Alice is in a spot of bother. She has been married for nearly ten years, and met her husband after a previous relationship ended. It was kind of a “soft ending” in some respects:
We didn’t dislike each other, but it wasn’t working for some reason. It was very hard to end the relationship over that, but it needed to end, as we were both unhappy with how things were. (I ended it, and I discovered later that my ex partner went into turmoil over this and took a good while to get over it. I didn’t know this at the time and only found out recently – we took a clean break and didn’t communicate for years).
Fast forward to the present, and Alice finds herself visiting her ex’s city for work, and – fatefully – gets in touch to suggest a friendly catch up over coffee after all these years.
Experienced limerents will be wincing at this point
My ex anticipated that it might be a bit difficult; I was much more breezy and thought bygones were bygones and it would all be fine. He was right, I was wrong. It wasn’t fine.
She was hit by the limerence train.
On seeing my ex, all the old feelings came flooding back that I didn’t even know were there, even in dormant form.
Being an enlightened soul, Alice has been using this unexpected and shocking experience to try and understand both what happened in the past and why she is going through limerence now.
The LE for your ex that you wouldn’t have in a million years anticipated a few weeks prior, now prompts almost total overwhelming, all-consuming thoughts of them, such that work begins to get neglected. You try and eke out time in your schedule for ‘alone time’ to indulge fantasies about the ex. These fantasies feel utterly delicious. Thinking about the ex becomes your new hobby. They give you a dopamine drenched high. You stare at old pictures of them and can sense your synapses / neurones crackling and fizzing with pleasure.
Curiously, I don’t think Alice was limerent for her ex first time round, but she does suspect that part of the emotional dynamic – and possibly the cause of the breakup – was complementary, unhealthy attachment styles. Also, her marriage was already in trouble before that ill-fated “old friends” catch up, and it’s a form of trouble that comes up a lot in the messages I get: Alice and her husband are no longer having sex. They are trying to work this out (in their case, he is the low libido partner), but as anyone who regularly reads agony aunt columns knows, that’s a perennially high-stakes, high-conflict topic (which always degenerates into thousands of comments as people shout variations on “The marriage is dead!” and “There’s more to life than sex!” past each other).
So, Alice got in touch to ask:
I just wondered if you’d consider writing a blog post giving an in depth look at limerence between people who were once partners, as I think that brings a while other layer of complexity (and pain)
Good idea. Here goes.
So this is not something I’ve personally experienced, but I can see it’s a doozy. There are a number of likely aggravating factors with ex-partners, making limerence both more likely to happen and harder to get over. Let’s work through the tribulations.
1) LO reciprocated once, so they may well reciprocate again
The thing that limerents crave most of all is reciprocation. They want LO to be as madly infatuated as they are, so they can submerge themselves into each other in a glorious euphoric melding of oneness. Well, the thing with exes is – even if the whole “euphoric wonder” thing wasn’t there – they did reciprocate once. They were into you enough to get together and fool around. So one of the major drivers of limerence is built in at the start. You want them, and it’s totally credible that they want you too and you could have them.
2) It didn’t work out first time, so it might not work out again
Another major driver for limerence is uncertainty. You’re sure they’re attracted to you, but you can’t be sure how much. Well, with an ex that uncertainty factor is also built right into the fabric of the situation. You know it failed once. It was good and then it wasn’t good, so even though you are massively keen again, it could all fall apart again. Should you even try? But you’ve both changed, so maybe it would work better this time? Why did it fail? Because I ended it and left him! Maybe if we try again he will end it this time?
This sort of mental second-guessing is the stuff that rumination is made of. Crazy making merry-go-round thoughts that have no resolution, but keep LO central in your mind – keep the prospect of a relationship with LO central in your mind. Endlessly working though the permutations, comparing the old (rose-tinted) relationship with your current (dull looking) marriage and wondering what you really want.
3) You know you are sexually compatible
Most people don’t end up in a romantic relationship of any length, unless they are enjoying the sex. Lousy sexual partners rarely get past a few clumsy and unrewarding attempts at hooking up, after all. Exes are a known quantity – the sex with them was at least good enough to mean you gave it a go for a while. And it might have been great.
Add to that the limerence idealisation of only remembering the red hot feats of sexual athleticism, and glossing over the good-enough-but-not-very-memorable everyday encounters, and you’ve got some good fodder for X-rated daydreams.
Add to that the dam of pent up desire and emotional pain that comes from repeated rejection by a spouse and… well, I wouldn’t like to be anywhere near that bomb when it goes off.
4) Unfinished business plus nostalgia
It’s possibly a little early for Alice in her mid thirties, but we’ve discussed before the fact that midlife is a particularly vulnerable time for limerence. To a large degree that’s because of a feeling that time is running out, that you have chosen a road for yourself and have a little panic that it might not be the right one, and you realise that other options are closing down. You will never be an astronaut. You will never be a pop star. You will never be young again.
A paradox of midlife, though, is that the realisation that new opportunities are disappearing provokes a wave of nostalgia. Instead of seeking new adventures, many people revisit old places and pastimes – perhaps in the hope of recapturing the feelings that they used to evoke when they were younger, and full of hopes and dreams. I’m sure the same principle applies to old relationships.
A life with LO was a road that Alice chose not to take, no doubt for very good reasons. But, that road seems to have opened up again. Perhaps it’s possible to go back in time and get it right after all? Perhaps their complementary emotional issues could perfectly gel, and they can save each other now that they are so much wiser and more experienced? A seductive thought. An emotional time machine, and a second chance at mastering the romantic adventure.
It’s much more likely, of course, that it’s all an illusion. The same problems that ended it in the first place would need to be confronted and resolved, and that would be just as much emotional labour as trying to make the current marriage work.
Now, Alice strikes me as a purposeful type, who is feeling a bit ridiculous about the situation she got herself into, and is determined to stay true to her moral compass. I think she’ll do fine.
For the rest of us, her story is a salutary lesson in how perilous coffee dates with old flames can be.
Step carefully. There’s dragons out there.
“You love somebody, and then you don’t love them anymore. But if you really love somebody, you always love them, don’t you? Isn’t there always some small part of you that reads their horoscope in the paper everyday?” – Cynthia Heimel, A Girl’s Guide To Chaos
My ex, LO #2: Virgo
“So, if I leave her…
And, you leave him…
Can we ever get it back again..?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaRnRp63Aj4
The answer is “Probably not” but the song is catchy.
I love the Beach Boys!
Today is LO #2’s 65th birthday. I made the mistake of telling my wife. She asked that I not acknowledge it.
My wife didn’t like LO #2 30 years ago and it seems nothing has changed.
Why in the world would you raise that topic and how could you possibly expect her to respond differently? Or was her response the one you wanted? It is very likely your wife feels her position is threatened everytime LO#2 is brought up.
You have discusses #2 frequently since I have been reading here, so I think your wife is right not to care for all the head space she still occupies. It sounds as though you still carry a torch for her and are more eager to relight it than toss it into the water.
The subject happened to be Social Security and when we could respectively retire. LO #2 happens to be in the last year you can retire at 65. My wife and I have to work longer.
I doubt that torch will ever be relit. I spent a lot of time with the therapist on this. It’s not that I want to get back together, it’s about unfinished business and the ability to let things go. The therapist said I ended the relationship with LO #2 and rebounded into my wife. She said for a rebound relationship, we had done remarkably well. I argued that with her. I told the therapist we’d broken up over a year earlier. The therapist replied that we were still seeing each other and I’d laid out the conditions of LO #2’s return only a few months prior to meeting my wife. The therapist said if LO #2 hadn’t said the wrong thing and really pissed me off, I would have likely kept things going. The therapist said timing is everything, my wife came along when she did, and I was smart enough to see which of them was the better offer.
The therapist said I’d never mourned my relationship with LO #2 and I left a lot of things on the table. She said once my wife came along, I just left. She said in her opinion I needed to finally allow myself to do that. Considering I had a wife and two kids by that point, pulling that off was no easy feat. I took the dog for a lot of long walks and let a lot of things out. The therapist also said that back then, I hadn’t processed the things LO #2 had said to me. Understanding that led to understanding other things that were affecting my marriage that had nothing to do with LO #2.
As for the unfinished business, the therapist tried to take care of that vicariously by taking on the role of LO #2. She did a pretty good job but, she didn’t get all of it. She said an actual confrontation wouldn’t do anybody any good. She said out last meeting wasn’t a goodbye of two people who’d spent 4 years thinking they would be together, our last meeting was a fight. It was and I started it. I think If I met her today, it would still be a fight. Unlike our last meeting in a restaurant in Pioneer Square in April, 1988, over lunch, I’d know exactly what I was saying and why. I had the chance to do that when LO #2 sent the FB friend request and my dead father came back in a dream to tell me to stay away from her. I tell myself that there’s nothing I want to say to LO #2 and nothing I want to hear from her. But, that’s not true. That woman owes me an apology. In the 5 stages, it’s all anger and acceptance. I’m way past the other 3.
I know what the right answer is. One of the truly great things about this site is I can still work on what I need to do.
“The subject happened to be Social Security and when we could respectively retire. LO #2 happens to be in the last year you can retire at 65. My wife and I have to work longer.”
My point is there was no reason to speak about LO#2 to your wife whatsoever and to remember and state it was her birthday 30 years later, to your wife, who never liked her anyway was unnecessary unless you wanted her upset and off-balance.
I am willing to bet that every time you bring her up it pisses Mrs. Scharnhorst off. Then to remember her birthday and insert that into the conversation? Four years or more of therapy but you still made certain she knows that LO#2 is important enough to remember her 65th birthday.
I bet it REALLY hurt her feelings. If you agree, do not buy her a “guilt gift”. I have received plenty of them and I never wear them. They only bring back memories of the miserable event that led to them showing up. I quietly give them away.
Article of the Day: https://thoughtcatalog.com/kris-gage/2019/12/of-course-your-ex-still-thinks-about-you/
I found this article comforting. For years, I wondered if LO #2 ever thought about me in all those years. While it was technically possible to accidentally friend someone you weren’t actually looking at by fat fingering the old “People You May Know List” (I know because I accidentally sent a request to a teenage girl in St. Louis), I’m going to assume that even if the request was an accident, she was on my page.
At first, I didn’t know what was worse, wondering if she had ever looked, or believing she had, at least once, and wondering what it might have meant.
“. . . midlife is a particularly vulnerable time for limerence. To a large degree that’s because of a feeling that time is running out, that you have chosen a road for yourself and have a little panic that it might not be the right one, and you realise that other options are closing down. You will never be an astronaut. You will never be a pop star. You will never be young again.
A paradox of midlife, though, is that the realisation that new opportunities are disappearing provokes a wave of nostalgia. Instead of seeking new adventures, many people revisit old places and pastimes – perhaps in the hope of recapturing the feelings that they used to evoke when they were younger, and full of hopes and dreams. ”
I have read and re-read the posts on midlife limerence and could not agree more. I am fascinated by the concept of nostalgia and how it plays a role in limerence. Not so much for an ex in my case, but as a longing for a time when I was younger and care-free. I see LO as the perfect ideal of how I used to be years ago before family and career and stress and pressure and responsibility happened. I see a younger version of myself. We already have so much in common. But I have a deep longing to return to that. I ponder regret of my life’s choices. I should have spurned higher education and my profession and done something artistic with my life instead. Sure it wouldn’t provide me with as much money but who cares. Life is about more than that.
But I had another thought about nostalgia that just dawned on me recently, and I wonder if it’s been discussed here. In my ruminations about LO, I often think back to times in our lives when we were growing up (we are from the same region but about 2 hours’ drive apart). We visited the same places, attended universities at roughly the same times, etc. I wonder if our paths ever crossed and we didn’t know it. I get sent down this rabbit hole anytime I see an old photo of LO or we discuss things from our past. Anytime I think about her past, I instantly think about my past: Where was I at that time? What was I doing? Was I happy then?
My conclusion is that it is my subconscious trying to re-create a time and place where LO and I could have met under different circumstances without barriers to us being together. I am convinced LO and I would have a made a perfect match, if given the chance. The tragic part is that we were never given that chance. And now barriers exist for both of us. That creates such an ache in my stomach I cannot even describe it. I mourn the death of a relationship that never was.
I can relate to this.
When LO #4 left her BF, she moved to about 15 miles from where I used to live. I could get to her with my eyes closed. I gave her directions to places. I could see us on the deck of the restaurant at sunset, the smell of low tide, hearing the ferry sound its whistle as it swung into the dock. I could see us walking along specific beaches. I knew the kind of beer she liked and what places likely had it.
If that wasn’t bad enough, when I disclosed, she said, “Wow! I had no idea. I’m flattered and, under different circumstances, might even be curious. But, circumstances are what they are.”
In my case, from what she said, if I was available, I think she would have at least given me a shot. That was really hard for awhile but now, since I’m not willing to sacrifice my marriage and family, I think that for me, that’s as good as it will ever get.