Reader Andrew got in touch with me about a difficult dilemma:
Help! I don’t know what to do! My girlfriend dumped me about a month ago but she has made it clear she still wants me to be her best friend.
Even that brief summary triggered a lot of emotions in me. Here’s how my thoughts raced:
- That’s an unbelievably selfish request
- But… maybe she has just realised that she loves Andrew in a non-romantic way, which is sad but not necessarily selfish
- It’s possible she’s trying to let him down gently from the breakup
- Or that she’s trying to assuage her guilt for dumping him
- Whatever. He should still just walk away
- That will be really hard if he’s still in love with her
- But it’s got to beat hanging around in agonising limbo
After working through those rapid-fire mental zigzags, I read on.
I have a long history of limerence and I fear my old habits are coming back. She has a history of people in her past abandoning her and I don’t want to be like everyone else, but I don’t know if I can do this again.
That triggered another avalanche of thoughts:
- If his limerence wasn’t resolved by the time of the breakup, it will flare up again with a vengeance
- If his limerence trigger is the rescue fantasy it will be even worse
- But, it will be hard for her to cope if he does distance himself
- Dammit! That’s my White Knight syndrome kicking in
I’ve come to learn that such rapid, varied and emotionally powerful responses to a limerence story means it’s tapping into something important. In this case, I suspect it’s the question of what a romantic relationship should be like.
The two tribes
I’ve written before about the different experiences of limerents and non-limerents when it comes to early love, and how they cause a tragedy of misunderstandings and mismatched expectations.
For a limerent, Andrew’s scenario is agony. The prospect of being emotionally intimate with an LO, but not in a romantic relationship, would be slow torture. You crave ecstatic union, they want to be your best friend. The more time you spend with them, the deeper the limerence will get. The more you give, the more they’ll affirm their affection for you, and the more you’ll want them. It’s not going to work.
From the perspective of a non-limerent, proposing a platonic friendship is much more rational. They were attracted to you, felt affection and affinity, and so tried out a relationship to see if it would develop into a stronger romantic attachment. Unfortunately, it didn’t. From this perspective, it’s sensible and honest to admit that the lack of spark means the best future is a close friendship that keeps the good connection alive.
Of course, we don’t know if Andrew’s ex is a non-limerent, but if she is, she won’t understand the implications of what she’s asking for from Andrew. She could be thinking “let’s keep the affectional bond, but look for romance elsewhere” with no notion that this would trap Andrew in limerence limbo.
Alternatively, there is a possibility that she is a limerent, and felt the glimmer and euphoria for Andrew early in the relationship, but the limerence high has now passed. With reciprocation and time the sparkles faded, and so she’s come to the conclusion that she is no longer in love with Andrew (because she’s no longer limerent for him).
In that case, her behaviour will doom her to serial limerence, as every relationship loses its early fireworks through the inevitable fading of limerent feelings.
Is it a reasonable request?
These mismatched expectations might explain the desire to remain best friends after breaking up with an ex, but is it a reasonable request? Ultimately, only the individuals involved can decide on that, but it is also useful to look at it from the perspective of a dispassionate observer. What would the average person on the street think of this scenario?
While received wisdom can sometimes be wrong, I’m sure most people would say that an emotionally intimate friendship between (heterosexual) men and women is a high risk scenario. This is especially true when there is an asymmetry in desire.
Even without the emotional hazards of their own complicated new relationship, if either Andrew or his ex want to have a new romantic relationship in the future, the new partner is bound to be suspicious of the old bond. “Why is your ex still around so much?” is an obvious and perfectly reasonable question for anyone to ask.
That reality means either having an argument about the new romantic partner’s suspicions, or finally breaking the bond between Andrew and his ex/LO if a new relationship starts. If that is actually the plan that she is working on, then it clearly isn’t reasonable. Not wanting to lose Andrew’s emotional support until she finds a new partner, at which point he would become expendable, is blatantly selfish.
Abandonment anxieties
OK, so I think it’s fair to assume that the average person on the street would counsel Andrew against remaining best friends with his ex, but Andrew knows her better than them. She has a history of abandonment anxiety and that adds an extra dimension to the situation.
No one compassionate wants to cause pain to someone they love. Knowing that your choice to detach would re-open old wounds for them, as well as damaging your own emotional stability, makes it harder to be decisive about taking action. It’s a natural impulse to protect the people you care about from distress.
Another complication is that limerence is wily, and the idea that you are staying connected to protect her from pain feeds into the rationalisation instinct that there are tangible, legitimate reasons for staying close to your LO. Maybe, subconsciously, your limerent brain is bargaining that you still have hope. Don’t give it all up yet.
Bundled all together, that’s a heavy weight in the scales. The desire to still be near LO, the secret hope that there might still be a chance to reignite the romance if you are patient enough, and the guilt that “abandoning” them will cause them trauma, is a hefty collective burden.
For someone who is used to expressing love through giving, it takes some steel to consciously put your own emotional needs ahead of theirs.
What is the purposeful way forward?
So, we’ve worked through a lot of speculation and problem-identification, but what can Andrew practically do?
Well, a simple truth is that suppressing his romantic feelings to accommodate her abandonment anxieties would be psychologically harmful for him. It will trap him in a limbo of uncertainty and pain, and delay his chance of finding a new partner who is more romantically compatible. It will stifle his personal growth.
At the fundamental level, Andrew’s ex knows that he wants a romantic relationship because that is what they had. She might have now realised it isn’t working for her, but she can’t be naive about his feelings. They find themselves at a point where their needs are a mirror image of each other:
- She cannot give him romantic reciprocation, but wants to retain the platonic bond.
- He cannot give her a platonic bond, because he wants romantic reciprocation.
It’s sad. Life often is, regrettably. The purposeful response is to face this key incompatibility and accept it. Looking into the future, if Andrew (and his ex) want to have a significant romantic relationship they will have to find it with other people, and retaining the intimate “best friends” set up will work against that goal.
Given that reality, perhaps the most pressing issue for Andrew is: how can I move forward without causing her harm?
Well, given that they do have a history of emotional intimacy, it could be possible to discuss all of this openly – to try and understand what she is going through and communicate what he is going through. Try and figure out if she has ever experienced limerence and therefore which of the scenarios above (falling out of limerence or never having it at all) is most likely to explain her decision to end the romantic relationship .
Explain that your limerence pain would cause the same turmoil for you as her past abandonment pain has caused her. Be open about why you are making the choices you make. Self-awareness and honesty are at the heart of purposeful living, and give you the best chance of moving on without gaining psychological baggage that you’ll carry forwards into the next relationship.
You want to look back on this relationship as a noble failure, not as unfinished business or a source of regret.
Trying to suppress your desire and carry on the facade of a best friend works against that goal, and is ultimately bad for you both.
As the “Andrew” in too many scenarios, I say …buddy, run for your life. Shut off the compassion spigot and mute the Hollywood romantic fantasies of the platonic best friend suddenly becoming the Desired One. In the infinitesimal chance that it would happen, it’s only after you’ve walked away and “moved on”.
A true friend would distance themselves from you if they know there is no longer a chance of romance. A selfish person with lack of character would want to be your “bestie” for their own ego reinforcement and, also, you are indeed a wonderful person and a fabulous friend. But everything has changed because you are in love and they know it so the platonic friendship thing is impossible and soul destroying. It’s not healthy for them either because it’s enabling this selfishness.
Hold your head up high and walk away with dignity. They can find best friends elsewhere.
You are not a doormat, you are the whole stylish and well made flat. Close the door to the LO and lock it!! You will heal and be just fine.
💃🏻🕺
I agree with Jaideux. The LO history of abandonment anxiety is not Andrew’s problem. I would give more weight to it if he wanted to end the romantic relationship but she didn’t. Even then, that is not a good reason to stay in a romantic relationship. The fact she no longer wants a romantic relationship means all bets are off and she should know that.
Staying in a one sided situation like this is torture enough but if Andrew is limerent it is much worse.
@Jaideux.
“A true friend would distance themselves from you if they know there is no longer a chance of romance. A selfish person with lack of character would want to be your “bestie” for their own ego reinforcement and, also, you are indeed a wonderful person and a fabulous friend. But everything has changed because you are in love and they know it so the platonic friendship thing is impossible and soul destroying. It’s not healthy for them either because it’s enabling this selfishness.”
I agree with your observations here. However, I think limerents can’t always control the actions of an LO. So what might a limerent do to help themselves?
I think limerents often focus all their empathy and emotional intelligence on LO, trying to please LO/figure out how LO feels. Perhaps it would be better at times if limerents focused some of that empathy and emotional intelligence on themselves, trying to answer the question: “What do I really want from LO? Do I want passionate love? Could I realistically settle for platonic friendship?”
If a limerent has looked deep into their own heart and decided that “anything less than mutual passionate love with this person will make me unhappy”, then, yes, I agree – distance is in order. I think distance is the kindest thing for both parties, rather than some kind of insincere friendship where one party still pines for more and the other party can use latent desire – however innocently – as leverage.
I do think limerents and LOs in theory can be friends, but only after the limerent has stopped limerencing over LO. And if the limerent habitually struggles to understand their own emotions, they’re not really going to know when they’ve stopped limerencing. They’re going to think they’re ready for friendship way too early. So, again, learning to empathise with oneself is the key to freedom.
Perhaps the greatest gift a limerent can give self is simply to learn the symptoms of “being in love”, so one doesn’t confuse that state with other attachments. I think it’s not unreasonable to say that “being in love” does come with its own special set of rules i.e. the potential for causing hurt or being on the receiving end of hurt is greatly magnified when in love versus, say, platonic friendship. 🙂
Song of the Blog: “You’re My Best Friend” – Queen (1975)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCCtPr-0rbM
I may be the LwL SME on this subject. LO #2 tried to play the “best friend” gambit on me from the time we broke up until the day she admitted that if she didn’t find anything she liked better she might come back and settle for me. I didn’t take that well.
I refused to take the demotion. I stopped being her best friend the day I stopped being her boy friend. In the end, I didn’t even want to be her buddy. LO #2 had trouble with that.
I disagree with DrL’s recommendation of Andrew possibly sitting down with his ex and discussing limerence. A discussion of why he can’t be friends with her is totally appropriate but trying to figure out why is likely a waste of time. LO #2 explained things to me but it took me 20 years and two therapists to understand it.
When LO #2 told me the second time that I was still her best friend after telling her 6 months earlier that I wasn’t, I told her that there was nothing in that for me. I told her that I wasn’t going to pat her on the head, tell her that she was wonderful, and put her back together so she could do this to me again. I told her that I’d rebuilt her once and I wasn’t going to do it a second time for another man. One therapist said that it was my grandmother talking. I don’t understand that but whatever.
Using the usual disclaimer that I’m not a mental health professional, I’ll toss out a few things drawing from the works of Shari Schreiber, Dr. Marion Solomon, and Dr. Martin Kantor.
Andrew knows his ex has abandonment issues. That indicates Andrew’s ex likely has “core damage” stemming from childhood (Schreiber.) Schreiber also say that many core damaged adults crave intimacy but fear it and can’t handle too much of it. It’s not uncommon for them to adopt an “abandon them before they abandon you” mindset. It’s also not uncommon for that individual to sabotage the relationship to the point where the other partner calls it quits. It would be interesting to know why Andrew’s ex dumped him.
In one of her works, Solomon says that when the fear of intimacy becomes too great, the distressed partner will withdraw or “distance” themselves from the situation to where they can handle things again. Hence, the demotion from boyfriend to best friend. All the support with less intimacy. The therapist who I discussed LO #2 with said that she believed that’s what happened with LO #2. People who are leaving bad relationships disappear and go into hiding. LO #2 always made sure that I knew where she was and what my status was. After I returned the pictures I took of her, LO #2 had me take one the next time she saw me and made sure I had it. The therapist said that’s distancing. The therapist said that LO #2 saw my returning the pictures as purging her from my life. Martin Kantor has several books on how distancing plays out. His discussion of Passive-Aggressive behavior is outstanding.
Andrew didn’t cause his ex’s problems and he can’t fix them. As an adult with agency, he can decide what he’s willing to put up with. Finding a place in his life for his ex could likely cause problems in any future relationships. And, it gets old being the one they turn to in a crisis, unless you enjoy that sort of things. If Andrew does, have it. With the right ex, it could turn into a second career.
LO #2 tried to bitch to me about my successor. With the exception of asking her how the guy knew so much about me, I told her that I didn’t want to hear about it and I refused to listen when she tried to bring him up. LO #2 told me that she told my successor that I was still her best friend and she wasn’t ready to give me up. What kind of dingbat tells something like that to their current lover?! I told her that if she had said that to me, I’d have kicked her in the ass so hard that she’d still be bouncing across the street. 6 months later, she’s crying on my shoulder that he’s cheating on her! Seriously! Given a few other things she had told me about him, before I cut her off, I told her that nobody could have seen that coming.
If Andrew is lucky, she’ll go away on her own and they can drift into the birthday/Christmas card phase a dead relationship until one year the cards stop. I don’t think Andrew will be that lucky.
My recommendation to Andrew is the next time she calls a meeting, he tells her that after a lot of thought, he (he takes responsibility) doesn’t think they can stay friends. For him to move on, there can no longer be a place for her in his life. Wish her well, and say goodbye. When he leaves, he doesn’t stop and turn around and look back. He doesn’t respond to texts, calls, and letters, and if she shows up at his door, he doesn’t let her in. But, he has to be willing to carry things out. If he waffles or recants, she has him. An action that you’re not willing carry out is called a bluff. If Andrew isn’t ironclad, she could call his.
Not everyone who comes into your life is meant to stay there. No matter how much you think you want them to.
Continuing on this topic…
I have to say this about LO #2. Whenever I asked her a straight question, she always gave me an answer that I could work with. She never lied to me and she never waffled.
At the meeting I described earlier, I asked LO #2 if this relationship would ever be what I wanted it to be. She responded, “No, you should find some sweet young thing who adores you and not waste your time with a crusty old broad like me.” That set us off going down the whole “pat you on the head…” exchange.
Sometime later, we were in the car and U2’s “With or Without You” came on. LO #2 says, “That’s how I feel about you. I can’t live with you but I don’t want to live without you.”
While I was discussing all this with the therapist after she read my history of the relationship, she asked why, knowing what I knew, I stayed in the game as long as I did. The therapist said that not only did I ask great questions, LO #2 gave me great answers. I didn’t have to connect the dots, LO #2 took a ruler and drew the line for me. The therapist said it doesn’t get any easier than that.
My response to the therapist was that LO #2 was my first adult relationship, given my parents 0-5 track record in marriages, and being raised by two grandparents one of whom was actively waging a Passive-Aggressive guerilla war against each other, my relationship example was skewed. I was largely flying blind. Being raised by alcoholics, I knew that I couldn’t turn LO #2, she had to turn herself. But, I thought that if I hung in long enough and kept the pressure on, LO #2 would turn.
I was wrong.
The therapist said that I was a slow learner. I told the therapist that in the grand scheme of things, it turned out pretty well. My wife was in college during years I crossed paths with LO #2. I was in training. I learned a lot from LO #2. When the time was right, LO #2 took herself out. It could have been easier, cleaner, and less painful, but it all worked out. LO #2 was a cosmic placeholder.
The therapist asked how I seemed to manage to avoid many of the mistakes I observed growing up and asked if I had any idea why? I told her that nobody was happy and modeling that behavior was counterproductive. Why emulate dysfunctional behavior. Between being happy and unhappy, happy is better.
I didn’t know what a good relationship was but I had a pretty good idea of what a good relationship wasn’t. Unfortunately, that childhood template can be difficult to entirely overcome and everybody has a blind spot. You often come out of a relationship like this with more baggage than you came in with but you never come out with any less. My baggage followed me right into my marriage.
This song reminds me of LO #2:
“Go to the Mirror” – The Who (1969)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Qe-utqHDU
“What is happening in his (her) head?
Ooh, I wish I knew
I wish I knew”
Looking back, I can see the events that got me to where I am now. I can see how the choices I made affected me and I can see how the random choices of others affected me.
As The Grateful Dead put it, “What a long strange trip its been.”
“Andrew knows his ex has abandonment issues. That indicates Andrew’s ex likely has “core damage” stemming from childhood (Schreiber.) Schreiber also say that many core damaged adults crave intimacy but fear it and can’t handle too much of it. It’s not uncommon for them to adopt an “abandon them before they abandon you” mindset. It’s also not uncommon for that individual to sabotage the relationship to the point where the other partner calls it quits. It would be interesting to know why Andrew’s ex dumped him.”
Oh, wow. What you are describing sounds like classic BPD.
Any cluster B is not just a red flag, it’s a huge black flag!
Unfortunately, these traits don’t manifest until weeks or months deep.
And they have some attractive (? addictive) qualities that keep you from just walking away.
Of course, the limerent will continue to be drawn to such qualities, against anyone else’s better judgement, due to some need within.
Yeah, I’ve had a relationship like this long ago, and it was emotionally scarring enough that I’ve shut a lot of it out.
And I’m not even sure that limerence was involved! (not on my part, at least)
Much of Schreiber’s work is about borderlines.
I have two professional opinions that LO #2 was a borderline. I also have one opinion from an LCSW friend who knew LO #2 when we were dating that she had NPD. Different points on the Cluster B spectrum.
One therapist said, “You’ve convinced me that she’s a borderline. Quit trying to convince yourself that she’s not.”
As one psychiatrist put it to me, “Cluster Bs can be quite a handful.”
And, yes, dealing with one can be utterly maddening.
I know something about dealing with people with Cluster B! Of course, it depends on how open they are to dealing with their issues. One person with BPD ripped me apart emotionally and was just terrible to everyone around her, including her kids. While another one works with children and is very much against abuse of any kind.
SL,
I wouldn’t disagree with you.
Schreiber describes 4 different flavors of borderlines. I was partial to Borderline Waifs.
We’re in no position to assume that Andrew’s ex is a borderline. DrL periodically refers to Narcissists as a particularly dodgy type of LO. Borderlines and Narcissists are both Cluster B personality disorders. DrL doesn’t talk much about borderlines. But as it relates to this blog, Schreiber has some thoughts:
“If you’re thinking you can maintain a friendship with a Borderline after your romance falls apart, think again! First of all, real friendship is built on mutual trust, respect and consideration. Second, the Borderline will keep you around just to meet his/her needs (so what else is new?) and yours will continue to go unmet. Third, when she/he is getting involved with their next victim, you’ll be used for leverage in that relationship–a virtual tool to keep the present lover on-edge and insecure (remember that??). Fourth, he/she will extol their new lover’s virtues, to where you’re thinking; what am I, chopped liver?? Fifth, whenever your ex-Borderline thinks it serves him/her, they’ll use their new love’s “feelings,” or their own (supposed) moral high-ground as an excuse to break away from your lovely friendship–and you’ll be dropped on your head all over again. Don’t play the fool–it’ll only come back to haunt and hurt you!” – https://sharischreiber.com/course/there-must-be-a-pony-in-here-somewhere-sorting-your-way-through-the-bpd-madness/ – [Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall. If you’re interested in borderlines, I recommend paying the one-time fee. It’s pretty reasonable and the articles will blow your mind]
I got 1, 2, 3 & 5 from LO #2. #4 was an odd kicker. To hear LO #2 talk, I beat out my successor in every category. The therapist said that it wasn’t that I wasn’t good enough for LO #2, I was too good for her. The therapist’s theory was that LO #2 didn’t feel worthy of being loved so she distanced herself from someone who did love her and hooked up with someone who supported her view of herself.
@Limerent Emeritus.
You’ve written us a whole essay. Well done you! 🙂
Your thoughts on various things must be getting clearer in your own mind, and that’s reflected in your ability to do writing that’s sustained. 🙂
Thanks, Sammy!
After a lot of time and effort, the pieces eventually came together.
I ran out of questions. It’s like standing in the middle of nowhere and asking “OK, now what?”
It’s a nice feeling.
@Limerent Emeritus.
“When LO #2 told me that she was seeing someone after we broke up it felt like someone kicked me in the stomach. I thought I was going to barf on the spot. Then, the oddest thing happened. I felt a wave of calm come over me like someone had hit me with a shot of Demerol. I later learned that the wave of calm was the body flooding my system with endorphins to keep me from going into a full blown panic.”
I came across this paragraph of yours, too. lower down in the discussion. In this paragraph, you’re both eloquent and you have no problems identifying your own emotional responses. What happened to the old Limerent Emeritus? Have you been holding out on us regarding how eloquent you can be when you want to be? 😆
I am sorry posters here have sometimes been unkind to you, or misunderstood things you’ve said. You’re a good man. Being good doesn’t mean being perfect. Being good doesn’t mean being nice always. Being good doesn’t mean never being tempted. 🙂
I think my mother may have BPD. About two years ago, my father had a non-fatal heart attack, just from the stress of sitting next to her while watching TV. (They’re divorced, but my mother was visiting us). I’m not blaming my mother for maliciously causing the heart attack. However, some women with BPD, just by virtue of being their lovely dysregulated little selves, can unknowingly put a lot of strain on a man’s cardiovascular system.
A lot of men are detached from their emotions, so they don’t realise the woman is stressing them out. Often, the woman can’t de-escalate her emotions at will even if she knows that would be the most loving and humane thing to do in the situation. I think when a man pair-bonds with a woman with BPD, he’s always going to be expected to absorb a great deal of emotional strain.
My father become a lot more emotionally open with me after reaching his 60s and facing a series of health crises. He started telling me stories from his childhood. He started sharing his honest opinions about things, and his real feelings about events from the past. I was like: “Wow! There’s a real person in there! You’re not a robot or a zombie after all. You’re the one who invisibly kept the family afloat for years while hiding behind that poker face.” 😜
For some reason, my father sort of “donated” me exclusively to my mother when I was a little boy. For a long time, I didn’t understand this decision and resented it. As an adult, I think he “rejected” me because he knew that (a) my mother would never hurt me, though she was very cruel to other people, and (b) since my mother had BPD, she needed a constant companion. My father actually understood my mother’s psyche a lot better than he ever let on. 🤔
Thanks, again, Sammy!
I never thought people were unkind to me. I was taught to say what I was thinking and not talk around it. A lot of discussion here is abstract.
A lot of my posts deal with the nitty-gritty of how things played out for me. They ranged from the exquisite to pretty ugly. I escaped most tangible consequences for my marginal choice but those were more by accident [or Divine Intervention] than by design. One therapist said the nicest thing LO #2 ever did for me was to decline my marriage proposal. As she put it, “Your life could have been so much worse.”
Candor serves you well in the military but not always as well outside the military. When I quit working for the Navy and went to work for a civilian agency, my boss told me to tone down the candor. What I said was true and correct but it made people feel uncomfortable. My boss was on my side but we “didn’t want to melt the snowflakes.”
I was always eloquent but now I write from a different perspective. When I arrived at LwL, I was a pilgrim like most people who land here. To use a bad analogy, I’m a Realist movement artist, I’m not a Romantic, or God forbid, an Impressionist. IMO, Impressionist artists were possibly suffering from lead poisoning stemming from drinking bad water in Paris. They couldn’t see clearly.
My favorite writers are de Maupassant, Twain, and Vonnegut and my favorite genre is short stories. I chose the Fantasy Lit class over the Sci Fi lit class. If I ever wrote a book, I’d call it “Memoire of a Limerent.”
One of my English professors said that my writing style reminded him of James Joyce. He said the my punctuation was grammatically sketchy but when read aloud, it sounded wonderful.
From my perspective, how your father dealt with things is different than the way my father dealt with things. When my father left my mother, he took me with him. My father had the means to do it and his parents were willing to take us in and watch me while my father worked. I was spared living with my alcoholic mother. I learned a different skill set observing my “wearing the pants in the family” matriarch grandmother and her Passive-Aggressive consort. The family dynamics my father and mother demonstrated while they were together sucked and my grandparents were several decades into their marriage.
There’s never an unintended consequence.
Great article with great perspectives on both sides. However, everything aside, limerence makes them staying friends even more impossible than normal breakups in IMO.
After abruptly and without warning or explanation going NC with my work LO in April, at week 17 of NC I noticed a shift. During the weeks of NC some days and weeks were worse than others. It didn’t get better the longer I was NC, it varied. Around week 16 it was really bad for me, probably the worst since going NC. At week 17 I wasn’t over her but I noticed a couple things. I didn’t think about her all the time and I stared noticing how beautiful other women were. It wasn’t a complete change but a change from when I first became limerent 7 months prior. Some things I read said limerence usually fades in 6 to 8 months (although other info says 18 to 36 months or even decades) so I was hopeful it was coming to an end.
The first thing I did when I noticed the shift was to come to this website and see if that’s how the loss of limerence starts or if it just suddenly fades. I found it gradually fades so that was good to read.
Today I saw my LO very briefly from a distance. It was so brief I didn’t even see her face but knew it was her. It didn’t kill me or make me feel bad for hours like it has in the past but it still stung and it has been difficult today after leaving work. I read on a Reddit forum that even as the limerence starts to fade, some days are worse than others so I guess it is par for the course but it makes it difficult to ever see me and my LO being friends. I would just like us to be normal co-workers like we were before I became limerent for her. I have likened it to trying to put the genie back in the bottle. That’s my goal but I am not there yet. Not sure if I ever will be.
A little update for those of you who were following my posts under “When things go sour”. Six days ago at the completion of week 19 of NC, there was an incident in which I extended an olive branch intentionally or unintentionally.
One of my teammates was reaching for an item on shelf next to a big heavy piece of equipment and he accidentally knocked a personal item of my LO off the shelf and behind the piece of equipment. Since the equipment is big and heavy and has to be moved to get behind it, he told my LO there was nothing he could do to retrieve it. It wasn’t an expensive item, maybe $10 to $20 but now she would have to replace it.
It was about 25 minutes before quitting time and this teammate just happened to mention that this just happened. Although it was an easily replaceable item, very strong emotions came over me that I had to get her item back for her. I don’t know if it was some kind of white night syndrome or hero syndrome. I just felt bad for her that her item was lost through no fault of her own. Although difficult, I had moved that equipment once before so I knew I could get her item back.
As I was walking to the area of the equipment, the logical side of my brain was telling me I was making a mistake, that I need to leave it alone, that it wasn’t my fault, and if my teammate didn’t care (enough to offer to pay to replace it) why should I. But I couldn’t stop myself. I was running off pure strong emotion and I knew it.
My intention was to get my LO’s item, put it back on the shelf, and not say a word (although the thought did enter my mind to put a post it note on it with my name but I quickly decided against that). I just wanted her to get her item back.
I pulled out the equipment, climbed and crawled behind it and got her item. As I was doing this, her manager came there because she had told him what happened and he went to see if he could do anything. So of course he saw me there and saw I got her item.
When I was done and the equipment was moved back into place, the manager called my LO over the radio on their department’s channel and told her he didn’t do anything but that Gallant got her item for her. She replied saying “Thank you and please tell Gallant thank you”.
About 10 minutes later when it was about 5 minutes before quitting time, my LO came on our radio channel and said in the most heartful voice “Thank you very much Gallant”. I replied in a very pleasant tone of voice “You’re welcome. X told me what happened so I went behind there and got it”. I wanted her to know that I took it upon myself to retrieve her item and wasn’t asked by the manager for help in getting it. Although not necessary, I kind of expected a reply from my LO like “Well I appreciate it” but she never replied.
I went home feeling kind of high that day. This was the first time we had spoken directly to each other and not work related since I went NC. The very few other times were when she called to any teammate on our channel for something and I was available so just replied “copy”. Our “thank you’s” and “your welcome’s” ended soon after I went NC. She would always say “Thank you Gallant” and I would say “You’re welcome” and when I said “Thank you” she would always say “You’re welcome Gallant”, but I stopped saying both of those so she did as well. She would never say those to the other guys, just to me.
So after this incident of what could be seen as me extending an olive branch, and her unnecessary “thank you very much” since she already told the manager to thank me, was it time to put this ignoring her to an end?
The following day I saw her. We were walking toward each other, and not like on opposite walls of a large hallway. She was coming directly at me and passed by me with a foot or so between us. In other words, she saw me and knew I saw her. Although I didn’t look her in the eye, I didn’t look down or away like I normally would have. My face was looking in her direction.
So what does she do? She quickly blows right past me as if I wasn’t there. She had paperwork in her hand so I know she was on her way to do something, as opposed to just leisurely walking back to the office, but I felt that if she saw me as extending an olive branch to retrieve her personal item yesterday, she might have said “Hi” to test the waters. Maybe she expected me to say it, but she didn’t slow down or pause while I pretty much stopped right before she passed.
A short time later our paths crossed again. This time we were separated by about 10 feet as we passed each other. I was writing something down on a notepad as I was walking and I looked up to see where I was going. As I did I saw her and it appeared she looked at me, but based on our previous encounter I just looked back down and continued to write as I walked. I felt I was just burned once
Later during my lunch break I thought about all this. Of course my mind was all over the place. Was she done with me? Had I damaged beyond repair any chance of even a polite working relationship by ignoring her 19 weeks? Did she think I hated her but once I extended an olive branch she knew I didn’t and got some sort of closure and was now able to forget about me and move on? Did she never care to begin with and just didn’t like being ignored regardless of who was doing it?
Was she waiting to see if I would say something when we passed the first time? Did I miss an opportunity the second time we passed? Was it time to make amends with her?
I thought it would be nice to be able to stop ignoring her but when I asked myself what I wanted out of it, I knew nothing had changed. If we made amends it would go right back to what it was before. I would get 2 or 3 minutes of her time every week or two talking about work related stuff while I see her talk at length to other guys in other departments (meaning she isn’t talking about work stuff with them).
She never asked why I went NC. She never chased me. That wasn’t my purpose for going NC as what could I say if she asked? I couldn’t tell her the truth. I didn’t want her to ask. My thought was that unless she expressed some sort of feelings for me, NC would be to get over the limerence. However, if she did have feelings for me, I doubt she would say anything to me since I pretty much rejected her with no explanation. If I didn’t have the guts to tell her why I have to go NC, why would she tell someone who went NC with no explanation that she has feelings for them?
Another thing, a few weeks ago I noticed she changed her appearance. She normally wore her long hair down, which was so attractive to me. Maybe twice a week she would put it up but never two days in a row. Now every day I see her it is up. She also started wearing glasses all the time. I knew she had trouble seeing close up as she mentioned it before but she never wore glasses.
A couple weeks prior to this we passed each other as she was coming out of an office and I was going in. I was working on something in that office and when I got up to turn around and leave she was standing at the exit with her back in the direction I was working and just staring at the wall, as if she wanted me to see her as I left. She could have stood anywhere else as it is a big office but it’s like she saw me working when she came in and positioned herself so I couldn’t not see her when I left. I know that even if this is true, it doesn’t mean she is interested in me romantically. Anyway, when I walked past the back of her I saw she was wearing large earrings, I don’t recall exactly what but they were something like loops, very noticeable. I never saw her wear earrings before.
I am not saying this is true all the time but a few times I have known single women at work who would be all dolled up but as soon as they got a guy the hair wasn’t made up nice and they would stop using make up and they didn’t try to look as nice. Whether this is because they no longer needed to or out of respect for their new guy, I got a feeling this is what happened with my LO.
I mean seriously, she wasn’t wearing earrings to catch my attention when I would barely see her anymore and she didn’t get depressed over me so stopped trying to look as nice. I convinced myself she had a new guy and it actually helped. It took away some more hope. It would have devastated me prior. I didn’t feel I missed my chance by not asking her out, so she then found someone else. I figured she would have never dated me anyway and now found a guy. This happened when I was younger. I fell for a woman who was in a relationship and I eventually confessed how I felt. She led me on to believe if she wasn’t in a relationship she would date me. Then she started seeing a guy twice her and my age and married him.
It’s weird. We are both are so aloof to each other as we ignore each other. She just appears so strong and unfazed as if she rejected me and I am sure I project the same to her. Then when we spoke over the radio after I retrieved her personal item she sounded so humble and heartfelt and I was pleasant back to her, but in person we are like enemies. If it weren’t for the limerence I would end this ignoring. I am not doing it to hurt or punish or because I hate her, which she might think because the NC has gone on for so long with no explanation. I have a much stronger reason and willpower and it’s because I can’t go back to a couple minutes of breadcrumbs from someone I have strong feelings for whether real or based on an idealized image. I just can’t.
It sucks that there is no solution. It had now been 20 week of NC or about 4.5 months. I am setting a goal of 5 months and then 6 months and hoping by then the limerence is mostly gone. If so I don’t know what will happen. I don’t want to tell her what happened. I don’t think she would care. I don’t think I could just start acting friendly again and expect her to do the same. I really think I have damaged things beyond repair. She can do fine without me. She doesn’t need to wonder if it is going to happen again.
Sorry for the novel and going off topic with my own LE. It’s been quite a few weeks since I last posted anything and it has just been bottled up inside me so I just needed to get it out. No need for replies. As I mentioned, today was a little rough. I guess after things shifting for the better, then the olive branch, then seeing her so briefly from a distance but still having feelings after 4.5 months of NC hurts.
Best regards.
I read your post very carefully. You are definitely rotten with full-blown limerence right now. I’m trying to think of some effective advice I can offer, especially since I’ve been in very similar situations myself. It sounds like your working environment mostly male, so ANY female is going to get a lot of attention from everyone, not just you, regardless. Is she even able to put a face to your name, if you only talk on a radio frequency? I’m guessing the object that fell behind the machine was one of those elaborate water bottles that can be pretty pricey, and may even start to take on some sentimental value, especially if it is customized. She would have been grateful to anyone who retrieved it. I know this is still not advice, just observations.
I’m thinking you messed up trying to go “no contact” when what you were doing before was just fine. Remember, limerence an epic battle going on in your own head that everyone else is totally oblivious to. When you stopped acknowledging her on the radio, she probably noticed, but thought maybe your work routine had changed; so, she didn’t take it personally. I have found that the best way to mask limerence at work is to just keep doing the same things you always do, the way you have always done them, regardless of how often this puts you in direct contact with your LO. Take pride in fooling your LO that you are unfazed by her presence by doing things and communicating with everyone, including her, how you always did before she ever showed up on the scene. Of course, this stops working when your LO is the one trying to dictate your work routine. I hope this at least helps a little bit.
Hello James and thank you for your insight. I didn’t want to mention the personal item in case she ever came across this page, but you are correct. Amazing how you guessed that! I agree she would have absolutely been grateful to anyone who got it. It’s just that we haven’t spoken a word since I went NC other than a handful of short work related things on the radio and she already told the manager to thank me so it wasn’t necessary for her to do it again. I thought maybe she was reaching out for the olive branch but she did not try to extend the conversation when I replied. I’m sure it is nothing. I just want to believe it is.
Our work environment is a mix of male and female but she does get attention. She is beautiful and has a nice fit body.
Yes she is able to put a face to my name. We use the radios but it is only a small part. Most of our interactions are face to face. We have worked in the same place for 14 months. At first she was very aloof and I tend to be as well. I admired her beauty from afar but left it at that. Eventually after many months she was the one to come to me and break the ice. Once in a great while she would ask for help and things were fine.
Then in December she started coming to me quite often for help. Despite us not seeing each other for days at a time she would tell me “see you tomorrow”. Which I took to mean she wanted to see me. I never went looking for her. She always came looking for me. I was very attracted to her and when she started interacting with me more the attraction grew. I thought it would be okay as long as we kept it profession. It was, until it wasn’t. Somewhere at the beginning of January the limerence hit. I knew it wasn’t love because I didn’t know anything about her. I had read about limerence before so looked it up and had all the symptoms.
I posted so much under the “When things go sour” post so won’t repeat it here but I will explain why I had to go NC. Not being NC wasn’t working fine and I will explain why.
I always treated her professionally and with respect. Some of the other guys didn’t so I made sure I did. I never flirted with her. Never told her or led her to believe I was interested in her romantically, although maybe she sensed it. I wanted her to feel comfortable asking me for help but outwardly I never showed romantic interest.
As weeks went by I noticed I had all the limerence symptoms except the one where you want to see your LO all the time. Despite our interactions being positive, I actually didn’t want to see her. I never wanted to see her again. I guess always being burned in the past falling for someone who didn’t feel the same, I knew the ending of this movie. What I think really triggered this was that we work in different departments so I would only see her about 2 or 3 minutes every week or two. I would think about her constantly. I obsessed over her. Then I would get 2 or 3 minutes of her time, and it was always work related, and then nothing until another week or two. It was torture having strong feelings for her and getting breadcrumbs.
Many years ago when I fell for a co-worker who befriended me and then started saying all sorts of things indicating she was interested in me, we would talk 2.5 to 3 hours per work day on the phone, as our jobs involved lots of driving, so maybe the contrast between then and now is what makes the LE now so bad.
I think if I was in her department and we were able to spend more time together it would have been better and I might not have had to go NC. It’s like longing for someone, getting 2 minutes with them, and then being dismissed.
So I was looking for a way to go NC. The last time together before NC she touched me 5 or 6 times in 3 minutes, where as prior to that it was 3 times in 3 months. She also said that was the first time she saw me that week. Since becoming limerent I could tell you which days I saw her and how many days between seeing her. I couldn’t do that with any other co-worker. Now it seemed she was thinking about me and noticing the days she didn’t see me. I thought things were escalating.
A week later I saw her again. She stopped to say hello but said she was busy. Even when I was busy and she knew I was busy, I always made time for her when she asked me for help. Anyway, I started to say something (I wasn’t planning on keeping her long) and she just walked away while I was talking to her. I said “that is so rude” but she just kept walking.
I thought back of all our interactions since December. They were always short. Although she always came to me when she saw me, she seemed uncomfortable being around me. Rather than stand and talk to me she would be doing something else, or if I was working on something she would say something and then walk away but come back in a few seconds and say something and repeat this, plus she never asked or shared any personal details. She always was the one to leave in a couple minutes. Looking back it is like she was always dismissive of me.
I tried to be her friend (yeah I know I was fooling myself) but it seemed she didn’t want that so just prior to going NC I gave up on that. Thinking back to her dismissiveness, appearance of being uncomfortable around me, and never asking anything personal I decided to start distancing myself more. Then the incident happened when she walked away from me and I decided that was the perfect opportunity to go NC.
By the time I stopped acknowledging her on the radio she already knew I was ignoring her. She continued with the “thank you’s” a couple times as well as saying hi, even after ignoring her a few times. Then she gave up.
As far as I know I masked the limerence well. Based on past experience I found admitting feelings never works. This time I wanted to try the opposite.
I can appreciate what you are saying about masking the limerence and not going NC. I tried that hoping the limerence would fade but it didn’t. I just couldn’t take it anymore and her disrespecting me gave me the out to go NC.
I have since seen her talking at length to guys where she stands there facing them and seems comfortable. She wouldn’t do that with me. Best case scenario would be she was attracted to me so was nervous around me or was playing hard to get but that’s just a fantasy.
Today I saw her for a few minutes as I was working in an area she was at. Of course she was talking and joking with other guys while we just ignored each other. I admit it made me miss talking to her but I can’t go back to breadcrumbs. The aura of attraction isn’t there as much as her appearance has changed as I mentioned previously, which should help me get over her, but I know it is the same person I have an idealized image of and I found myself still wanting her.
Almost feel like I am relapsing these past two days.
Thanks for the update Gallant. Sorry the way things have worked out so far.
My only advice would be to continue to be nice and respectful towards her. She is still a Colleague and as such you both have to work together at some level. Don’t make it any more difficult than it needs to be. If you are respectful and kind, you never know how that might end up in your favor later on.
Hi MJ
As of now we completely ignore each other and it has been that way since the start of April so there is no “continuing to be nice”.
There were a couple times in the past two weeks when I could see her turn her head and look at me as we passed (when she could have kept her head forward and looked with her eyes) as if to catch my eye. Or positioning herself where she knows I would have to see and pass behind her as I left an office. One time I was talking to a male co-worker from her department. I was talking to him about 5 minutes engrossed in the conversation, and then behind me I hear some noise. I don’t recall what it was but it was enough to make me turn and look and when I did she was slowly walking away. It’s as if she saw me and made the noise to attract my attention.
Of course these could all be innocent things my limerent mind is making into something they are not but the point is they made me anxious she is going to try to break NC. As I have mentioned, I can’t go back to breadcrumbs. I know it is best to just be polite and professional. That is my goal but I don’t think I can do that now. As much as things are still bad, NC is better than 2 minutes of her time every week or two while I see her taking at length to other guys. I am hoping the limerence fades completely in the next couple months.
You are 100% right. She is still a colleague and we both have to work together at some level. She doesn’t deserve the way I am treating her. It may end up in my favor later on. However, for me I feel starting to talk to her will make it more difficult for me than it is now. Honestly, based on everything I really don’t think she cares. She may not like the silent treatment but that could be no matter who is doing it to her.
Since I felt a shift a couple weeks ago there were times during one or two days where I sort of felt indifferent about it all and it hit me that she has probably felt that way a day or two after I started ignoring her. I recently read something that said “We think other people are feeling what we are feeling”. That is so true. When I am missing her or longing for her my limerent mind is thinking she feels the same. Then when I feel indifferent I feel this is how she has felt almost from day one of NC and it is really depressing. She probably doesn’t like being ignored but it can’t be anywhere near as bad as I have been feeling all these months and as one of the blog posts here say, it is better to ignore your LO for your own mental health as it won’t affect them as much as not ignoring them affects you.
I think I would get over this if I never saw her again. The occasional sighting seems to just pick at the scab. Not as bad as before but I still see the living real person who I am limerent over in real life right before me.
I also wonder if the times comes to start talking to her what would be the best thing to do. Start out small just saying “hi”. She might thing where does Gallant get off deciding now he wants to be polite. Should I apologize? Although an explanation might be good, I don’t think I could burden her about my limerence, unless it is so totally gone. I wouldn’t want to hear that from someone I am not interested in. It would just make me want to avoid them if not for my own sake but for theirs.
As I said before. There really is no solution.
Gallant,
Probably best not to overthink things. Just let it all simmer down or let it fade to black. You do seem to be in an awkward situation with no good solution. At least you can work together without the fireworks.
Keep us posted if anything changes.
I think it is quite possible for Andrew to SLOWLY, and successfully, “fade out” his limerence for his LO. I say this because I did have an LE (a pretty intense one) where I was lowered gently – so gently, in fact, that I will sometimes accidently leave her off my list of LE’s when I’m rattling off this list in my head. Let me explain.
She (Stephanie) was already about LO# infinity by this time (about 15 years ago) when I met her at work (OF CORSE). We were both collage students at the time, so we ended up running into each other outside of work fairly often. She remains the only LO I have ever had the opportunity to actually talk to. There were several times we got to the laundromat at about the same time, so there was nothing to do except wait for our clothes to dry – and talk. (Laundromats are known to be nearly as good as night clubs for meeting new people.) This is where I found out that her dad and her son were both diagnosed with Asperger’s, which kind of confirmed for me that it is likely a common thread among all of my LO’s that they are all on some sort of neurodivergent spectrum. However, I still never found out what she thought of me personally. It is this single fact that still galls me to this day, that I still have no idea what any of these women actually thought of me.
Anyway, so how did I resolve my limerence for Stephanie? I had always thought that maybe if we were in a same class together, we could interact in the process of solving a hypothetical problem given to us by an instructor, but that will never happen. It even crossed my mind to go to the Guidance Counseling office to find out if they knew her class schedule so I could sign up for a class she was in. Of course I knew this was a crazy, fanciful thought; this would have violated every rule of privacy you can imagine. In my second to last semester, I showed up for the first day of my Calculus class before the door was even unlocked and heard “Hi James!” It was her, I got my wish anyway! It was as if even the gods were pulling for me. The semester started and ended without ever meeting up outside of class. On the day of our final exam, I told myself “If she isn’t waiting for me outside after the exam, then she is obviously not interested.” She wasn’t there – surprise.
After she graduated, she started a job as a nurse at a mental health clinic that my mother had been going to for years. It was around this time that a buddy of mine, that I was roommates with in collage, talked me into moving to where he was, where he had taken ownership of his uncle’s restaurant. It was the last time I ever took Mother to this clinic before we moved, when she had just gone into the small office to check in for her appointment, when Stephanie walked by and saw me and said hi. My dear mother never got to see even so much as a photograph of ANY of my numerous LO’s, and missed meeting Stephanie by mere seconds. Had we not moved, it is likely that this LO would have been making in-home visits to check on my mom, whether I was there or not. I don’t know how awkward that would have been, but once I had settled into my surroundings after I moved, I didn’t think that much about her at all. In fact, the four years I lived in this new location was one of the few periods of my life where I wasn’t limerent for anyone. I have very fond memories of this place, I realize now, because my mind was totally limerent free.
But anyway, I don’t think Andrew has to do anything rash to end his limerence, it will fade slowly without going no-contact cold-turkey. Of course he could use another method that I’ve used before: Step on the X in the middle of the circle on the floor, DISCLOSE all of your tender feelings, and then wait for the grand piano to drop and crush you into melon guts.
Andrew, I thought a lot about your dilemma. Thank you for allowing Dr L to share your story as a case study. I have very mixed feelings about this.
First, you don’t owe your LO anything. It is reasonable for you to part ways after a break up. You aren’t interested in the friendship that she is offering so don’t accept it. You don’t owe her an explanation either. Her fear of abandonment is not your problem nor your responsibility. You can’t fix it anyway.
Here is the reason I feel conflicted. I understand her perspective. I am married and yet I experienced limerence for a friend. I can’t offer him anything more than friendship so that is what I offered. Luckily, friendship is good enough even though he is attracted to me, too. I actually made this deal with two male friends (a past LO and the man who I transferred my limerence to). Both of them seem fine with friendship. Reading your story makes me feel selfish because I am only giving friendship even though I know these two men are attracted to me. Since all of us are married, I don’t see any other way to maintain contact. But it sounds like you prefer no contact rather than friendship and now I am second-guessing myself. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I also don’t want to prolong misery, which seems to be what would happen to you if you tried to maintain friendship with your LO. Of course my situation is not your problem. I am just trying to explain why I feel conflicted about your story.
Here is the most important thing for you to think about. You really don’t owe her anything. You can exit her life and she will get over it. If she doesn’t get over it, that is her problem not yours. If my presence made someone miserable for any reason I would want them to keep a distance from me. She might feel that way, too.
Best of luck with this!
Lovisa,
“Luckily, friendship is good enough even though he is attracted to me, too. I actually made this deal with two male friends”
I don’t know where on the spectrum your male friends fall, but there’s a huge difference between attraction and limerence. The former is fairly generic and could pertain to a number of women. The latter, as any limerent knows, is specific to one person. And involves obsession, longing and pain. I think it’s very difficult for most people to be friends with someone they are limerent for.
Marcia
I agree 100%. If I am attracted to someone I might want to date them and see where it goes. With my current LO, as much as I want her, I don’t even know if I could date her. I am in so deep. I would try to hard to make it work for fear of losing her that it would end up doing just that, losing her Not to mention the devastation of losing them after a couple dates where as someone you are attracted to you could let go after a couple dates because you don’t have the emotional investment yet.
You have a great point, Marcia! I can’t possibly know where they fall on the attraction spectrum either.
Gallant,
“With my current LO, as much as I want her, I don’t even know if I could date her. I am in so deep. ”
If you’re both available and she’s interested as well, you’ve hit the lottery in terms of odds. I’d go for it.
But I was really talking about platonic friendship. And, in particular, between two, opposite-sex people, one of whom or both might be partnered. If one of the friends expresses generic attraction for the other, you may be able to carry on with the friendship, with proper boundaries. However, if the person expressed deep feelings, like limerence, it’s probably not possible.
Hi Lovisa,
I think these are different situations to Andrew’s. From things you’ve said, your LO2 and LO3 both turned out to be mutual attractions (whether mutual *limerence* as Marcia asked is a good question?). The barrier to more than friendship was marriages. It was disclosed in both instances, which makes a difference. Whether limerent and LO want to accept mutual friendship in this ‘attracted, disclosed but barriered’ state is, I guess, a decision for both people involved. It seems to work out OK for you guys so far from what you’ve said?
Andrew is in a different position of being reduced by his LO from lover to friend status. Limerent Emeritus has gone into a great example above of what that can involve and look like. It is harder for Andrew to be her friend. If he chooses to try, he needs to own the outcomes.
The whole thing about the dynamics of a limerent and an LO, which of them is ‘only offering friendship’ and why, is fascinating and throws out loads of scenarios with different answers. Overall it is hard for limerent and LO to be authentic friends, as any of us who’ve tried it knows. I do admire that you’ve done it, especially because you’ve clued your husband in.
I hear what you’re saying about the dynamics of friendship between LO and limerent, but my LO #2 and I made it work somehow. I can honestly say she is one of my best friends. Throughout most of my LE with her, she was dating other guys. It didn’t bother me too much as long as it wasn’t right in front of me. But now that the limerence is essentially over, I’m even alright with seeing her chat up and pick up other guys in my presence. I even talk to her about other women. I still find her attractive, but there isn’t that burning desire to be with her. Still, I get a sense that the tacit knowledge that I’m over her is a bit of a blow to her ego. But that doesn’t stop us being really good friends, enjoying each other’s company and confiding in one another. Obviously being post-limerent for this lady changes things, but I feel like we had an authentic friendship even at the height of my LE for her (she basically knows how I felt about her). I wonder what’s different about our situation?
A “friendship” with a limerent (that is committed) and a LO is basically (provided the LO is morally responsible) the LO respecting (as I think was the case in my LE) the barriers that the LO is aware of. One thing, in the midst of it for all of us limerents, we forget just how NOT discreet we are being with LO. Which then means that most LOs know they are in a “favored” status to us limerents. Which I think that she was well aware of since the whole damn office staff was too. I think that it is going to be very difficult for the LO to continually respect the barriers of commitment and for the limernet to not ever cross the line of friendship. That is a constant struggle for both parties. And to what end? Is that a genuine friendship? Is that a relationship both are happy with? Or is it just a facade so limerent can be close to LO and justify “friendship” and LO remains in the loop for her own reasons? The attention. Feeling special. ……… Until some other young guy comes along and gives her that and now you aren’t needed anymore? And now all of a sudden you are like “oh $hit I’ve got a spouse I’ve been ignoring!” If you can make it possible I applaud anyone. But you both going to have to be stark naked honest about this “friendship.”
Adam I believe you are 100% correct. The entire thing is a recipe for disaster. It is so easy to be the LO. You get the attention, all the benefits, and knowing someone is really into you while not having to do anything. It’s a win/lose situation. A win for the LO and a loss for the limerent.
Gallant,
” It is so easy to be the LO … It’s a win/lose situation. A win for the LO and a loss for the limerent”
I’d like to unpick this a bit. In the two situations below, an LO would feel
like they win like you say:
1. LO doesn’t know of or sense limerence, receives all the limerent’s best behaviours towards them with no strings
2. LO does know or sense, but is a narcissist or enjoys having someone on a string.
But here are five more where the LO is more likely to feel they lose:
1. LO senses the limerent’s feelings, nothing is said, LO doesn’t reciprocate (attention gets annoying)
2. As 1. except LO does reciprocate and still nothing happens (frustrating)
3. As 2. except LO isn’t sure of feelings or one or both parties already has an SO (uncertainty/limbo)
4. Limerent discloses and there is any one of non reciprocation, uncertain reciprocation or SO(s) involved (messy to move forward whichever way)
5. Limerent changes behaviour to combat limerence without explanation, eg goes NC or ghosts LO (confusion or feeling of having been misled eg treated as a friend on false premise)
So the LO can ‘win’ like you say, but can also often be a loser. While there are narcissists and other forms of bad LO out there, a lot of them are just normal, good people who never asked for the ‘label’ and status of LO we give them. (See the post in the archive called “good LOs” on this perspective)
I don’t mean to seem knock your point for the sake of it, but for me it is more complicated than the LO always winning.
Cross ref to the post mentioned in my last:
https://livingwithlimerence.com/good-los/
Lim-a-rant,
“(whether mutual *limerence* as Marcia asked is a good question?”
Yeah … if I could chime in one with one more thought … I’ve had guy friends who expressed interest but I don’t think they were limerent for me, nor do I think they had deep romantic feelings for me. They were dating other women and … if I was down for a nice evening with them, they weren’t going to say no to the offer. But I don’t think they were hoping to be with me.
What I’m describing is much more common than a person being limerent for an opposite-sex friend. Or the situation with the LW, who was with this person in a romantic relationship and is now being asked to be a friend, which would be hard for anyone to do.
Marcia,
Please call me out if I have this wrong – piecing together a few bits you’ve said, it seems you would pretty quickly sort a new male into candidate for friend, possible light dating/fun, or deep attraction/limerence. In effect three categories and then it is unlikely the guy will shift between them much.
If that’s accurate-ish, then this helps you avoid the situation where a friend could jump the rubicon and end up as an LO, like I have had, among others on LwL.
Andrew’s dilemma that Dr L posted is a jump the opposite way round. It feels pretty clear cut that he should walk away. I have never seen point of trying to be friends with my exes (the only exception could be if kids are involved) and when I tried, it didn’t work.
Lim-A-Rant,
“Please call me out”
I’d love to. 🙂
“it seems you would pretty quickly sort a new male into candidate for friend, possible light dating/fun, or deep attraction/limerence. In effect three categories and then it is unlikely the guy will shift between them much.”
That’s true of me, yes. But I was writing more about Lovisa’s situation. A guy friend expressing attraction and being ok with just being friends with a female friend, whether she is married or single, does not mean the guy is dying of love for her. It could, but it could just mean he’d been down for a sexual rendezvous, if the opportunity ever presented itself.
” You avoid the situation where a friend could jump the rubicon and end up as an LO, like I have had, among others on LwL.”
I won’t have that issue, no. But I doubt any of the male friends I’ve had who expressed became limerent for me, either. Limerence is not common. Most of these guys had girlfriends, even wives, and, if single, were sometimes dating multiple women.
“It feels pretty clear cut that he should walk away. I have never seen point of trying to be friends with my exes (the only exception could be if kids are involved) and when I tried, it didn’t work.”
I agree. That’s exactly what I wrote. 🙂
And I’m always a bit leery of someone who has to maintain some kind of ongoing tentacle to an ex. Why? If you’re not together anymore, is the ex a back-up option? Someone who gives you attention?
Lovisa
Before I became limerent for my LO, I actually thought we could be close friends. Then as the attraction grew I thought if she said she wanted to be friends I would tell her we could not be friends because I am too attracted to her. It would be kind of a test balloon to see if maybe she had attraction for me while also being honest as to not lead her on in a friendship. It would be more innocent than saying I am limerent on her. I don’t think I would have a problem if someone told me they can’t be friends because they are attracted to me but harder to hear they are limerent for me.
@Gallant
“It is so easy to be the LO. You get the attention, all the benefits, and knowing someone is really into you while not having to do anything. It’s a win/lose situation. A win for the LO and a loss for the limerent.”
I’ve been on both sides (being an LO + being a limerent). Being an LO sure sounds good on paper. But being the LO can take its toll. No real (love) feelings and being suffocated with love that you can’t reciprocate. The good side is security, most likely the limerent will never give you up. You say the limerent is losing, but they get all the warm feelings while the LO doesn’t.
As soon as there is limerence in a relationship, I think that relationship will never truly be a happy one. One party will always feel a lack. It’s just too lopsided.
Thanks for your feedback, everyone! It helps a lot. I guess I was overthinking my situation. Since I can’t read the minds of my male friends, I just have to listen to what they say. They continue to want friendship. Neither of them have said, “Lovisa, I want to be your friend.” But they continue to correspond as a friend would. I’ll just assume that I am not making anyone miserable. They seem happy with the arrangement. I am happy with the arrangements, too.
I appreciate all of your feedback!
@Vicarious limerent,
What steps are you taking to separate/divorce, and why is your spouse not accepting it? OK not to respond. My spouse and I are having marital problems, too. Not sure how it will pan out yet. Trying not to let my limerent brain get “excited” that I could possibly start dating again if we do separate and go our own ways.
My wife and I have been living like roommates for seven years. She is bossy, controlling, mean, boring and lazy — and downright abusive to my daughter and me. I have been saying to her for almost 3.5 years that I want a divorce and I will never change my mind. She simply cannot be happy with me either based on the way she treats me, yet she completely resists separation and divorce. I suspect it relates more to keeping up appearances and maintaining her middle class lifestyle than any deep love for me. I care about her and even still love her in many ways, but life is too short to waste it in a miserable, sexless marriage.
Still, there are serious financial, logistical, legal and emotional barriers to separation and divorce. For starters, a year of separation is generally required in this jurisdiction before divorce, and house prices and rent here are astronomical. We can have an in-house separation, as long as we basically lead separate lives under the same roof. Until a few weeks ago, I dithered about this and worried how my wife would never accept living separate but apart, but I am determined to make it work because there simply isn’t enough money for two households until we sell the house (which she says she refuses to do). After a particularly bad weekend with her, I decided there’s no going back. I need out. After an upcoming holiday and some family events I am going to clearly and unequivocally communicate to her how I am going to proceed to separation and divorce, and there is nothing to stop that from happening. My mind is made up. If she wants counselling that’s fine, but from my perspective it will purely be to help facilitate an amicable split with as little hassle as possible.
@Vicarious limerent,
Wow, that is a lot, thanks for explaining. I was reading up on my state’s divorce laws (just in case it goes that route) and it just seems a lawyer would be necessary in your case to get everything that you want/need to get handled. I read in my state’s laws that the other person doesn’t have to “agree” to a divorce to get a divorce, but maybe each state is different. I am really sorry you and your child are in an abusive situation. I do hope for all of those horrible things to go away once you get things sorted.
I know about the financial situation. I am the one who would have to “buy my husband out” if we went our separate ways. And, morally, I would not feel comfortable either starting a new relationship and still technically married.
And the kids… oh, the kids… I can’t even think about that right now 😪
Thank you. Things are similar here. It isn’t necessary for both spouses to agree to a divorce for it to happen. I could theoretically petition a court to order a sale of our house, but I would prefer to avoid that if I can. My daughter is almost an adult and she would most likely come with me if my wife and I separated. Your situation sounds much trickier than mine.
Fantasizing about dating is so tough. In some ways, it is a nice dream, and I think if I could date normally, I wouldn’t get so hung up on LOs. Some people would say it’s morally wrong to even think about other people when still married, but I can’t help it. I’m not getting any younger, and my patience wears thin after seven years living as roommates. I definitely have some moral lines I will not cross, but at the same time, I maintain that the parameters of acceptable conduct must shift slightly in a marriage where one spouse has repeatedly communicated their desire for separation and divorce over multiple years. Some people have suggested I just have an affair (and I think I could have had that with one of my female friends), but I still maintain that I won’t physically cheat while my wife and I are living under the same roof. Still, I don’t think it’s necessary to wait for a formal divorce decree as long as I’m formally separated and have been for a few months, there is no chance of reconciliation and I’ve been totally transparent about my marital status to any potential dates or partners. I realize other people may feel differently
VL,
Does your company have an EAP? An EAP can provide some free legal advice.
My twice-divorced father told me that of I ever decided to get a divorce, hire the best shark you can afford.
When I hit the point of seeing an attorney, I googled “Top Divorce Lawyers Near Me.”
I live in a fault state. I explained my circumstances. He asked:
“Is she sleeping around?” – no
“Are you sleeping around?” – no
“Has she ever hit you?” – no
“Have you ever hit her.” – no
“Too bad. If any of those had happened I could be in front of a judge in 24 hours. You’d still have the property settlement and custody arrangement to deal with but you’ll be doing them as a single man.”
He went on to say that I’d probably have to go the separation route but he closed with this:
“That said, I’ve never had a client who wanted a divorce that I couldn’t get one for. It’s a matter of how much you’re willing to spend and what you’re willing to do to get it.”
My wife knew that I was meeting with an attorney and begged me not to go. She texted me during the meeting and asked to meet at my EAP counselor’s office later in the afternoon. I told them what the attorney said and showed them the $600 receipt. We talked about a few other things.
The EAP counselor asked me to wait outside. I went back in. The EAP counselor said that my wife would agree to check herself back into rehab if I would agree not to pursue the divorce for 6 months. That was the usual protocol. We agreed but I told her that if she relapsed again, we were history. The counselor at the county crisis center where the school referred our daughter said he’d sign an affidavit recommending that I get sole custody and she get supervised visitation.
Faced with the losd of her marriage and kids, my wife got sober and has stayed sober for over 10 years.
For all this relating to limerence…
All the problems in my marriage had me revisiting my life choices that got me there. Part of the corrective action was individual and couples counseling.
In many of the individual counseling sessions, I talked about LO #2 and my mother. The therapist said that was an interesting association. That led into discussions of my childhood. In those sessions, I identified where the issues lay but I didn’t rectify the issues.
In the process of understanding my relationship with LO #2, I encountered LO #4 and we developed an attachment which is documented elsewhere. LO #4 not only reminded me of LO #2, she bore a physical resemblance to LO #2. As it relates to borderlines, I got a whiff of waif from LO #4.
It was my LE/EA with LO #4 that could have destroyed all the progress my wife and I had made over time that got me back into therapy to identify and eliminate the vulnerability to limerence. That didn’t take me back 25 years, that took me back over 50 years.
@ Vicarious Limerent,
DON’T CHEAT, for many reasons and especially because then you will be blamed for the divorce. She will look like a victim. Don’t do it. My dad went that route forty-two years ago. The damage that my mom did to my dad’s reputation and relationships is something that he has never recovered from. Seriously, don’t cheat!
Vicarious,
“I have been saying to her for almost 3.5 years that I want a divorce and I will never change my mind. ”
She doesn’t believe you. Or doesn’t believe you’ll do anything about it because it’s been so long.
If you want out, you’ll have to do the work because she’s not going to do anything. It doesn’t seem to bother her to live in such a tense environment with you. She’s going to coast along unless you force the issue.
@Vicarious Limerent,
I have only been in a roommate situation for three months. My family and friends have been very forward in reminding me of the times when my spouse was emotionally/verbally abusive toward me, and at times the kids. They remember instances when it happened in front of them. But I remember the improvement he has shown over the last four years, and have forgiven him of those times. So it doesn’t feel right to me to have it be on those grounds.
The real issue is that he invaded my personal journal and read about my issues with limerence, and we are not sure at this time if he can recover from such a hard blow to his ego and insecurity. But those were thoughts and feelings I have been working on for the past year since only learning about limerence last year.
These next few months will be telling — for both of us!
Thanks everyone. We do have an EAP, and I have made use of it. They do offer marriage counselling, but I doubt they offer legal advice. Fortunately, I do have free and low cost options I can access (without giving away too much personal information). I’m happy to attend some personal counselling and maybe family mediation as well. I have the ability to draft a separation agreement on my own, and I think that might help my wife to see I’m serious. This has gone on far too long. I’ve given her plenty time to mourn the death of our marriage. I also think me moving into our basement will help her see it’s a lost cause. She is so angry and often hateful towards me. She fundamentally doesn’t want to be with me. I really believe that just as she’s not a fit for me, I’m not a fit for her either. But I want to handle this as amicably and collaboratively as I can. I don’t want to be her enemy, but if she wants it that way, so be it. I’m not going to worry about that anymore. I’ve had enough of her.
I have no intentions of cheating on my wife. Dating someone while we’re still under the same roof isn’t appropriate in my books. That applies even if we need to have an in-house separation for a while. I understand monkey branching isn’t right either, and jumping right into another relationship isn’t a good idea either, but I see no problem at this point in engaging in some early “succession planning” by befriending some ladies I might like to date someday, with the proviso that things are to remain innocent and platonic for the time being – and possibly always. That was why I was kind of hoping someone might chime in on my thoughts about my new LO. While telling myself she is avoiding me and wants nothing to do with me is a good limerence management strategy, I do think she is lovely and exactly the sort of woman I would be interested in after my marriage is over. I still have a faint hope there and would love to see her again. Even after the awkwardness between us, things seemed to go so well with her the last time I saw her. There is a chance she took what I told her to mean I want her to back off, but that wasn’t what I was telling her at all. I just wish that friend of mine hadn’t been so meddling in the past, and none of this would have happened.
My sympathies to you on the demise of your marriage. Divorce absolutely sucks and I’ve been dealing with the aftermath of one for over a decade. Even after our Children are now grown, there is still fallout, which grates my every last nerve at times
Just last week I wanted to blame my Ex again for a matter related to my ex in-laws and our Daughter. She (my ex) wouldn’t even hear of it. She blamed me and my failures as the reason we were about to have the communication breakdown.. When I took a step back and thought about it, she was correct.
I am a stubborn mule when it comes to accepting things but overall we are divorced because of my cheating, pathetic past. I just got lucky because my Ex is not the vindictive type. But in the end, I live with a ton of regret now for how little effort I put into marriage.
As for your LO, I can understand how appealing the idea of her seems. That perhaps she could even be a Friend while you go through this divorce. But do be careful here. I don’t know your ex but she doesn’t sound like an easy person to deal with.
I also will echo Lovisa and say don’t cheat because the way you speak of her, she sounds like a bitter Woman who will use it as fodder against you. The road ahead is going to suck, but in your particular situation, it feels like its necessary.
Best of luck..
Thanks MJ for the kind words. I’m certainly not going to cheat and I’m even careful to avoid what might be construed as an emotional affair.
Lovisa said it best
‘First, you don’t owe your LO anything. It is reasonable for you to part ways after a break up. You aren’t interested in the friendship that she is offering so don’t accept it. You don’t owe her an explanation either. Her fear of abandonment is not your problem nor your responsibility. You can’t fix it anyway.”
Move on
My initial reaction was I think the relative risks of the situation are massively skewed, Andrew should run a mile. Andrew could easily get into a long term limbo as many here have mentioned. Abandonment/attachment issues won’t be solved by him sticking around, at most it is a sticking plaster, that is something for a therapist.
My later reaction was completely different. Relationships are hard to build and just as hard to maintain, so he should really fight to keep the full relationship alive, probably to the point where friendship isn’t possible any longer. I think noble failure/checking if she is in fading limerence are along those lines, but I would suggest one doesn’t have to be ‘too’ noble in the sense of vacating the field. Fighting a lost cause is still noble.
Through various break-ups and limerent episodes, actually the only episode i really regret is not trying harder to rescue the intial romance that led to LO2, which has periodically re-surfaced over the last 18-19 years. I saw limerence coming and tried to escape it by ending the ‘situation’, but only made it worse as I was left with the uncertainty of what I could have done differently. We were very compatible as friends, and periodically re-kindled it, but it never worked as there was too much history and an ongoing mismatch in needs from each other.
That of course doesn’t mean being creepy. It sounds like the GF has been fairly clear about what she wants. Nevertheless, I think stating very clearly you want the relationship to carry on, even if the form changes somehow, and being prepared to fight for it is the way to go. Getting to the point of a firm no should be the goal…. if he has pushed appropriately hard enough likely the girlfriend will decide from her side that ‘best friends’ isn’t possible. Andrew should be prepared though for an unexpected outcome, which is that he rescues the relationship then finds that he is in an uneven relationship where he doesn’t know how much his now partner loves him. That can be messy and take years to recover, and will shape a relationship over the long-term.
@Vicarious Limerent,
I see no reason why you can’t get to know the LO lady since you have very clear boundaries for yourself and her. If you are going to be divorced soonish, and you have been over your marriage for seven years, then it would be good to see if she is even compatible sooner than later. Or just wait til you are officially divorced. If you are single, you can find out. The sooner, the better. Then you can go forward one way or another.
What do you think?
It would be good to know what type of limerence you have. Mine is the “everything’s great!” for a couple years til reality sets in. So, if I were single again, I would be extra, super-duper cautious to make sure we are extremely compatible, and that I would still enjoy them for them, and they me, after those two years. 😉
Thank you LN. I’m still hoping she isn’t totally freaked out by me mentioning the possibility of my friend trying to set us up. I haven’t seen her in over a month even though she’s had plenty of opportunities to tag along to our large group nights out. On the other hand, she now regularly checks our chat group when she didn’t before and I did tell her I find her very attractive (in a roundabout way). Things seemed so natural, normal and fun between us the last time I saw her (other than the first hour or so). If anything, I was a little standoffish with her for a while and I kick myself for not sitting with her and talking to her more that night. I will be away for a while, but I’m hoping I see her again. We do have quite a few mutual friends and I got the feeling she was a little surprised by how many people we both know.
I am happy to report that I was able to walk away once the LO realized I couldn’t go back to platonicism and decided to cut off contact. Thanks for the post it really helped me work through this!
That’s great news, Andrew! 🥳
Good to hear, stick to it! As I am sure you know, it is quite likely not a one-off decision, it is a decision you will have to keep making/re-enforcing repeatedly.
Well done!
I recommend that you lay low for awhile. Try to avoid incidental contact, if you can. You may get the urge to keep tabs on her via social media. Resist that.
You should also be prepared for her to cycle back through. LO #2 & LO #4 both broke No Contact at about 3 months. I got a FB friend request from LO #2 25 years after we said goodbye.
The loss of a relationship can be traumatic and mourning it’s loss is OK. Are you familiar with the 5 stages of grief? If not, I recommend that you check it out. You may or may not go through them but knowing about the stages could help if you do. Some of the stages can get pretty intense.
The bargaining phase is potentially the most dangerous. If she comes at you while you’re in the bargaining phase, it can lead you to undo all the progress you’ve made.
On to better things!
Hi there,
I have found this community & wanted to reach out to see if anyone could help me. When I was about 20, I met a new group of friends in university. This group is still my closest group of friends today (I am now 33).
I was immediately attracted to Rob and on the first night we met we kissed. Over the following years, we became much closer as friends and my romantic feelings deepened. He was always reluctant to engage in a romantic relationship as he did not want to risk the friendship. However when I was about 25, we started sleeping together over the period of about 1 year. It was very intense and I was completely consumed by it. He decided to relocate to Australia for work (in hindsight I can objectively see that this is probably the only reason he allowed us to be together – he suffers with commitment issues). We stayed in touch when he went & I ended up following him there. Other friends were relocating too so it didn’t appear as if I was exclusively going for him. Not long after I arrived – he ended the romantic relationship. I was utterly heartbroken and still feel the same pain 8 years on as I did then. I told him I could no longer directly be friends or be in contact. He was extremely upset over this and fought for the friendship but eventually understood I couldn’t do this. Given that we have so many mutual friends I have had an awareness of his life since we ended. He has had 1 or 2 relationships since then and the pain this caused me was indescribable. I have a deep rooted belief that we are supposed to be together & have lived in the fantasy of this daily since he ended it. The thought of him being with another woman romantically or sexually makes me feel physically ill. I recently heard (from friends who care and want me to have the facts as I think they know I still carry hope but do not know the extent of my heartbreak) that he has gotten back with an ex. We have both now relocated back to the UK, I have engaged in therapy and worked with a psychiatrist but to be honest its just not working. We have seen each other over the years and I have sustained myself with small actions – I have noticed his eye contact towards me when we are in the same place and he reached out over 2 years ago where we spoke for a number of weeks about how we missed each other but the fact that he was trying to be responsible given the risk of him hurting me due to his commitment issues. I obsess over these daily. This fixation is ruining my life, I think about him all of the time, and I feel so depressed at the thought of him being with someone else. I am considering lexapro to assist with the spiralling thoughts about him being with someone else. I get intrusive thoughts about the thought of him sleeping with her (I found her on social media). If anyone has had a similar experience I would love to hear about your healing process- i can’t do this anymore.
Welcome Rosie! I am glad you joined us. I am not glad about the uncomfortable situation that brought you here, but hopefully we can find ways for you to cope and maybe even thrive.
I don’t know anything about the drug you mentioned. Please work with a medical professional or a mental health professional if you intend to use medication. Please follow the instructions, too.
It sounds like you are in the intrusive thoughts phase. Intrusive thoughts are awful. My intrusive thoughts for my LO2 is what brought me to LwL more than two years ago. I am happy to tell you that I don’t have intrusive thoughts anymore. Well, not about an LO. I’m having problems with a family member and I ruminate about it, but that’s a story for another time. You will get through this phase. Hang in there. I want you to check out Dr L’s resources and see if anything stands out to you.
Here is the Blog Archive, read the articles that might fit your specific situation. You might consider reading the comments, too.
https://livingwithlimerence.com/blog-archive/
This is the resource page. Dig in! Please ask questions if you have any.
https://livingwithlimerence.com/resources/
Purposeful living and no contact is recommended for recovery. It’s okay if you don’t feel like you can go in that direction, yet. We don’t expect perfection out of you. Something else might help you. I used transference and it worked for me. We can talk more about that later. For now, do some reading and then let us know what you think and how you’re doing.
Best wishes! You got this, Rosie!
@Rosie,
I am so sorry to hear about your very difficult situation. I am in the medical field, so when you mentioned a psychiatrist and Lexapro, I can relate to using certain medications for depression and anxiety. My condition is called dysthymia, and low-dose Paxil works for me for my underlying low-grade depression/social anxiety. Those kinds of drugs take a few weeks/months to start working. Everyone is different with what works for them.
Does your psychiatrist recommend this medication? So though medication may work for some of your issues, it may not work for limerence per se. I still experienced limerence twice after taking medication. But having the medication worked really well in other parts of my life.
For me, the best way to start stopping intrusive thoughts was having zero contact with the person causing limerence: no texting, social media, no work contact. It might get worse for a while, but that was the start for the healing process. That, in addition to your therapy and perhaps some medication for any underlying issues, I hope will help you. It may take time too. The intrusive thoughts should slowly fade away anywhere from months to a year. My worst limerence took about a year. And now that I know what limerence is, I take steps to try to avoid it happening again.
I hope this helps, Rosie! 💙
Thank you both for such kind, informed and quick responses.
I suppose I feel the longevity of this is the most concerning thing. I have not been in a relationship with him in almost 8 years, however over this 8 year period we have seen each other on average maybe 2/3 times a year. I feel like my heartbreak is getting stronger, and over this entire time I have had intrusive thoughts about him being with other people, in addition to constantly fantisising what it would be like for us to get back together – with a big focus on our physical connection. It is all day, everyday. I think I am only starting to understand that this is limerance, and not just extreme heartbreak. I have not dated anyone else since it ended with him, I am consistently just waiting for him to come back. I, objectively, recognise how unhealthy and wrong this is,.
I had never thought of myself as having depression or any other mental health conditions. Which to read back on my message seems naive. But in recent weeks the emotional pain of hearing he is with someone has made me feel like I am dying. Looking objectively at my mood patterns, it could definitely be categorised as depression. However, I feel that the limerance has triggered the depression as opposed to the reverse, if that makes sense.
I see there is a general theme of NC being required, and this is difficult given my broader friendship dynamics but I might have to mandate it for myself, at least until I feel safe to see him. It has been very comforting to see and hear from other people who have experienced something similar. I feel intense shame at the depth of my love for this person who left me so easily, so long ago, that I no longer talk to friends about it. Thank you for replying so quickly.
R
Rosie, I’m sorry, but the fantasies need to stop. The fantasies are what causes intrusive thoughts. Your brain wants to make you happy and it notices that thoughts of LO make you happy. Your brain will push thoughts of LO into the front of your mind even when it’s not a good time. I can’t explain it. Please watch this short YouTube video about intrusive thoughts. If you are uncomfortable clicking the link, please look it up by the title and watch it.
How to Deal with Intrusive Thoughts
by Mark Freeman
https://youtu.be/laeYq51SYA0
Rosie,
The physical symptoms you describe are trauma responses. Does your therapist have experience in trauma? If not, I recommend that you look for a therapist that deals with trauma and tell any psychiatrist you work with the same.
When LO #2 told me that she was seeing someone after we broke up it felt like someone kicked me in the stomach. I thought I was going to barf on the spot. Then, the oddest thing happened. I felt a wave of calm come over me like someone had hit me with a shot of Demerol. I later learned that the wave of calm was the body flooding my system with endorphins to keep me from going into a full blown panic.
As for drugs, from my personal experience dealing with my son’s near crippling depression and anxiety is a psychiatrist uses the drugs to stabilize you and make you receptive to therapy. My son was so tightly wrapped up that two therapists said that he was treatment resistant, they couldn’t help him, and recommended that he see a psychiatrist to get medication to unwind him. Finding a combination of a psychiatrist and therapist who can work as a team that you like can be daunting. My son is still seeing a psychiatrist but doesn’t need a therapist now.
Who recommended Lexapro? Anti-depressants are often the first “go to” drug prescribed but it may not be the best. Anti-depressants may do more harm than good if what you need is a mood stabilizer or anti-anxiety medication. One thing I found working for my son is most mental health professionals are pretty “by the book” and psychiatric drugs aren’t like antibiotics. If you have an infection, you can test to determine the kind of bug it is and prescribe a specific antibiotic. For psychiatric drugs, you may or may not have a test and they’re usually subjective. So, your provider starts down the list, waits while it titrates to the level of effectiveness and see if it has any effect.
If it does, great! If it doesn’t, your provider increases the dose or switches medications. While this is all happening, you’re in crisis and spinning your wheels with your therapist. What works for some people doesn’t work for others. We paid for expensive genetic testing for our son that indicated what drugs might work and what drugs wouldn’t. Another psychiatrist we saw later thought the test was utterly useless. As a Type I diabetic, there were drugs they wanted to prescribe that he couldn’t tolerate because it sent his blood sugar out of control. Side effects are real.
Toss in that you’re not your providers’ only patient. We’d like to think they spend time thinking about us when were’re not there but the reality is they probably don’t. So, to maximize the effectiveness of the time you do spend with them, it’s nice to have an idea of what you want to talk about when you do meet with them. When I worked with a therapist myself, I asked her if it was ok to email her a few days before the session with what I wanted to cover. A good therapist will like that.
Rosie, I know what I said sounds pretty bleak. My points are that what you’re feeling isn’t unique, other people have them and that dealing with these issues can be very challenging and discouraging but they can be dealt with. Immediate good results will likely be more by accident than design. But, if you keep working on it, you can find what you need and things do get better. Keep working at it. If you don’t see results, don’t assume the situation is hopeless, assume that your still looking for the right combination of things to make things better. They exist, you just have to find them.
Keep fighting for yourself!
Hi Rosie,
it sounds to me as a layman like you have become trapped in a very, very strong uncertainty loop. This is the tag you want and will bring up the main articles to help you understand what is going on.
https://livingwithlimerence.com/tag/uncertainty/
I have been trapped in a similar but much weaker, loop for around 18 years now, also with someone (a girl) i met at university and had a brief relationship and then extended messy friendship with.
I found that it began to fade after about 5-6 years, and more specifically 3 years of no contact. It only went away completely after I had kids, nearly 10 years later, but returned recently – probably due to hitting midlife.
Maybe I am mis-‘diagnosing’ you so someone else can weigh in and correct me.
What you might also find digging through this website is that many people seem to have different underlying issues that cause limerence. You coudl think about trying to work that out. In general though this is quite a trauma/attachment theory free ‘space’ compared to some, so there isn’t that much to find here. For me it is to do with parental addiction issues, and that realisation in the last few months has been a major step forward in me seeing what is happening for what it is. It has been the first time I have managed to step outside my belief I was in (unrequited) love and recognise the limerence as a coping mechanism which took over after the relationship failed. I’m not saying that is what is happening to you, but it might be ahelp.
Rosie, I can relate to your experience with my LO#2 from years back. She was my 3 year college girlfriend and we had a very close and intense relationship both emotionally and sexually. After 3 years and after she graduated she broke up with me and I was devastated. I became obsessively limerent for her at that time and the only thing I wanted was to have her back. She also dated some other guys after me and like you it made me physically ill. Also, though we did not live in the same area any longer, we did have common friends and so I knew about her life quite often. During about a 3 year period after our break up we continued to talk and even saw each other on a few occasions, both initiated by her and me. She still pursued friendship with me and I always thought if I just hung in there we would get back together. During this time I dealt with a lot of depression too depending on her interactions with me and whether I felt we were getting closer or not.
So what got me over her? One day after a particularly bad phone interaction I sort of just came to the realization that she was not into me like I was her, that this was all too much effort, and I really needed to move on in life. This actually coincided within a few weeks with me meeting my wife. I just decided to completely purge my ex from my life, and focus my efforts on new people and starting a relationship with someone else. From that point on I went absolute no contact with my ex and have never seen nor spoken to her since in 25 years.
I won’t lie though, it took another good 6 or 7 years after going NC for me to completely get over her. Even while I dated my wife, then became married, I still longed for my ex, just not as intensely. The limerence slowly faded and I can tell you as of right now I feel zero affection for the ex. Complete indifference.
My suggestion, which you will find in many of Dr Ls blogs here, is to go complete NC, purge this person from your life, and live purposely to become the person you want to be. This means meeting new people and engaging in new relationships. You won’t purge the intrusive thoughts right away, it could be a very slow fade like it was for me, but I bet in a few months time it will get better as you start your journey post LO.
I hope my story helps. Hang in there!
Hi there – this message means a lot as I draw many parallels with my own story.
This issue for me with regards to NC and purging him from my life is that I don’t want to. I feel innate panic when I think about letting him go.
He doesn’t initiate contact with me anymore, and I know he is seeing someone else. Due to wider friendship dynamics, we see each other every so often and being in the real conversation, I survive off this. We had a wedding in January where we both were in the wedding party – I also gave msyelf great hope as he did not bring his partner to this (I have never met her) and I convinced myself it was out of respect for me.
I suppose I’m just wondering when do I get to the stage of being motivated enough to do the NC or live purposefully. For now, that prospect fills me with panic as it makes me feel like I am ‘losing’ him. It makes me upset to see these words written down- as I consider myself a pretty educated person and I realise how mad I sound. I love him madly, beyond words, and he does not want to be with me romantically (although I convince myself that he does and he can’t). Years have passed, and I am waiting. It has defined me. A part of me deeply believes that he is coming back. What you said about that phone conversation you had – ‘she’s not into me like I’m into her’ I feel like I know that now. So I’m so frightened that I’m still waiting. I’m waiting for him to realise that we’re supposed to be together and come back. I’ve done a lot of therapy and so much reading and I just don’t really feel that I’m healing.
I fully recognise that I have some childhood trauma with emotional neglect that is interlinked with this and exacerbating it. But it annoys me to admit that as it feels like it’s detracting from how much I care for him. And that’s the only thing I know for sure, I care about him so much. He was my favourite person.
Thanks so much for your words. Your message provided so much comfort. I have screenshotted the above and will read again and again. Hope is good. Thank you, R
To chip in with my thoughts – one really has to know themselves and develop their own identity outside of LO better. YOU have to be your favourite person. At least in my case, when I did that, LO stopped being the sun my mind orbited around, and I re-centred.
Maria, I’m glad my story has helped. For a long time I felt the same, my ex was all I knew and all I wanted and I feared life without her. But as I kept holding on I also became more and more frustrated and angry until the one day I sort of just lost hope. You still have hope and it’s holding you back. Dr L has a great blog post on it.
https://livingwithlimerence.com/the-death-of-hope/
Do you have prospects to date other people? If so, take advantage. If there are no immediate prospects then look for ways to meet new people. I really believe one of the best ways to beat limerence limbo is to seek out and move into new communities of people and start building new relationships.
Sorry, meant Rosie, not Maria! But Maria has great insight too.