Another month, another visit to LwL virtual coffeehouse.
Today’s conversation starter is a wryly double-meaninged title about muses.
It comes from a tweet (still calling them that) that I saw the other day:
I think this exchange captures one of the dilemmas at the heart of limerence.
It can provide a massive boost of energy and creativity, but at the cost of spiralling into a mental state that feels like psychosis.
Do you use that altered mental state to create something wild and extraordinary, or do you resist and try to avoid the risk of destroying your soul?
As I’ve opined before, it’s possible that Rue may get her pill, but would that mean we never got to read Chloe’s book?
Lots of artists have a muse. Sometimes it’s a real flesh-and-blood lover who is essentially a limerent object (like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera). Sometimes it’s a particular fixation on someone the artist is enchanted by, that flares up and becomes an obsession (think Girl with a Pearl Earring). Sometimes it’s a sort of transcendent experience, where the muse becomes the embodiment of perfection and beauty (like Dante and Beatrice).
In the latter cases, the artist has somehow sublimated limerence into an abstract ideal, a form of Courtly love that transports them. A sort of religious passion, rather than earthly passion.
It’s rare that artists and their muses have a straightforward relationship. It’s usually a destructive, chaotic, creative, life-affirming and soul-damaging tempest of a connection.
That kind of makes sense, if you think about it.
As limerence consumes you, you seek more of it as a positive influence on your creative energy. You don’t moderate, stabilise, regulate; you embrace, abandon, surrender.
Viewed as person addiction, artists who have a LO for a muse are “chasing the dragon”. Seeking a high that becomes more elusive and less intoxicating over time.
Devoting your life to that pursuit rarely ends well… but are the artefacts you create along the way worth it?
So, that’s the opening thought to kick off today’s discussions. Have you ever chased a limerence dragon only to have it turn around and burn you up?
I don’t consider myself a creative person, so no, I have never been in a muse-type situation of any kind.
I did want to report that my progress is slow, but it’s progress. LO’s house went back up on the market after numerous delays. I went online to look at the photos, and I got bored. I realized with some satisfaction that I’m getting tired of his house, which is a relief.
I also saw LO at Starbucks yesterday. He spent two hours detailing all of the horrors that real estate people and the IRS have heaped onto him. And I’m not being snarky–he has every right to be upset. I listened patiently, as always. But I also noticed I was getting bored.
His problems are real, and they’re exhausting. I am grateful that I lead a much simpler life and don’t have all the unpleasant financial entanglements that he has. When I met him, I thought he was exciting. But I was wrong, he’s just extremely tiring. One crisis after another.
It was a relief to get home and to realize that I don’t have to solve any of his problems.
Not to offend but are you sure you have never been in a muse situation? They don’t necessarily have to inspire you to do something creative. You just use them (or they use you) to accomplish something. It doesn’t have to be someone that makes you do something creative, they can inspire you in other ways. My muse helped me to make it to retirement in a job that never respected me for 35 years. She was the reason i came to work. In return, I left her with the gear she needed to succeed, and a few parting gifts after I left. We were both caught in a dopamine loop. But it felt so good to feel that way, better than any drug (hey…i grew up in the 1970’s LOL). It sounds like reality is overcoming your limerence toward your current LO. Keep it up!
Frank,
Your post here just gave me another inkling: more than two years ago your LO sensed/suspected that you just wanted to “use” her as the LE “drug” but uninterested in knowing her as a realistic, round person outside the work (kept turning down her social invites) for a possible close friendship, so she gradually stopped her texting? Maybe she felt disrespected as a whole person? 🤔
An addict would want to keep their drug (all sorts) continuously coming at all cost, right? Just a thought. Sorry if I’m frank here; you know yourself (& your LO) much better than us, bystanders here. 🙂
Edit:
An limerent addict would want to keep their LE drug continuously coming at all cost, right? Based on DrL’ theory, realistic interaction with LO (dating while both sides available), under ordinary sunlight or gray sky, would kill LE, right?
Just a thought. Sorry if I’m frank here; you know yourself (& your LO) much better than us, bystanders here. 🙂
Hi. Thanks for being frank with Frank lol. I think we were both getting the dopamine rush. I was not uninterested in her life, just the opposite. We did the classic overshare but we stopped short of complaining about our spouses. I just knew deep down inside that it would explode outside of the work boundry. She contacted me after 9 months of silence. That started the whole process again. I sent her crown earrings which she said she loved. I dont think she ever got dicouraged, but if she did it was best for both of us. It was the last grand gesture that I could give. Could we be friends? Not the way I feel about her. Her last comment “no clouds in my sky” doesn’t sound like someone who is discouraged. As far as keeping the addiction going, you are right about that. But if both sides are willing to give it up, it is possible to make a clean break with no mess or drama. I got really lucky (or blessed) to have someone like that who,like myself, cared enough about the other person’s life to let it go. Thanks for your insight.
Frank,
When using the word, I didn’t even realize that I was “frank” with Frank, LOL 😆.
“I think we were both getting the dopamine rush. “
You “think”? Well, I have to take your assessment here that even after your retirement, you both kept it up in giving and receiving “dopamine rush” to/from each other — the responsive texts and your gifts.
But how could you tell for sure If she was in an actual LE (not just a crush or deep affection) with you, in what degree? more or less than L10+? Moreover, do you think she’s an ignorant or informed limerent?
“I was not uninterested in her life, just the opposite.”
Well, not attending those social parties would only indicate the opposite of your true wishes/interests.
“We did the classic overshare but we stopped short of complaining about our spouses. I just knew deep down inside that it would explode outside of the work boundary. “
What do you mean “explode”? — both crossing the red line? Or having an emotional affair?
“She contacted me after 9 months of silence. That started the whole process again. “
Of Course, it would and did! True limerence never dies that easily, even with a mutual willingness but without realistic consummation.
“I sent her crown earrings which she said she loved. I don’t think she ever got discouraged, but if she did it was best for both of us. It was the last grand gesture that I could give. “
From your admiration disclose, parting gifts and the “dopamine rush” texts, she probably already knew your emotional/LE attachment to her. Because of her affection/“LE” for you, she’d truly love the crown earrings that could remind her of you everyday.
“Could we be friends? Not the way I feel about her.”
Not what way? You mean that you were too much into her to be put back in the friend Zone? If ignorant of limerence, she Probably thought/assumed you’d want to be close friends even after your retirement; thus her contact before and after 9 month NC.
“Her last comment “no clouds in my sky” doesn’t sound like someone who is discouraged. “
True. It sounds like she was running on sunshine at the time of commenting, although your retirement could have been very demoralizing to her, or both of you.
“As far as keeping the addiction going, you are right about that. But if both sides are willing to give it up, it is possible to make a clean break with no mess or drama.”
Well, if she’s ignorant of LE, her giving-up was probably due to: 1), your unwillingness to keep a friendship with her outside the work; if she’s an informed limerent, her choice to give it up was perhaps 2), primarily for your sake, but also 1). Do you think she’s figured out your LE addiction — L11+?
“I got really lucky (or blessed) to have someone like that who, like myself, cared enough about the other person’s life to let it go.”
Probably, it’s your good Karma, if you have done something benevolent to others prior to LE. Is this mutual consideration for the other side what you meant when you claimed that you both transformed LE to “real love”?
But I vaguely remember that you told other bloggers here that even if you two were available, it could not work for a relationship? How did you come to that conclusion if you did/do not know about LO outside the work? Then, would what be this “real love” for? Only the mind, the heart?
yes, my “Spanish Inquisition” are frank again with Frank ! 🙂
To Frank:
Thank you for your question. I will have to give it more thought.
But I don’t think so.
“artists who have a LO for a muse are “chasing the dragon”. Seeking a high that becomes more elusive and less intoxicating over time.”
When LO is also an artist/a creative soul, then the fuse of “limerence dragon & limerence phoenix” (based on Chinese mythology) makes the art history, as well as an inspirational and happy love-union.
Georgia O’Keeffe et Alfred Stieglitz
Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Jean Arp
Dora Maar and Pablo Picasso
Yoko Ono and John Lennon
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely
Lee Miller and Man Ray
Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock
Gabriele Münter and Wassily Kandinsky
Gala and Salvador Dalí
Sonia Delaunay and Robert Delaunay
Elaine de Kooning and Willem de Kooning
Jeanne-Claude and Christo
Jo Nivison Hopper and Edward Hopper
Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin
Harriet was an actress, not a creative artist herself, so Berlioz and her marriage lasted only 4 years (he financially supported her until her death). His revolutionary, autobiographical piece “Symphonies Fantastique” has immortalized the sensation of Limerence — idée fixe.
“Devoting your life to that pursuit rarely ends well… but are the artefacts you create along the way worth it?”
Some would think the artefacts are worth it, ie. Virginia Woolf’s “Orlando”, Joyce’s “Odyssey”, Kerouac’s “On the road”, Fitzgerald’s “This side of paradise” & “the Great Gatsby”, Yeats’ poetry collection…. The process of creating is not only intoxicating and fulfilling to the artists but their works aesthetically, artistically, philosophically benefit humanity.
I think/hope, less artistic limerents could soar their creative wings through their limerence wind in moderation (monitored by the logical mind); but are also able to ground their feet in Stoic/reality soil when no wind blows in the sky.
Channeling limerence energy into creativity can be more beneficial for limerents themselves and the society than merely “using” LO as a walking drug to indulge in LE fantasy.
Doctor Zhivago was inspired by an LO who was also the author’s affair partner.
Here is an example of taking a limerence muse way too far:
https://youtu.be/OVH5H1WGT6s?si=d-4TGdWkqKfFvSa_
Some of my best writing was inspired by an LE that went sour, such as my most recent novel, which was actually inspired by two previous LE’s. But in the midst of an LE, if it’s going happily, I’m more likely to be daydreaming about the LO instead of coming up with inspiration. 🙂
The story in the song is totally unrequited limerence and too creepy; those historical, famous artists’ love/limerence were reciprocated through marriage or a consummated relationship (as a lover or partner) at least for a period of time.
You’re amazing to be able to write a novel inspired by two previous LEs! During that sour LE, did you have any Hope to be reciprocated?
Berlioz recorded/dramatized his entire LE in idée fixe, with a HOPE that he’d win Harriet’s heart, he did! Too bad, she could not match his creativity in their marriage.
Most masterpieces of artistic works were inspired by a muse, either in LE or real love. However, those highly talented artist/writer (couples) were scarce in the history.
I would certainly HOPE for the LE to be reciprocated, but it wouldn’t be. It could be a breakup or a one-sided pining that was never mutual.
Sorry I am so talkative. I wish I could feel more grateful about all the progress I have made. I’m doing fairly well getting through my limerence, but I certainly have not lost my capacity for self-loathing.
I was noticing something about LO the other day. He is friendly and pleasant to everyone. When I first knew him, I was surprised that he was so nice to me, but I see now that he’s that way with everyone. What makes me disgusted with myself is this. I think my infatuation with LO started with him expressing concern by asking about my cancer surgery several years ago. I was touched that he even remembered. I am actually surprised that he remembered, because I know him pretty well now, and his memory is terrible.
What nauseates me about this is that he treats everyone this way, and somehow, at the time, it made me feel special. I am obviously not the least bit special to him.
What on earth is wrong with me that I would see this bit of kindness as anything at all noteworthy?
I will mention that I have been treated pretty badly by my ex-husband and my three adult children, and am always surprised when anyone is nice to me. I will also mention that LO was more concerned about my cancer than my children were. But still.
It makes me feel very foolish.
Norma
You are not alone in this and should not feel foolish. I have had the same thoughts. Though I suspect I have some attachment anxiety from childhood, I do not feel that I have ever been treated badly by anyone close to me; I now see that I was wanting some kind of connection with my LO because he represented some kind of ideal to me. Because limerence alters one’s perception I completely misinterpreted my LO’s attention and apparent interest. I think most of us have. I am no stranger to self-loathing but in my more clearheaded moments I come back to this explanation.
Don’t be so hard on yourself.
To Impatient Limerent:
Thank you for your kind thoughts and wise words.
ND,
Self-loathing seems to be a near universal phase for a recovering limerent. It will pass, hopefully sooner than later. From Self-loathing, the process seems to transition to “What was I thinking?!” There’s usually overlap until you’re out of one and into the other.
Song of the Post: “I Hate Myself for Loving You” – Joan Jett
https://youtu.be/bpNw7jYkbVc?is=jKMlFOy1POctPOlL
To L.E.:
I actually put this song on my playlist a while back because of your recommendation. It’s very apt.
I am already in the “what was I thinking?” phase. I have been in that state for a while, noticing how thoughtless and uncaring LO can be. He’s superficially kind to everyone, but once you get to know him, there’s really nothing underneath. He’s under enormous stress, and all of his mental energy goes to dwelling on his own problems.
Which just makes me feel worse when I realize that I mis-took his surface-level pleasantries for anything of substance.
I think this is why his relationships haven’t worked out. He told me a story last week about the messy ending of a relationship he had. I already knew about this person, but he gave me some details I hadn’t known before. For the first time, I really sympathized with the other man–I think I have more in common with the other man than I do with LO. I think I understand how the other man felt, even though I don’t condone the cruel things he did. LO is a force of nature, completely self-absorbed, and I can see how the former partner could get so frustrated and angry.
I’M frustrated and angry, and my contact with LO is minimal, compared with someone who was completely enmeshed personally and financially for several years. I got upset because it never occurred to LO to text me on Mother’s Day, even though he knows that’s the worst day of the year for me. Imagine being his live-in partner, and also being employed by him. The other man must have felt completely under LO’s thumb, overshadowed and unappreciated.
The thing is, your LO is just the latest in a long line of people important in your life who have turned out to not be who you wanted or needed them to be. Your husband didn’t turn out to be the life partner you reasonably expected and needed him to be. Your children have abandoned you. With LO, while you were never able to hope that he might become a lover, you did hope for a reliable friend. If it hadn’t been for being let down by the others previously, it wouldn’t have mattered so much that LO has turned out to be less constant than you desired.
I know that you are also amplifying his bad points in order to help get over limerence, but his bad points are also hurting you because he’s turned out to be so different from how you imagined.
To Miss Cloud:
Good points. I try not to expect too much from anyone, but I guess I need to do better.
I realize that nobody was put on this earth to live up to my expectations. But still.
Norma, I didn’t want your takeaway message from my comment to be “I need to do better” or “I need to expect less from people”!
Please be kind to yourself and accept that you’re hurting because of past hurt that isn’t your fault.
To Miss Cloud:
I didn’t take your message unkindly. I thought you made excellent points. Everything you said was true.
I know it’s not my fault. However, I still need to expect less from people.
ND,
Add this to your playlist:
“Easy Come, Easy Go” – Bobby Sherman (1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkmYU-2auP4
“I’m sittin’ it out, now I’m spinning the dial
Just thinking about the chump I’ve been, I have to smile
Didn’t I know?
Easy come, and easy go
She wasn’t kind, I wasn’t smart
I lost my mind and fell apart
I had to find myself in time
Now I can start all over again”
Sometimes, the absurdity of it all just leaves one shaking their head.
To L.E.:
“I lost my mind and fell apart.”
Well, that pretty much sums it up.
Re musing about limerence.
I think I do the opposite. My creativity is what I do to exercise “purposeful living” and makes me feel more in control of my life and less in need of the brain chemicals that limerence provides.
I have been creative these last few months and it’s helped me feel much happier and less limerent for a long time. My limerent episode started at a time when I was prevented from exercising my creativity or doing any of the things that enable me to be me.
I did think that maybe I could create something that expresses the strong emotions from my limerent episode, but creative ideas on that topic haven’t arrived, and anyway, the world already has plenty of angst-ridden artworks.
Gertrude Stein
Mina Loy
Curie
of the laboratory
of vocabulary
she crushed
the tonnage
of consciousness
congealed to phrases
to extract
a radium of the word
Woman—The Poet
Frances Dana Barker Gage
“The greatest female poet,” said a gentleman friend to me, “has fallen below our mediocre men.”
Tell me not, proud man! that woman
Never yet hath wrought her name,
With the golden threads of Genius,
Topmost, on the scrolls of fame!
That the strongest, loftiest effort,
Of the greatest woman’s soul,
Hath but half way climbed the mountain,
Hath but midway reached the goal;—
There, beside the weaker brothers,
In the shadows cold and high,
She has thrown her withering laurels,
And hath laid her down to die;
While above her, in the sunbeams,
Homer, Milton, Shakespeare bask,
And with mocking voices ever,
Tell her of her hopeless task.
* * * *
Oh! there is a glorious poem,
In each earnest, woman-heart,
Struggling for a mighty utt’rance,
Struggling to become a part
Of the never-ending drama,
Acting on Life’s fitful stage,—
Hourly, daily, monthly, yearly,—
Love and hope on every page.
Think ye not, because she’s plodding,
Plodding duty’s daily round,
That no glowing lines of beauty
In her footsteps may be found.
When she giveth meat in season,
To her household, morn and night;
When she giveth ease to suff’ring,
Or to darkness bringeth light;—
While she plieth broom and duster,
Needle, scissors, here and there,
Leaves she not a glow, a gladness—
Do not all things grow more fair
* * * *
Mark, proud man, the patient mother,
Bending o’er the cradle low;
List ye to her stirring heart-songs,
Improvised in love-tones low.
She is writing, ever writing,
Poems, earnest, true, and strong,
On that fair, unsullied life-page,
Nestled snowy downs among.
She is writing, ever writing,
Love all holy holds her pen.
Will her lofty aspirations
E’er be reached by mortal men?
Can the creature she is forming
Soar beyond her earnest thought,
Or produce one trace of beauty
Which her soul hath not inwrought?
She is writing, ever writing;—
Busy day or quiet night,
Finds her pen still poised and ready,
Some great poet-thought to write.
Here a line of love and beauty,
There a touch sublimely true,
Now a stanza breathing duty,—
Ever marking something new;
Till, at last, her work completed,
Like a regal flower unfurled,
Every petal fresh and glorious,
Bursts her Poem on the world.
Bursts to live and glow forever,—
Shedding fragrance o’er the soul,
Gathering power, and strength, and wisdom,
While the eternal years shall roll.
Bursts to live and glow forever,
Live above the earth-chained clod,
Drawing all things human onward,
Upward to the throne of God.
Oh! what living, breathing Poems,
Now are echoing through the land,
Written from the heart of woman,
While God held her trembling hand.
What were Homer, Milton, Shakespeare,
All who’ve ever near’d Fame’s goal,
But th’ inspired, the living Poems
Of a loving mother’s soul!
Man may form the grand Ideal,
And lay down the glorious plan;
But the woman’s work is real—
’Tis the mother makes the man.*
* “Men are what their mothers made them.” —R. W. Emerson
The Language of the Soul
Silas Xavier Floyd
1869 –1923
There is a language of the soul
More powerful than all uttered speech
And there’s no mortal on the earth
Of high or yet lowly birth,
Who finds it out of reach.
Not that all spoken words are vain,
But oft we do not need their seal.
Weak words are not the only way
In which we fashion and convey
The things we think and feel.
The trembling hand, the tell-tale eye,
And rosy ting of cheek aflame.
Speak louder than the loudest word
That we poor mortals ever heard,
Or that we chanced to frame.
And in the soul’s sublimest mode,
When love meets love in rapturous bliss,
’Tis then that silence is supreme,
And kisses fitly crown esteem,
While words would be amiss.
LO has a new girlfriend. I saw it today when he shared a photo of her on fb. There is nowhere else I can share it but here because nobody knows about my ongoing LO obsession.
I can no longer see myself through his lens now. Internal dialogues are pointless. The loss of hope is here. There is no one who is secretly still waiting for me. There is no longer that someone I can eventually run to if this all goes wrong. There was never anyone who showed such an enthusiastic and sweet interest in me as he did. He was unique. Over the course of years I matched my personality to his special vibe. I made the jokes I thought he would like. I wore the clothes I thought he would like. As if everything was a rehearsal for what could ever happen again. As if I was perfecting myself to create the best version that was finally able to choose him. I know there’s a chance I’ll never meet someone like him again. Never having those same kind of conversations again. Never again someone who is that unique … with everything I like and find special about him and all that I look up to. Yes, only now do I notice what a pedestal I’ve put him on. But I know there are no other men like him. And I loved him and now he’s gone for good. I don’t know if I want to know more about her. She is proof that I let go of something valuable. I don’t know what it’ll leave me with. Will I feel the emptiness, or maybe this is what I needed? Can I actually begin to let go now? How can I break those patterns that are so stubbornly ingrained in me? Who or what will replace him? Writing this, it sounds as cliche as it can get. But it is my experience. Limerence experts and survivors, please tell me is this a good thing, will this mean the end of my LE for good? Damn I really wonder what this will do to me…
It is a good thing. It feels bad now because reality has set in. Yes, you will never meet another like him. But that’s okay too. You need someone who can show you the same deep connection that you feel. The things you did, dress and joke about things he liked, are normal in the beginning of any relationship. He showed interest but never asked you out? You said new girlfriend. So he had one before? Was he unavailable? There are “more fish in the sea.” It feels hopeless now because you lost something valuable, but that feeling will fade. If it wasn’t valuable to him, use that as your reason to move on. I know it hurts deeply, but time will heal your wound if you let him go. You are in the right place. Leave it all here.
Frank, a little background story. I met him a very long time ago, we were lovers briefly. Met my SO after that, who is the very best and I would never want to trade him for anyone, but it was during a stressful time when our relationship went through a crisis that I met him again and fell for him more deeply than ever before. I couldn’t carry it at the time. Despite his many invitations, I declined. Off you go, I thought, find your person because you don’t want to deal with the mess that I am right now. And then I will get back to mine. But it wasn’t that easy and it took a long time before we stopped all contact. And now he found his person. And I am a mess again.
Kat
Im sorry i tried to read so much into your story. Your story is a real heartbreak. You had an intimate relationship before and then broke
it off. Then you found another. But then he wanted to meet up again, but you declined, which was very wise. But the feelings were still there. But you are a different person now, with the strength to fight the chemical reaction in your brain. That’s why you said no to the meetups. And you are NC now. You are on the way to healing, even though it may not feel like it. My advice is to not look at his social media. You tried to form an intimate relationship before and it didn’t work. It definitely will not work now without hurting your SO and his new girlfriend. You are doing all the right things, but you must convince yourself of that. Please be easy on yourself. Like you said, you have to live your life and he has to live his.
Kat
I’ve found that my absence from my previous job (I was laid off back in March) even though LO left the job when I was still there (June 2022) that my attachment to her, despite having a gentleman friend when I still worked with her, and is now married again, to a different man, been a helluva help in finally letting go of her, my idealization of her and the stories I played out in my head of her and me. The literal four walls that imprisoned me in the job I hated but held on to long after she left, hoping she would come back, were the last thing to remind me of her. I don’t even look at her Facebook or have the desire to. The letting go completely finally has happened for me. I hope that your uncertainty about yours eventually brings you the peace mine finally has.
To my other LwL friends …. Our oldest son came by today before I have to work tonight and brought me my Father’s Day gift. The boy (err man) has good taste in fashion. I’ll be wearing it to work tonight.
https://imgur.com/a/BcrPEaw
Oh, dear Adam, you’re going to look like a million bucks in that hat!
I’ll wear on our dance to Purple Rain. ☺️
To Adam:
I can’t wait!
Adam,
Do you play saxophone in smoky jazz clubs wearing that hat? 🙂
I meant Marcia to Adam.
Imgur not available here! Can you describe the picture?
To Miss Cloud:
Purple fedora with a black band and multicolored feathers.
Fabulous!!
Adam,
Was it mostly the absence of the surroundings that reminded you of her or the loss of possibility when she got married, that made you lose all desire to stop checking on her? I did the thing I never could have imagined myself doing in years: I unfriended him.
Turns out I can still visit his profile and see everything he posts because apparently he set his posts to public. Weird. How relentless. Next time I’ll ever fall in love I make sure it is with someone who is not on social media and leaves no trace of his existence anywhere. It’s painful, but I remind myself I am doing this out of compassion for myself, to break a painful habit that doesn’t serve me at all. I feel a small spark of hope. This ‘possibility’ i clung onto was actually something that imprisoned me and limited my identity to a certain story. Now I can finally begin to let go. The world is open to a lot more interesting things now, I am not defined by this anymore, even though it’s a part of my experience that I carry with me.
Kat, I couldn’t stop by here without replying to you and offering some words of comfort to show we’re here listening. The grief (and yes, it is grief) you’re going through right now is overwhelming. Coming here and letting it out in a safe space is an excellent plan. We’ve got your back.
Cloud, I appreciate it. Been through a lot of grief already before I (thought I) went NC, but then tricky ol limerent me got the best of me and kept checking in until now the definitive answer arrived. So grief comes and goes, but at least it’s moving and hopefully for the better.
To clearly see and care-freely try possibilities, but never cling (always causing aching)…
A small dose of hope keeps curiosity alive and spirit up, without which the sky would be mostly gray.
It’s Okay to express all your ordeal and pains here; voicing them out in writing will reduce more than half of them; the rest of the half through self-exploring by inquiring and answering, internally or externally (here).
Keeping a connection alive by merely checking in on his existence microdosed me little bits of hope which indeed kept my curiousity alive and spirit up. I am afraid the sky will turn grey now, the world too uncontrollable and me in it, unnoticed, discharged.
Why did I need this guy’s validation so much? Why do I let someone who is long gone still dictate my energy?
Kat,
I didn’t mean to keep an unavailable LE connection alive, but possibilities in general in one’s life.
I remember what Father told me: never shut down or close up a possibility, before thoroughly assess it, realistically try it, and then firmly put it into the file of “Impossibility”. Even if it’s still in the file of “possibility” after the evaluation, never “Cling” (— passive & desperate thus burdensome) to it but actively make some benefits out of it for yourself.
Do we really need to be “noticed” to exist, live, and thrive? How could one to be “discharged”, if you (collective) don’t discharge yourself?
Keep a small dose of hope alive even when there seems to be no hope, just like a bird chirping every morning, even if the sky is gray. “Always keep a patch of blue sky over your head” (Proust) at wherever you are!
One default of the natural or human world is: uncontrollable. However, with some training, one could have some “control” over one’s own mind. I recommend some Stoicism (or/and IFS — Internal Family System), which has been effectively working for me.
“Why did I need this guy’s validation so much? Why do I let someone who is long gone still dictate my energy?”
A insightful question, “Why do I let…”. You’ve recognized that it’s your own mind’s doing, not anyone’s fault. True answer(s) would eventually arrive through one’s internal discovering and healing process. I would repeatedly self-examine myself:
1. what aspects of me/my life that need to be validated by LO?
2. Why do I think him, not anyone else including my SO, could do the job? What’re his merits and flaws?
3. Is anyone else in my far past (a caregiver, or an earlier crush, etc) who had held such a power over my mind/emotions?
4. Do I truly need such LO’s validation to live and thrive? Without it, what happened or what will happen?
5. Do I have/want a strong autonomy, an independent mind, and adequate knowledge to sort out any “mess” whenever they appear in my life?
6. What wisdom tools could I use/acquire to help myself, w/o external assistance?
I applied them during my own LE mess (for 8 years) and am liberated now. I am positive I won’t fall in an unavailable LE again.
Smooth sailings with your self-discovery, and feel safe to unload your stresses, concerns, or questions here.
Edit an ESL error:
I need to say “never close your mind to a possibility”, right? (Not “close up”)
Sometimes, even just one spelling error, could cause colossal mistakes in communication and understanding, possibly darkening the sunny sky … or misplacing a matter from “possibility” pile to “impossibility” file.
Kat, please be assured that you’re very much “noticed” here and never to be “discharged”, regardless of how the external world seemingly feels “too uncontrollable”.
To Kat:
I can identify with your feelings even though my circumstances are different.
I find that writing about these things is very helpful. I am so glad you posted about this, although I am so sorry about the pain you’re going through.
I was just about to write my own separate post, but maybe I’ll wait awhile.
Kat
I think the biggest move forward for me was leaving the physical space (even if it wasn’t on my terms) that embodied her. Her dating didn’t when I worked with her bother me other than he took more of her attention than she gave to me. And even though finding out 2 years after the fact (by checking her social media) she got married again, to a man clearly my age (she was younger than me) hurt at first, I accepted that this was her life and I wasn’t a part of it anymore. But I think moving on from the job, every last reminder of her, helped the most. Sometime in the fall of last year was the last time I looked her up online. And have had no interest to do so since.
Miss Marcia
At my old job, our warehouse was in a residential area and our neighbor across the street would ask something similar. She was from Mexico and would often ask favors of me (when her husband passed and she needed physical labor jobs done) the same thing about me wearing hats. “Are you sure you’re not a musician?” No sorry. All I can do is badly sing to “Girl Crush”.
Girl Crush — Little Big Town (isn’t Miss Kimberly, the blonde, the cutest thing ever?)
https://youtu.be/JYZMT8otKdI?is=182YLRzFIZNK9iTQ
And to my brother
This is the kinda drinking music we need to share some drinks with if we ever get the chance.
The Wine, the Beer, the Whiskey —Little Big Town (though it unfortunately has LOs name mentioned in it)
https://youtu.be/FDF0Y9KOloY?is=ziMkwigk2qFtnkRL
Adam,
“At my old job, our warehouse was in a residential area and our neighbor across the street would ask something similar. She was from Mexico and would often ask favors of me (when her husband passed and she needed physical labor jobs done) the same thing about me wearing hats. “Are you sure you’re not a musician?” ”
Yeah, it makes sense that she noticed. You dress like a man of color. 🙂 Most white guys have a certain “dude uniform” they wear that involves rather drab browns and blues. Maybe a little plaid. Whereas you’ll see a black man in a red suit. Something tells me you own a red suit. 🙂 (I’m not criticizing you; I’m teasing you.)
Actually it’s lavender, the suit, Miss Marcia. It and my finely polished Madison Stacey Adam’s shoes are what our oldest son worn, when he took (his now ex) to prom.
But now I’m thinking of getting a red suit. ☺️ Maybe more maroon. Don’t think I could pull off actual red like the hair color of the ladies I keep falling for.
Where I grew up, church, school, neighborhood, etc my skin color was a minority. So your assumption is quite correct. “Play that funky music white boy” and my taste for dark chocolate are also favorable assumptions.
My brother likes his tamales spicy and I like my chocolate dark. (We won’t talk about this yankee white boy trying to eat his first tamale through the literal husk after Momma introduced me to them.)
Adam,
“But now I’m thinking of getting a red suit.”
Of course you are. 🙂
“Where I grew up, church, school, neighborhood, etc my skin color was a minority. So your assumption is quite correct. “Play that funky music white boy” and my taste for dark chocolate are also favorable assumptions.
I knew it ! 🙂 I’m not sure how to write this but … a black gentleman once told me that I had “a little black in” me. I took it as a compliment. You and I have that in common. We each are “funky white people.” 🙂
“My brother likes his tamales spicy and I like my chocolate dark. ”
Does that mean he likes Latino women and you like black women?
I’m an equal opportunity employer. I like both of these foods. 🙂
“This is the kinda drinking music we need to share some drinks with if we ever get the chance.”
Adam
The mariachi sound always defaults me to a LO thought. Which is usually a good thing. Thank you for that.
It would nice to meet up for a drink with you sometime. After the day I’ve had, I could use about 20. 🍻
Marcia
Does that mean he likes Latino women and you like black women?
It’s not Latino, its Latina.
Latino refers to a male (or a mixed-gender group), while Latina refers to a female. Both terms are used to describe people of Latin America. However they mean the same thing in terms of cultural background.
Get yourself and your Spanish together, Woman. 😆
MJ,
“Get yourself and your Spanish together, Woman. 😆”
I don’t care about Spanish women. That’s your job. I think I wrote “Latino” as a freudian slip. I was thinking of the men. 🙂
I know I’m in trouble when I’m relying on you to correct my PC-ness. 🙂
Adam,
“Otherwise women are to me what alcohol is; they all work for me regardless of type.”
You’re like your brother. You have no selection process. 🙂
Dame Marcia
Actually the only physical feature in a woman I’m partial to is red hair. Natural or dyed. Otherwise women are to me what alcohol is; they all work for me regardless of type.
I saw LO last night and he was uncharacteristically nice to me, and it threw me off, big-time. Or bigly, as our president would say.
I assume that he was in a good mood because he is showing his house today for the first time since last fall. He has a new agent who is advertising it exclusively in high-end markets, and LO is very hopeful that it will sell quickly.
So it appears that he is being unusually kindly to me, which has nothing to do with me, but somehow I FEEL it has something to do with me, and it throws my emotional state way off.
I realize now that I have been counting on him to be brusque and standoffish in order to help me keep my limerence under control. Well, I see that this strategy has a giant drawback.
He was unexpectedly nice and I fell into a giant pot-hole.
My self-loathing is greater than ever.
This is an example of intermittent reward and unfortunately does a number on the emotions! The hot/cold. So sorry that the inconsistent LO who sounds like he’s 90% not nice but 10% nice has this dynamic going with you.
To Sympathetic:
Thank you for putting your finger on this!
I couldn’t quite express it, and you nailed it in two words–intermittent reward. Ugh. Yes, you are spot-on. 90/10. Again, ugh.
You wouldn’t think the 10% kindliness would mess me up so bad, but it does.
Thank you for giving me the words I couldn’t quite find on my own.
Norma,
To clearly see and accept that it’s a case of 90/10, intermittent rewarding LE, we know your “exposure treatment” is not and will never be working. Your own mind needs to find a way to ‘break it off’ — to break the deep mental/emotional expectation and dependence on your LO’s spotty 10% niceness towards you. Is it possible not to expect it at all by cut off meeting with him?
I think this weekly meetup with him is just keeping doing a number on your emotions/psyche; then faithfully writing about it week after week internally reinforces the damage, which might not recover easily (or ever) even after LO leaves.
Hope you have a peaceful weekend!
It would be understandable if this ‘hot and cold’ is 40/60 or even 30/70, but only 10% breadcrumbs? What’s so missing/starved in your current living?
It’s a general question to all unavailable, unreciprocated LEs.
To Miss Snow:
Thank you for your comments. Lots of food for thought.
I keep thinking I am making progress, but maybe I am fooling myself.
To Miss Snow:
It just occurred to me that I wanted to make one additional point.
Every time I am with LO, I learn something new which is off-putting about him. I do think the cumulative effect of the off-putting issues is helping me long-term.
If I DON’T see him, it’s too easy to slip backward and start idealizing him again. When I see him in person, and he reacts to a question or comment of mine in a way that is negative, unkindly or rude, it raises my awareness that he has very few qualities that make him a palatable friend.
The jury is still out on my experiment. Chances are, he will move soon and the issue will be out of my hands. He will be moving to YOUR neck of the woods. Perhaps you’d like to take a crack at him? You’d probably do far better than I have done.
Norma,
“Every time I am with LO, I learn something new which is off-putting about him. I do think the cumulative effect of the off-putting issues is helping me long-term.”
I DISAGREE, based on what you’ve been describing repeatedly, it will NOT happen in a long run. His 10% of “nicety” would throw you back the Bottomless rabbit hole again and again.
“If I DON’T see him, it’s too easy to slip backward and start idealizing him again.”
It’s the LE brain that finds excuses NOT to do what’s right and beneficial for your wellbeing. Your logical mind is aware what kind of person he is, but your LE let it ignore the horrendous facts and weaken your executive mind again and again.
“When I see him in person, and he reacts to a question or comment of mine in a way that is negative, unkindly or rude, it raises my awareness that he has very few qualities that make him a palatable friend.”
You’ve had enough awareness, but you still hope for /expect /depend on that 10% breadcrumbs, whether you’re conscious of or acknowledge it or not.
“The jury is still out on my experiment. Chances are, he will move soon and the issue will be out of my hands.”
Sorry to be frank here: your ‘experiment’ sounds like a masochist’s behavior, especially when one totally let another lead/control their life (or unresolved issues). Unfortunately, LE sometimes can make limerents mentally/emotionally “masochistic”, w/o their own awareness or consent.
Using your argument above, after he leaves your mind will just idealize him more without the 10% “correction”, the “backward slipping” memory would keep you stuck in LE, might be for years, like some Lwlers reported here.
“He will be moving to YOUR neck of the woods. Perhaps you’d like to take a crack at him? You’d probably do far better than I have done.”
Why would I stupidly care about your disgusting, devilish LO? Not for a billion dollars! I won’t let anyone negatively affect or damage my small but quite content, joyful life.
Again, please do NOT talk with me again about your LO. My two previous posts were focused on YOU and your wellbeing.
Sorry about my math error in the deadly night; it should be — [without the 90% “correction”].
It’s another heavenly sunny, cool day here (highest 26C/78F) … 😃
Got to run now to “brainwash” my senior pupil in a skyscraper 🏙️
No more talk 🤐 of your LO , wish your LE-free days to come, Norma!
To Miss Snow:
I was joking–perhaps it got lost in translation?
I am quite sure you could eat LO for lunch.
I’m quite sure I’d 🤮!
Anderson Cooper has NO personal attraction to me!
To Miss Snow:
I only said that you COULD eat him for lunch because of your impressive skill-set.
I didn’t say he would taste good.
MJ,
“I haven’t been ignoring you. 😆”
But I ignored you. 🙂
I moved the post here because it’s the most recent coffeehouse.
“Show me some attention and I’ll gladly try to give you what I’ve got.”
That may be coming across to potentials. It’s … um … not attractive. Sorry. I’m not sure how else to say it.
” I really have no life”
I don’t have much of one, either. But I did make big social plans for the fall and that has gotten some fire under my ass. I agreed to go in hopes it would. I’ve been working out and dieting ever since. Just changed my hair today. I want to get back in the game, baby. 🙂 Give me, ballpark, 3 months. I think the LE is finally starting to lift a bit.
“Thankfully the worst of it has passed, but I still want her.”
I think this is a false narrative you’re telling yourself. You never so much as talked to her.
“Has it really devolved all this time to become the awkward and joy-less life this has become? Unless some other person comes around, finds something in me that’s worth keeping around, can even like me despite my past mistakes, I’m doomed to keep drinking this coffee alone, for the rest of eternity.”
That’s a bleak picture. I certainly don’t think you’re doomed to spend the rest of (what little) time you have left. (C’mon. That was funny. :)) This will be an irritating answer … but it’s kind of up to you. Like it is for anyone. You have to get off your butt and start creating a life for yourself outside of work and caring for your dad. To be clear, I know none of it is easy. I’m working on it myself.
“Her and I recently had another one of those regret conversations again. She reminded me of how divorced she is from me now and I have to admit, it really hurt. ”
I’m not sure why you did that. I think the door is shut with her.
I look at it much differently than you do. You get to meet a new person who is introduced to the person you are today. Who doesn’t see your through the lens of decades of past mistakes and past selves.
“I say I’ve changed, but it’s not really for the better. I’m just older and crustier now.. Sad but true. 😑”
Well, you’re definitely older. 🙂 I don’t see “crusty.” I see a person who has learned from his past mistakes and doesn’t want to make them again.
“I am. I’m just not posting about it yet because it really is fresh. ”
I don’t want to hear about it until you get back from the first date.
“A part of me has become comfy with my way of life now, but I long for company besides the few friends I have and relatives who come and go.”
I feel the same way.
” Like you, I want them to just show up too ”
I like meeting men naturally and kind of stumbling upon them when I don’t expect it. But … let’s be real … what is the likelihood such a man will be available and also interested? It’s not an effective strategy. Waiting for the Universe to be nice to me.
” Like am I, old fata$$ MJ, going to land someone as perfect as LO or as hot as Sabrina? Hilary? Ana? Probably not..”
I mean, if you need to get in shape, start working on it. Become the best version of yourself you can, within reason. Physically, mentally, etc.
One of the things I’ve noticed in your posts … you’re very, very hard on yourself about your past. Something maybe to work on in the “mental” checklist.
“He probably didn’t want to be alone. ”
That’s not a reason to ask me out.
“He might have thought you had wife potential.”
I didn’t. 🙂
“I knew a guy who had just gotten out of the joint ”
“The joint”! OMG. What year is this? 1975? 🙂
“after about a 10 year bit and married the first Woman he met.”
I was going to say …. that’s how your side sometimesoperates when they decide they want to marry. But that’s not really fair because there’s a woman who agrees to marry that guy.
“She was being a home-wrecker and I wanted in on the fun too but she was never going to tell me about it.”
I’m not following you. You thought because she was hooking up with a married guy that signaled she would be ok with also having sex with you or you were angry she was hooking up with the married guy and not you?
” I know my place and it’s definitely not between her sheets.”
“Between her sheets”! Another super old phrase. Are you going to be “dancing in the sheets”? 🙂
“I’ll not talk about it until I have something concrete to work with. I’m not putting the cart before the horse. No bad decisions.”
If you’ve talked to her more than two or three times and not asked her out … you’re still using the MJ hover system.
“I guess my only question here is, is every woman like you, in that they want every guy to be cavalier in the effort? ”
Cavalier means showing a lack of concern. They weren’t cavalier. They were direct and assertive.
“It’s like your options are thin, but we have only the smallest window we can get in through.. If we don’t fit, oh well.”
I can’t speak for other women, but I have to be attracted to some degree. And I know that fairly quickly. Usually within seconds of meeting the man. Or, in some rarer, cases, within a few interactions of talking to them. Either way, feeling attracted happens fairly quickly.
“I mean you have to like the guy a lot in the beginning I suppose, if you like the vibe and the fact he’s not being a dawdler about getting what he wants. Right? ”
Yes.
“But what if he’s lacking something?”
I don’t know yet what he’s lacking. I just know I’m attracted.
“I think I wrote it like that because at this point, I would settle for a good platonic friendship. ”
I think it’s fine if you want to take it slowly and develop a friendship. I think you can even say on the first date, if it’s going well and she seems interested, that you’d like to go out again but want to take it slowly to build a solid friendship. I think a lot of women would like to hear that. HOWEVER, that’s once you’re established your romantic/sexual interest by asking her out. On a date. So you’re both on the same page that you’re not hanging out as friends. And you’ve asked her out on this first date pretty quickly after meeting her, making it clear it’s a date.
” But I do believe that in a platonic sense I can work with it and I kinda don’t mind it either. Because at least having a good work friend is better than having no good work friend.”
As long as you’re not hoping for more, I think it’s fine. I wouldn’t, however, waste my time communicating with her outside of work.
“True but meeting anyone new is hard work. That’s why I mentioned up there that if I find something in them I am attracted to or think I could enjoy getting to find out more about, then lets see what transpires.”
Yeah. That’s fine. But you have to ask them out and start the dating process.
“You girls know when we’re going there. You feel it.. I call it sniffing. 😆”
You call it “sniffing.” I call them “toss outs.” Like the comments I wrote that that guy made. I will probably pick up on the first toss out. I will almost certainly pick up on the second (just in case I missed the first or was unsure if the first was an actual toss out). No need to continually toss out more. That can get irritating (and comes off as the guy not having the guts to ask the woman out or that he just likes the attention and has no intention of asking the woman on a proper date). If I don’t respond to the toss outs or don’t respond in a way that opens the door for the guy, I don’t want to.
“He was probably hoping if he kept going, things would change in time.”
Honestly, he only did the toss out thing 3 times. Any more would have started getting annoying.
” I feel like she longs for someone to appreciate her like I do my own kids. ”
Like a father figure or a date?
“I’m gonna pull the Brother Adam card here and admit, I kinda want to rescue her too.”
I don’t get that at all. I don’t know why you’d want to raise another man’s baby. Especially because your kids are grown and gone and now you have your dad to care for. So you’ve had a lot of caretaking years in your life. I’d think you’d want to completely avoid adding more of that type of responsiblity to your plate.
Marcia
“But I ignored you. 🙂
I moved the post here because it’s the most recent coffeehouse.”
Ikr right? Finally, the reply you’ve been waiting for. I’ve had a very hellish and long week. Thank you for ignoring me. I would ignore myself too if I could but I’m stuck with me unfortunately.. Thank you also for moving the post. It makes my cut and paste a lot easier 😊
“That may be coming across to potentials. It’s … um … not attractive. Sorry. I’m not sure how else to say it.”
Maybe its unattractive only to you. I’m pretty much almost out of options at this point. I made too many LO mistakes to not at least shoot my shot with whoever has the kindness to look twice at me or say hello. This is just what things have devolved to. I’m not trying to be desperate but if that’s how its perceived, then thats on them. I try to keep it real, hoping I land with someone. I think I already have but I’m not expounding on it much because I’m not allowed to.
“I’ve been working out and dieting ever since. Just changed my hair today. I want to get back in the game, baby. 🙂 Give me, ballpark, 3 months. I think the LE is finally starting to lift a bit.”
Good for you. Sounds like you’re in a better place than I am (Not hard to do tbh). Guess I didn’t figure you were still suffering over LE matters much these days. Your advice is usually pretty sound, so I figured you were more out of the woods by now.
“I think this is a false narrative you’re telling yourself. You never so much as talked to her.”
You don’t need to remind me. I’m well aware of what I didn’t do. It was the altered state of mind, that planted all those fantasy seeds, that developed into the limerent mindset, which then morphed into a reality that wasn’t. I conjured up every good and wholesome loving relationship fantasy possible. Sometimes going even sexual. I thought of marrying her, Christmases with her, going to the beach, cooking dinner together. I wrote poetry about it. Created playlists. I sang in the car to her. Yelled it out the window. I never felt more in love or more complete than when I thought of her. I know it was terribly unhealthy, but this is where I was at. ALL of it just crashed and burned, when she switched locations..
I took it so personally, feeling so betrayed, that my altered state of mind made it feel like it was a real actual breakup. As if she left because of me, when I know better she didn’t. Like I’m still very aware nothing ever happened between us. Nothing. Not one damn thing and yet it all feels way too real like it all actually did. So I kept hanging on to all that good I thought of, which at the same time saddened me to extreme because I knew in my head it was all fake. That is the lie behind my limerence.
Was I finally sad about my divorce? Was it because I had broken up with my last SO, 6 months prior to LE? Was I finally coming to grips with Mom being gone? Was it because my Daughter and I were (and still are) bad at connection?? Could be.. Right?? Like the recurring theme in my head then was, all the good and important Women in my life are leaving me. Wtf?? What do I do now?
That is why I know and I admit to many others on here, that this was beyond a doubt, the only one true limerent experience I’ve ever had and I would never want it again. No other one human-being, EVER, in my life has affected me like this Woman has. Like I’ve never been more sure something so awesome was going to happen between us and then next in Twin Towers disaster fashion, watch it all crumble right before me when I realized it wouldn’t. I mean, it next-level shook me to my core. What god-awful feelings this experience has done to me. Like how could anyone do this to themselves more than once? I would never do this to myself again. I can’t. My mood swings have varied and have been all over the place. I was depressed and had panic attacks all the time. I know I never got that sad even in my own mother’s passing..
So if you want to talk about false narratives I’m telling myself, I just gave you the many reasons why. A lot of this crap is still in my head. She’s still one thing that makes me a little happier than I currently am. Any little thing that reminds me of her makes me happier than I am. I.E., Seeing our finshed vehicles on freight haulers going to car dealerships, a car like hers, fake nails, fake eyelashes, hair extensions, Dunkin, Wendy’s, Sabrina, Labubus.. And tbh, if you could see my life on this end and the sort of hell I’ve kinda defaulted into, you might actually see why I think like this. I’m trying to be real and down to earth but it’s also very difficult.
“That’s a bleak picture. I certainly don’t think you’re doomed to spend the rest of (what little) time you have left. (C’mon. That was funny. :))”
It was. I mean you’re not wrong. 55 is not 35, nor is it 45. I hope this is not the beginning of the end. 😆
“This will be an irritating answer … but it’s kind of up to you. Like it is for anyone. You have to get off your butt and start creating a life for yourself outside of work and caring for your dad. To be clear, I know none of it is easy. I’m working on it myself.”
Yes you are correct. It feels like it’s in deluxe slow motion getting there. It’s figuring out how to develop into this stage and doing it solo. Again, I get Dad has a caretaker and he is very easy to work around so I have this in my corner. I am hopeful of what I have in the works but I am also trying to be aware I may be putting the cart before the horse. So my strategies may need tweaking.
“I’m not sure why you did that. I think the door is shut with her.”
Comfort. She’s still a safe person for me. I can bitch and complain all I want expecting her sympathy, based on how I remember her. Yet I know the ship has still sailed. There are decades to our difficult story. That’s not something I’ve ever been easy with just discarding.
“I look at it much differently than you do. You get to meet a new person who is introduced to the person you are today. Who doesn’t see your through the lens of decades of past mistakes and past selves.”
Sounds good. This is very true and I know you mean very well. I wish I could tell you it was that easy. But it isn’t and this isn’t the forum to talk about it either. Not trying to evade here. But mistakes have cost me a simple luxury. My actions now mean nothing. All good intent doesn’t matter. Its luck of the draw when it comes to the opposite sex now and they just have to deal, if they want to be in. If this appears to sound cryptic, just leave it at that.
“Well, you’re definitely older. 🙂 I don’t see “crusty.” I see a person who has learned from his past mistakes and doesn’t want to make them again.”
No I do not want to make them again. As mentioned above, this is a work in progress. (Pardon the cliche, I really hate that phrase, tbh 😆)
“I like meeting men naturally and kind of stumbling upon them when I don’t expect it. But … let’s be real … what is the likelihood such a man will be available and also interested?”
This is almost the same exact thing I think about too. I know I can’t tell you anything in particular but I recently stumbled when I least expected it. It is fun. But I am curious of the likelihood they are interested the same. I don’t know. She gave me her number and I didn’t even have to ask her for it. I mean thats a good sign isn’t it? (Wait did I just think out loud? 😆)
“One of the things I’ve noticed in your posts … you’re very, very hard on yourself about your past. Something maybe to work on in the “mental” checklist.”
There is a method to the madness. I don’t know how you were raised, but there was yelling in my family growing up. I had a soccer coach who was a lot like Bobby Knight and threw temper tantrums on the sidelines. So I come from a place thats old school and people got mad. This is a huge reason my Daughter and I are always at odds. She just shuts down whenever I slightly raise my voice. It’s her default reaction. Which drives me insane. I can never get my point across, because she’s done.
I positively hate myself for making the bad choices I’ve made. Which makes everything for me now, way more difficult than it needs to be. I just don’t like myself and I know that is not attractive at all to the opposite sex. I’m not really trying to shoot myself in the foot, right out the gate, but maybe its karma for being such a rotten provider. At least in the way of being quality mental support and overall good person. Monetarily, my family has always been very well taken care of and never gone without. Yet that isn’t important. Because It’s true what they say. Money can definitely not buy happiness.
““The joint”! OMG. What year is this? 1975? 🙂”
In 1975 I was 4. Just like you were. Whats wrong with “The Joint”? Did you want me to say “Big House?” “The Clink?” “The Slamner?””The Pokey?”
I’m always living in the past. So what if its 1975? What were you listening to in 1975? I’ll bet it was Captain and Tenille grooving to “Love will keep is together”
Or maybe it was something by John Denver. “Thank God I’m a country boy”
Meanwhile little MJ was being cool listening to Zeppelin and “Kashmir” and Earth, Wind and Fire with “Shining Star”
“I’m not following you. You thought because she was hooking up with a married guy that signaled she would be ok with also having sex with you or you were angry she was hooking up with the married guy and not you?”
It was a little of both of those. I wanted to be the better option for her because I know it was killing her emotionally to keep doing that with him since he was going home to a Wife all the time. I figured I could give her more, mentally and emotionally (even financially) being single, and not going home to anyone. Being that her and I seemingly could get along just as well as they did. I got a little all up in my feelings when she didn’t have the emotional capacity to at least meet me half way somehow, or at the bar, and/or maybe a give me a happy ending sometime. I mean I never inquired to her about it, but I did want to fool around at some point and I think she knew it. I couldn’t have been more simpy or pathetic if I tried. I adored her. Always went out of my way for her. In other words, I tried too freaking hard. Which is why she told me I was putting too much on her to expect anything more, after I disclosed.
““Between her sheets”! Another super old phrase. Are you going to be “dancing in the sheets”? 🙂”
You keep making fun of my old timer lingo, but its funny isn’t it? I used to tell the guys at work why I was still doing the laundry, even after I was divorced. I told them my Wife had always told me I wasn’t any good in between the sheets, so I thought the least I could do is wash them.. (C’mon you laughed 😆)
“If you’ve talked to her more than two or three times and not asked her out … you’re still using the MJ hover system.”
If I had to gauge things, I would say I am in the sweet spot to do just that and not rely on the hover system this time. I feel like the timing is right. However I had a positive response from NG right out the gate too and it went nowhere fast. I have a better idea this time around. Stay tuned for updates.. 🤔🫠
“Cavalier means showing a lack of concern. They weren’t cavalier. They were direct and assertive.”
By cavalier I meant not concerned with how that makes YOU feel. Like direct and assertive is fine. But if it bothers you because your feeling is not mutual towards them and they just keep driving away at your unease, not caring about you, then that would be cavalier on their part. Sorry if I didn’t phrase that better.
“I think it’s fine if you want to take it slowly and develop a friendship. I think you can even say on the first date, if it’s going well and she seems interested, that you’d like to go out again but want to take it slowly to build a solid friendship. I think a lot of women would like to hear that.”
It’s too early to say where this is headed. I started talking to this person because I mentioned she has a tail-light out on her car and I would gladly fix it for her if she wanted me to. Which surprised but delighted her all at the same time I think. I’ve seen her around work before and she’s always noticed and smiled at me, so I thought it was high-time I move-in and investigate. I introduced myself and asked her her name (I’ll call her eM for this forum) So far it’s been pleasant but she’s being flighty about meeting up to fix her light. I’m not being pushy but we haven’t had much time at work to talk either. As she too works in an almost different zip code than I do. But I’m keeping things light and I’m making her laugh. As mentioned above, she willingly gave me her number too without my asking. So I have to pat myself on the back for little victories. I feel like I’ve come a long way..
Think about it. If that had been LO freely giving me her number, I probably wouldn’t be messaging you all this because I would have had a stroke and passed out due to her actually doing that.. What a doofus, right?? 😆
“HOWEVER, that’s once you’re established your romantic/sexual interest by asking her out. On a date. So you’re both on the same page that you’re not hanging out as friends. And you’ve asked her out on this first date pretty quickly after meeting her, making it clear it’s a date.”
Since I’m not allowed to talk about it till it happens, I won’t reveal my plan. All I will say is I WILL make it very black or white. No grey area for her to wheedle in and/or out of. Again this is the plan. It may backfire and I’ll have to improvise on the sly but I will keep you posted Dear.. Believe that.. 😇
“I don’t get that at all. I don’t know why you’d want to raise another man’s baby. Especially because your kids are grown and gone and now you have your dad to care for. So you’ve had a lot of caretaking years in your life. I’d think you’d want to completely avoid adding more of that type of responsiblity to your plate.”
I’ve mentioned about this person enough. She’s a work friend. Thats all. Like not even the same kind of work friendship I have with LF. Nothing close to that. Totally different. I really don’t see this person as much more. The idea of actually being with her is only because of the desperate place I feel like I’m in. I think there’s just too much drama in her world to make that happen and I think she’s already got one or two more from another baby daddy anyway. I’m not really down with that. I don’t really want her like that. She’s just kinda sweet and got a little bit of the bad girl thing going. Plus she’s in her 30s and I like her style. It’s definitely not LO but it’s passing. I’ve been alone long enough. I’m not going to be too picky..
Besides, I have another option now anyway.. I think.. 😁
🎩 🦎 MJ,
“…I never felt more in love or more complete than when I thought of her. I know it was terribly unhealthy, but this is where I was at. ALL of it just crashed and burned, when she switched locations…
I took it so personally, feeling so betrayed, that my altered state of mind made it feel like it was a real actual breakup. As if she left because of me, when I know better she didn’t. “
Most limerents (in LwL) in the peak of their limerence have fantasied a relationship with LO happily ever after, but your alter state of mind even went further to a fantasied breakup — star-crossed love for eternality ⚡️ … Can I think such a LE is in its sublime stage (while your logical mind was still functioning)? 😳 It’s so amazing and enlightening (I’m sincere here, no mocking all) to hear about such a marvelous description of a perfected, superb LE! 🙌
“If that had been LO freely giving me her number, I probably wouldn’t be messaging you all this because I would have had a stroke and passed out due to her actually doing that.. What a doofus, right?? “
IMHO, if LO freely gives her number to you, you’d probably run away (instead of passing out) — a reality even with one’s LO would clash/crush all idealized fantasies with LO, thus kill that invincible LE High/dopamine. Like substance addicts, LE addicts would want to hold onto such a dopamine supply, not cut it off by realistically dating or having a relationship with LO. Have you thought of that?
It’s just my theory. Please don’t get offended if I’m wrong in your case. After all, I don’t live in your head, and LO has not given you her number yet, in the reality.
By the way, your writing style, hmm… sounds more and more like inherited from your Grandpa 😀 (who might be still living in a kangaroo’s pouch 🤔).
Actually, I’ll wager 💰 with anyone here on my theory! 😀
Not offended Snow. Truth is I’m not sure what I would do. But running away probably wouldn’t be it. True she provided intense dopamine hits, but I’d still like to remain human about it. Because she is human. I know this.
Much better than anything AI will ever dream up for me. 😉
Thank you for the writing comment also. I’m not really trying to model my style after anyone. Much as you might disagree. I do very much have always liked the way Brother Sammy writes. He made me laugh. He should come back. It would be nice to catch up.
🎩 💦 🪣 🦎,
“Truth is I’m not sure what I would do. But running away probably wouldn’t be it.”
Not sure what to do is most likely, it would be overwhelming . But if she turns out to be high-maintenance, more vain (already), and treat you like LF, then what are you going to do? 🤔
“True she provided intense dopamine hits, but I’d still like to remain human about it. “
Once she just gives you her number, the uncertainty and dopamine would decrease, all your perfected LE imaginations would be dissipated or even“crashed”. If you can remain a human while dealing with her flaws, then you have NOT reached the LE addiction stage, which is good! 👍
“Because she is human. I know this.”
Based on your description, she surely sounded like a walking “goddess”, despite your logic knew better. If I remember correctly, she’s back working in your area; what prevents you even just simply greet her — WITHOUT ANY EXPECTATION, like any other colleague?
“Much better than anything AI will ever dream up for me. 😉”
The idea of AI companion is simply repulsive to me. IT is an artificial tool made of 0️⃣ and 1️⃣ — how romantic/sexy is that⁉️
“Thank you for the writing comment also. I’m not really trying to model my style after anyone.”
I meant that your posts getting hmm… longer and longer… 😀
“Much as you might disagree. I do very much have always liked the way Brother Sammy writes. He made me laugh.“
Yeah, your Grandpa well wiped your 💦 🪣 and glorified your LE sentiments… but often reddened 🎩 🥃 ’s face, and even made 🎩 🐍 to pull out his verbal sword…. The most of all, his posts threw some shocking, puzzling, toughest lessons for my Stoic training…. 🔨
But nowadays, Stoic Way runs in my veins, making the life much more content and joyful. The past experiences were all made of either gifts or lessons — the latter benefits more in a long run for the future.
“He should come back. It would be nice to catch up.”
“Should”? No one has banished him or prevented him from comeback; why don’t you and your sentimental brother launch a Quest to locate his whereabouts?
Not long ago, a drone spotted him in the wildness, do you think he looks like he wants to come back to LwL? —
https://imgur.com/a/FhsCj3F
Hopefully working —
https://imgur.com/a/g4DT1o9
Good vibes.. 👍🏻
MJ,
“Thank you also for moving the post. It makes my cut and paste a lot easier 😊”
I try not to challenge you too much. See below.
“Maybe its unattractive only to you. ”
I’m pretty sure desperation is universally considered anti-seductive.
“I’m pretty much almost out of options at this point.”
The only pools you’ve fished in are your place of employment and the female employees of Walmart and the bank. You’ve made zero effort unless it falls right in your line of vision as you’re going about your day. I totally get it. I’d like that to happen to me, too, but the likelihood is low. You’re going to have to get off your butt and do more to meet women. I hesitate to tell you to try online because I keep reading about how horrible it is for men.
“I think I already have but I’m not expounding on it much because I’m not allowed to.”
Whaatttt? Is that MJ honoring a boundary that was stated about 10 times? 🙂
“Guess I didn’t figure you were still suffering over LE matters much these days. ”
I’m not the kind of person people check on. If it sounds like I’m whining … I am.
“Your advice is usually pretty sound, so I figured you were more out of the woods by now.”
No. I’ve been in a funk for almost a year. I’m finally climbing out of it, thought it still bothers me.
“I never felt more in love or more complete than when I thought of her.”
I think this is worrisome. Because you’re going to use this as a standard for when you start to date. As some kind of barometer for how to feel. And no mortal woman will ever be able to compete.
“Was I finally sad about my divorce? Was it because I had broken up with my last SO, 6 months prior to LE? Was I finally coming to grips with Mom being gone? Was it because my Daughter and I were (and still are) bad at connection?? Could be.. Right?? Like the recurring theme in my head then was, all the good and important Women in my life are leaving me. Wtf?? What do I do now?”
Well, limerence is an escape hatch. It’s a place to project all of our “stuff” — unresolved trauma, loneliness, regret, failure — onto someone else. This has almost nothing to do with your LO. She just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
“Like how could anyone do this to themselves more than once? ”
I can only speak for myself, but it’s not something you plan. And I’ve on some level pursued every LO I’ve had. It’s really hard for me to comprehend not ever speaking to them.
“And tbh, if you could see my life on this end and the sort of hell I’ve kinda defaulted into, you might actually see why I think like this. I’m trying to be real and down to earth but it’s also very difficult.”
You sound very depressed to me. I think you should try to find a therapist. I know you were looking for one a while ago and you couldn’t find one who knew a damn thing about limerence. I’d forget leading with limerence. They’re not going to get it, but maybe start with some of these losses you’ve experiend (not your LO but people in your life). Please do not focus your time in therapy on your LO (what she does, wears, how perfect she is, etc.). She’s displacement for other stuff.
“I hope this is not the beginning of the end. 😆”
It is. We’re on the tipping point. 🙂
“Comfort. She’s still a safe person for me. I can bitch and complain all I want expecting her sympathy, based on how I remember her. ”
It’s not based on who she is today. From what you described in your previous post, it didn’t sound like she is all that sympathetic. And, honestly, it’s not really her job to be. You’re not married anymore and doesn’t she have a new partner ?
“This is very true and I know you mean very well.”
I mean well and I honestly believe it.
“My actions now mean nothing. All good intent doesn’t matter. Its luck of the draw when it comes to the opposite sex now and they just have to deal, if they want to be in. If this appears to sound cryptic, just leave it at that.”
I don’t know specifically what you’re talking about. I won’t press for details, but I think this is your depression talking. You’re very bleak and very dark in terms of mood/tone.
“No I do not want to make them again. As mentioned above, this is a work in progress. ”
Isn’t that all anyone is? A work in progress?
“I know I can’t tell you anything in particular but I recently stumbled when I least expected it. It is fun. But I am curious of the likelihood they are interested the same. I don’t know. She gave me her number and I didn’t even have to ask her for it. I mean thats a good sign isn’t it? (Wait did I just think out loud? 😆)”
And there we go trying to go over the boundary. I’m ignoring this part of the post.
“She just shuts down whenever I slightly raise my voice. It’s her default reaction. Which drives me insane. I can never get my point across, because she’s done.”
But … is that because you yelled at her? I mean, there are some people who won’t deal with any kind of confrontation. And you can’t ever say anything to them or bring anything up because it if you do they say you’re attacking them. That is frustrating. But she could be reacting to being yelled at a lot.
” Monetarily, my family has always been very well taken care of and never gone without. Yet that isn’t important. ”
It is important. But, yes, there needs to be more than that provided.
“Money can definitely not buy happiness.”
Security and freedom to do what you want, yes. Happiness, no.
“I’m always living in the past. So what if its 1975? What were you listening to in 1975? I’ll bet it was Captain and Tenille grooving to “Love will keep is together.” Or maybe it was something by John Denver. “Thank God I’m a country boy”
I don’t remember what I was listening to at 4. But maybe 7 … Andy Gibb, baby. Just like all the little girls were. Dude was hot. 🙂
“Meanwhile little MJ was being cool listening to Zeppelin and “Kashmir” and Earth, Wind and Fire with “Shining Star””
Led Zeppelin is a dude band. 🙂 But I like Earth, Wind and Fire.
“It was a little of both of those. I wanted to be the better option for her because I know it was killing her emotionally to keep doing that with him since he was going home to a Wife all the time. ”
We’ve talked about her before. I can’t tell you why she wanted to hang out with a married guy, but the very first time you asked her to do something and she gave you that flim flam response … that was your answer. I cannot stress this enough … if a woman will not meet up with you, she’s not interested.
“I got a little all up in my feelings when she didn’t have the emotional capacity to at least meet me half way somehow, or at the bar, and/or maybe a give me a happy ending sometime. ”
She was with the married dude and doesn’t she have a boyfriend ? Suggests to me she isn’t necessarily an avoidant.
“Always went out of my way for her. In other words, I tried too freaking hard. ”
Don’t do things for women who haven’t invested in you.
“I told them my Wife had always told me I wasn’t any good in between the sheets, so I thought the least I could do is wash them.. (C’mon you laughed 😆)”
It was more of a chuckle. 🙂
“If I had to gauge things, I would say I am in the sweet spot to do just that and not rely on the hover system this time. I feel like the timing is right. However I had a positive response from NG right out the gate too and it went nowhere fast. I have a better idea this time around. Stay tuned for updates.. 🤔🫠”
I’m not reading this.
“By cavalier I meant not concerned with how that makes YOU feel. Like direct and assertive is fine. But if it bothers you because your feeling is not mutual towards them and they just keep driving away at your unease, not caring about you, then that would be cavalier on their part. Sorry if I didn’t phrase that better.”
Where did I write it bothered me? Where are you even getting that they kept driving away? Here’s an example. Another LO. He was a colleague in the same industry, though we did not work for the same company. I’d see him around at industry stuff and we’d say hi to each other. Kind of a professional acknowledgment but I’d never spoken to him. At some point, I ran into him at a social event and we talked. I thought maybe he was chatting me up but he didn’t ask for my number. I remember hoping that he would. I was definitely getting the glimmer that night. Two days later, he emailed me at work. He got my email address from the company employee contact list on the website and he asked me out in the email. I emailed back yes and we had a phone call that week. The party was over the weekend and we went out the following weekend. That’s how easy it should be. Where in there are you getting that he was making me uncomfortable? I could easily have said no in response to his email or ignored it.
“It’s too early to say where this is headed. I started talking to this person because I mentioned she has a tail-light out on her car and I would gladly fix it for her if she wanted me to. Which surprised but delighted her all at the same time I think. I’ve seen her around work before and she’s always noticed and smiled at me, so I thought it was high-time I move-in and investigate. I introduced myself and asked her her name (I’ll call her eM for this forum) So far it’s been pleasant but she’s being flighty about meeting up to fix her light. I’m not being pushy but we haven’t had much time at work to talk either. As she too works in an almost different zip code than I do. But I’m keeping things light and I’m making her laugh. As mentioned above, she willingly gave me her number too without my asking. So I have to pat myself on the back for little victories. I feel like I’ve come a long way..”
Not reading this.
“Since I’m not allowed to talk about it till it happens, I won’t reveal my plan.”
Don’t.
Do you have a cognitive issue? Do I need to take you to get an MRI? 🙂
“She’s just kinda sweet and got a little bit of the bad girl thing going. ”
Well, the bad girl thing I could understand. 🙂
I have a small update. I spent time with LO yesterday, and he was in a fabulous mood. Usually he is in a Grinchy mood, but somehow this was worse.
His elaborate house is back on the market, and he is showing it four times in the first week. Two of the showings have happened already, and he described with great enthusiasm the reactions of the prospective buyers. OF COURSE the house is going to knock people’s socks off. That is an understandable reaction. It’s the reaction I had when I first saw it, and LO gets a lot of satisfaction out of this.
He is, after all, a designer who lives and breathes architecture, antiques, and landscaping. Everyone who sees his house is flabbergasted, and I am no different. I once suggested I think I am limerent for the house, although Dr. Tom says that’s not possible.
LO was positively giddy yesterday, gushing about what a great job his new agent is doing. His eagerness to sell and move to the opposite side of the country is palpable. All I can say at this point is that I hope he sells and moves soon.
Generally speaking, I believe that limerence is a symptom of what happens when things go WRONG, when a normal human interaction comes to a confounding dead end! I believe that if your feelings and actions are actually reciprocated back immediately in real time, the rot of limerence never has a chance to take hold.
Exactly, I can’t agree with you more on the point!
“A Confounding dead end”, IMHO, is either caused by inadequate brave, truthful communication or “abnormal” human interactions between LOs and Limerents, whose fear is often astronomical.
Precisely, no/little ACTION in real time, either due to unavailability, unreciprocality, or in a rare case, a limerent’s choice (when the LE attraction/affection is available for a trial), make LE loop endlessly in the head. It’s truly sad to see deep LE sufferings.
I hope you’re not in a confirmed “unrequited” LE. Please feel free to express your pains here if you wish.
“I believe that if your feelings and actions are actually reciprocated back immediately in real time, the rot of limerence never has a chance to take hold.”
The word “immediately” caught my mind after I briefly responded it yesterday. I totally agree with your view on what can lead to “the rot of limerence” in the first place. However, what would happen if feelings and actions are reciprocated in delayed time, due to some inevitable barriers? Would the limerent be lifted out of “the rot of limerence” and sparkle a fresh ride, or the LE feelings be too “rotten” to rise?
Well, reality is NEVER as neat/ideal as anyone hopes, right? *sigh*. Thus, imho, we need Stoicism to cope with meaningful matters that are beyond our control, temporarily or permanently.
I hope you’re not in a painful LE state. The Sun 🌞 will always rise after dark nights or thunderstorms.
Hi LaR,
I’ve been wondering how you’ve been doing, since I haven’t seen your posts for a while — I always find them so insightful and helpful for my own development.
Nothing substantive has happened on my end since my last post a few weeks ago, but I find myself going a little “wobbly” — as you say on your side of the pond — for no discernible reason, maybe just a little too much pondering the future.
Hope you’re doing well.
To CatCyclist:
If two wobbly people lean against each other, do they prop each other up, or do they both fall over?
This is the deepest, yet funniest, thing I’ve heard all day, Norma; you’ve truly made my day!
… Now, if it’s a sympathetic vibration, the wobbles reinforce each other, so they could either support each other, if they do so in a bounded, not chaotic manner, but if they grow without bound, they could lead to a mutual collapse!
Hopefully we’ll all try to prop each other up here, but to overcome our unwanted limerence, not reinforce it!
@Norma,
It depends if they’re cycling… after all, nobody wants two wobbly cyclists (or two wobbly cats) colliding!
@CC,
WRT my LE, I continue to do better and better. The less I post here, the more that’s generally the case – I tend to yelp more when it is proving more tricku. Like you said was true for you, I have found that too much LwLling can act as fuel. It has taken me a very long three years to feel confident I’m bringing it to a slow close. Thank you for the shout out though – I much appreciate it, as I do still want to contribute here in some form or another when I have anything useful to add.
We had an appointment to eventually resume debates about something – remind me, what was our stepping off point there?
I hope you navigate your wobbles. To me you seem to have handled your LE in a pretty exemplary way. I think you and most other LwLers should not look at my ongoing quest to exit my LE as friends with my LO as anything to emulate. I had ten solid years of friendship with her in the banl before I fell
limerent – and that makes a massive difference. Because there was something real and established there, that we just had to find our way back to.
Stay with us and update us CC. Thank you so much for shouting out to see how I was doing.
Typo corrections:
-when it is proving more *tricky
-in the *bank
Hi LaR,
Great to hear from you, and I’m really glad to hear that you’re doing better and better.
I also thought that I had really turned a corner after my decision in April to leave my job in several months. The intrusive thoughts and the rumination were almost completely gone.
That is, until I started contemplating “the end” – the realization that there might not be any more conversations with my young coworker, that I’ve possibly already had the last one. I’ve also been planning for my “graceful exit”, a short goodbye note wishing her well, bla bla bla … and also ruminating over “what ifs” – what if I had not followed my strategy of extreme LC (only meeting with her face to face every few months or so), and instead followed a strategy more akin to Norma’s, that is, getting to know her better, in the hope of better seeing her flaws, her real self, and thereby reducing the limerence. What a tremendous, missed opportunity, the opportunity of a lifetime, to deepen my relationship with the greatest young person I have ever met!
Ok, enough of this flight of fancy. Just reading your post, LaR, is helping to re-ground me. You are correct in that your situation with your lady friend does not really serve as a model for mine or of most LwLers. Thank you for the reminder.
CatCyclist,
I don’t think Norma’s strategy would work with your LO – said without judgement of how it works for her. I suspect in your situation that trying to get to know her might just ‘reveal
more and more good things’?
With my MFF I’m so
‘sensitised’ now that it is untrue. Virtually daily for 3 years of the LE, I’ve had to figure out how
to deal with constant interactions. It means I see the good stuff and the bad about her and have a more rounded view now. But it has been a battle to get here. I suspect she also knows of my feelings but does nothing to either encourage it (apart from perhaps in the first few months) or show aversion to me.
We have hit a long plateau that I can now live comfortably with. I don’t know where you’re at with this with your LO, but the minutes (seconds) in the past where I couldn’t banish her from my thoughts can now be many hours at a time. It took ages to get there.
“I’ve also been planning for my “graceful exit”, a short goodbye note wishing her well, bla bla bla … ”
My rhetorical question is – can you get to a point where you can do that with zero expectation on the reply, or even of getting any reply?? Just because you want to wish her well and with no other reason behind it than to wish her well? That will be very tricky but could be a goal?
Vent out your thoughts here whenever you want to!
LaR,
I agree with you that the exposure strategy is not terribly like to work in my situation. However, it’s not so much that “trying to get to know her might just reveal more and more good things”; instead, I’ve already maxxed out on my idealization of her, and have begun to take her off her pedestal. However, she remains an essentially good person in my mind, and I strongly suspect she always will. That transformation came, I believe, less from Tom’s mental reprogramming strategy, and more from seeing her “other side”. That, in turn, is due in equal parts to the natural evolution of MY limerent episode and to noticeable changes in HER behavior. I suspect that in the first two years, she was “on her best behavior”, and now, especially in the last six or so months, is showing her full range of behaviors expected for a young adult.
“With my MFF I’m so ‘sensitised’ now that it is untrue” ?? I think some of your words might have been dropped by the editor. BTW, what is MFF?
LaR, I am really glad to hear that you have hit a plateau that you can live comfortably with. Now, the question is, would I be able to get there also? I genuinely don’t know, but I suspect that it will take a while longer, much longer than the three or so months until I leave my job. There have been a few times with the last few months when I thought I’d reached a plateau, when the intrusive thoughts had almost disappeared, but now I’ve somewhat returned to an unstable equilibrium, having the outward appearance of steadiness and composure, but hiding indeci – “should I” type thoughts – going wobbly, in short. So, right now, my focus is to achieve a graceful exit, one that I won’t regret in the future, one that I can be proud of.
As to your question on my proposed goodbye note – “can you get to a point where you can do that with zero expectation on the reply, or even of getting any reply??” – I sort of already have the answer, which is no, I am not yet at the stage of having zero expectations. Of course, I would like to get to that place eventually, but am not there yet. I know this about myself, because recently there have been one or two email replies from her that have been notably shorter and less deep than in the past, which somewhat distressed me – keeping in mind that we’ve exchanged only a handful of emails within the past year, equally initiated by each of us.
Going back to my college years, forty years ago, I was caught in a vaguely similar situation in one of my most painful and long-lived limerent episodes. I mishandled it badly by behaving, perhaps subconsciously, in a manipulative manner when, close to the end of my final semester there, I sent my LO a mix tape with some of my favorite, emotionally charged, songs – hoping to keep alive our connection beyond graduation. When, after several months had gone by and I still did not get a reply, at first, I grew increasing despondent, but later started to finally heal from the limerence. But when she eventually replied after two years, my limerence was re-ignited, now worse than ever before. So, I finally disclosed, in so many words, the full depth of my feelings for her, fully aware that she was living with her boyfriend, who later became her husband. The limerence then ended abruptly when she told me that we should go no-contact (not the terminology of the day, but in effect the same thing), and I agreed.
The present situation is rather different in that I’m pretty sure that, judging from her past behavior, there will be a response. Also, I feel that if I were to leave without a note, I would regret it later, and furthermore, it may be taken as somewhat of a slight. The key is to write the note with the proper professional tone.
As I write this, the important thing to keep in mind is that this was a truly unique experience for me. Even putting aside the limerence, I have never had such a mutually close relationship with a younger employee, and I feel that it was highly valuable to both of us in so many ways – enriching our lives and improving my faith in humanity. I feel a sense of responsibility that is not just rationalization. That is why I can’t just walk away without even a note. Sure, there might be some risks, but I feel it is still the best of all the alternatives.
Thanks for letting me vent. Have a great weekend.
Hi again CatCyclist,
MFF – I thought I explained before – ‘mentally fond (fondled?!) friend’. For large parts of my time here I have referred to my LO by that label.
I think when you/we hit plateaus and then backslide, it’s always good to remember that these are still small steps in the right direction, even if they feel like 2 steps forward, 1.9 back (or sometimes 2.1 back!). For every LiR (Limerent-in-Recovery, my newly invented acronym – should I just change my LwL handle?!), the journey is long and jagged, never linear. Better spells can be celebrated even if they’re intermittent.
I kind of did suspect what your answer would be to my question about being able to send the goodbye note with no expectation on the reply. It could take a long time to get there (FYI I’m not there either, if I was hypothetically faced with it).
So maybe that can be recalibrated. Maybe instead of my somewhat unrealistic suggested goal, you can think of it more about how you’d like her to remember you. As it stands there is nothing you’ve told us about that should stop her having good memories of you as a friendly professional mentor – ie nothing that isn’t positive. Wouldn’t that be good? (Especially compared to the college LE you mentioned last message that you blew up by disclosing).
When my LE was at its worst, I used the above idea as a way to pull myself back from the almost overwhelming compulsion to disclose (context: she is available, I’m not). I preferred the idea that her memories of me wouldn’t ever be tarnished by the possible interpretation that all I’d given to our friendship was driven by an ulterior
motive all along. I’m sharing this because it was something my rational brain could use to talk back to my lim-brain. And boy did I need all those things to stop myself flying through red lights.
Another of those can be related to your point about the recent email replies / her showing full range of emotions for her age. I understand why more short or businesslike replies could feel more hurtful. It can be worth remembering that LOs are just normal people experiencing the same ups and downs in mood, the same good days and bad days, as everyone else. Differences in tone can be down to no more than that. And I know you know that already … but again it can help to remind lim-brain which (in my case) used to rush off in the direction of all the possibilities for what I’d done wrong, at the slightest perceived change in tone. I also think LO has sensed … if not my feelings … then subtle changes in my own behaviours, and responded in kind. Could there be any of that involved in your case – like – you’ve cooled, so she has too?
Catcyclist,
A quick clarification – all I said doesn’t mean I don’t support your idea to write a friendly and professional note to her. I do think that’s a good idea. My suggestions were to try and help you calm you mind when writing it and in the period around sending it – not to suggest not sending it.
With this LO and a previous one, I also wrote out the counterfactual versions of such notes – the ones where I (hypothetically) blow it all up by disclosing. I kind of knew how ridiculous they sounded and that I wouldn’t send them – they were just a way of pouring it out of my head.
MFF — Mentally Fondled Friend
MFG — Mentally Fondled “Ghost”
MFO — Mentally Fondled Object
MFP — Mentally Fondled Pirate
MBP — Most Beloved Person
Hi again LaR,
Thanks again for your incredibly insightful response. You really have a knack for laying out all the relevant considerations point by point, and discussing the consequences of each action. In many ways, better than a therapist! Maybe you’re already one, but if not, perhaps as a second career?
“I understand why more short or businesslike replies could feel more hurtful. It can be worth remembering that LOs are just normal people experiencing the same ups and downs in mood, the same good days and bad days, as everyone else. Differences in tone can be down to no more than that.” I’ve ruminated on this quite a bit, endlessly going over both sides of each argument! However, my gut tells me that there really has been a substantial cooling off in her demeanor in the past six months or so. I see eerie similarities with past relationships (real ones, not LEs) that were in their final, dying stages. I know this is going to be a controversial statement, but about one to two years ago, I was nearly certain that she had a crush on me, albeit one that would be impossible to act on. Now, her behavior is indicative of a more normal friendship. Based on both of our unavailability, this should be exactly the desired trend. Of course, the big assumption is that friendships after limerence are possible. Perhaps they are, but as has been extensively discussed on this site, that is only possible after the LE has passed. And at least on my part, as I have been rediscovering lately, is that it has not.
I understand you about not caring whether she responds to the note being a long-term goal. As to my state now, I think I probably would be upset, at least for a short period of time, if there were no reply or a terse reply. I say this having gone through retirement almost exactly two years ago, where I sent retirement party (at work) invitations. While most people responded with a polite yes or no, a few did not. For most of the latter cases, I could be quite forgiving, but for formerly close friendships, it was a little irritating – nothing to severely bring down my mood, but irritating, nonetheless. In this situation, I’m afraid my emotional reaction might be stronger than for my non-responding colleagues, however much I may “train” myself not to. This is judging from my devastating reaction in a vaguely similar situation way back from my college LE.
However, this is not my biggest worry. I’m sure I’ll be able to eventually recover, and maybe even put the negative feelings to good use, i.e., in aiding my recovery from limerence. Instead, my biggest worry is that if she gives me an ambiguous or enthusiastic response, it will set off yet another round in this long running limerence saga. This is exactly what happened in my college LE – after my disclosure, five years into the LE, I initially felt elated by her extraordinarily empathetic response, quicky followed by despair at the impossibility of consummation, leading up to the “blow up” – permanent NC. I also worry that however brief and professional I make my goodbye note, I will still be subconsciously trying to impress her and try to draw her in, or at least to maintain the connection. Is it better to have a clean break instead?
Thanks for letting me add to the venting!
Hi CatCyclist,
Thank you for your very kind comments about the style of my posts. No, not a therapist. The closest I can get is that I took a very introductory counselling qualification nearly 20 years ago – it was hard going!
What were the kind of signs that were present when you thought she had a crush, that now seem to have changed? There has been a ton of discussion, some of which you were here for, between the male and female posters about how women behave when they like someone, versus when they LIKE someone, and how many men (I count myself among them) struggle with the difference. Was my LO flirting with me for a time? Or were the ‘signals’ actually just her showing her naturally friendly side when she is comforable with someone? Now that I still can’t answer – I am just more OK with the fact I don’t have the answer and will probably never get it. That is the goal, but a very long term one. It is impossible to just flip a switch and stop caring about it. Which is ironic really, given that these things often start with a switch flip at the moment of glimmer.
“Is it better to have a clean break instead?”
I think it’s the prospect of ‘the end’ that has put new fuel under your LE. And that should gradually reduce to embers again after you leave.
Re sending the letter or not – you have to think about which course of action you’d regret more afterwards. My SO looks back and overanalyses most decisions she makes, and I have to remind her of the fact that the decision felt like the best among the alternatives (‘least worst option’) at the time, based on all available info.
Rhetorical question – which decision would you regret more, sending it or not sending it?
I think there would inevitably be an emotional reaction around the response, positive or negative, but that you could ride that out.
You worry that an enthusiastic response could trigger another round of limerence – what would be the nature of that type of response? Something like that she’d like to keep in touch?
I’d be wary of pinning any hope on that happening, as it would stop death of hope and slow limerence recovery. You’ve got an opportunity to treat the end as the end and focus on yourself and other priorities. I understand why that may not feel like an opportunity, but it is.
I’m close now to thinking I’d take a spell of NC if I could get it over the constant daily interactions at work that keep the embers burning a little.
Try and bank the good memories. Personally I don’t think a warm-but-not-too-warm professional goodbye would tarnish those for you or her.
Hope you have a good day when it arrives in your neck of the woods!
Hi LaR,
Thanks for yet another insightful take.
I’m about to leave on a short vacation with my wife. She tells me it’s about a 250 year anniversary or something.
I’ll reply with my thoughts when I return.
Take Care.
It Is Important To Be Something
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
This is like a life. This is lifelike.
I climb inside a mistake
and remake myself in the shape
of a better mistake—
a nice pair of glasses
without any lenses,
shoes that don’t quite fit,
a chest that always hurts.
There is a checklist of things
you need to do to be a person.
I don’t want to be a person
but there isn’t a choice,
so I work my way down and
kiss the feet.
I work my way up and lick
the knee.
I give you my skull
to do with whatever you please.
You grow flowers from my head
and trim them too short.
I paint my nails nice and pretty
and who cares. Who gives a shit.
I’m trying not to give a shit
but it doesn’t fit well on me.
I wear my clothes. I wear my body.
I walk out in the grass and turn red
at the sight of everything.
This Is What Makes Us Worlds
Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
Like light but
in reverse we billow.
We turn a corner
and make the hills
disappear.
You rearrange
my parts until no
more hurting.
No more skin-sunk
nighttime fear.
No more blameless death.
My hair loses its atoms.
My body glows
in the dark.
Planets are smashed
into oblivion,
stripped of their power
to name things.
Our love fills the air.
Our love eats
the deadly sounds men
make when they see
how much magic
we have away
from them.
Poetry in Small Language
Damir Šodan
translated from the Croatian by James Meetze
Cork, Ireland
is like a church bell
in some remote village
tolling mutely in the evening
through the musty provincial air
self-obliviously
and quite self-sufficiently
—one might add—
if it weren’t for the pair of those
ragged sheep
huddled before the rain
on the empty lot
in front of a stone barn
bobbing their whitish little heads
here and there
just to let you know
that regardless of medium
the message will always
arrive at the destination.
“language is the house of being.” — Martin Heidegger
🙂
******
u malom jeziku
Cork, Irska
poezija u malom jeziku
je kao zvono
u zabačenom selu
što tuče muklo s večeri
kroz memlu provincije
samozaboravno
i poprilično samodovoljno
—reklo bi se—
da nije tih par kuštravih ovaca
skutrenih pred pljusak
u oboru
ispred kamene pojate
što malo-malo
trznu bjelkastim glavama
da ti daju do znanja
da bez obzira na medij
poruka uvijek
stiže na odredište.
*********
In the Celestial Music
M. L. Kiser
Celestial music rings,
riding waves,
in the ethers.
every note,
of every song,
does its aerial dance.
As voices in prayer dance;
reverberating rings,
echo each soul’s song;
upon Etheric waves.
Every note,
a precious gift on the ethers.
Souls ride the ethers;
swirling, twirling, they dance.
The resonance, rings every note,
like a bell rings
out upon the waves
of air, to build a sacred song.
Spirit songs,
on the ethers;
oike ocean waves,
in celebratory dance;
play celestial scales and bells ring
out each precious note.
Each bell-like note,
echoes its own set of songs,
like church bells ring
through the heavenly ethers.
All life will dance
upon those heavenly waves.
Earths ocean, womb-waves;
swirl and sway to every celestial note.
Back and forth they dance;
in rhythm to the songs,
as upon the ethers;
the music of life rings.
Hear the ring, on the waves.
Ride the ethers and become one with each note.
Absorb life’s song and with all life…dance!
After finishing a big piece about my best, glorious two weeks in my childhood (9 yrs), I took a stroll in the warm (81 F), sunny afternoon.
Leisurely wandered, I suddenly realized that I was about to pass that 2nd hand shop with that pair of LEG (forgot about it for over 7~8 months). My curiosity decided to give it a check today through the windows.
The girly one was there wearing much shorter, straighter boyish hair (used to be curly, a younger version of Sombr, but more girlish) and a pair of transparent glasses; his jealous protector was absent.
I consciously checked my internal self while peeking inside: no butterflies at all, not even one 🦋! He looked quite ordinary and even a bit of dull through the glass door. So what on earth made me to have glimmered at him about 10~11 months ago with a rabbit hopping in my chest? How weird!
A glimmer through naked eyes is a “weird” thing: one never knows when, where, and why a glimmer would strike and still can’t really comprehend it in hindsight, months or years later… 🤔
But from today’s experience, I wonder if a glimmer would occur/strike when one is Longing or care free? After having a few productive hours (or a day), I usually felt the sky was under my 🪽🪽, with nothing missing in the mind/heart…
Was/is an innate or/and mimetic need/desire behind a Glimmer?
If limerence were inspiration for art to some of the levels mentioned here, then yes, it would be worth it.
Unfortunately, for some (most?) limerence is so distracting that it consumes one’s entire focus and attention, and the limerent is too much of a wreck to be productive or creative.
There could be One and Only Einstein, Beethoven, Van Gosh, and Proust; otherwise, no meaning of “genius” and “mediocre”. However, the endeavor to reinvent oneself — to be “reborn”, is a Godly mission, infinitely creative and rewarding.
Sadly, the majority, especially caught in an emotional whirlwind, is involuntarily controlled by overwhelming, seemingly uncontrollable desires and external forces.
Still, with nuggets of LwL and mental practices (Stoicism), it’s definitely possible to reform/recreate oneself to be a “rational limerent” — able to dial it up or down a limerence whenever needed.
Wise actions Lead the mind, the disciplined and agile mind Reins the emotional wild horse. Please do not kill the beautiful 🐎, just train her to serve your “flying” rides…
Love in Stoicism | Why Stoics Were So Good in Love and Relationships
https://youtu.be/fdHVzYfIxeI?si=4neuF7RdvXiQv7-B
[since feeling is first]
E. E. Cummings
1894 –1962
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis”
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
E. E. Cummings
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
Let not my love be call’d idolatry (Sonnet 105)
William Shakespeare
1564 –1616
Let not my love be call’d idolatry,
Nor my beloved as an idol show,
Since all alike my songs and praises be
To one, of one, still such, and ever so.
Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.
‘Fair, kind, and true; is all my argument,
‘Fair, kind, and true’ varying to other words;
And in this change is my invention spent,
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords.
‘Fair, kind, and true,’ have often lived alone,
Which three till now never kept seat in one.
August Morning, Upper Broadway
Alicia Ostriker
1937 –
As the body of the beloved is a window
through which we behold the blackness and vastness of space
pulsing with stars, and as the man
on the corner with his fruit stand is a window,
and the cherries, blackberries, raspberries
avocados and carrots are a rose window
like the one in Chartres, yes, or the one in Paris
through which light floods from the other world, the pure one
stabbing tourists with malicious abundant joy
though the man is tired in the summer heat
and reads his newspaper listlessly, without passion
and people pass his stand buying nothing
let us call this scene a window looking out
not at a paradise but as a paradise
might be, if we had eyes to see
the women in their swaying dresses, the season’s fruit
the babies in their strollers infinitely soft: clear window
after clear window
Meditatio
Ezra Pound
When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs,
I am compelled to admit
That man is the superior animal.
When I consider the curious habits of man,
I confess, my friend, I am puzzled.
On Talking
Kahlil Gibran
1883 –1931
And then a scholar said, Speak of Talking.
And he answered, saying:
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.
There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.
When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.
Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear or his ear;
For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered
When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.
On Love
Kahlil Gibran
1883 –1931
Then said Almitra, Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself
He threshes you to make your naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your heart you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, “God is in my heart,” but rather, “I am in the heart of God.”
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.
a feeling has passed before a charted present
Kimberly Alidio
I wanted to write a book that was like lying down.
—Bhanu Kapil
a feeling has passed before a charted present
a possibly expired desire
a replacement of Whitman’s body with his opposite
a polite vengeance
a presumed minor literature
a simile not in force
a yoking of the concrete
a myth makes
a body subject to forces not legislated to pass over a same
a memory uncertain about a sentence
a certain observation of an indefinite object
a response barely stands
a sentence only to signal an unwritten
a demand for a law barring its passage and end
a tapeworm, a pinworm, a hookworm, a threadworm
a fluke a sentence wants never to end
I am having a lot of anxiety today. It’s times like this that I turn to my best strategy, Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s simple yet powerful breathing exercises.
He also suggests that, if you’re feeling anxious or sad, allow yourself to really feel these unpleasant emotions, rather than pushing them away as we are tempted to do. Cradle them and comfort them like we would a frightened child.
I do find this to be effective. He was a very wise man.
Two strangers
Kimberly Alidio
pass away & the summer stations. Of the indelible & the
tremulous, both a fellowship & an indictment. Slowing down to
idle, swaying in suspension, a momentum that can spiral to a
stop or start up. Forward for ten seconds & undo to get
somewhere. To mirror, to double evanescence. Of the
diptych, non-binary binary, the &/or, refusal to decide, multiple
in the dual, refusal of one & space of other. The swampy
bugginess of endless rain flips the scorch & wildfires of the
place just left. On earth anywhere stresses the body
Romance doesn’t overwhelm ecosystem but only some know
a sensory letdown moving away from the ends of the
earth, where friend scarcity & giant ancient plants daily invite
the paranormal. Turbid, brackish, super confluent, my new river
homes me for others. Each sound a dislodged world
skirting close to a god complex, fade up into the ringing
without the percussive start. Feet when wheeled or jarred by a knee
Of the jolting screech pattern before the stationed hum
Can the fire of seeking excellency be more enduring than any particular object of devotion?
Can mistaken admiration enlarge the soul by encouraging courage, generosity, and aspiration?
******
Hero-Worship
Amy Lowell
1874 –1925
A face seen passing in a crowded street,
A voice heard singing music, large and free;
And from that moment life is changed, and we
Become of more heroic temper, meet
To freely ask and give, a man complete
Radiant because of faith, we dare to be
What Nature meant us. Brave idolatry
Which can conceive a hero! No deceit,
No knowledge taught by unrelenting years,
Can quench this fierce, untamable desire.
We know that what we long for once achieved
Will cease to satisfy. Be still our fears;
If what we worship fail us, still the fire
Burns on, and it is much to have believed.
Listening
Amy Lowell
1874 –1925
’T is you that are the music, not your song.
The song is but a door which, opening wide,
Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong
Sing but of you. Throughout your whole life long
Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
The song of earth has many different chords;
Ocean has many moods and many tones
Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods
The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones
Autumn alone can ripen. So is this
One music with a thousand cadences.
The Lamp of Life
Amy Lowell
1874 –1925
Always we are following a light,
Always the light recedes; with groping hands
We stretch toward this glory, while the lands
We journey through are hidden from our sight
Dim and mysterious, folded deep in night,
We care not, all our utmost need demands
Is but the light, the light! So still it stands
Surely our own if we exert our might.
Fool! Never can’st thou grasp this fleeting gleam,
Its glowing flame would die if it were caught,
Its value is that it doth always seem
But just a little farther on. Distraught,
But lighted ever onward, we are brought
Upon our way unknowing, in a dream.
Self and Life
George Eliot
1819 –1880
SELF.
Changeful comrade, Life of mine,
Before we two must part,
I will tell thee, thou shalt say,
What thou hast been and art.
Ere I lose my hold of thee
Justify thyself to me.
LIFE.
I was thy warmth upon thy mother’s knee
When light and love within her eyes were one;
We laughed together by the laurel-tree,
Culling warm daisies ’neath the sloping sun;
We heard the chickens’ lazy croon,
Where the trellised woodbines grew,
And all the summer afternoon
Mystic gladness o’er thee threw.
Was it person? Was it thing?
Was it touch or whispering?
It was bliss and it was I:
Bliss was that thou knew’st me by.
SELF.
Soon I knew thee more by Fear
And sense of what was not,
Haunting all I held most dear;
I had a double lot:
Ardor, cheated with alloy,
Wept the more for dreams of joy.
LIFE.
Remember how thy ardor’s magic sense
Made poor things rich to thee and small things great;
How hearth and garden, field and bushy fence,
Were thy own eager love incorporate;
And how the solemn, splendid Past
O’er thy early widened earth
Made grandeur, as on sunset cast
Dark elms near take mighty girth.
Hands and feet were tiny still
When we knew the historic thrill,
Breathed deep breath in heroes dead,
Tasted the immortals’ bread.
SELF.
Seeing what I might have been
Reproved the thing I was,
Smoke on heaven’s clearest sheen,
The speck within the rose.
By revered ones’ frailties stung
Reverence was with anguish wrung.
LIFE.
But all thy anguish and thy discontent
Was growth of mine, the elemental strife
Toward feeling manifold with vision blent
To wider thought: I was no vulgar life
That, like the water-mirrored ape,
Not discerns the thing it sees,
Nor knows its own in others’ shape,
Railing, scorning, at its ease.
Half man’s truth must hidden lie
If unlit by Sorrow’s eye.
I by Sorrow wrought in thee
Willing pain of ministry.
SELF.
Slowly was the lesson taught
Through passion, error, care;
Insight was the loathing fraught
And effort with despair.
Written on the wall I saw
“Bow!” I knew, not loved, the law.
LIFE.
But then I brought a love that wrote within
The law of gratitude, and made thy heart
Beat to the heavenly tune of seraphim
Whose only joy in having is, to impart:
Till thou, poor Self—despite thy ire,
Wrestling ’gainst my mingled share,
Thy faults, hard falls, and vain desire
Still to be what others were—
Filled, o’erflowed with tenderness
Seeming more as thou wert less,
Knew me through that anguish past
As a fellowship more vast.
SELF.
Yea, I embrace thee, changeful Life!
Far-sent, unchosen mate!
Self and thou, no more at strife,
Shall wed in hallowed state.
Willing spousals now shall prove
Life is justified by love.
To Solitude
Alice Cary
1820 –1871
I am weary of the working,
Weary of the long day’s heat;
To thy comfortable bosom,
Wilt thou take me, spirit sweet?
Weary of the long, blind struggle
For a pathway bright and high,—
Weary of the dimly dying
Hopes that never quite all die.
Weary searching a bad cipher
For a good that must be meant;
Discontent with being weary,—
Weary with my discontent.
I am weary of the trusting
Where my trusts but torments prove;
Wilt thou keep faith with me? wilt thou
Be my true and tender love?
I am weary drifting, driving
Like a helmless bark at sea;
Kindly, comfortable spirit,
Wilt thou give thyself to me?
Give thy birds to sing me sonnets?
Give thy winds my cheeks to kiss?
And thy mossy rocks to stand for
The memorials of our bliss?
I in reverence will hold thee,
Never vexed with jealous ills,
Though thy wild and wimpling waters
Wind about a thousand hills.
I, Lover
Elsa Gidlow
1898 –1986
I shall never have any fear of love,
Not of its depth nor its uttermost height,
Its exquisite pain and its terrible delight.
I shall never have any fear of love.
I shall never hesitate to go down
Into the fastness of its abyss
Nor shrink from the cruelty of its awful kiss.
I shall never have any fear of love.
Never shall I dread love’s strength
Nor any pain it might give.
Through all the years I may live
I shall never have any fear of love.
I shall never draw back from love
Through fear of its vast pain
But build joy of it and count it again.
I shall never have any fear of love.
I shall never tremble nor flinch
From love’s moulding touch:
I have loved too terribly and too much
Ever to have any fear of love.
I Speak Your Name
Sophie Jewett
1861 –1909
I speak your name in alien ways, while yet
November smiles from under lashes wet.
In the November light I see you stand
Who love the fading woods and withered land,
Where Peace may walk, and Death, but not Regret.
The year is slow to alter or forget;
June’s glow and autumn’s tenderness are met.
Across the months by this swift sunlight spanned,
I speak your name.
Because I loved your golden hair, God set
His sea between our eyes. I may not fret,
For, sure and strong, to meet my soul’s demand,
Comes your soul’s truth, more near than hand in hand;
And low to God, who listens, Margaret,
I speak your name.
November 20, 1892
Secrets of the Inner Mind
By CEDAR SIGO
The Age of Gold cracked me up last night,
asters and sparrows to be exact,
that unrelenting knot in
the choral fire. It’s good exercise, to get out
on stage, to stand in the silvered chamber
and deny emptiness, when the pocket falls so deep
one could mark anything out over the top.
The India ink drops continuously,
its likeness, still Helen as phantom
not the truth of the state of her body
but being awash in a sound uprooted.
The desk is still a symbol I pile things on,
pin down elegies, illegible dates, introductions scrawled
on slender backs of envelopes, receipts, small machine-like
cloud chambers, talon disconnected.
Sunlight burns my feet putting away
the wet mop, where I am stopped
from almost killing myself. All that wobbling of the lens
nonsense, I will cling to the truth of the soundtrack
tearing through the unveiling:
Jeanne Moreau’s scepter coated in dust
a darkness poured from the open door, crowned
enameled teeth of Tyrannosaurus rex
•
Their portrait is crushed
to the point of flowers
Their lines are reaching
arms out from the center
Their lace is torn over
the image at points
a flame-like insistence
flaring this all up from behind
one piss-driven, lifelike icicle
the diamond district through a downpour
past the love-sick dungeons
of Dante, a cleaving after in Sappho,
what remains of a dialogue?
The small, blobbed cellular enclosure
slipping it into strings
letting it wither
•
No god but the act
creator eternally rested
in light
fears for my life
dissolved in the booth
largely unknown
fire exit back/ of the hotel closet door
satin sheets
light foot thunder
lover impaled/ outside of that world
cutting young poets
much slack
and the box for the board
missing:
remains of the maze
spit out from a star
Inside-Bird and Outside-Bird
BY KIM HYESOON
TRANSLATED BY DON MEE CHOI (from the Korean)
A frigid sound of a violin
Bird sweeps across the frozen river
and watches us from above
as if looking at the fish trapped beneath the ice
Bird crashes into the window
triggering a symptom
My nosebleed drips into milk
In the scattered crowd at the snow-covered square
two people walk side by side
It’s cold isn’t it?
No!
Perhaps we are the violin’s cradle
The opening and closing
of the gap between you and me
as if it were alive
a lumpy, transparent bird
too precious to be touched
It hurts to look down from above
Two people walk side by side
like the way the light switches for the dining room and kitchen sink are perfectly in line
like two words that appear on the back of the page
written by my teacher, drowsy from a painkiller
How wonderful if there were no doors in this or that world
I finally feel it
that the world becomes as flat as a mirror if bird doesn’t fly
that’s why my bird flies even in sleep
Bird pecks on the glass again
triggering a symptom
From up in the air I can see
you and me walking
as if I were looking at the fish
trapped beneath the ice
House Arrest
CATHERINE BOWMAN
I confess to these feet,
tethered to the earth,
pulled down by force
every time I jump or try
to fly. Like you, an old tree
sentenced us, keeps your wings
under lock and key
so we’ll bicker with the birds
over scraps of weather
and the privilege to sing
or be seen. In the dark,
we scavenge midnight,
make chains out of stars
and bracelet shame.
My biggest crime, I could
not trust. I confess, I shut
myself off from the one
I needed and loved most.
I confess, I could not be
woken or accept myself
to the river’s basin to be washed.
I’m dirty, scratching love notes
on the wall. Tonight, outside,
winter, subzero. Too cold
to snow. The neighbor
next door shooting phantom
deer with a handgun,
his beagle tied to a tree.
Over wooden bowls,
we count, we’ve become experts
at counting. When did we
make each other serial?
The keys froze in the ignition:
tonight the moon rises
from a ravine, a spice drawer
of pickled ferment to feast.
For us it’s only surveillance:
under surveillance we interrogate
each other’s mouths, pursue
every laugh and cry as they twist
and turn through our time,
as we investigate and ransack
our dog-rabbit-wolf shadows,
the half ones, the whole ones,
and cross-examine every intent,
put hidden taps to choice
appendages. In the basement,
we de-crimson our one last apple,
cut a tunnel through the core,
truss ourselves in aromatics,
climb in and out to the garden:
among the capable trees,
the not-degraded weeds,
the flowers released,
arrested in light, we stand
on strong enduring feet,
confess, captives of earth,
to the heart, aflame, the source—
across this iced plain—
the only material witness.
She Was a Phantom of Delight
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.
The Moon Has a Head But No Body
CATHERINE WAGNER
So why assume [she]
Is cold why not
Assume drunk
“Legless”
Can keep up pretty good though
With your car in the rural night
You are a passenger
Your left leg lolls and
Your friend reaches a hand
Across the emergency brake
Which points now at the base of
The gearstick shaft
And can point at its head
But nowhere else
Thus does not
“Speak”
And unless overused abused is
Reliable
Whereas anyone can misunderstand
Or willfully misinterpret the
Point and represent
Are very different (Moon!)
6am and the snow
Sent enough light upward
For this window to
Transmit and permit
My seeing
I heard more than I saw
I understood less than I heard
I was well read compared to
But not compared to
I begin to feel warm in
My crotch, as if a wodge
Of moist electric blanket
Were stuck in there
And my friend was not
Riding on the other side of the brake
—I mean emergency—he is not
Fox-hunting and on
A horse in a novel
In which the brake
Is a strip of greenwood
He is downstairs the coffee’s
Made but he ignores
My text He works alone
And I will have to go down there
The Runaway
ROBERT FROST
Once when the snow of the year was beginning to fall,
We stopped by a mountain pasture to say, ‘Whose colt?’
A little Morgan had one forefoot on the wall,
The other curled at his breast. He dipped his head
And snorted at us. And then he had to bolt.
We heard the miniature thunder where he fled,
And we saw him, or thought we saw him, dim and grey,
Like a shadow against the curtain of falling flakes.
‘I think the little fellow’s afraid of the snow.
He isn’t winter-broken. It isn’t play
With the little fellow at all. He’s running away.
I doubt if even his mother could tell him, “Sakes,
It’s only weather.” He’d think she didn’t know!
Where is his mother? He can’t be out alone.’
And now he comes again with a clatter of stone
And mounts the wall again with whited eyes
And all his tail that isn’t hair up straight.
He shudders his coat as if to throw off flies.
‘Whoever it is that leaves him out so late,
When other creatures have gone to stall and bin,
Ought to be told to come and take him in.’
Dolphin
RICHIE HOFMANN
Hermias of Iasos
A dolphin fell in love with me.
Probably because of my looks—
people always said, What a pretty boy you are.
I was coming home from Gymnasium,
I was so sweaty from running,
we all were, we all ran into the sea,
its freshness,
we gargled the water, we threw it from our hair—
I washed my limbs in the waves,
and I heard him calling.
I didn’t want the other boys to see.
But I kept glancing at the shimmering sea,
hoping he was there. My dolphin.
I dreamed about becoming
a dolphin, being carried
on the waves, doing flips while the boys clapped from the docks,
chasing the elegant boats,
making choreography in their wakes.
I dreamed.
The sight of a dolphin is always
a little bit magical,
even on our island.
But he liked that I was human.
That is why he fell in love with me.
Because I wasn’t a dolphin.
He liked my singing voice.
I blushed, but I knew he thought I was good
at singing made-up songs.
I never liked animals,
not really trusting something
that doesn’t talk.
But I knew what he felt.
One day I walked right into the water.
I was surprised by how his skin felt.
Pricklier than it looks.
He let me put my mouth to his blowhole
Oh my god
it was the saltiest thing I tasted.
I held onto his fin and we swam, he always dove up
so I could breathe.
I came home exhilarated.
My parents were mad I dripped all over the house,
dragging my wet feet across the floor,
dripping onto the pillows
and the white blankets.
Why are you swimming all evening?
When there’s homework to be done!
My mother said she could smell the salt
and it disgusted her.
Take a shower right now.
Night entered the sea.
Night where there is no future.
I imagined his gray body against the waves.
I sat in our courtyard with olive trees.
Gulls laughed at me,
the open door.
Waking from the incomplete dream,
I wanted to possess him—
What a weird thing for a child to say, I know.
Dolphins carried Dionysus to the underworld,
disappearing each winter—
Would mine carry me there?
Winter came. The constellations
disappeared.
It’s terrible what happens next, but our playing
turned rough. It was an accident.
I was bleeding
in the water, I hardly noticed at first,
but then the panic set in.
I started thrashing in the water.
My dolphin wanted to save me.
He hadn’t meant to cut my flesh
with his sharp fin,
the salt was stinging.
I blacked out.
I died on shore, my dolphin tossed me there.
And he flung himself there, too,
to die beside me.
I am a little famous.
I was loved by a dolphin.
They minted coins that showed us playing.
I never thought
they would miss me.
And they make songs about us,
the humans,
saying that dolphins were human once,
and charmed by singing.
Pencil Letter
IRINA RATUSHINSKAYA
I know it won’t be received
Or sent. The page will be
In shreds as soon as I have scribbled it.
Later. Sometime. You’ve grown used to it,
Reading between the lines that never reached you,
Understanding everything. On the tiny sheet,
Not making haste, I find room for the night.
What’s the hurry, when the hour that’s passed
Is all part of the same time, the same unknown term.
The word stirs under my hand
Like a starling, a rustle, a movement of eyelashes.
Everything’s fine. But don’t come into my dream yet.
In a little while I will tie my sadness into a knot,
Throw my head back and on my lips there’ll be a seal,
A smile, my prince, although from afar.
Can you feel the warmth of my hand
Passing through your hair, over your hollow cheek.
December winds have blown on your face . . .
How thin you are . . . Stay in my dream
Open the window. The pillow is hot.
Footsteps at the door, and a bell tolling in the tower:
Two, three . . . Remember, you and I never said
Goodbye. It doesn’t matter.
Four o’clock . . . That’s it. How heavily it tolls.
Two Songs of Love
There is a love
that rises like morning fire,
filling the blood
like sweet wine,
like thunder,
like a dream too bright to hold.
It races.
It reaches.
It trembles
between heaven and goodbye.
Every smile
becomes a miracle.
Every pause
Appears a warning.
It fears the very peace
it longs to find.
There is another love.
It still remembers
the first bright flame,
but it does not live
by the flame alone.
It plants
where the fire once danced.
It builds
where longing once wandered.
It finds joy
not only in desire,
but in friendship.
Not only in passion,
but in trust.
Not only in promise,
but in keeping it.
One love asks
for another sunrise
of sweet intoxication.
One love embraces
the quiet morning
after sunrise,
where two hearts
choose each other
without needing
the sky to blaze.
One clings
to the mountain peak,
afraid to descend.
One discovers
that valleys
are where homes are built.
One says,
“Don’t let the euphoria end.”
The other says,
“Let the euphoria reach peace.”
One waits
for certainty
inside the feeling.
The other creates
certainty
through faithful action.
The first
is a beautiful beginning.
The second
is how beautiful beginnings
become beautiful lives.
A promise
is never made
to keep hearts intoxicated.
A promise
is made
to keep hearts together.
Not by chasing
the highest note—
but by singing
the same song
through every season.
For the brightest fire
lights the way.
But the steadiest flame
brings the journey home.
Beyond the Fire
Some hearts awaken
like wildfire,
lifting the soul
higher than the clouds.
Every glance
appears a sunrise.
Every silence
sounds a storm.
Such fire
can open the door.
Bless the fire,
for it first teaches
the heart to dance.
But no promise
is ever spoken
to keep the mountain burning.
A promise
crosses the threshold.
It walks inside.
It gathers wood
for the glowing hearth.
It learns the quiet language
of faithful hands,
shared burdens,
patient mornings,
and settled evenings
that need no proof.
One love
keeps climbing,
afraid the valley
will steal the sky.
One love
comes down the mountain,
finding that peace
is never beneath the fire—
it is waiting
beyond it.
For the hearth
does not silence the flame.
It gives the flame
a home.
There,
warmth outlives wonder.
There,
desire is not lost,
but embraced,
steadied,
and chosen
again.
The fire
opens the door.
The promise
crosses the threshold.
And love,
at last,
comes home.
Fountains in the sea
BY MARIN SORESCU
TRANSLATED BY SEAMUS HEANEY
Water: no matter how much, there is still not enough.
Cunning life keeps asking for more and then a drop more.
Our ankles are weighted with lead, we delve under the wave.
We bend to our spades, we survive the force of the gusher.
Our bodies fountain with sweat in the deeps of the sea,
Our forehead aches and holds like a sunken prow.
We are out of breath, divining the heart of the geyser,
Constellations are bobbing like corks above on the swell.
Earth is a waterwheel, the buckets go up and go down,
But to keep the whole aqueous architecture standing its ground
We must make a ring with our bodies and dance out a round
On the dreamt eye of water, the dreamt eye of water, the dreamt eye of water.
Water: no matter how much, there is still not enough.
Come rain, come thunder, come deluged dams washed away,
Our thirst is unquenchable. A cloud in the water’s a siren.
We become two shades, deliquescent, drowning in song.
My love, under the tall sky of hope
Our love and our love alone
Keeps dowsing for water.
Sinking the well of each other, digging together.
Each one the other’s phantom limb in the sea.
Card 19: The Sun
BRENDA SHAUGHNESSY
When you show yourself to the woman
you love, you don’t know your fear
is not fear, itself. You have never been good,
but now you are so good,
who are you? Is it the liquidity of her skin
that bathes the world for you,
or her face, captured like a she-lion
in your own flesh?
This summerbed is soft with ring upon ring
upon ring of wedding, the kind
that doesn’t clink upon contact, the kind
with no contract,
the kind in which the gold is only (only!) light.
Cloud covers and lifts,
and sleep and night and soon enough, love’s
big fire laughs at a terrible burn,
but only (only!) because pain absorbs excess
joy and you shouldn’t flaunt
your treasures in front of all day’s eyes.
Altruism
MOLLY PEACOCK
What if we got outside ourselves and there
really was an outside out there, not just
our insides turned inside out? What if there
really were a you beyond me, not just
the waves off my own fire, like those waves off
the backyard grill you can see the next yard through,
though not well — just enough to know that off
to the right belongs to someone else, not you.
What if, when we said I love you, there were
a you to love as there is a yard beyond
to walk past the grill and get to? To endure
the endless walk through the self, knowing through a bond
that has no basis (for ourselves are all we know)
is altruism: not giving, but coming to know
someone is there through the wavy vision
of the self’s heat, love become a decision.
To One That Asked Me Why I Lov’d J.G.
BY EPHELIA
Why do I love? Go, ask the Glorious Sun
Why every day it round the world doth run;
Ask Thames and Tiber, why they Ebb and Flow:
Ask Damask Roses why in June they blow;
Ask Ice and Hail, the reason, why they’re Cold:
Decaying Beauties, why they will grow Old
They’ll tell thee, Fate, that every thing doth move,
Inforces them to this, and me to Love.
There is no Reason for our Love or Hate;
’Tis irresistible, as Death or Fate;
’Tis not his face; I’ve sence enough to see,
That is not good, though doated on by me;
Not is’t his Tongue, that has this Conquest won;
For that at least is equall’d by my own:
His Carriage can to none obliging be,
’Tis Rude, Affected, full of Vanity:
Strangely Ill-natur’d, Peevish and Unkind,
Unconstant, False, to Jealousie inclin’d,
His Temper cou’d not have so great a Pow’r,
’Tis mutable, and changes every hour:
Those vigorous Years that Women so Adore,
Are past in him: he’s twice my Age, and more;
And yet I love this false, this worthless Man
With all the Passion that a Woman can;
Doat on his Imperfections, though I spy
Nothing to Love; I Love, and know not why.
Since ’tis Decreed in the dark Book of Fate
That I shou’d Love, and he shou’d be ingrate.