.
Well, I myself was never in denial about the LE. I never disclosed to my spouse, though. Basically, I was in denial about being married! My behavior was more like someone who was single. I was also in denial about him being married… and also about him being my boss. As I’m coming out of this LE, I’ve realized that I’m not proud of my behavior. Even though I tried to rationalize it due to my displeasure in my marriage, it wasn’t right. The “fun” of the LE is over. Time to lower myself back to earth.
Thanks for the comments and insights, all. Really helpful.
My husband has used, at one time or another, all three forms of denial mentioned at the beginning of this article. Perhaps these excuses are not simply attempts to gaslight me after all?
Thank you, Dr. L, for your excellent research into this aspect of limerence while married. And thank you, LaR, LE & LIAM, for your in-depth responses. Although I probably won’t ever know exactly what my husband is thinking, his behavior suggests shades of all three of your accounts.
I was thinking more towards the inevitability of divorce this week. Maybe I’ll try to hang on a little while longer and see what the research bears.
One thing I’d like to note is that the strength and type of denial changes with his alcohol use/withdrawal. I wish I had kept a daily diary of it all these past years. It’s just such a blur of pain at this point
Libra,
“One thing I’d like to note is that the strength and type of denial changes with his alcohol use/withdrawal.”
How does it change it? Is there more, and more far-fetched, denial when there is alcohol involved? Or the other way round, alcohol
makes him face the truth more?
“In the case of drugs of abuse and alcohol, the neurological changes can include direct damage to the brain, killing neurons that will not recover.” — Dr L
Whether alcohol makes limerent/anyone feel more far-fetched or closer to the truth, they don’t have certain neurons anymore to control their actions. They lose will power in taking right or challenging actions, let alone dealing chemical-induced limerence….
A lot of alcoholic’s brain has been damaged beyond repair! 🧑🔧
Both. He’s been really inconsistent. Sometimes he suddenly becomes angry, defensive & irrational, but other times, he expresses remorse or will give me clues about the truth of what’s occurred. The combination of limerence and alcohol dependence has made everything extremely complicated.
During the height of his LE, I believe he started drinking more to cope with the despair of uncertainty, and the decreased inhibitions from alcohol caused increased fantasizing, rumination, planning, pursuit etc. And it probably enhanced the limerence euphoria at other times.
Even though he knew that his behavior was obsessive/compulsive, irresponsible and risky, (he purposely hid it from me for years) he still was able to rationalize or justify it in part by devaluing me.
The questions about denial, and Dr L’s mention of anosognosia led me start reading “I am not sick, I don’t need help” by Xavier Amador (available on nami.org). The author describes how pockets of awareness and unawareness can coexist side by side in patients, how they can be aware of a condition in others but not themselves, or aware of some symptoms but completely unaware of others.
It seems to dovetail with the limerence altered state of mind: denial (to both himself and to me) of obvious evidence; bizarre explanations/excuses; lack of empathy; inability to reason.
Sorry if my thoughts are scattered, the anxiety from all this is mind-numbing.
Hi Libra – I’m sorry you’re in so much pain. It always makes me sad to see the lower case “i” you place ahead of SO.
Did your husband disclose his limerence to you or did you discover on your own?
Does he have an understanding of limerence? Does he visit this site? I know I found it very helpful to read what limerents post here in understanding my husband’s limerence. Perhaps he’d find it helpful to read what other SOs post here.
How long have you been married? Were their issues in your marriage before the limerence? Does he want to stay married?
To answer your question about gaslighting: It’s of course impossible for anyone here to know for sure what motivates your husband, but I imagine it’s very uncomfortable for limerents to be discussing their feelings toward LO with their spouse. So there’s a good deal of defensiveness and desire to minimize the limerence to both feel less guilty and to not hurt the spouse.
I accidentally discovered the years-long secret relationship on his phone.
We had been happily married (or so I thought) for more than 30 years.
Luckily, I stumbled onto LWL and after watching a few of Dr L’s videos, he admitted to the EA and agreed it was limerence.
But he also drifted in & out of various types of denial, and has a disturbing lack of empathy regarding to the whole situation.
Do you know if he has maintained the relationship with LO? I think there is a difference between an undisclosed one-sided limerence and EA (though limerence would be part of EA).
How long has it been since you found out?
It’s now been 4.5 years since I realized my husband’s limerence and asked him about it. It took us a good three years of frequent conversation about his limerence to get to peace. He no longer has his rumination/obsession/fantasies about his LO and he doesn’t follow her on social media. He had very little actual contact with her all along. His LO is someone we see occasionally in social settings and we almost never know in advance if we’ll see her. Sometimes he manages running into her quite well, and other times he “leaks” his emotions and it’s painful for me to see. I imagine his LO suspects his feelings for her, but she doesn’t make any attempt (at least not overt) to keep him “hooked.” She’s a fine person and sometimes we’re all able to talk and socialize as though the limerence never happened.
I would say my husband also had a “disturbing lack of empathy” in our initial conversations. And sometimes he’d abruptly say he didn’t want to talk about it. But in time and with vulnerability on both our parts we’ve worked things out. In some ways, our marriage is better, but it still hurts me to remember the limerence and I still remember it every single day.
The Bitter Paradox of Limerence
My wife and I have been married for 25 years. We have a good marriage, but for most of those years I have felt that something was missing — a certain spark, intensity, or emotional excitement that I could never quite reach.
I now understand much more clearly what was standing between us.
Before she met me, my wife had been deeply infatuated with another man. We now believe it was limerence. She had convinced herself that she was over him by the time we met, and for years she insisted that he had never really meant anything to her.
But I could see something she couldn’t — or perhaps wasn’t ready to see.
Early in our relationship, there was one evening when she simply told me she had no plans. She said she would just see what happened that evening. In reality, she had already planned to go out with him and his friends because he happened to be in town for an event.
I eventually understood that she was out with him and tried calling her several times. She simply let the phone ring. At first, she said afterwards that she had just forgotten to answer. Later, she admitted that she had deliberately chosen not to answer.
What I only learned very recently was that he had actually seen my calls coming in — and laughed while she ignored them.
That detail is particularly painful to me. She was sitting there with an old flame, deliberately ignoring her husband’s calls while he watched. I find that deeply humiliating, even 25 years later.
There were also a couple of other occasions when he happened to appear unexpectedly. Each time, she became completely euphoric. I remember seeing her practically hanging out of a car window, shouting to him as he passed by. She seemed to completely lose her head whenever he appeared.
But there was never any physical affair. He was never actually interested in having a relationship with her, and she never pursued one either. She did not contact him afterwards, and she has never tried to find him again.
Just one month before our wedding, he unexpectedly appeared at a party she was attending. The flirting between them was so obvious that other people noticed and wondered whether something was going on, even though she was getting married a month later.
Then we got married.
He sent flowers to our wedding. The next day, on the long drive home, she took his flowers with her. She threw away her bridal bouquet but kept his flowers, held them in her lap for the entire journey home, and then put them on our living-room table.
I don’t think she understood at the time how inappropriate and hurtful that was. Perhaps she realized later that it had been foolish, but she never really confronted just how far beyond normal boundaries it was.
For me, it was deeply humiliating.
And yet, for 25 years, she has maintained that there was nothing significant about him. It was me who had a problem with her friendship and she was even angry at me for destroying this special friendship. She hated every time I wanted to talk about it. Answered short – it was stupid. Move on. and changed subject.
The strange thing is that she has actually been remarkably loyal in her actions. She hasn’t contacted him in more than 25 years. She hasn’t even Googled a picture of him. She didn’t know what he looked like as an adult.
In her mind, he had simply been frozen in time — forever the attractive young man she had once been infatuated with.
So although she never actively sought him out, the emotional imprint remained.
The part that hurt our marriage
I have known for a very long time that this was part of what stood between us.
She has often told me that I’m simply not the romantic type. She has said that romance isn’t particularly important to me, that I’m more about being a team, and that I don’t really have much of a romantic “love language.”
But I knew that wasn’t the whole story.
I had seen her become euphoric. I knew she was capable of that kind of excitement. I had seen it with my own eyes whenever he appeared.
So for years I tried, consciously or unconsciously, to awaken that same enthusiasm in her.
I pursued challenging and exciting careers in the military and the police. I pushed myself in extreme sports. I achieved things I was proud of. I devoted enormous amounts of time to our children and did a great deal of charitable work.
I wanted her to be proud of me. I wanted to impress her. More than anything, I wanted to awaken that sense of excitement in her.
But I never seemed to be able to.
Now she understands something she didn’t understand before.
It wasn’t necessarily that she didn’t have a romantic side. She had buried it.
After learning about limerence, she has said that she sometimes couldn’t bring herself to be romantic with me because, on some level, it felt false. It didn’t feel like the “real thing” because it didn’t produce the same overwhelming emotional rush.
And that may be one of the most painful parts of the whole story.
She mistook the intensity of limerence for the authenticity of love.
Because she didn’t experience that same emotional rollercoaster with me, genuine intimacy and romance could somehow feel less real to her.
So the bitter paradox is this:
She thought the real thing was fake, while she thought the false dopamine high was real.
The breakthrough
Eventually, I reached a point where I told her that I needed an honest answer. I couldn’t keep living with the denial.
Her behaviour back then had been so obviously abnormal to me, yet whenever I brought it up, she would simply say, “Yes, it was stupid,” as though that explained everything.
Then, for the first time, she told me the truth: she had been hopelessly in love with him.
That was a huge breakthrough.
I also learned more about who he had been at the time. He had apparently been voted “Mr. Chemistry” at university, and there had been many women who were very attracted to him. Suddenly, some of the dynamics began to make more sense to me — the intense attraction, the idealization, and the enormous emotional charge surrounding him.
We had a long conversation about limerence, and I explained that what she had spent all these years calling a “friendship” didn’t really explain what had happened.
And something finally broke open for her.
She realized that this wasn’t simply an unusually intense friendship. The emotional pattern had been limerence.
She broke down and finally understood that she had been carrying a distorted version of this relationship in her mind for decades.
Since then, things between us have become dramatically better.
What remains
There is still one thing I think we haven’t completely resolved.
She still wants to preserve the idea that they had a special friendship and a unique friendship chemistry — that there was limerence, but also something genuinely special between them as friends. She realize intellectually that you can’t have both, but emotionally I get the sense that she holds on to small parts of the old special friend story.
Maybe there was some genuine friendship. I don’t need to deny that.
But I struggle with the idea that we can separate the “special friendship” from everything else so neatly. The behaviour was profoundly unbalanced. He wasn’t her partner, he wasn’t pursuing a relationship with her, and yet he could still trigger an extraordinary emotional response in her.
And I think she still has some difficulty seeing just how unhealthy and one-sided that dynamic actually was.
I don’t need her to hate him.
I don’t even need her to decide that every moment of their friendship was meaningless.
But I think she needs to be able to see the whole picture, the imbalance between them, what a bad friend he was (playing with her feelings) and the way limerence distorted how she experienced it.
Because perhaps that is the final step in taking the power out of it.
I don’t think my wife deliberately betrayed me. In fact, she has been remarkably loyal in her actions for 25 years. She never pursued him, never contacted him, and never built a life around him. Never googled him him or reached out or even looked at him on SOME. She was afraid at could wake something in her.
But she carried an emotional imprint she didn’t understand.
And I spent 25 years living with the consequences of something neither of us could properly name.
Now we finally can.
The limerence wasn’t a great lost love. It wasn’t evidence that he was somehow more compatible with her than I was.
It was an intense emotional state that she mistook for something deeper and more authentic than it really was.
And perhaps the hardest lesson is that we can be completely sincere while being profoundly wrong about our own emotions.
The past cannot be changed.
But something has changed between us now that we finally understand it.
George,
Incredible story, though it must have been so tough for you – thanks for sharing it here.
What your wife has done is to compartmentalise – seemingly without fully knowing consciously that that’s what she’s doing.
As someone who has done my share of attempted compartmentalising and ended up failing to trick myself (see above) … I find it amazing that she could compartmentalise for 25 years, and until confronted.
Like other posters have already said, I hope this ‘wringing it out’ and working through it proves to be a positive step for you both. Go well.
George,
I don’t know if this will make your wife feel any better, but as a limerent who had a serious relationship (years ago) with an LO … all of the intensity and infatuation fade. Completely. Once the uncertainty is resolved and you know the LO feels similarly (is, if not limerent themselves, at least really interested) and they commit to you … the clock starts ticking on the intense infatuation.
So if her LO was actually interested in her (sounds like he wasn’t; he cruelly toyed with her) and wanted to be with her… the intensity would have died eventually.
Thanks for reply. Problem is that this is something I hope she is discovering herself. At some intellectual level she probably have, but a 25 year old illusion take some time to eradicate…
She just want to forget and move on. But thank you for sharing. With the right timing I might share it with her.
I may ad that two days after our wedding LO sent her a sms; «Congrats, remember that I love you! Hug»
By coinsedance I saw the sms when it came and said «that was quite unnecessary… «
hoped she wouldn’t reply since this have been difficult for me. As soon as I left the room she replied long and asked how he was doing etc. He never replied. (He probably had his recognition) living her with a big question mark – what did he mean? Etc
Sorry for the very long reply here. Never spoken with anyone in quarter of a century – just keeping it inside. It had to come out and this blog happens to be the place for it…😞
Welcome, George!
Thank you for your very poignant story. You seems to have a remarkable level of empathy, patience, and understanding, and I’m also glad to see that your marriage is moving in a much better direction.
Hoping to learn much from you in the coming days. However, I’m off on a two week vacation with my wife, starting tomorrow.
Good luck!
Thank to so much.
I just had to share the story and hopefully have some mirroring on what was going on and how to move on. I am so so so tired. Some days are great – some days (and nights…) are heavy.
But the truth will set us free! Just understanding what has been going on has been a revolution for both of us, even though I believe here limrence filter have made her blind to some parts of the story. When she, 6 months after the whole truth and forgiveness session, told me that LO actually watched her ignore my calls and laughed. And I asked her why she haven’t told me that before, she did not realize why that was important and ment anything. I asked why she did tell him that I called when he asked. She replied «Did you expect me to lie?» She could have said it was no one, doesn’t matter or whatever. She was honestly surprised that I was hurt by that detail. So she probably still see the story thru the limrence lense. But she is getting there. Eventually..
I don’t plan to write much here as I don’t believe it will help me move on and the details can be recognized and I am extremely afraid this will come out, so I’ll keep a low profile.
But again; thanks for the reply.
Enjoy you’re vacation
Hi again, George.
One thing I can say for sure about your wife’s LO is that he’s an a**ole. And that you are the complete opposite of that. Always remember that. You are not lacking in any way when it comes to the important stuff.
Also, whether or not you choose to write much (and I do hope that you do), there is an absolute wealth of stuff here that has helped me immensely in both my understanding of limerence and for the support.
I’d agree with that after reading the text he sent her after getting married—then he ghosts her. Like he was deliberately playing with her head.
I want to say the same thing: your wife’s LO is an A**ole.
“Mr/Miss. Chemistry” in any school settings were/are naturally nauseating to me; but this LO was also cruel beyond belief…
If you can forgive all those cruel details, your heart must be big enough to sail the boat of life 🛶!
“He wasn’t her partner, he wasn’t pursuing a relationship with her, and yet he could still trigger an extraordinary emotional response in her.”
**I’ve been in an LE for about six months now. This pretty much sums it up.
It’s great that you and your wife are working through this and that you are willingly making the effort to understand her. May you have another 25+ years to make it the marriage you both dream of!
Thank you🫶
If your wife could truly wake up and understand what happened with her delusional limerence (so stupid), you may have another 25 years of solid, truly emotionally connected marriage!
Best wishes! 🤞🧧
She did wake up. She is very intelectual but never understood what was going on at the time. She felt stupid and avoided him completely for 25 years after the last sms when he ghosted her.
She get it now, but she just want to forget all about it and live happy with me. But if she goes to fast she will still clinch to the myth that «they» had something special, they shouldn’t flirt etc and not seeing that it was completely unbalanced. Realizing that she invested so much for someone who invested so little is hard to accept I guess. Hopefully she will see it as we finally can speak honestly about what happened.
“She did wake up. She is very intellectual but never understood what was going on at the time. “
As every limerent here knows that when one slips in LE, logic and intellectuality lose their power, either helplessly or a bit by choice (in Dr L’ case). It sounds like your wife didn’t know what was going on back then and thus “sucked” in LE and its ember deep and long! Ignorance is a never a bless, but a root of many pains in life!
“She felt stupid and avoided him completely for 25 years after the last sms when he ghosted her.”
An intellectual mind tends to see losing logic or emotional control as the most stupid/embarrassing thing in the world. Without a deep understanding of LE, physical NC does not necessarily remove LE, which was then repressed down deeper internally.
“She get it now, but she just want to forget all about it and live happy with me. “
If she truly gets the nature of LE and the baseless “special friendship”, then there was/is little positive stuff to remember, except perhaps embarrassment and regrets. Her wish and determination to live happily with you will help her “forget all about it” Fast or live with it in peace without any emotional charge. Then, she can focus her emotions on you!
“But if she goes too fast she will still clinch to the myth that «they» had something special, they shouldn’t flirt etc and not seeing that it was completely unbalanced. “
If she did wake up, hasn’t she realized that her LE /“special friendship” was totally one-sided, unbalanced, and the myth — something special, was merely the chemical reaction and its illusional ember in her system? Once T brain reaches its conclusion (about her LE), F mind will follow soon. There isn’t necessary (could be slightly, though) “clinch” to the myth.
“Realizing that she invested so much for someone who invested so little is hard to accept I guess.”
To spend 25 years to hold onto the “phantom” of the young LO is quite excessive and can cause the injury in pride, self-esteem, and self-confidence. Repressing them inside of her would cause a lot of dreams/nightmares in which the senses of embarrassment, anger, regrets and self-shaming could be captured through “twisted” images and “new” narratives — making her to relive in any unprocessed LE reactions.
“Hopefully she will see it as we finally can speak honestly about what happened.”
I think you can share more your LE knowledge with her from now on, since she has strong intellectual capacity to process/let go the past and “move on” into a brighter future with you.
Once she could speak up freely and safely without ever worrying being judged by you, then the “myth” would leave her system soon, despite being subconsciously stored for a quarter of a century!
Please feel free/safe to share with us your “new” marriage of mind and heart with your “enlightened” wife. A good luck!🍀
We need to hear more good news in this forum.
I’ve been married fourteen years now and when I found myself having feelings that felt a lot like love toward another person it was really difficult for me. Now I know that experience was limerence.
My wife found out because I had had too much to drink trying to deal with the confusing feelings I couldn’t work out and wound up running my mouth and saying too much about my LO. I downplayed it as a crush, apologized, and we’ve moved on but I’ve never really shared with my wife how far gone I was. Talking it through with my therapist, we both agree that being completely honest at this point would only add insult to injury and it’s best to move on.
I was very physically attracted to this person but in my case I rarely thought about my LO sexually. I really just wanted to be close to them. I also never really thought about how things would work if my LO reciprocated my feelings. As deluded as I was, I don’t think I ever got to a point where I seriously thought about the consequences of any next steps. In retrospect I’m really thankful nothing happened and my LO did not reciprocate. As frustrating as it was at the time, the NC LO initialized was enough to finally get me to move on.
I’ve talked with my therapist a lot about how I’m not really a person who ever feels guilty about anything. I feel generally bad for hurting my wife and I acknowledge that I fed into my limerence a lot and had an EA in my mind but I don’t particularly feel guilty about it. I have, however, resolved to do better about managing my day dreams and don’t want to ever have an EA again and I’ve done a lot better with a lot of therapy and self work. Recently I talked with my therapist about having “limerent speed bumps” and I’ve found it helpful to take time during the day to stop and analyze my thought patterns to make sure I’m not going down another harmful rabbit hole.
I’ve read, and I think it’s true, that having feelings toward another person is not necessarily something everyone can avoid. However, I can control my actions and not flirt with other people or cultivate my day dreams. I think it was November 2024 when NC began with my previous LO and I haven’t had a relapse with anyone else. Every once in a while I do need to remind myself that the dreams my brain decides to give me while I sleep mean nothing, not every conversation with an attractive person is an indication of something more, and watch what I say but I haven’t seriously fed into any limerence in years.
UST,
“I’ve been married fourteen years now and when I found myself having feelings that felt a lot like love toward another person it was really difficult for me. Now I know that experience was limerence.”
Very glad to hear that you’re enlightened now. Knowledge is a blessing and power!
“Talking it through with my therapist, we both agree that being completely honest at this point would only add insult to injury and it’s best to move on.”
I hope you won’t get into another drinking binge and accidentally reveal more of your last LO to your wife, causing her more pain. Over-drinking is purely BAD, BAD, and BAD to oneself and others around drunker.
“I also never really thought about how things would work if my LO reciprocated my feelings. “
I don’t remember reading any post here (in 3 years), in which partnered limerents would know what to do if their LO reciprocated. Nonetheless, that didn’t stop them to have dreamed, chased, bargained for any means to keep in touch with their LO, so their LE would not die.
“As deluded as I was, I don’t think I ever got to a point where I seriously thought about the consequences of any next steps. “
LE is an involuntary mental state, no one could plan or has planed it. Have you really thought what caused your last LE? Did you seek any validation from her? Was your SO’s love and validation not enough?
“In retrospect I’m really thankful nothing happened and my LO did not reciprocate. “
In the online gaming world with an inhuman, metal screen in between, I couldn’t see/understand how you could glimmer at her or she could reciprocate…. Your five sensory are deprived, your fight-or-flight alarm is turned off — meaning one can neither feel safe nor unsafe, comfortable nor uncomfortable… your interactions were based on words and intellectuality, how F brain could follow T mind in that setting?
(I had an office meeting and pot luck lunch today after 3 months of the summer break, and felt such a huge difference in speaking with colleagues f2f than through emails. Their smiles, laughters, expressive voices, body movements, hugs, hair styles/colors, dresses, individually prepared/cooked international food, etc. so alive and lovely… My thoughts and feelings about them were definitive, nothing like online interactions, aside from depth and contents of chats. )
“As frustrating as it was at the time, the NC LO initialized was enough to finally get me to move on.”
So, “the NC” was an ultimate gain for you? What happened to your ex LO nowadays? Or you just no longer go to those gaming rooms?
“Recently I talked with my therapist about having “limerent speed bumps” and I’ve found it helpful to take time during the day to stop and analyze my thought patterns to make sure I’m not going down another harmful rabbit hole.”
I think that’s very effective way to observe and analyze one’s mind during the day or whenever one pumps into new encounters that might involve glimmers.
“I’ve read, and I think it’s true, that having feelings toward another person is not necessarily something everyone can avoid.”
Of course, not. We’re sensory human beings, we feel others/pets while interacting with them. Our magnetic field sense theirs and tells us (often immediately) whether the other side is attractive or repulsive, or neutral, in various degrees.
“However, I can control my actions and not flirt with other people or cultivate my day dreams.”
Most limerents can if they want to.
“Every once in a while I do need to remind myself that the dreams my brain decides to give me while I sleep mean nothing, “
Based on my limited learning about Jungian dream theories, I’m afraid that I can’t quite agree with you here. Dreams tell us what’s in our Unconscious — our deep wishes/desire/worries/unprocessed emotions, etc. But you’re right that dreams don’t tell anything about our current external world or foretell/predict our future.
“not every conversation with an attractive person is an indication of something more, and watch what I say “
Precisely. Just enjoy contents of spontaneous conversation while learning something new about that attractive person.
“but I haven’t seriously fed into any limerence in years.”
Congratulations! 🎉 Very happy for all your progresses in life… 🎈
So beating your last LE is a success story here?