New Year is always a time when I reflect on the concept of purposeful living and planning for the coming year. Usually that means getting all excited about new projects, new goals, and new opportunities, as my mind naturally seems to focus on personal creation as the most purposeful use of time and energy – YouTube channels, books, courses, that kind of thing.
This year, I’ve been reflecting on how that view is too limited.
Purpose can take a wide variety of forms; it doesn’t need to mean grand personal ambitions.
Home is where the heart is
For those of us lucky enough to have a happy family life, Christmas and new year is a cherished time. We focus on domestic concerns, household tasks, and spending more time together. It’s a good reminder that home is important in the broadest sense, as somewhere we belong.
Building and maintaining a home is important work. I don’t mean this in the narrow sense of “household chores are valuable work” (even though that’s true), I mean it in the “home is the foundation of life” sense.
Having children really, well… brings this home.
One of the most valuable things that a parent can do for their children is to create a stable home – a secure base to explore the world from. This is not just about bricks and mortar, it’s about feeling safe, feeling loved, and being able to intrinsically trust that tomorrow will be much like today.
When parents don’t manage this, all sorts of issues arise that have long lasting consequences – most obviously attachment problems.
It is not trivial or easy to achieve this. As the famous opening of Anna Karenina puts it:
All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
Disharmony is effortless, harmony requires skill and practice.
Purpose in domesticity
Dedicating effort to improving your home life is every bit as purposeful as undertaking a grand new project. This might mean a new approach to your relationship with your partner and/or children. It might mean breaking free of a “situationship” and finding someone who is willing and able to commit. It might mean decluttering a chaotic environment.
It will mean facing your own sources of unhappiness and addressing them, and that can be painful because it normally requires change on your part.
The essence of harmony is mixing your tune with others to create a pleasing composition. Bands aren’t just a group of soloists doing their own things side by side. You have to work together, experiment with different styles, and find complementary melodies, or you’ll make a discordant din and then break up due to irreconcilable musical differences.
Families are likewise full of compromise, conflicting demands, and sacrifices. Like a good band, everyone needs space to express themselves, while also recognising that they can’t always be centre stage.
Making the purposeful choice to be a better member of the family means finding that balance – making sure everyone has their time to shine, without hogging the limelight, in a mutually beneficial way.
Once you make the decision, you’ll realise that it’s not actually all that challenging or complicated. You’ll get 80% of the way there by spending more time together, taking interest in what everyone is doing, expressing love in a way that feels natural, and being patient with each others idiosyncrasies.
It’s worth it, not just for your own domestic harmony, but for the impact it has on the wider world.
Troubled lives
One of the most affecting books I read last year was Rob Henderson’s memoir, Troubled.
Rob grew up in the Californian care system. His first hand account of a life moving through a series of unstable (sometimes abusive) homes is sobering, to put it mildly.
Among the many insights, a few that stood out were his learned distrust of adults (a psychologist trying to assess his progress failed to realise that Rob was lying and uncooperative throughout – no adult had ever helped him, so why should he help them?), his fear of strange cars in the driveway (meaning someone had arrived to move him to the next foster home), and his amazement when arriving at Yale to discover that most of his classmates came from two-parent homes.
Intact families were basically a fairy tale in his life experience, and yet here was a whole social niche full of people who had benefited from them – but who were also, paradoxically, disdainful of marriage and heteronormativity.
That experience was a catalyst for his idea of “luxury beliefs” – opinions held by cultural elites, which communicate their educational status while inflicting social harms on others in a way that they themselves are insulated from.
Today, Rob is a psychologist and writer, working on the impact of family stability on life outcomes and community cohesion. From his own experience he knows how beneficial it is to have a critical mass of stable families in a neighbourhood:
Many people overlook this broader impact. They often frame the discussion as simply “married parents versus unmarried parents,” without recognizing the larger, community-wide “spillover” effects. It’s not just the children of those married parents who benefit—it’s the entire neighborhood that feels the ripple effects of that stability and trust.
Working on the foundations of your own family doesn’t just benefit you. Others notice – sometimes the most vulnerable among us – as they can be searching for role models of what healthy relationships look like.
We
That broadening of the concerns of family beyond the immediate nuclear unit highlights another concept that links nicely into Teika’s last post about the novel by Yevgeny Zamyatin. Who do we mean when we talk about “we”?
Zamyatin invented a totalitarian communist dystopia, where “we” was programmed into citizens from birth as universal devotion to the Benefactor. It was not an organic development of kindred affection, it was enforced. That is why limerence proves so destabilising in the story, as it is a personal bond of frightening power that separates the heroes from the synthetic, fake bonds to their community.
This question of how wide a feeling of “we” can grow was a key concern of the philosopher Roger Scruton. He coined the term “oikophilia” (same Greek root as “economics”) to denote the love of home that most people feel keenly. He wondered what it is that nurtures affinity between people.
There are some obvious candidates – family, religious congregation, village, parish – but once the population size starts to rise to the level of towns and cities there comes with it an anonymity that is alienating.
Scruton ultimately seemed to settle on the idea that the Nation was the largest level at which people could still feel a sense of “we”. Nations have shared history, heritage, landscape, culture, and customs that can unify people – even to the ultimate point of citizens being willing to die fighting for their nation if it comes under attack.
He argued that love of home could be scaled up from a household, to a community, and a nation, as long as people felt a sense of kinship and mutual inheritance, investment and gratitude. But, it must be organic, it cannot be imposed or insisted upon by a state apparatus.
Postscript
This long and rambling reflection began as a rather sentimental response to Christmas, but it’s taken on extra poignancy in the last few days as X.com has erupted with international scrutiny of the “grooming gangs” scandal that has plagued the UK for decades.
The girls who were targeted were from poor communities and often broken homes. The men who preyed on them came from a different cultural “we” and saw them as subhuman – “easy meat” for exploitation.
The institutions of state that should have protected the girls instead decided that community cohesion was best served by strictly controlling what could be said and by whom – apparently operating from an ethical framework that Islamophobia was a more serious moral hazard than the systematic rape and torture of thousands of children.
Even now, our media and politicians seem obsessed with why and how Elon Musk is talking about it, not why and how it happened – role-modelling in real time the same behaviours that concealed the crimes in the first place.
It’s been quite something to witness the total moral collapse of the British establishment.
In the face of such demoralisation (in every sense of the word), the mind fills with urgent questions – how can I protect my children, how do we stop this from happening again, how can the victims be helped?
I suspect that the answer to these questions lies in strengthening the bonds of family – asking how we can be better fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, neighbours and friends. Doing the purposeful work of self-development that enables us to build better relationships, and become more reliable, patient and compassionate with the people who depend on us.
It won’t undo the evils of the past, but it might help build a sense of unity around the idea that safeguarding children matters more than anything else in any civilisation worth the name.
That’s the only way to really feel secure, confident and free.
To feel at home.
Dr L.,
Which of Roger Scruton’s books covers nurturing affinity please? I am interested in learning more about it.
Thank you as always for continuing with your blog.
Hi Onyx,
I think it’s a theme in all of his work, but I came across it in the book “How to be a conservative”. I believe the one in which he first defines oikophilia is “Green Philosophy” – although I haven’t read that one myself.
Thanks. I’ll start there.
I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while. Probably due to my single status and likelihood of remaining that way for a long time. I moved to a country town in the hopes of finding my community. I’d say that I’m finding it, but my daughter isn’t. And I have to wonder if a big part of that is what we keep trying to push as ‘normal’ and ‘better’ or ‘healthy’ when from an anthropology perspective, this is simply untrue.
I would argue that children of single mothers fare worse because of society telling them it is so. As in, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why do we marry? Why do we believe staying together as a family unit is so important? I came from a supposedly stable family unit and I still have attachment issues (and many others!). The ‘stability’ everyone saw was for the sake of keeping up appearances. ‘Good families’ live around here. WE don’t behave that way. Everyone I know who grew up near me feels the same way. It was a ‘safe’ childhood compared to that of a foster child, but it was a behaviorist parenting style and psychological science has come a long way since then.
The same argument applies to holding children back at school. Here, it is very unusual for a child to repeat and the argument given is that children need to be with their peers. It’s detrimental if they aren’t. That’s unbelievably untrue. I also went to school in Europe. There were 19-year-olds in my Year 11 class. Nobody cared. It was ‘normal’.
I just don’t really understand why we feel the need to have biological family to feel safe (other than the economic issue of who pays for the child’s food and clothing etc but I’m ignoring that for the sake of the hypothetical argument). I’d argue a lot of biological relatives are extremely unsafe and I’d rather choose my family. I wish my child didn’t compare herself to other kids her age and wonder why they ‘all’ have good dads. I think it’s society (and probably specifically capitalist society) insisting she has a relationship with her dad. In other cultures, uncle and father can be synonymous. I think we need to look further than our own society and culture because in my opinion, this is a problem we created and something that could be solved by changing our perspective at a cultural (and economic) level.
Does limerence occur in cultures where they don’t feel compelled to marry and commit for life, or where our idea of a ‘traditional’ family group isn’t the norm? What if they’ve never been subjected to a Disney movie or romcom? I wonder if many of our issues are psychological conditioning. Just like in Zamyatin’s story.
CMC,
Marriage is an interesting concept in that in most Western societies, it’s not just an emotional commitment, it’s a legal contract. Marriage is likely the second biggest obligation one can assume, children being the first. You can usually dissolve a marriage, but you’re a parent forever. Some people are better at meeting those obligations than others.
Growing up, I don’t remember anyone having a happy marriage. I saw a few content ones. My parents have a collective 0-5 record for marriages. Of my 4 aunts and uncles, half of them divorced at least once. Of my 13 cousins, at least 5 of them are divorced. Until I was old enough to enjoy regular sex and understood the US tax code, I thought marriage was some grotesque punishment God inflicted on adults for original sin.
LO #2’s parents stayed married. I don’t know how. LO #2’s father was in an open affair going back to the 80s. Maybe they weren’t living together. I have two former coworkers whose parents were married on paper but lived separate lives for decades.
Given my parents’ track record, I’d be a lousy candidate for marriage. Yet, there was never any doubt that I’d want to be married. For me, it was the ultimate expression of commitment. I took a vow before God and a few dozen of my closest family and friends. I backed it up with half my assets.
LO #2 understood some of that and didn’t understand some of it. I believe it factored in her decision not to marry me. Her parents stuck it out and made each other miserable. When things became unacceptable for my parents, they’d cut and run.
As far as cultural norms and such go, it might be more simple. Where do children learn to model behavior? From their parents and home environment. My wife grew up in an age-appropriate two parent family with two siblings. I was on only child raised largely by my elderly grandparents after my parents divorced. I wasn’t their grandchild, I was their fourth son. The dynamics of being raised by two people in their 60s was different than those I would have seen being raised by two parents 20 years younger.
The differences in our upbringing landed my wife and me in marriage counseling less than two years into our marriage. My wife told the counselor that I wasn’t meeting her expectations. When the counselor asked my wife if she’d ever communicated those expectations, my wife said no, I should have known them. The counselor pointed out that we had been raised differently and I had never observed the expectations my wife took for granted. We worked through it.
Like everything else, everybody’s perception is unique.
@LE
I also thought that I wanted a partner for life although I never felt the need to get married. I now don’t feel that way at all. I feel that if I found another person it would be for as long as it works. I wouldn’t be going into it thinking or even hoping ‘this is forever’.
I wonder if we think we want ‘til death do us part commitment in relationships because we feel it’s better for the kids? Or because women needed financial security? Or because God says we must? So we ‘know’ who fathered a child to prevent inbreeding?
I just don’t think any of those are good enough reasons to tell people that one partner for their whole life is the best way to go. And that dissolving that relationship should be seen as a failure in some way. It’s making me want to learn more about tribal or village communities where children feel their family is a much larger group than even just mums, dads, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Do small children become well attached to multiple people? Do they feel safer knowing if anything happened to their biological parents, there’d still be ‘family’ there for them.
I’m too used to my own space to desire communal living. I have also read enough about cults to know that this utopian ideal can quickly turn dystopian. I think my argument stems more from a desire to stop children being conditioned to believe that their parents have failed in some way because they’re not together. That a child brought up in an environment where family units not living together (to the exclusion of others) was ‘normal’ would be none-the-wiser, and therefore not feel they’re deficient in some way.
I think the biggest failure should be seen as the one where we don’t try to grow and do/be better, not that we can’t find a good partner.
@Dr L
I suppose I’m mostly asking ‘why’ it’s best for a partnership to stay together? As per my reasons above, what else makes it ‘better’ to try and stay together other than society telling us it is so. One person usually dies before the other so can’t be for company in your old age either. And good friends can fill that gap.
I’d also argue that my child has just as much chance to access a good university education as a child from a two-parent family, but that’s down to my financial stability and me being a responsible loving parent. Not that she doesn’t have two living together with her. I would need to read the book you referenced, but I worry that in social sciences we can have the tendency to incorrectly extrapolate (or interpolate) from our own perspective and experience. But these arguments only apply to a construct of our own making and those of us who don’t fit that construct have to do a lot of inner work to convince ourselves we’re actually OK. Because we are ❤️
Call me Cordelia,
I just wanted to say I get absolutely what you are saying. The important thing for a child is maybe an overall loving and stable atmosphere, from one or more parents or other caretakers or environment, and not that parents stay together no matter what.
I‘m myself from a stable two-parent-family and now have one myself, but I see in my friends a lot of other ways of life, and I think the most harm that was done was by the guilt the parents were feeling about having „failed“ and not having been able to hold it together.
From the outside you could see that it was clearly the best decision to part ways, but for them it was a kind of failure, and that’s sad because they actually really did the only best thing for their kids but couldn’t perceive it like that because of this societal „sacredness“ of the two-parent-family.
@Mila
Thank you for that. I think you get what I’m saying 💯
In my case I don’t see myself as a failure (relationship-wise anyway! 😅 motherhood is a whole other thing).
My concern is for my child. When we constantly refer to the sacredness (as you aptly put it) of a romantic relationship that lasts until you die, we teach children that it’s ‘lesser’ to be from a single parent home.
So even if I don’t feel I’m a failure, society tells her otherwise. We have families with mums who have children via donor, same sex couples, and multigenerational homes. As long as there’s love and respect for everyone in the home, that child should not suffer thanks to an ideal that is clearly difficult for a lot of people to attain/sustain. I should look further into the research. I am OK if things are true and there is simply an observed correlation. It doesn’t mean I can’t be an outlier 😅 But that also doesn’t mean the research isn’t biased. Like my example above that children need to be with their peers. I think this will only apply to cultures where children are schooled in peer groups. That is entirely a construct. Humans didn’t naturally organise children into peer groups until schools came along. Children who aren’t constantly compared to their peers at school would have no reason to care what ‘grade’ they are in. Society forces the outcome by telling the child it is so. Aren’t blue-eyed children smarter after all? 🤷♀️
Did humans from every culture form lifelong monogamous relationships? So research suggesting two-parent households are better is only applicable to a certain context and it might be worth exploring this chicken and egg scenario with regards to outcomes for children from single parent homes. As for my little darling, she says she will never marry, never have children and be a dog mum. I’m fully supportive of her choice ☺️
CmC
I absolutely love what your saying here.
I am single at middle age and now after addressing my co-dependency and other attachment issues I am feeling more “at home” with myself than I have ever had my whole life.
Sure, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like a partner to share life with but I’m ok just the way I am!
I don’t have any children but to be honest I wish I was raised by my mother only, my childhood was rather disordered thanks to my Narcissistic father.
And that’s the very reason I’m here and on other sites like this trying to make sense of it all.
Hi Anna
I think it’s fantastic that you’re finding home within yourself ☺️ I think that’s why I don’t need to see any relationship as lasting forever. I belong to me (and my child for as long as she needs to be dependent on me) which means nobody can take ‘home’ away from me.
I read a great article in the Atlantic about people who have quit dating. We’d be happy to have a good relationship, but not actively looking for one. In the article, a therapist posed the question ‘if you knew your partner would finally show up but not within the next ten years, what would you do with your time?’
I love that because it takes the pressure off finding someone and puts the emphasis back on living purposefully. Whether you find someone or not, you will still feel fulfilled ☺️
Thanks for a thoughtful counterpoint, CmC.
I was aware as I was writing that my argument ignored the rather big issue of it being undesirable to keep dysfunctional/abusive families intact regardless. As you say, simply being intact is not beneficial in itself – the benefits come from healthy, loving relationships. But, I didn’t want to bog down the point with lots of caveats about all the possible ways families can go wrong.
From the perspective of individuals choosing to act with purpose, I’d advocate for trying to improve relationships as far as possible, but this isn’t always very far (when dealing with narcissistic or abusive parents, for example).
Definitely, “everyone playing happy families” is not going to solve the problems of feeling homeless. It really does need the families to be sincerely happy.
I was driving home from work about a week or two ago and saw a younger woman with two children. Pushing one in a stroller and pulling one in a wagon. It was in the neighborhood of 30 F outside at the time. I pulled into the nearest parking lot and got out of my truck and asked the woman if I could offer her and her children a warm ride to wherever they needed to go. I was standing a very safe 6 feet plus away from her. She shook her head no and the look of fear in eyes ….. not even a kind act can be appreciated. I got in my truck and drove away wondering where in hell this country is headed.
Adam,
The few bad men get the more good men a bad name here. When the man is a stranger, the woman has no way to tell which category the man belongs to.
I agree it’s sad, but I do get it.
Adam,
we teach our children not to get into the car of strangers at any time, no matter what, so she couldn’t really take your offer in front of her kids! Also, I wouldn’t do it either- you never know. There might be one bad man in 10000, but what if he’s the one.
I think this is a good example of the alienation at town/city scale that I talked about, Adam. Once you get to the point where most of the people around you are strangers, the default setting is caution rather than trust.
There were probably times in the past when some community figures engendered trust (policeman, teacher, vicar, solicitor) but even those times are gone now – regrettably, often because that trust was broken by bad actors.
Not just fear of you but fear that you may be setting her up to lose custody of her children (CPS). Transporting children in a vehicle without their being in a safety seat can lead to that call. Doubly so if you had been in an accident and any of the children were hurt.
Plus the fact that no way in the world would any woman with any good sense at all accept a ride from a stranger, let alone a strange man. The stakes are even higher when your children are involved.
Hi Dr L, I have a random question for you. I was reading an academic book this morning when I remembered that during limerence, I didn’t have enough attention span to read a book. I’m curious about my lack of attention span during limerence. What caused it? Was I overstimulated on dopamine? If dopamine was the reason I couldn’t focus during limerence, is dopamine (from other sources) a likely culprit when I struggle to focus and I’m not limerent?
I hope my question makes sense.
Hi Lovisa,
Yes, it is likely a consequence of the reward system (powered by dopamine) being overactive. Every thought that brings LO to mind triggers urgent motivation to go and seek them, or ruminate about them, or plan for how to secure their love. It’s like your reward-seeking impulse is on a hair trigger.
This is a big part of procrastination generally – focusing on a task is cognitively demanding, and we naturally try to escape that discomfort. At a totally subconscious level the motivation drive is activated to find pleasurable rewards to provide relief from the hardship of mental effort.
That makes sense! Thank you so much for explaining it to me.
That was illuminating also for me, I think that’s what is behind my subconscious drive to find new shiny glimmers objects to focus on.
“This is a big part of procrastination generally – focusing on a task is cognitively demanding, and we naturally try to escape that discomfort. At a totally subconscious level the motivation drive is activated to find pleasurable rewards to provide relief from the hardship of mental effort.”
https://despair.com/cdn/shop/products/procrastinationdemotivator_1024x1024.jpeg?v=1416776298
Ok you caught me!
Thanks Lovisa for calling out the Sheriff to shine the searchlight on procrastination culprits. 😀
to add that women going through hormonal changes can play a role in brain fog too, meaning concentration levels are significantly compromised than before.
“even to the ultimate point of citizens being willing to die fighting for their nation if it comes under attack.
Maybe one day all of humanity will unite around this principle”
Careful what you wish for!!! There are rumors of “Operation Blue Beam”, which is a red flag operation (kind of like, George Bush invading Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction) whereby staging a fake alien invasion and passing world domination/new world order over to The Bilderberg Group, The Club of Rome and
Population Council.
Sorry excellent post. Forgot to take my meds today!
🙂
We should all be wary of false flag alien invasions!
OMG This reminded me of something I read when I was a kid. It was a book written in the 80s following up on “The Late Great Planet Earth,” that 70s book that sparked an End Times craze in the fundamentalist Protestant churches. The author wrote that he thought demons would stage an alien invasion to deceive people and get them more vulnerable to the Antichrist, lol!
If you want to think of it that way, which makes more sense to me in hindsight; that the aliens in Signs weren’t aliens but demons invading Earth. There several theory videos out there on youtube that make a lot more sense than the invaders being actual aliens.
“I suspect that the answer to these questions lies in strengthening the bonds of family – asking how we can be better fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, neighbours and friends. Doing the purposeful work of self-development that enables us to build better relationships, and become more reliable, patient and compassionate with the people who depend on us.”
Really fascinating read, as always, Dr. L.
To achieve life in a relatively safe and happy world, a few things need to be accomplished:
(1) People first need to live in a community.
(2) The people who live in said community need to believe in and actually invest in said community.
(3) It’s very helpful for people in said community to have common goals, so they have a reason to work together and hang out and invest in community.
(4) Community needs to be understood primarily as the relationships that exist between responsible adults in that community (who then provide safety for more dependent/vulnerable members of the community e.g. the young, the old).
Now it’s very hard to balance this “invest in community” mindset with the very strong individualistic mindset people are encouraged to have in the West. Also, close-knit communities can sometimes become dysfunctional and/or suffocating, despite the best efforts of all participants to make them welcoming/healthy.
A classic limerence scenario I think is a limerent yearning to break free of the constraints of family or religion or country because for some reason they’ve found those constraints burdensome. Or, perhaps, the original community hasn’t met the needs of certain people in the community, including children growing up. Unmet needs/glaring injustices may prompt some people to reject community values and/or not want to invest in community when they have the opportunity. I.e. there’s some unresolved “quarrel” with the community one grew up in.
LGBT+ folk can obviously get upset when the shared goals of the community appear too heteronormative. However, are LGBT+ folk being selfish for failing to empathise with the needs and dreams of straight people and specifically the desire of straight people to build strong, healthy families? Gay people don’t automatically have to oppose society’s norms and traditions. For example, I knew a lovely gay man in his 50s with a lot of religious friends who taught Sunday school in a (Baptist?) church, and was much loved by all in his community.
Personally, as a gay man, I find I get on a lot better with the heterosexual majority when I empathise with the goals of the heterosexual majority, even if I’m not about to adopt the goals of the majority. I love going out and observing men who are obviously fathers, and community-minded women who are socialising in large groups in order to achieve some community-minded goal. I realise, as I age, I have to find some compromise between “offbeat self” and “member of mainstream society”. If I spent my life, for example, rebelling against mainstream society, all I’d be doing is cutting myself off from warm connection with most of the human race. At some point, for me, never-ending rebellion would become self-defeating.
I’ve also observed neurodivergent people can often rebel against social norms as adults, probably because they were great kids who obeyed all the rules growing up, and were still treated like dirt by neurotypical peers. Those childhood wounds relating to rejection, etc, clearly still loom large in autistic consciousness. So there’s that sense of “why bother investing in community if I’m not respected for my contribution or if I don’t receive the benefits I was promised i.e. full social acceptance/inclusion?” Neurodivergent people may self-isolate for this reason.
I have recently had a very unpleasant interaction with an autistic person, despite being autistic myself. We were talking about limerence, actually, and this person absolutely refused to believe that maybe just maybe they have a few things in common with other people (both autistic and non-autistic) who have experienced limerence. I was trying to help this person see that maybe they weren’t some unique case in their pain after all, and they turned on me like a rabid animal. lol
I believe I am 100% out of my limerence now, which is so cool. I had a dream about my LO last night, and it was a completely positive dream. I felt ecstasy during the dream, but not anxiety. I feel like my LO appeared to me one last time in a dream to let me know that it’s okay to let him go if I would like to let him go. It wasn’t some violent forced separation. It was a gentle “setting the other free”.
I have found in general that people in the throes of limerence are extremely resistant to the idea of community, and the benefits of community life, perhaps because (a) they are in so much pain or (b) limerence is simply so taxing on one’s rapidly-shrinking mental reserves one hasn’t the energy to engage with others. Essentially, people in limerence very noticeably WITHDRAW from community.
@Sammy,
Those are some very interesting ideas. Personally when in limerence, I reached out to community/counseling to try to get help for it, once I realized what it was. But yes, it was easy for me to withdraw internally during the high and low of limerence because it took up all of my emotional space, and I couldn’t control it. On the outside, I may have been going on with community as I normally would, but inside was either a hot, ecstatic raging fire when it was in the good phase, and then a cold, raging storm in the downward/withdrawal phase. It wasn’t until it went away that it became neutral phase again (peaceful, normal, calm, logical, rational). I have learned to love the peaceful, neutral phase and hope to maintain it for the rest of my life.
One has to put in a lot of work to get rid of limerence: delete all conversations, photos, connections, social media for those who do that… and then WAIT for the embers to burn out completely. Once you’ve done everything on your own part to get rid of every sliver of connection, then it is just a waiting game. And if it is limerence, and no-contact is possible, the good thing is that it can and will go away.
💙
@Limerent Nurse.
Thank you for your lovely words.
I think, just before I drifted into limerence unknowingly, I was in eighth grade at high school, and I was definitely a well-behaved kid who followed all the rules. (So much so that I got teased for being ” a square” aka the walking, talking human embodiment of “conventional morality”).
I did have a ready-made, available “we” to join i.e. the other boys in my year. But somehow I didn’t quite “fit” with the other boys in my year. Without external prompting, they all kind of banded together to give the teachers a hard time – both the male teachers and the female teachers, but the female teachers in particular.
Let’s avoid all fancy labels such as “gay” or “autistic” and just say I was an outsider. Let’s simplify further and say I wasn’t necessarily an outsider in terms of my actual social standing, but I felt on a subjective level like an outsider. I think feeling like an outsider probably pushed me into limerence. Feeling like an outsider also made me resistant to seeking help for my limerence (because how can non-outsiders possibly understand outsiders? And what outsider wants to give away outsider secrets?) 😆
Like you, I discovered that when I was alone in my thoughts I could create this “hot, ecstatic, raging fire” within myself. This fire was very comforting at times. This fire was also intensely pleasurable. I knew this fire had something vaguely to do with my LO, but I couldn’t fully explain the connection. (He was the inspiration I guess for feelings that were spontaneously arising within myself?) The very comforting, very pleasurable “fire” did eventually turn into a rollercoaster of highs and lows, although I didn’t really understand back then what was going on. (I guess I moved from Honeymoon Phase of limerence into Addiction Phase?)
My LO? He was an odd case. He was an insider but he was also an outsider. He was accepted by the other boys, and mucked around in much the same manner they did, but he was also a bit aloof and unconventional. He was very good-looking, even from a young age, so he was beloved by the girls. But he sometimes made dirty jokes/remarks that made it seem like he was aware of his universal attractiveness. He knew he was always going to be something of a catch, at least in terms of good looks and self-confidence.
I think he was a little bit neurodivergent, but not fully neurodivergent. He definitely had an ear for music. So I think, like me, he was a male born with an artistic gene. However, he was a male born with an artistic gene who went on to develop a healthy interest in girls. He was a “normal boy”, but I also felt we just had a mental connection right off the bat that I found hard to create with the other boys. It was interesting to meet someone who was both “conventional” and “unconventional” at the same time. The fact he sometimes showed interest in my interests was just the icing on the cake. I sometimes noticed him all alone. In those moments, I felt sorry for him and wanted to reach out to him and draw him into the bosom of the group.
Prior to my limerence, I actually had a super-strong emotional bond with my mother. After falling into limerence, I very intentionally started pulling away from my mother, and felt angered at her continued attempts to be close to me. I’m not saying my mother did anything wrong. However, my surly behaviour reminds me of something Tennov wrote – about how limerence might weaken the bonds between parents and offspring, so the offspring have the drive to go off and establish their own genetic lines.
I don’t have a citation, but Tennov apparently also called limerence (in its unrequited form I guess?) a “tragic daydream”. Isn’t that lovely? Looking back at my limerent episode, I can definitely see it in terms of a “tragic daydream”. What a shame there is only one word in the English language for “bittersweet”. It sort of felt like an “impossible romance” to me…
I personally think the whole experience would have been entirely harmless if hormones weren’t involved. I think the only real drawback of limerence is that limerence causes hormonal changes in the brain. Without those hormonal changes in play, I feel I would have been just fine, physically and psychologically. I don’t think my “attraction” would have troubled me. There would be no pain to heal from and no “cold, raging storm” to survive.
Ironically, in grade eleven, one of the teachers wanted to know who the class rebels were and my LO (sarcastically) pointed to me. 🙄 That makes me wonder: did he see me as some kind of goodie-two-shoes? Also, it makes me think we were sort of two sides of the same coin – light and dark. (He was an angel of darkness and I was an angel of light. Then I decided I wanted to switch sides and become an angel of darkness too. Perhaps, all along, my animus was luring me into exploring the “dark” side of myself?)
In my early 20s, I did become very interested in the concept of “rebellion”. I’m not sure why. I think I associated rebellion not with romantic love but with masculinity. I was trying to understand why I’m not like other males. I was trying to understand what masculinity is (biological masculinity, the kind of masculinity that culture must control/harness/domesticate). And, for a time, I thought I might find the answer in “rebellion”. My efforts at rebellion, however, were not very creative e.g. smoking, drinking, using occasional “unparliamentary language” in the presence of elders. I was like a six-year-old doing an impression of a rebellious adult man. 😜
If gay men are gay because they’re “caught in their mother’s eros”, I’m still trying to understand what that means. From what i can gather, the emotions and chemicals of limerence are identical in males and females. So does “mother’s eros” in gay men just alter the sex of the object of desire? I hope that wandering around in a cloud of female eros is actually fun for females, because wandering around in a cloud of (second-hand?) female eros hasn’t always been fun for me as a biological male. Am I able to empathise with women due to shared sensibilities or am I just a freak that nobody understands? There are days the “freak category” seems by far the more pertinent one. 😁
Regarding my gay friend who teaches Sunday school – I’ve just remembered he does that in the Uniting Church, not the Baptist Church. I think, in Australia, the Uniting Church decided it would open its doors to gay people.
Camille Paglia says that when gay men drop their macho facades (which they may wear in public for their own protection), they’re often very effeminate (i.e. not masculine). Their effeminacy manifests itself in the “artistic sensitivity” gay men often have, and their “rich vulnerable emotionality”. Camille Paglia thinks that masculine men aren’t sensitive (and nor should they be). In fact, she thinks a man that is sensitive isn’t a man at all, and she is correct to a degree, although there certainly are heterosexual men who are also great artists. (Tolstoy? Dostoevsky?)
These days, I have many casual friendships with beautiful younger straight women. It amuses me – the way these women trust me. How do they know I’m not a sexual threat? How do they know they can relax around me? I don’t tell people I’m gay. I don’t go out of my way to be feminine or effeminate. I think I am just naturally interested in many of the same things women are e.g. should I or should I not eat that slice of lemon pistachio cake? 😆
It IS still painful, however, to be forever branded as different from other members of one’s biological sex. When males like me, they probably like me because they think I’m being intentionally funny. They see me as their brother who’s always up for a laugh. But I’m not always being intentionally funny. I really do whole-heartedly believe in some of the oddball stuff I say.
I think straight men don’t realise I’m funny BECAUSE I’m gay, and not funny DESPITE being gay. They just think I’m funny, and don’t seek fancy explanations for my humour. I get along best with heterosexual men who have a feminine streak – they appreciate me for the fact I don’t judge them for their own failure to fit the mould of the perfectly masculine macho man.
Two entertaining things I’ve noticed recently about straight men. First, although stereotypically women possess “the gift of the gab” and men are “strong, silent types”, there are a surprisingly large number of straight men who love to talk. Second, while straight men may sometimes worship women, straight men often hold surprisingly low opinions of other straight men. A classic case is my own father. While I’m watching some male character on TV and thinking “Isn’t he dreamy?”, my father is sitting across from me and shouting: “He’s a turnip! He’s a turnip! He’s a turnip! He should go to turnip school and learn how to be less of a turnip!” 😆
I’m relieved limerence is over after waiting for it to end for over twenty years. My own school did send me to counselling after my grades started to slip due to limerence. But there’s only so much a (young and inexperienced) female school counsellor can do. I also attempted to talk to my school principal about it and I did talk to (and get a sympathetic response from) my advanced Maths teacher/Senior Discipline Master.
The constant anxiety is really the main (only) feature of limerence I find objectionable. I don’t want to live in a state of constant anxiety. I have a lot of free time on my hands now that limerence is over, and nothing terribly important to think about. I’m tempted to go back to reading novels. It is spooky to me after limerence how ALL the memories of the limerent episode remain intact, but with none of the original joy/pain attached. It’s like owning a photo album full of pictures of a life no one actually lived. 😉
„ It is spooky to me after limerence how ALL the memories of the limerent episode remain intact, but with none of the original joy/pain attached. It’s like owning a photo album full of pictures of a life no one actually lived. 😉“
Strong imagery Sammy!
@Sammy,
Gosh, I could just read your words all day. Love them.
In many ways, I too have felt like an outsider, especially in elementary school, middle school, and high school. I felt I garnered my true friends in college and after becoming a Christian in my early twenties. I mean, I had friends and was extremely involved, but internally always felt different.
Where you had mother issues, I had a daddy issues. He was a good man, but unbeknownst to me at the time, had struggled with undiagnosed bipolar disorder and wasn’t super emotionally attached to me and my sister. That could be part of the reason that I had crushes on boys all the time, or maybe I was just prone to crushes on boys all the time. Some reciprocated, and some didn’t show any interest.
We are both INFJs, Sammy. Enough said, right? It’s a confusing personality until you get the hang of it. 😃
It must’ve been difficult being an outsider with your unique set of personality traits, and being raised in a super-religious household. I also can’t imagine what it must have been like to be limerent for 20 years, when my experiences (while married) only ever lasted two years. I think the actual heart ache/physical pain was just as miserable as the anxiety. But at least I know now that the heartache was the start of the downward/healing phase of that season.
For me, the thoughts in my limerence caused the cognitive dissonance of feeling like “I am an adultress! I feel like an adultress! I don’t want to be an adultress!” I know in reality I didn’t commit adultery, but I know that the thoughts lead to feelings that can lead to adultery… and I couldn’t stop the thoughts! I am so thankful my faith anchored me from going off and doing anything more than what was already done. But even if I did, there would still be forgiveness if I had asked for it.
Sammy, do you believe people are born being gay? Or is it life circumstances? Or is it a choice? Or is it different for everybody? I tend to think people who know when they are children are probably born that way. But then again, I think people are just born with different tendencies, and that’s just one of them.
What are your spiritual beliefs as an adult? How does that play out in your life? I had a friend who lived as a lesbian before recommitting her life to Jesus, and I think she chooses to not live that lifestyle in preference for Him. But I don’t imagine it’s something that goes away… it’s probably a daily choice to not live that lifestyle. Thoughts?
💙
Oh my gosh, the biggest gossips at church are a couple of retired men, lol. Sometimes I hear them going on and on and it’s shocking what they say. As for orientation—I know one of them is straight, but have my doubts about the other one. It’s not like that sort of thing would be openly stated at a a conservative church, so I can’t be sure.
My friend knew when he was a child that he was “different.” I didn’t realize it until he told me that he was gay, but after I knew, it made a lot of sense. I’d “out” him if I described his traits, but he does have some traditionally “feminine” traits.
Hello everyone. The topic of this thread really resonates with me. I get the feeling that I am doing better in my LE partly because I am working on my relationships, especially with my SO, kids, parents. It looks like if these relationships improve, I get my joy from them, and then do not really need to look towards LO for happiness. What happened in my case was that one family member was in depression, and now they are doing better. Because of this, perhaps I am feeling better, and LO effect is reduced.
Do you think this theory makes sense?
To add to this, I spotted LO on a couple of occasions. We did not cross paths. However, these events did not bother me, so this is a great development.
ABCD,
I think it makes absolute sense, together with what Dr L wrote in his answer to Lovisa, your mind maybe casting around to find relief from the situation with your family member?
Great to hear about your progress! Sounds like you are doing extremely well!
I am not a scientist by any means but I tend to favor Dunbar’s number as the realistic limit in the sense of “we”. It’s referred to quite often by the many social scientists that come on the Nate Hagen podcast, The Great Simplification. In fact.. I want to say I just heard it referenced again in the John Vernaeke interview posted last week “The Meaning Crisis, Wisdom, Purpose, and the Search for Coherence”. (might be an interesting discussion for you).
I feel like I’ve experienced this tribal/village concept twice in my life… the first was as Texas teenager engaging in “high school band” culture in the late 90’s. I know…
Sounds ridiculous… but I can name 10 couples that emerged -and are still married- from that shared experience. That number of “high school sweethearts” is not typical for my Gen X generation!
Now in my later 40’s I’m working at a retail store that employees about 80, but our district has 4 stores that are all a short drive from each other. The dynamics within the company are hilariously tribal: Many couplings and marriages are between people within the company. Many households have more than one person working at the company and others still are sharing housing. I would say over half the store currently fits neatly into one or more of these categories and probably another 25% has in the past. In my case I had my son working with me for a short while last year and I’m currently housing my former trainee and her grandmother (also employed with us). They are precariously legal immigrants (Venezuela) and I’m particularly concerned about the 19 year old falling into some sort of sex work. I believe this is what her mother -who is mentally unwell and living in a motel with two young sons- is doing to make ends meet.
It seems that most of the people in the store don’t have stellar situations. Mostly broken families, reformed families. I’m undoubtedly in the best financial situation than anyone, but my domestic circumstances are no different than anyone else. Despite a little wealth I belong with them and they feel that way too. I’ve crashed out probably half a dozen times and they tell me to come back each time.
We struggle in that store but we’ve somehow figured out how to struggle together and that’s how we’ve become the “we”.
Dr L, I’m excited about something and I want to tell you about it.
I just finished playing with my guinea pigs. I have 4 loaves of bread in the oven. I went back into the kitchen to wash my hands and check the bread. I noticed it would be a few minutes, so why not scroll through YouTube to find something to listen to? An interesting video came up in my feed… “What makes some people so addictive?” The video has an interesting thumbnail photo. I clicked it and was delighted to hear your accent! I was so excited that I paused the video to tell you about it. Here is why this delights me.
1. It’s like watching a friend talk about something interesting.
2. It came up in my feed even though I haven’t subscribed.
And the best part…. Drum roll….
3. You caught my attention even though I didn’t know it was you! That makes me so happy!
Now I must run because my oven is beeping at me.
Great work Dr L!
I watched the video. The content was interesting and helpful. I love that shirt on you!
Thanks, Lovisa! That video has taken off, and I’m pleased because the thumbnail was a conscious effort to do something different and eye-catching (if you’ll pardon the pun).
Still having fun experimenting with YouTube 🙂
To go slightly into the most political bit, Elon Musk is not a good example – I think people are bothered about him sticking his nose in, and making wildly inaccurate accusations, not someone talking about the grooming gangs.
Here in Germany he supports possibly the most extreme of the european right wing populist parties – The AfD are a genuine threat to a stable society and the rule of law in a way I certainly wouldn’t consider Reform to be. The AfD have a history of internal revolutionary radicalisation, had multiple convicted and have rumoured fascists in their ranks, and passive flirting with forced deportations of even 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants in certain cases.
When someone who has enough money to signficantly move an election is pushing that it is really scary.
I second that, Heebie-Jeebies. Scary times
I agree. I read an article in Der Spiegel a few years ago about the AfD. It sounds like a resurgence of Naziism. With all the safeguards against that in Germany, I’m surprised they’ve gotten so far.
I take your point, Heebie Jeebies, but my anger is with the UK politicians and media flipping out about Musk’s tone and continuing to minimise and deflect from the horrors of what was done to those vulnerable girls (both the awful abuse, and the subsequent indifference/hostility of the police and local authorities who should have been protecting them).
Elon Musk doing his usual chaotic stream-of-consciousness Tweeting doesn’t bother me nearly as much as our institutions failing in their duty of care in the most shocking ways imaginable.
Yeah It was useful and a massive indictment of some very serious issues in the mollycoddling going on around what lanugage is used publicly and how it affects what we focus on.
But Musk is not chaotic, nor is Trump, nor any of the right wing parties. What Musk is doing is very deliberate, and in some ways worse. He is very cynically using the pain those girls suffered twice, once for the original crime, and then being ignored, for his own personal political agenda. All hues of institutions and political persuasion have their chosen blind spots.
I think Scruton was great, and very unfairly vilified, even if I wouldn’t subscribe to many things he believed.
Found this site today after randomly searching for help with overwhelming feelings for someone I met a few months ago. Reading it has made a bunch of things fall into place. I think I have ADHD as well so I’ve really been struggling to break out of anxiety>overthinking loops that have caused me to be unable to work productively or think straight. I have literally been unable to stop thinking about my LO at times. I don’t know what to do. I can’t seem to keep away from the pub where she works (which is also the centre of my social life atm). I think I have started to make her uncomfortable which I deeply regret. Having found this site I am wary of my desire to try explain and apologise but I also need to not fall out with the other staff and patrons there as the pub has been something of a refuge for four years or so now. The lady in question is popular and well-liked and I feel like I can detect some cooling amongst the staff there (I haven’t seen the LO for nearly a week and am tormented by the idea that I have driven her to resign, which rationally I think is unlikely, but can’t stop returning to).
I’m seeing a doctor next week to try to get an ADHD test referral so that may help but the NHS is rather slow in my experience of accessing mental health treatment.
I’m cooked. Any advice?
Welcome MrGuinness! You have come to the right place! It sounds like your limerence is causing some problems for you.
First, we can’t know if your behavior has caused your LO to change her schedule. It’s possible, but unless you have a reason to believe it, I don’t think you should worry yourself.
The desire to disclose to your LO is very common. If both of you are available to pursue a relationship, disclosure is fine. If either of you are in a committed relationship, I recommend that you don’t disclose.
I wasn’t sure if you feel like your thoughts of LO are distracting or intrusive. A common symptom of limerence is obsessive thinking about LO. I recommend that you don’t intentionally daydream about your LO because you will train your brain to put her at the front of your thoughts. Your brain might start bringing her up even when it’s a bad time. Try really hard to think about something else instead of her. When I was limerent, I could distract myself by reading LwL articles and engaging in the community.
Best wishes!
Thank you Lovisa for your reply.
I’m 99% sure that the LO changed her schedule because of me, obviously I’m second-guessing everything I thought I knew in the light of finding this site yesterday, but having said that I went back last night when it was quiet and explained that I had been struggling and was getting some help and it changed the atmosphere considerably.
My thoughts were intrusive and for several days last week I was locked in a mental loop that was frightening and debilitating. Reading this site yesterday took so much of the anxiety out of everything because I was able to understand what was happening. I still have thoughts but they are of the distracting/day-dreaming variety not the inescapable vortex of misery kind.
I am making an effort to move my mind away from the day-dreaming and it’s helping.
Thanks again.
Hi MrGuinness and Lovisa,
Welcome MrGuiness! Very sorry for your situation!
„First, we can’t know if your behavior has caused your LO to change her schedule. It’s possible, but unless you have a reason to believe it, I don’t think you should worry yourself.“
Well, I guess it depends on the kind of behavior. If it was intrusive or inappropriate or making her scared, it might be a reason that she changed her schedule. As we have seen, women with bad experiences in the past are wary of men not reacting on social signs that their advances are unwelcome. Working in a bar, she might have had very unpleasant male customers, who knows.
But it’s also possible that you were behaving ok and her absence has got nothing to do with you, also that you imagine coldness of staff. It’s hard to know from your story.
Having said that, I know from own experience that sometimes you cannot stop yourself from behaving in a way that’s detrimental, when your mindset is immersed in a limerent reality, where you see things/persons as you wish they were and not as they are.
It’s good that you are looking for help because limerence is a tough addiction.
I would recommend still going to that pub and just behave normally, like any other customer, and, if she is there, just to be nice but leave her alone otherwise, like any other customer.
If that’s not possible for you, you might want to look for other pubs/locations with friendly people/friends where you can relax and have a refuge. It’s probably not healthy to rely on the one location where the source of your distress is working?
You are welcome to unload here any time, I sometimes go on rants here, taxing the patience of the other posters, but it helps me and they are very patient..
Best wishes!
Thank you for your reply Mila.
I am going to continue going there but I’ll be drinking considerably less or sticking to non-alcoholic drinks and yes, I will be leaving her alone.
I am mortified by the thought that I may have been so intense that I made her feel uncomfortable or unsafe (I kind of need to know for sure so that I fully understand). I will be looking to widen my circle of activities to take pressure off myself, the LO and that pub in general.
I also badly need to reduce my drinking which I’ve been self-medicating with for years. Getting an ADHD test is a big part of that but this limerence business has been a big push in that direction too, which a good thing coming out of a really difficult one I guess.
I feel incredibly relieved and also really bad at the same time.
Thanks again for your reply
„ but having said that I went back last night when it was quiet and explained that I had been struggling and was getting some help and it changed the atmosphere considerably.“
That was very courageous and honest!
I think it’s not possible to stop drinking by own free will if one has reached a certain stage addiction. It’s not weakness. You need to get professional help for that, I think.
I wish you all the best!!
Welcome Mr. Guiness. You have come to the right place, I can vouch for this.
From personal experience, intrusive thoughts about LO can take a whole lot of your mental bandwith. But now they do not bother me as much as they used to.
What I do is this — I let the thoughts come and go. I observe them arriving and leaving, dealing with them as calmly as I can. I don’t beat myself up too much about why the thoughts come, and till when they will come.
As others have said, try to find some distractions, like taking a walk, to take your mind off.
There is no sure way of finding out if your behavior caused your LO to go into her shell. As limerents, we do tend to over analyse such stuff. I would say just go to the pub, and if she is there, interact with her, like you would with any person. However, I am not really one to give advice on this, as I am still struggling when in the midst of her.
All the best!
Thank you ABCD. All good advice, much appreciated
Great advice about the intrusive thoughts, ABCD!
Please forgive my naivety, but if MrGuinness wants to cut back on his drinking, maybe he shouldn’t visit the pub.
I’m reminded of something that a friend said to me just before he was released from prison. He wanted to do better upon his release so he intended to “find a new sandbox to play in.” I thought it was a cute way of saying that he recognized that he couldn’t expose himself to tempting situations like he had in the past.
Thanks Lovisa! Your advice is spot on, always!
Hi MrGuiness, limerence is very unpleasant, sorry to hear that, and losing your pub to boot is a double blow.
Just some questions to maybe help explore why now….
have you experienced similar feelings before?
have the circumstances of your life worsened recently (like last 6-12 months)?
For some people here it does some out of the blue, experiencing limerence for the first time in mid (?) life is not unknown, but many experience it earlier in life as well.
Some people here also seem to experience it as well as a reaction to traumatic or crisis sort of situations, or in transition periods in life (mid-life, young adult, later ages for seemingly men in particular).
That may not help to relieve the situation in the short term, but it might give you a sense of underlying drivers. I am sure ADHD is one possible cause.
Thanks Heebie Jeebies for your reply.
In answer to your questions:
-I now realise that I have had similiar experiences before. About ten years ago, when I was still married, there was a lady who worked in the office across from mine. I fell harder for her than I ever had for anyone before. It was totally unrequited.
It was a difficult time because I would go home and hate myself for being emotionally unfaithful and the next day I would be able to tell when she was coming out of the lift and walking down the corridor because of the scent she wore.
After she left, I thought about her every day for perhaps five years and it took perhaps ten before I stopped scanning faces when travelling on the tube in hopes of seeing her.
It was so bad that, up until a year or two ago, when I thought of the word ‘love’ I thought of her name. And, in fact, during this current LE her name and the name of the new LO have been almost fighting for supremacy in my head. The old name being overwritten by the new and sometimes thinking of the new name to myself I would hear the old name.
Bizarre.
The circumstances of my life have actually improved over the last 6-12 months but as depression has receded and hopes and aspirations have returned so have complexity and pressure, revealing underlying problems with, I think, undiagnosed ADHD.
That definitely sounds very like limerence, and a fairly strong episode, most people are through in a couple of years at most.
I mean, you can read around here on this board, but the advice is almost invariably going to be low to no contact, (especially where contact is volunatary), and living purposefully, which just means doing new things in life. Spending less time in the pub might not be the worst thing in the world if you can find hobbies or activities that replace it and are a bit healthier.
I’ve only had one episode that long and needed no contact to get over it, but a shorter one was a few months and then completely clean end while still in contact, so nothing is certain.
I am sure you are aware of the key resources section, and there is also the paid course.
It sounds like the easiest action you can undertake is to immediately go to the pub less, working quickly don towards hardly or not all, and start thinking about what else you can do with your free time.
The following articles might help as a quick start
https://livingwithlimerence.com/the-best-cure-for-limerence/
https://livingwithlimerence.com/where-to-find-purpose/
https://livingwithlimerence.com/the-recovery-mindset/
https://livingwithlimerence.com/overcoming-limerence-for-good/
https://livingwithlimerence.com/seeking-healthy-rewards/
Best of luck
Hi MrGuiness, limerence is very unpleasant, sorry to hear that, and losing your pub to boot is a double blow.
Just some questions to maybe help explore why now….
have you experienced similar feelings before?
have the circumstances of your life worsened recently (like last 6-12 months)?
For some people here it does some out of the blue, experiencing limerence for the first time in mid (?) life is not unknown, but many experience it earlier in life as well.
Some people here also seem to experience it as well as a reaction to traumatic or crisis sort of situations, or in transition periods in life (mid-life, young adult, later ages for seemingly men in particular).
That may not help to relieve the situation in the short term, but it might give you a sense of underlying drivers. I am sure ADHD is one possible cause.
Thanks Mila. I didn’t mention limerence but I did talk about ADHD and the LO wasn’t there. I know though that what I said will be passed on to her and I am hopeful that I may have fixed the immediate issue which is me mucking up her life.
The drinking is do-able, I think, as I have previously stopped for months or years at a time. I’ve always gone back to it though because, I suspect, undiagnosed and untreated ADHD makes it very hard for me to operate normally for sustained periods of time without turning my brain off with alcohol – even at the best of times.
Given I’ve been through a business failure, an (amicable) divorce that took four years to complete the early part of which was during lockdown, the loss of my family unit (I have a great relationship with my daughters but only see one or both every weekend) which all led to mental exhaustion, burnout and clinical depression, the last six or seven years have not been the best of times, lol.
The drinking is quite heavy now but still less than it was. I can get it down I am confident, I’ll need to deal with the ADHD though to make it stick.
Dear MrGuinness,
I feel great empathy for your situation. I have an LO who I suspect has ADHD. I think it was mutual between us (its been going on for a while – we don’t see one another very much). We both have SOs (are married). I think what started me off on limerence was a huge and very obvious display of attraction on his part – that sucked me into it too. I think his lack of inhibition around me was contributed-to by his ADHD. (All armchair diagnosis by yours truely but I have studied him in detail and am an educator so I know the signs). Now, four or five years later (!), I have got to a much more stable point with him – we work together from time to time but do not see each other in person very much (when we do, he is quite “obvious” in his attraction). I have huge sympathy for him as his ADHD seems undiagnosed (he is old-school and we are both middle aged). I suspect that he has had addiction issues in the past, which he has overcome.
What I would say to you is to not leak too much information to others in your current stage perhaps? You have ‘settled the boat’ after rocking it but perhaps that is all anybody needs to know for now? When we need support, sometimes less is more, in terms of specifying all the gory details (and some people love to chit chat). You definitely sounds as though you’ve done well with your kids, which is marvelous, although the divorce can’t have been easy, psychologically, finacially, etc.
But you can recover from this and take baby steps to diversifying your support network.
I would recommend to read some of the blogs on limerence as an addiction.
Thank you for the reply Bewitched.
‘Settling the boat’ is what I was looking to achieve by speaking somewhat openly in the pub (way more openly than I am comfortable with). If I have achieved that then I am relieved. Either way I have done about as much as I can do to repair the damage I think I have caused.
The rest is up to me to sort out with myself I guess.
Your LO sounds quite like me I think in terms of age, being old-school etc. I was certainly very “obvious” with my LO, who is nearly 20 years younger than me. It’s not mutual limerence but if I had a gun to my head I would say that I think she may have liked the attention and there might have been some attraction on her side too. She is in a relationship but did agree to go on a walk with me, before changing her mind ten minutes later. I’ve never had her contact details or communicated with her outside of the pub so that will make it easier to maintain appropriate distance. I am encouraged by your experience turning out well seemingly as a mutual limerence when you both have SOs sounds like another level of difficult.
I think your auto-fill put your real name on this post. You can email Dr L and ask him to remove it.
Dear CV,
Yes, please do be encouraged by my story. The fact is that I am still really extremely fond of my LO, but I would say that my limerence is dialled all the way down now. And I think his is too (if I am correct about it being mutual). When it kicked off, I experienced a terrible three months of intrusive thoughts, inability to focus, etc. Perhaps this is the stage you are at now?
What forced the issue in my case was each being married. I was lucky that I fell for someone who was moral (and I also maintained strict boundaries with regard to him). As we both had SOs, we could not pursue it and so we didn’t. Even with all that boundary-keeping, recovery was slow because despite geographic distance and not seeing each other much in person, there was some contact due to work (mostly initiated by him), which fueled rumination (is he/isn’t he). But my marriage is strong so I was able to overcome it all. I did go through a short period of being annoyed with him for encouraging me (he initiates a lot of contact, plus there were a few other things that were ‘big tells’ in my mind, that I sort of wished he hadn’t done as it sent me spinning) but I have made my peace with all of that now because I think he did his very best. I care about him and want him to be okay.
We all have different situations and scope for recovery. The ability to go No Contact has been one tried and tested method, as well as distraction (a key one for you, maybe with your ADHD? Can you maybe hyperfocus into an area that interests you for a while, and maybe things will sort of go away/settle down again?)
One thing I learned is not to overthink interactions with LO (very difficult to do) but in limerence our minds are not always very trustworthy / reliable narrators. There can be a tendency to over-catastrophise. Equally an inability to see what is staring us straight in the face (LO’s disinterest, for instance). I must say, it sounds as though you’ve accepted her decision not to pursue anything with you which I think is a massive step in recovering. The is she/isn’t she? cycle is one rabbit hole which many of us have fallen down and wasted a lot of time down there in that particular burrow! Although you are single and different rules apply to becoming attracted to someone new, perhaps for your own sake, its important not to ruin and important outlet for you at the moment (which this social life seems to be). Ultimately, you’ll want to develop new outlets too though, right? To help with that alcohol dependence. As you have ADHD, the dependence could perhaps be substituted fairly straight-forwardly with another activity that stimulates you (that is my sincere hope for you!).
I am very interested in seeing how this all works out for you because I think you have massive potential to recover (ADHD can be a blessing as well as a challenge, I think?). How do you feel you are getting on now that you know you are ‘wired’ this particular way?
Oh my goodness, MrGuinness, you are carrying a heavy load: a divorce, a business failure, an ADHD diagnosis and clinical depression? That is a lot. I’m sad that alcohol is your coping mechanism. I have very little experience with alcohol because I don’t drink and most of the people in my social network don’t drink. I have relatives who drink, but I rarely see it. Sorry for my lack of understanding about your current struggle with alcohol. I can relate to your ADHD diagnosis and clinical depression. I was diagnosed with ADHD about 7 years ago and a few years after that I suffered a clinical depression. It was rough. I used medication that my doctor prescribed for a few years. Now I manage my mood with regular exercise. Exercise works much better for me than medication, but you will need to find what works for you.
Speaking of what works for you… you mentioned that you are looking to widen your circle of activities. Like what? I want to hear about your new adventures.
I’ll tell you a little about my adventures. I like to participate in ultra marathons. I love them so much! They make me happy! I’m getting giddy just thinking about my current race series. I struggled at the first race. By mile 18, I was dehydrated, but I didn’t know it, I just thought my training had failed me because I was miserable. Then I started drinking electrolytes instead of water and I was back to my happy self. I finished the race strong (50 kilometers). Two of my daughters ran across the finish line with me. They are so cute! It was a great experience. Now I am looking forward to my next race. I am determined to drink plenty of water and electrolytes even if I don’t feel like it. I am also hoping to do a better job on my pacing. It’s hard on my ego when I finish towards the end of the pack which I did at the last race.
Enough about me. Mila had some great words of encouragement for you. She was right that you will find support here. If you do scale back on your drinking, I hope you will share your experience with us because I would love to walk that journey with you. I am hopeful that Adam notices your posts. Adam calls himself a functioning alcoholic. I think he will understand your situation better than I can. I noticed that Mila recommended that you get help to quit alcohol. Perhaps that is the best approach. I’ve attended addiction recovery meetings with friends and I must say that I love those meetings! People are raw and honest and hopeful for a better future. I seriously love the environment in those meetings. Have you tried it? I attended AA at a Christian church, NA at a treatment center and addiction recovery through my church. I loved them all. Is that kind of stuff available in your area?
Best of luck with your new adventures!
Thanks Lovisa for your kind words. It sounds like you have been through it too. I’m currently self-diagnosed with ADHD but I am going to talk to the doctor next week about getting a test.
Exercise is really important to me too. I have been walking a lot for years and it has really helped. I’ve started going to the gym too in recent months which has also been very helpful.
I’ve been on anti-depressants for six or seven years which are a mixed bag in terms of helping but do stabilise the worst of the depression I have found. Ironically, I realised about the middle of last year that I was no longer seriously depressed (i.e. I began to feel that there was more to life than merely surviving to be there for my daughters, and there might actually be a future I could build for myself). That was a significant step forward depression-wise as I hadn’t thought that was possible for a very long time.
However, not too many months after that realisation hit, I met the LO. Boy, has that shown me that the underlying issues that likely made a significant contribution to my depression are still very much unresolved.
If I don’t address them then I will likely never get my life back on track. At the moment I plan on doing some yoga and meditation to manage the restlessness which I currently dampen down with alcohol.
Longer-term I want to become self-employed and give myself more freedom in terms of travel and not having a 9-5 job. Again, I’m going to need to tackle the ADHD I think I have before that bears fruit.
I’ve never done AA but would consider it if need be.
Thanks again.
Also, your ultra-marathons sound great, and it’s wonderful your daughters get involved! Not for me though, if I run 3k my knees complain for days, lol
@bewitched. Thanks again for your comments.
Yes, it has been roughly three months so I think I am at the stage you describe. The overwhelmingly intrusive thought spirals/loops seem to have gone, hopefully they will not return. The day-dreaming/distraction stuff is still happening but that’s easier to deal with now that I know what is happening and that the scenarios aren’t a realistic prospect.
I am going to try to divert into exercise/reading/breathing type stuff. Anything positive that passes the time in the evenings that isn’t just swapping one negative activity (drinking) with another.
In terms of ADHD, I still haven’t been diagnosed but, from what I have read, it maps on to my experiences better than anything else (and something is definitely amiss). It does have potential to explain some life-long issues I’ve had. I’ve obviously done some online tests and they’ve come out with positive results but I need an official test to get any treatment on the NHS.
MrGuinness (which if that is an indication of your taste in beer, we already have something in common)
“I think I have started to make her uncomfortable which I deeply regret.”
Many of the women here have *dunno what agentive to use … advised maybe?* that us men seem to be really hard on ourselves when it comes to our LO’s reaction to our behavior. I’ve come to the conclusion that for the most part women are way more forgiving to us than we are to ourselves. When LO left (a former co-worker) I spent the vast majority (and to some degree still do) blaming myself for why she left the job.
I think it is an easy way for us men to separate why LO doesn’t share the same feelings. It was brutal when she was spending time with another man. To see him stealing attention from me. I didn’t begrudge her for seeing him, just jealous of the lost of time I had with her. If it is our fault than vodka and Air Supply can fix it. Because we couldn’t fix why LO behaves as she does. Guilt is easier to process than the fact that we didn’t mean to her what she meant to us. Aww the sweet embrace of guilt.
Miss Lovisa is more than likely right that you are seeing something that isn’t there with your LO and her behavior towards you. Indifference can manifest as disregard when one is in the middle of limerence. Miss Lovisa told me that she knew that LO never had bad feelings for me because she let me come to visit her on her last day on the job. LO would sometimes not be in a good mood and I would spend the whole work day trying to fix it. Blaming myself that I couldn’t do it some days.
Women, you can’t live with them and can’t live without them ……. I kid I kid ladies don’t crucify me. *Runs off to his hidey hole.*
Hi Adam, thanks for your reply.
I take your point about preferring the guilt to accepting that feelings are one-sided. If I am honest, it’s not just that I feel terribly guilty about potentially upsetting LO and forcing her to leave her job, which I do. It’s also fear of losing access to her irrevocably and the end of all lingering delusional hope.
I very much hope you are correct about me over-reacting. However, I’m really reacting to my perception of her co-workers’ attitudes to me, these have changed since I last saw LO, I think. I could easily be punishing myself excessively but I don’t think I am.
Anyway, I daresay all will be revealed in due course.
Hi, MrGuiness,
There’s a lot to unpack in your posts. If you haven’t, I recommend hitting the archives and doing a search for “guilt” and other key words you might come up with. There’s also “search the site” and “categories” boxes that you can use to refine your searches.
Since you can’t comment on closed posts, link the blog or comment or blog that interests you when you post in a coffeehouse. It will help the community frame your concerns.
Welcome aboard!
Thanks for your reply Limerent Emeritus
I will have a root around the archives.