A defining feature of limerence is persistent, intrusive thoughts about LO. And it doesn’t even let up when you are asleep. Frequent dreams about LO are very common, and can be quite informative. Now, I’m no Freudian (or Jungian) and don’t want to make too much of this, in terms of trying to interpret the symbolism of the dream or what it means for your deeper psyche, but sometimes the dreams are so hilariously literal that they can be useful. The stimulus for this post was a previous comment by J, who had this dream:
Last night I couldn’t sleep, was in a lucid dream state about LO could not get my mind to stop no matter how hard I tried. It was easier and more pleasurable to let the LO fantasy happen. I then had a dream of injecting heroine into my leg behind my SO back, but the injection site was bleeding!
Closely followed by an important P.S.
Ps I’ve never taken heroin!
I don’t think you need to be a genius rocket surgeon to interpret that one.
So, can our crazy dreams be useful for managing limerence? I think so, particularly in terms of how the experience develops over time, and what it tells you about the subconscious awareness of how LO is affecting your life. To illustrate this, I’ll adopt the strategy of bores everywhere and tell you about a couple of my dreams.
Now, early on in the limerence cycle, these dreams can be mostly positive, and often sexy.
As time goes on, the mood music changes, both in real life and in dreams. For me, one of the best ways to recognise how toxic the limerence was becoming was when the dreams turned into nightmares. This was also actually really helpful in the deprogramming process, as the more affecting nightmares would cause me to spend a good portion of the day still feeling the emotional hangover. On those days, time with LO became negative reinforcement. So, in the hopes that reliving them may help other suffering limerents, here are a couple of mine:
1) The trap
I was working in an office that I sometimes shared with LO, and we were chatting away. After a while, I left the office, and discovered that instead of emerging into the usual corridor, I was in a musty bathroom. In confusion, I wandered into the next room, which was a small lounge, with a blaring TV, and a window view out over a rainy city. It dawned on me that I was now living with LO in a tiny flat. With a creeping sense of claustrophobia, I tried to get out, and followed the only other route: a narrow, dimly lit corridor. It led around the back of the office (where LO was still working) in a short, closed circle, and back to the bathroom. There was no way out. I was trapped.
2) Gone swimming
I was with my wife and kids at the swimming pool, and having fun. Then I noticed that LO was at the far end of the pool. With some trepidation, I pointed her out to my wife, and said “Come on, I think I’d better introduce you all.” Somewhat reluctantly, she agreed, and so I swam over to LO. I greeted her, and explained that I wanted to introduce my family, and turned to find that they hadn’t swum along with me as I’d expected, and in fact I couldn’t see them. Somewhat embarrassed, I explained to LO that they must have gone over to the slides, or the small pool, and said that I would go and find them and bring them over. Dripping and cold, I then hurried around the various other parts of the pool, and into the changing rooms. I searched with awful, escalating, panic. My family had vanished. I woke with my heart hammering.
I’ve learned to listen to my subconscious mind when it screams at me. Dreams can be useful. Try and catch the worst and remember them for later reprogramming purposes.
P.S. Feel free to fill up the comments with your own limerence dreams… 🙂
I never had any dreams I remember about LO #1 or LO #3. I’ve had plenty about LO #2 & LO #4. I’ve talked about some of them elsewhere so I won’t repeat those.
Some of them were pretty intense. After LO #2 sent her Facebook friend request, I had a dream I met with her. I decided to ask her if she wanted to try it again. When I turned around, she was gone. After running away, I decided to turn around and look for her again. When I got back, my dead father was standing there. When I told him what I was going to do, he told me, “Don’t. Leave it alone.”
I think I had this dream when I was almost at the end of the line with LO #4. I dreamed my wife, my daughter, and I were at a resort. The porter told us our snake was in the urn. Apparently, there was some local custom having to do with poisonous snakes. There was a 4ft tall urn in the corner. I lifted lid and there was a rattlesnake in the bottom. I asked my wife if the ritual was sticking your hand or your head in the urn. She thought it was your head. I told her the point of that ritual escaped me. I turned out the light to go to bed and I got bit in the left leg by a snake. We flipped on the lights but didn’t see a snake. My leg started to swell and discolor. My wife called the front desk to get help and told me to calm down, there was anti-venom at the hospital. I kept asking but what if there wasn’t? Oddly, neither my wife nor my daughter were concerned there was a snake loose in the room.
Another thing is that after grinding through all this, I think I’ve reconciled things in my dreams.
It’s pretty obvious from FB that LO #2 has a BF. After I understood my emotionally corrective experience triggers, I dreamed I ran into her at the airport. She was on one side of a glass partition and I was on the other. I pointed to the area where we could meet. Just then I saw my wife coming up. They had never met and my wife would be mortified to meet her today (long story). I told her LO #2 was there and asked if she wanted to meet her after all these years. She said, “Nope.” I went back to the window and her BF was there with his arm around her. I gave her the sorry shrug, smiled, and turned away.
I had a dream that I was out with my wife and mother-in-law. We were waiting to be seated in a restaurant when LO #4 walked in and sat down. My wife was between me and LO #4. I asked my wife if we could change places so I could talk to LO #4. We did. As I was talking to LO #4, my wife gently took my hand and held. It was a reminder.
Almost all the dreams about LO #4 reflected the fact that there was nothing really mutual between us. Although when she did respond, my dreams reflected my anxiety.
Limerence was delivered to me in a dream I had last year2022- with a boy friend I had 49 years ago! (Bf is Lo now)
The dream was in three stages like a play.
First act- I was in a crowd waiting to cross a border-there were some kind of exodus -but people were calmed and talking relaxed. Then out of a building came LO, without saying a word ,took me on the back of the bldg and to a brier thorns and brambles patch and soft soil. I complained, why are you taking me through this place? He said nothing but held me up on his arms and crossed me over. End of first act.
Second act-same dream- I was at a park talking to a friend and watching her children s play. As I looked back I saw LO staring at me quite insistently. He was laying down on a rock with his hands on back of his neck. I made believe I didn’t see him but was aware of him gazing at me . I was somehow flirting w him. End of second act.
Third act- I was standing at the door of what seemed to be an open fair event, feeling bored and distant, Two of my sisters were there, but a little apart from me. Then I felt a hand take my hand and walked away with him, without looking at who he was, for I knew it was LO’s hand.I was immensely happy and euphoric that it was him, and sure that this is it! This is my fulfillment! He is my happiness. And he took me through a wide dirt road in the forest, hand in hand, while my sisters called out saying: watch out you don’t break the glass. I opened my right hand and showed them a colored piece of plastic I was holding in my hand, and I was smiling. LO never said a word.
And that was the end of act three and the end of the dream.
I have never before had a dream or thought of LO for 49 years!
When I woke up I was flooded with memories of a long gone romantic relationship . And it kept playing over and over again, sleepless nights and lack of appetite followed; the monster of limerence was born that night, my
mind taken hostage in its entirety for ten months; a monster that has shaken my entire life in a way that I cannot comprehend why now? What’s the reason for this pain and suffering ? What is it trying to teach me now at an old age? I have an excellent SO, children and grandchildren. I ponder on this all the time, but I don’t get a satisfying revelation. And I know LO is the love of my life and he knows it because I told him so on a phone conversation forty nine years later! (Last October) It’s over, it’s all useless because we could never ever meet again. He lives in another continent and I can’t communicate with him either. His wife is in charge of his phone somehow . And she has a right to do so. The forced N/C is in place, and ultimately will suffocate the LE. I do hope.
At least ,after ten months of total affliction, I could get some of my mind back! I think I’m winning this battle, but it has rocked the wits out of me . This shall also pass. I’m hopeful! Life can play games on you, never sure of what could happen next. Be alert and live a purposeful life. There’s always hope for better things to come your way.
Just as I’ve been feeling dreadful about how to go NC or pull down an iron face to the current LO (always with charming, warm courtesy in person) when the school opens in 2 weeks, I had this dream last night:
The first day back to the school, I was deliberately avoiding the common hallways and succeeded in not bumping into LO until the end when I was about leaving a stairway door: LO came out of his office first, saw but ignored me, and went out of the door ahead of me. When I came out of the building, he’d completely vanished, leaving me melodramatically looking at green lawns and an ancient castle’s ruins (no castle of any sort in my campus).
It hurt so much that I woke up with real chest pain, it triggered abandonment melange like in the past (emotionally by parents, then previous LOs and others…). The last realistic, “big one” (might be perceived by me) in 2019 by the same LO sent me to a severe panic attack that contributed to a consequential devastating health problem, which was fortunately cured in the following year.
I’m literally a dreamer — remember most of my daily dreams (1-3) especially nightmares (even from 10 years old) which could alter my moods for the following hours and days. As I’m writing here, the chest pain is going away, although the elephant is still in the room.
Besides daily cardio workout and long walks, I practice Vipassana meditation combined with a sort of self-hypnosis several times a day (15-30 minutes per session) to calm down my triggered cPTSD symptoms, eg. anxiety, depression, anger or despair…. It works, but does not stop or prevent nightmare like last night.
LE—the elephant really needs to leave the room regardless what LO does in reality or dream.
Rumination on how to go NC with LO in reality “triggered” my subconscious to have my narc LO pulled off a NC on me vividly in my dream and caused an abandonment melange — what a punishment of LE!
Dr L: Was ruminating part of a brain somehow damaged by one’s childhood traumas as it was still forming and developing , or could it be genetic as well? Could that part of brain be neurologically rewired through conscious thinking, behaving and some forms of meditating?
In the last few weeks, I’ve had 2 more dreams about LO #2. The circumstances were different but the themes seem to be the same.
#1: In this dream, I was parking my car along the side of the road. As I was getting out, LO #2 parked her car across the street. It turned out we were going to the same place. We went inside. There was a large lobby with a lot of exhibitor tables, etc., in it. LO #2 was looking at something on the wall when I asked if she’d like something to drink. She said a glass of water would be nice so I went to find one. When I came back, she was gone and I never did find her, again.
#2: I was walking across a large gravel parking lot to a building on the other side. The parking lot was largely empty. As I was walking across, I almost got hit by a small shuttle bus pulling into the lot. The shuttle was full of people and LO #2 was driving it. We recognized each other. I waited for her to park the bus and get off. She drove to the far end of the empty lot. The people got off the bus, She stood out from the others, wearing a blue and white floral pantsuit; the only person in color in an otherwise black & white photo. It looked like the group was dressed for something like a wedding reception, nice but not formal. As she came closer, I was suddenly surrounded by a large group of people. Some guy, I wondered if it was her BF, kept looking at me. I lost her in the crowd. As I was looking for her, a guy who worked there said, “There are lots of places you can stop along the way to water the horses (no clue) or get something to eat.” I told him, “I’m not a part of this.” The crowd disappeared and I started heading toward the building.
What I’m having trouble with, is why, after all this time, my subconscious still has me encountering her but not being able to engage her.
For me, an interesting feature of limerence dreams is the way it often brings slumbering limerence back to the centre of our consciousness. For weeks now, I’ve had minimal contact with LO. I enjoyed a friendly, collegial relationship with her at work and had no intrusive or limerent thoughts about her when out of her vicinity. My relationship with SO improved immensely, as freedom from limerent obsession freed up huge reserves of romantic energy and positive feeling towards her.
Then, for no clear reason, I have a mundanely pleasant fantasy dream about LO, not particularly interesting, but very vivid. And boom, I can feel the roots of limerence taking hold on my mind once more… Go figure!
Your hindbrain whispering, “If life is going well with one person, why not two!”? Or maybe it’s more like the cycle when someone stops drinking, or quits smoking cigarettes. Thinks are great & so easy for a stretch of time, but then a circumstance arises, old habits die hard and you’re tempted to have one drink with old friends, or one cigarette after dinner.
Sorry it sucker-punched you, Bram. Time to see less if LO, I guess.
“Things”, “…of LO”
*ties glasses onto face*
Yep, said dream definitely followed a period of increased contact with LO. At least the fact that things are going well with SO weakens the hold considerably.
That happens me after every few months…even the most mundane dreams about LO rekindles the limerence flame…🤷
That happens to me after every few months…even the most mundane dreams about LO rekindles the limerence flame
Recently, I read about a “strategy” that involved purposely altering the conclusions of the fantasies about the LO to ensure a “bad” ending. For example, imagining that the relationship slowly devolves into a state of constant argument and mutual disgust or hatred.
It worked for a while, I lasted several weeks without struggling with limerence. I felt free—like I had a grasp of reality and I was living again. But one night, randomly and completely out of the blue, I dreamed about the LO again, which served more as a reminder of the LO’s existence than any particular desire for activity together. I woke up feeling incredibly puzzled wondering what might have caused it as I had not been thinking about the LO for weeks.
And then the whole cycle started again. It’s annoying but the puzzled feeling hasn’t gone away yet. As with limerence, believing that it’s somehow the act of some higher power like a god or perhaps fate/destiny is very tempting. My subconscious believes in it (along with plenty of other highly improbable yet not impossible things) and as a result I’m actively having to fight it consciously almost on a daily basis. A bit like fighting for the control yokes on an aeroplane but one of the pilots is trying to fly into a jungle, completely convinced that Wakanda lies just beyond it (even though it is a fictional place).
I love the aeroplane metaphor. 😀
Sometimes, one needn’t even fantasize – it can be helpful to consider all the very real negative consequences that almost certainly will result if one’s relationship with LO was ever consummated (depending on one’s situation, of course).
I don’t know the specifics of your situation, but in the deepest grip of my limerence, I was amazed at my mind’s ability to glaze over the fact that my LO is married. The heartbreak for a great many people that would result from a successful pursuit was barely a blip on my radar. Taking that seriously into consideration can certainly cool the fires a bit.
6 weeks no contact and last night I dreamt about LO. First time in ages.
Annoying thing (or maybe a positive) is I cannot remember the actual dream, but I was awoken before the end of it and it’s left me feeling warm towards LO again.
No idea why I dreamt about him or even the details of the dream. Just frustrating.
I now keep rereading your article on the benefits of no contact and remember that if I contact him I’ve thrown my career away and put my marriage on the line again for nothing.
This past week I dreamed I was in a place that looked like a bike shop, but that was actually my hairdresser’s salon. There were some people I could not recognize in there, except for LO, who was on the opposite corner of the room in relation to me. When I would avoid looking at her, she would became upset and would frown together with a strong disaproval expression on her face, but when I looked at her then she would make an happy expression of enjoying the attention I was giving her.
This morning I was woken up by my kids during the weirdest dream.
Limerent dreams haven’t been a big feature for me as I rarely remember any dreams. Also odd this came at a time when I thought I really was moving on!!
In this dream I met LO at some event (setting was very vague) and I made some remark about it would probably be easier to live alone, to which he replied “Yes it is!” I was confused by that, then he explained he’d finally left his holding pattern.
(This was how he described his home situation when we worked together – wanting the kids to be older and needing to have changed jobs, so he could have them at weekends more easily, before leaving his wife.)
It was quite odd in the dream, because every time we went to speak to each other after that, there was a blockage or interruption of some sort!
“Also odd this came at a time when I thought I really was moving on!!”
Not odd at all. It’s part of the purge cycle, if you will. You may have a few more here and there but nothing to worry about.
“(This was how he described his home situation when we worked together – wanting the kids to be older and needing to have changed jobs, so he could have them at weekends more easily, before leaving his wife.) ”
Wow. That sounds unkind of him. I don’t suppose she knew of his master plan and was equally prepared for his departure. And why would he have the kids on the weekend and she would be stuck with them during the work/school week?
No matter. Life is looking up for you and yours. I hope 2019 hasn’t disappointed yet.
That’s good to hear.
So far my optimism for 2019 hasn’t been spoiled, and avoided the temptation to wish him a Happy New Year.
I am aware it sounds unkind out of context, but I was trying to summarise some lengthy (and admittedly inappropriate) conversations. I know I have only heard his version of events, and that I’ve only met Mrs LO very briefly, but from what he’s said they’re both working towards separating. Working in a job that is more flexible in hours will be beneficial, whatever arrangements they come to for the children.
Anyways, hope you and Mr Lee are getting there and 2019 is going as well as possible!
Yes, Mr. Lee & I are doing well & hopefully 2019 will be good all around.
Yeah – I wouldn’t believe what he had to say. He had an agenda and you are very fortunate to have recognized that something was amiss. If you want to see what you avoided, go to Chumplady’s site. So many cheating spouses say that exact same thing to the devastation of their husband/wife.
Anyway, glad things are looking up!
Hey, I’m going to put this comment here because there isn’t a specific post about limerence daydreams.
I have found that, no matter how hard I try, I can’t actually remember LO’s face. I would know her face anywhere, but I can’t remember it.
My theory is that I’m not allowing myself to remember her face due to the stress it causes me when she looks at me, but my question is: Does this happen to anyone else?
This happened to me for about the first two months but after spending a lot of time around LO I now recall every detail of his face indelibly.
I found similar, but when I was daydreaming a lot, it was our emotional connection that was of far greater importance to me than his physical appearance (attractive as he was!)
Now the memories are more about what he did and how I felt than about appearances.
It may be that because the limerence is my own issues being projected onto him, that his appearance is irrelevant.
I’m forgetting my LO’s face now. I can conjure it back if I try, but it takes a bit of work.
During the limerence, it was there all the time – apart from the fact that it sort of become an idealised version of LO’s face. If I met her after a break I was surprised that she wasn’t quite as beautiful as I remembered…
I’m the opposite; I really can’t remember her face, it’s just kind of a blur of skin with silhouettes of features haphazardly splodged in the right places, no detail. This doesn’t work quite well for me, as it results in, every time I see LO, my thinking how overwhelmingly, uncannily, unimaginably beautiful she is. It makes me even more nervous than I would be without the feeling.
Hi Al,
Your description fits my consistent experiences with my LO (married with kids) for 6 years — I can’t remember his face as soon as I left our shared office floor; despite we cordially, warmly chitchatted often as colleagues, and I day & night dreamt about him (positively for 1st 4 years and negatively for the past 2) almost all the time. This puzzling phenomenon made me feel and think that I’ve created an ideal phantom LO in my head who just carries this man’s handsome face.
In the last two years whenever I saw him (found out he’s a covert narc) in a distance w/o speaking, I could not help feel he were a Martian who put me either in a surreal, alienated, physically dizzy, or extremely uncomfortable state….
Such an uncontrollable, “mind out of body” feelings, in addition to a series of vivid nightmares in the past 7 months “demonizing” his covert narc traits (derived from his realistic behaviors), is actually helping deprogram my elongated limerence after the 3rd go for NC.
Meanwhile, his face is still blurry most of time, but has realistically emerged in my mind occasionally, but only lasted a minute or less. Maybe be neuroscience could explain such strange phenomena.
Hi DRLIMERENCE,
During either the glimmer or the later stage of my limerence, there was no clear image but only LO’s blurry face in my head during his “absence”, so I named my fantasized, idealized LO — “the phantom”, who later almost “stood” between us when I chitchatted with the realistic LO, which is helping me distance from the latter — he’s NOT the phantom but a flowed man (a narc)!
I think and hope negative fantasying or ruminating of a flawed LO can actually help produce vivid nightmares about them, which affects could help deprogram an ongoing limerence — one of mine was so powerful that I made a definitive step in two day to go NC again — no more fake friendship. (He hoovered me back 5 time in past 6 years)
I just wish affects of those nightmares (never realistically happened in my case) remain stronger and last longer, when our strong conscious mind knows they’re only dreams, which could interfere with our deprogramming of limerence.
I used to have that. When I was in contact with my LO I used to have difficulty remembering what she looked like. I mean, I’d know her face if I saw her but I had difficulty conjuring it in my imagination.
I could remember her voice, though. Really well.
Same. Can you remember now?
When I was in the deceleration of the relationship with LO, and anxiety over that was at a limerent fever pitch, I had a lot of dreams that involved me going to the loo. In public. And it was horrific and disgusting and there were mishaps and folks observing and chastising me and plumbing blockages and overflowing toilets and inability to hide or even modestly cover up (I was ALWAYS in a public place) and I was humiliated and revolted and dismayed that I had found myself in this predicament. And the more I tried to resolve it the more things became chaotic and even more embarrassing. I looked up dreams and it seems when you have dreams about going #2 in public there are toxic people you need to get out of your life. So there we go! I am now NC, and it seems I am now non-limerent (Could this be? Such a wondrous relief!) and interestingly I am no longer having Public Poo Dreams. Sorry ….just had to say it. Maybe I am feeling a little too comfortable here.
My dreams do a number on me. I had one the other night. I was back in school, in one of the science classrooms. I was sitting at one of the lab benches. I got the sense that it was a Thursday and we had Friday off. LO’s sitting at the other end of the bench. Her friend turns to me and says ‘She’s free tomorrow, if you’re not doing anything’ and I say ‘What?’. Then LO starts reading something aloud. She’s kind of angry and confrontational. Whatever she’s reading (I get the sense it’s the message I wrote her all those years ago) she reads it line by line and asks me about it. But, because I’m asleep really, I don’t understand what it is she’s asking, so I only respond with ‘What?’. Then she asks me point blank if I have any feelings for her. Then I woke up.
I had one last night. I can’t remember what it was. But I remember that she was in it. I generally dream more about LO (or at least recall my dreams about LO) more often than I dream about members of my immediate family, who I see everyday. Is that odd?
No, that’s the same for me.
It seems like you dreamed my biggest fear (almost); my LO confronting me about whether or not I like her. Of course, I’d have to say no, which is the terrifying part about it – not least because I’m lying to the one person I care about most in the world.
I, too, have a lot of dreams I can’t remember, but know LO was in. I don’t always immediately realise, so at some point in the day I’ll spontaneously just think ‘Oh. I had a [LO’s name] Dream last night…’.
I remember once, I had a dream. It was simple ream, short, but very big:
I walked into a room with some people (faces unseen, but presumably family) and it must have been a special occasion in the dream. There was a silver banner, with sort of ‘birthday’ writing on it (all colourful and bubbly, with sparkles). And all it said was “NO CONTACT”. And then I woke up.
A few weeks later I started not to look at LO in school, and it’s now sort of a habit, making it a little easier.
Wait, why do you have to say no? You’re single, she’s single. You’re lucky there are no social obstacles. If she were to like you too, why not try dating?
“If she were to like you too”.
It’s too risky and would probably end in my humiliation at a school I have to be in for the next two years.
I’m not a very secure person.
It’s not a fear for me.
When I was at school with my LO, I never had the confidence to just straight out tell her how I felt about her. So, what I would try to do is create opportunities wherein it might become obvious to her that I felt the way I did. Usually by doing stuff for her. For example, one time we got put together to do a presentation for History class so I offered to do, and did, all of the work. Another time, LO was having massive anxiety about her History A-Levels (she wanted to get into Cambridge) so I gave her three history books that were immensely helpful to me. Far as I know, she’s still got them. My aim was to get her to ask how I felt about her, or at least why I’d go out of my way to do this stuff for her.
Point is that, even after ten years or so apart, if she showed up out of the blue and asked me if I loved her I’d say yes. I’d relish an opportunity to answer that question
I see, AL. Thank you for explaining. My heart goes out to you; that sounds so difficult.
Hey, so last night I had a dream, just about being in school and seeing LO get on with her life, nothing particularly bad, but I dreamt that I cried. And I’m pretty sure I cried in reality – just a few tears, but it felt very real. Anyone else ever get this?
I don’t know whether or not to be concerned.
Can’t say I have in a dream, but as a general rule always think any way of releasing your feelings (without negatively affecting anyone else) is always a good thing!
I had a dream of my LO last week and I never dream or remember them..
So basically i tried to kiss my lo and he pushed me away. I was very angry and left and he started running after me saying we dont need to leave each other like that; he said but we should remember the first time we met to understand our relationship. I dont get it?? I was running back to my house and before he had a chance to say bye or say anything i spoke to my husband so my lo had to carry on walking and pretend we didnt know each other ; the house was opened to the street with no doors or
Cant understand this dream but maybe there is nothing into it?
“So basically i tried to kiss my lo and he pushed me away. I was very angry and left and he started running after me saying we dont need to leave each other like that; he said but we should remember the first time we met to understand our relationship.”
What about the first time you met? Sounds like your subconscious knows the right answer.
Mine always did.
Honestly the first time we met I thought poorly of him ☹️ I was asked by my manager to be his budddy when he joined our team and had to show him the canteen we went for lunch i didnt hear anything he said and was thinking ive seen so many ambitious men like him from business school lol but remember thinking im not happy that i have to go on one to one lunch with him im not confortable but ita ok its for work
Actually after rethinking about it we still have one to one lunches every week and we dont work together anymore… i obviously got comfortable with him as a “friend”
I had a doozy just now. Gonna write it down while I remember it.
So, for some reason I go to this library. It’s this big old building with a lot of wooden furniture, wooden chairs, wooden tables and this big circular wooden staircase with no railings to hold on to. I go there and I run into some family members (of my father’s family, these people would never be in a library). I tell them I’m in there for whatever the reason is (I couldn’t hear/don’t remember what I said). I look in the directory and the books I want are on floor 2040. I’m on floor 2010 (incidentally the year I left school). I look up at the floors and I say ‘Big climb’ and standing next to me is one of my school mates, who I haven’t seen since then. We exchange pleasantries and he tells me that everyone is here. So I go down the stairs, and because there’s nothing to hold on to I stumble a bit.
Then I see her. LO. We lock eyes for a bit and I sense that she’s very animated and excited to see me. She says something like ‘I always said we’d just run into him at the library’. She starts telling me about everything that’s happened to her since I saw her last. She mentions falling in love with another man. I finish going down the stairs and I run into some other people I know. An old teacher. Seems there’s an event at this library.
I catch up with LO and I take her by both hands. I’m semi-lucid by this point. I say to her ‘So tell me about this man you’ve fallen in love with’ and she tells me his name is Michael O’Reilly (which I swear is the name of a Humphrey Bogart character) and he’s really sweet. She starts describing him and I get the sense that she’s describing me. I still have her by the hands and I’m beginning to say ‘You know, LO, I’ve always loved…’
And then I woke up sweating
So vivid..and sad. I hope this is part of the healing process.
Ha ha, that’s a great dream! I had several dreams about my LO but my dreams are all stupid. What do you expect? My limerent brain is a total idiot.
In waking life I’ve been noting all the ways in which LO is toxic for me. Last night I had my first nightmare about LO. In the dream I got a phone call from LO’s number and answered it and said hello, but he couldn’t hear me. Instead of a dialogue with him, it was like my phone had become an audio surveillance device through which I could listen in on LO’s activities without his awareness. I felt sick but I kept on listening. He seemed to be off on a weekend trip with a woman whose voice I could also hear, seemingly a partner or ex that he keeps secret from me and other people who know him in our community. It sounded like he was engaging in shady transactions involving illicit drugs and stolen property. I tried to end the call and the phone would not let me. I tried to turn the phone off completely and it would not let me do that either. I carried it around with me trying to muffle the sound to keep my SO and other people from hearing it and thinking badly of LO. When I woke up, I felt sick, embarrassed, ashamed and humiliated.
Thank you, subconscious.
Here’s a dream from early this morning. My cat woke me up so this was cut off before it got very far.
I met LO on the way to a recurring community gathering where we first met and got acquainted, where we often see each other, and where we sometimes sit together. I noticed he was wearing a wedding ring. I wanted to ask him about it but pretended not to notice. Even though I saw him noticing that I had noticed.
Now back to real life, where I have reason to believe LO has been secretly going through a separation and divorce that he does not discuss with me or others. He certainly does not wear a wedding ring. I also believe he initially sought me out, knowing I’m married, and is also drawn to other married women, because our unavailability protects him against the risk of intimacy and full, truthful openness about who he is and where he is coming from in his life.
So, what is my dream hammering home for me?
1. My acquaintance with LO has been a mentally exhausting and emotionally draining hall of mirrors.
2. It would hurt like hell to stop going to this gathering. I’ve been going there for years, I have a lot of friends there, and I was there first. Nonetheless, he’s now a fixture there and it’s the one place I can be certain to see him. So I may have to stop going there. I hate that idea. I feel like it’s tearing me apart.
No one but me can save me from this situation, though.
Whatever I end up doing to withdraw from it, I’m going to do under clinical supervision, because it hurts to be there and it hurts to think of staying away. It’s going to hurt and keep hurting for a long time.
I think the drugs are causing my subconscious to bubble up….
Last night I had a dream about LO #2. I don’t know where we were. It seemed like modern day except she was a redhead, again. She’s a natural redhead but went blonde in 1987 because she said she was going grey so fast she couldn’t keep it red. On FB, she’s flying as a blonde.
In the dream, we kissed. I said, “I don’t know why we couldn’t make it work all those years ago.”
The next thing I remember was she was framed in a doorway like she was turning to leave. She said, “We were pretty insecure back then.”
I replied, “One of us was.” End of dream. The therapist said her abandonment issues wouldn’t let her trust me so the dream was no great revelation. My dreams keep telling me things I already know.
I love Roy Orbison. I recently watched the 1986 movie “Blue Velvet” where I heard this song. The movie puts an odd spin on it. LO #1 was a tall blonde. Laura Dern reminds me of her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPqZs7Vl_xg
In my experience, when someone is on my conscious mind, as LO often was/is, they won’t show up in my dreams. It’s only when they’re not on my mind as much that they make an appearance. Because of that, I’ve only had about four dreams where LO was featured in any way.
The worst was when I dreamed I was at work and I could see LO coming, but he refused to enter my workplace, so I went out to see him. He was sitting on a bench with other people and I sat down right next to him. Neither of us said anything, then he abruptly got up and went over to talk with a coworker of mine. The two of them talked and then they both looked over at me with looks of disgust/annoyance on their faces. I immediately got off the bench and walked out into the rain and made my way home. That’s when the dream ended.
I felt so horrible after that one.
I just had a horrifying dream that LO had a boyfriend. Which is something I’m not certain of in real life.
On a lighter note, here’s a Wikipedia article on noradrenaline, a hormone limerents have been found to have elevated levels of.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norepinephrine
It might be useful in explaining how some things are working, depending on how stressed you are. I, for example never knew until I read this that my LE was indirectly causing me terrible abdominal pain based on inhibition of gastrointestinal motility. I hope that doesn’t last long.
There’s also something in there about dopamine being the direct predecessor to noradrenaline, which is relevant to ‘wanting versus liking’. I couldn’t understand the part about the relation of endocannabinoids to the function of the sympathetic nervous system, but it might be interesting.
Okay, this is getting ridiculous now.
I’m f***ing depressed after today, I knew Maths would screw me over. I sit within earshot of LO, who frequently talks to her friend and it makes me nervous when she does as she has to look in my direction.
But today I heard them talking about someone setting her up with someone else. I now don’t care about anything and it’s taking some will power just to write this here.
This was the day after I had that dream (above). Scary. But the worst part is I’m STILL trying to rationalise it. And it’s WORKING. How the f**k dies that happen?!
I don’t feel like anything right now and I hate my life. I’m just hoping to use this as fuel to fight back.
We are in this with you AL! Why would you allow LO to have such a power over your wellbeing? I wish you had someone irl you could talk to and get support from. Continue writing here if that’s helping you.
AL, it’s tough, and it sucks that you can’t avoid or escape LO. Do you have any “end date” that you can grasp where your ways will part? Sounds like you are studying or in school, so that time is over eventually!
Until then, distraction, distraction, distraction… focus on other things, do something purposeful, keep your mind busy with other things!
Limerence will fade and one day you will look back on this and it won’t get your emotions all boiled up. It will just be a memory (I keep telling that myself.. one day…)
Sarah, I do have an ‘end date’.
Two years from now.
And if I feel like this after just over 1 year, how am I supposes to cope with the next two? Like I said, I really hope I can use what happened yesterday as some sort of motivation.
I can’t find it right now, but somewhere DrL talks about strategies to get over LO, and one was to find a new LO… not that I suggest to replace one addiction with another, but maybe trying to find a new LO will help getting your mind off your LO?
Try to not think about LO as hard as you can, push any thought related to LO away. Distract your mind. It will fade. I bet you, it will not take the two years and “natural” separation/NC for that to happen.
Sarah, I’m really not looking to transfer my LE. And I believe the post you’re thinking of is ‘How to get rid of limerence’.
Aside from that, today didn’t go that badly. My brain has chosen to push what happened to the back of my mind so I don’t think about it, and I didn’t look at her a lot, only by happenstance. (I was just walking or standing and she appeared a few times.)
I hope this means I won’t be that affected by what happened, and that I’m doing better with this whole thing. Maybe I felt a lot worse in earlier days when I’d had a day like this, but I think I’ve accepted that stuff happens, and sadness and anger are what limerence is. So I think I’m okay right now.
Hey AL,
Glad today is going okay. I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s easy to say, but I do think you need to focus on self-esteem rather than limerence. I don’t know if you have a school counsellor, but talking to them about low self-esteem might be a good start. No need to mention limerence at all – just the feelings of sadness and anger. They might have some constructive suggestions.
As Scharnhorst mentions – and having been an adolescent male myself – this period in life is hard going. But it does pass.
It sounds like you’re getting stronger, AL.
AL,
As a young adolescent male, all kinds of things are going on with you. Under the best of circumstances, you could still be all over the map. As you mature physically, the limerence may take care of itself. Your hormones could be in overdrive. There going to be a lot of things coming at you in the next few years.
My father trained me pretty well but he missed a few things. I’ll try to tell this story in the least crude manner but if DrL wants to delete it, it won’t offend me.
I was playing putt-putt golf with the girl I was dating my senior year. Suddenly, it felt like someone had put my testicles in a vise. I could barely walk and almost passed out trying to get the golf ball out of the hole. She asked if I was ok. I told her I’d be fine. After I got home, I asked my father what was happening. He started laughing and said, “Blue balls, I forgot to tell you about that.” He told me to take a cold shower or otherwise relieve myself. He also said, “In spite of what your friends may tell you, you really won’t die.”
Tomorrow it’ll be a week since I disclose my feelings to LO and had my propose rejected by her. Since then I’ve been trying to process everything as it started and as it has come to an end, and I’m making the effort to forget about everything, but I still don’t know exactly how it’s going to be seeing LO from now on knowing that she knows I was interested and also knowing it’s not going to happen. So, maybe this has acted as fuel for the dreams I had tonight related to her.
It was basically three dreams, or one dream divided in three parts.
#1) I was playing hide and pick with some children, and for some reason no one thought it was strange for an adult to be playing with the children. This dream/part finished when I had successfully hidden and “won” the play just before LO would be the next one to be searching around for the hides.
#2) After this I found myself talking to a young girl who didn’t resemble LO physically speaking but it was assume it was her in the dream, and she was blushed for talking to me, like as if she was trying to hide her feelings without being able to do it.
#3) In the third part of this dream we were informed there was a giant monster coming to the city (talk about Hollywood movies) and I was ready to defend LO from it, and I was even able to do so, like as if I had super powers or so much more strength than a plain human being.
Hey Ulysses, I think dreaming about LO is quite natural as obviously your brain is processing a lot about LO consciously and unconsciously. I personally wouldn’t read too much into the dreams and what they mean. But that is my personal opinion, I know that others see it differently with regards to interpreting dreams.
And in terms of facing LO knowing that she knows you were interested: treat her as “normal” as possible, like any other colleague so that it takes off any sense of weirdness. You told her how you feel, she told you how she feels, it’s all been said.
You’ll still need some time to fully get over LO, but hey, you have taken action to remove uncertainty.
I would say, on the contrary, do pay close attention to what happens; it could tell you a lot about your situation. I pay close attention to my LO dreams because they often warn me about what’s going to happen on the LO front the following day. It sounds weird, and it is, but they do.
Sarah, I’m trying to be as neutral as possible with LO when I pass by around where she is, greeting her with a polite “Good morning/afternoon/evening”, “Everything ok?” and so on, but I’m really working towards stopping all unnecessary contact besides these greetings and respecting her as a person, like not pretending she doesn’t exist, for example. But I have to face it throughly: LO is not interested and we won’t be getting any further in a relationship, so I have stopped giving her too much attention, and also I don’t want to flirt with her anymore. In essence I’m killing the interest I have in her in small steps, preventing my limerent brain to think there’s still hope. LO, on the other hand, is really acting as if nothing has happened, for it might be probably much easier and natural for the part who wasn’t interested in the first place, and then she is just as friendly as she always was before the disclosure. I think this is what she meant when she said “Let’s keep talking (just as friends)”, and I answered her that I would like to “talk” with but not in that sense of the word.
But it can’t be helped. Like Dr L says, we can’t be authentic friends to our LO. So I can’t keep being the same with her as before.
I feel she’s getting the message, that I’m actively avoiding all opportunities to have a one on one conversation with her now on. It’s just so weird. I think it would be best if she would do the same too. If not anything more, she’ll probably get a feel that the feelings I had for here were for real (or for Limerence, you mind it). Not that I’m using this to make her feel bad, not really. I hate manipulation and manipulators, so I don’t see myself in that light, or darkness. What I’m really doing is just being a passive observer, seeing what happens as it happens and the way it happens.
Of course it’s too early to make any assumptions on how this LE will end, but I bet we’ll go back to acquaintances level. Weird as it may be, everyone will probably notice there’s something amiss in how we used to talk before and how we are not as engaged anymore. But that’s what limerence looks to be all about: weirdness. There’s nothing normal about limerence, so this other side effect is probably just one more item of the package.
Hey Ulysses, I think you are doing the right thing. Be friendly, but reducing contact. As you say, you can’t be an authentic friend to LO, and it seems you also don’t see a benefit for yourself to keep trying to be “just” friends.
Putting myself into her shoes, it may be weird for her to. But I think if she continues as before “as normal as possible” is probably best, I think I would do the same. In the end, she didn’t have stronger feelings for you so she continues as before as for her nothing changes on that sense, other than knowing you liked her. By being the same I think that’s probably the best she can do.
But as you say, totally legitimate for you to retract and back off. I think that’s the best you can do for yourself!
Article of the Day: https://thoughtcatalog.com/brianna-wiest/2019/12/the-honest-truth-is-that-good-relationships-dont-end-and-romanticizing-the-past-is-only-keeping-you-stuck/
“Except we have to — this is often how we become who we were meant to be. Not when we spend time in the aftermath of a breakup just scheming on how we could piece it all back together, but imagining what opportunity we may have been given now that we have our lives back, we have our futures back, we were given a second chance.”
So, why is it here in “Limerence Dreams?” In one of the many dreams I’ve had about LO #2 over the years, this one relates. In the dream, LO #2 was talking to her father about me. He told her that she never took the chance on me. Her response to her father was, “If I had, I’d never become who I’m meant to be.” That dream is at least over a decade old.
Scharnhorst, I love this article, thanks for posting.
“I don’t care how absolutely perfect for one another you were. I don’t care how many promises were given, how many intimate secrets shared, how much time you spent together, how much you trusted that person. If your relationship was everything you think it was, it wouldn’t have ended in the first place. People do not walk away from good relationships.”
I am gonna bookmark that!
Tomorrow is my xmas party. Lunch with LO (and our group of 4 tomorrow got moved, to a date I cannot make it. Too bad). So I thought I was gonna see LO and it would be good preparation for the evening party, but it’s not happening. I actually do suspect that LO might not even show up to the party. Not his thing, if he hasn’t anyone dragging him to it (Like I did 2 years ago). Who will be there for sure is LO’s LO though, and it already pisses me off thinking about her, which pisses me off that she still raises some emotions in me. But oh well, gonna suck it up, keep conversations with her short and move on to enjoy my evening. So if LO is not there, and I can’t meet for the other lunch, I will not see LO this year anymore. Our last conversation was still “when will I see you again?” “I don’t know…” that was beginning of November. Haven’t heard from him since. I like that ending.
Pleased you’re staying strong Sarah! Even if LO is there. Who cares anyways. Your way past this and are far better than his crazyness.
As for his LO.. don’t be bitter or pissed off. Rather her than you hey! X
Thanks Rachel, life is too short to be angry. Focus on the beauty of life.
Happy New Year!
Aside from the annual Xmas run through of LO #2 declining my marriage proposal and the 4th Anniversary of saying goodbye to LO #4 yesterday, it was pretty quiet limerence-wise over the holidays. I did have one dream about LO #4.
In the dream, I was on a business trip. I think it was to some Latin American country. I don’t know exactly where I was or why I was there but I was where I was supposed to be doing what I was supposed to be doing.
I was wandering around near the hotel after dark. I was standing in front of a building. Down the block, I could see a band assembling and people starting to gather. It looked like they were getting ready for some neighborhood parade or festival.
I went inside the building and who should I run into but LO #4! She was dressed in a black top, black slacks, and casual shoes. She looked like a tourist. Unlike some other dreams, she knew me in this dream. She was staying in the same hotel that I was. It was like running into an acquaintance in an airport. The building was holding an expo on the refugee industry. There were non-profits and all kinds of vendors showing off everything from port-a-potties to disposable blankets. The building was old and looked like where they exhibit farm animals at a country fair. It had a main aisle and most of the exhibitors were set up in stalls. It was late and there weren’t a lot of people.
We decided to check out the exhibit together. I don’t remember us talking much, if at all. We got to the end and turned around to come back. I told LO #4 that I wanted to take a picture I could post on FB because nobody would believe I’d be at an expo related to refugees (true, nobody would.) I took the picture. It came out smudged. There was a fingerprint on the lens. I asker her to wait a second. It seemed to take forever to clean the lens. When I was done, she was gone. I went back to entrance. I waited a few minutes thinking maybe she went to the ladies room or something. Nada. I went outside and that’s where I start making mistakes.
I looked around didn’t see her. Up the block, I could see a crowd going up the street and heard music. The festival had started. LO #4 had ditched me. If she’d wanted to be with me, she’d have stayed or, at least, waited. She could have gone anywhere. The point is, she didn’t stay. But, that thought never occurred to me. Like the first dream in which she’d ditched me and I almost drove my car off the cliff, I assumed she had joined the festival crowd and, instead of going back to the hotel, I decided to try to catch up with her. Even in my dreams, I’m a slow learner.
The crowd was larger than it appeared and I wasn’t able to make my way through it. LO #4 is a 5’9” redhead and should have really stuck out in this crowd. But, I didn’t see her. The crowd went down some steps to a below street-level area of shops, cafes, etc. The passage narrowed and I wasn’t able to make any progress through the crowd. Suddenly, I felt a sharp sting. Some kid had poked me in the fanny with a wooden sword. The kid’s mother apologized.
At this point, I decided to head back. It hit me that I couldn’t remember the name or address of the hotel. But, if I could get back to the expo hall, I should be able to find it. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to where I was while I was following the crowd. After trying to retrace my route, I took the stairs to the street. It was broad daylight and I had no idea of where I was. I’d spent all night chasing someone who’d ditched me. I woke up.
Unlike the other dream, there was no sense of impending doom. It was just a complete waste of time and effort. Trying to follow this woman still got me lost and gained me nothing.
Happy New year everyone.
Wow Scharnhorst, so 4 years on you are still metaphorically “searching” for LO#4 and have feelings of abandonment.
“Trying to follow this woman still got me lost and gained me nothing.” It’s funny how the brain works and what messages it’s trying to send your subconscious.
I always have searching dreams, looking for objects, looking for my SO or children, being lost in strange crowds/cities. The other biggie for me is dreaming I am with my family fleeing a tsunami/fire and or massive storm. Dr Freud would have a field day with that!!
@Scharnhorst
Interesting. My approach to dream interpretation is to pay attention to the symbolism of many of the details (I think the unconscious parts of the brain speaks in symbols rather than words). If they really resonate they are usually telling me something about what I need in my life. For example, you started out far from home, in a strange place, out in the dark, somehow disconnected from your home and your purpose for being there. You connected with her, but all she showed you was the dismal practicalities of living as a refugee. You went to a festival but didn’t connect with it or enjoy it because you were looking for her, and ended up, now in full daylight, even more lost. You had neither the comfort of home, or purposeful activity, or the pleasure of a party. I would interpret that as my wise inner self sending me an urgent message: forget about her, this person is a total dead end, pay attention to those other, more important things.
In my dream last night I was at an old job and it was my daughter’s christening but my other daughter was at school. The day for the christening changed chang and I asked LO to bring my daughter from school as I was busy doing the party stuff. The whole christening went by with out my LO and my daughter. When I went to leave I saw my LO and his SO with my daughter. I was so upset that LO and my daughter missed it. I was screaming at LO, crying and couldn’t believe he could do this to me. He walked away with his SO laughing at me… What does this mean I wonder. I have lots of dreams about LO and his SO laughing at me.
“I would interpret that as my wise inner self sending me an urgent message: forget about her, this person is a total dead end, pay attention to those other, more important things.”
I agree with it except for the urgent part. At times in my life I have had dreams or experiences that I took as warnings to raise the shields ahead of some impending attack but I don’t see any attacks coming.
The therapist’s theory is that I have a thing for women taking off on me, starting with my mother. How important can you be if your mother takes off on you? How important can you be if the woman you ask to marry you takes off on you? How important can you be if the woman who reached out to you (admittedly inappropriately) takes off on you? In the last one, doing the right directly clashed with that insecurity.
The therapist thinks a lot of the problem is my refusal to get past that and focus on the woman who didn’t take off on me.
@Scharnhorst I certainly wouldn’t contradict your therapist! As you say, there seems to be a larger pattern, and possibly you’re fixated on reliving that pattern, over and over again, trying to heal it.
I understand how your mother’s actions would have messed you up, badly. To me, it would suggest finding ways to confirm your self-importance to yourself, regardless of what any d**n woman thinks (or appears to think). It was your mother who was the loser in life, not her innocent little boy.
I recently dreamed about my LO. In my dream, she was pregnant by her new boyfriend.
Yay!
My dreams are more straight forward: I was fairly innocently cuddling with LO and as I touched his six pack, he pushed me away.
I woke up thinking, I actually don’t (consciously) want to touch LO anymore, so complete pointless dream. I take it as a memory in my brain that just happened to surface. No meaning, no impact. Bye LO.
I have not heard of LO, no happy new year message etc. and I also had various opportunities to bring up LO in conversations to other people, but I didn’t. 2020 is LO free 😊 I am leaving this in 2019.
This is great! It’s over and you are on your way to freedom sarah!
And you can too, Rachel! Be rude, ignore LO!
I’m gonna find that very hard if I’m honest but I can’t see any alternative. I’ve removed myself from social media so contact is low as possible.
So, in last night’s episode, our hero is in the lobby of a professional building. The reception desk is U-shaped with multiple receptionists/agents.
My turn comes up and I’m talking to the receptionist at roughly the 5 o’clock position. The receptionist to my left looks very familiar. I asked if she’d lived on LO #2’s street. She said she had. I asked if it was in the apartment beneath LO #2’s apartment. She said it was. Here’s the thing, no such woman existed in real life. I have no idea where she came from in my head. In the 4 years LO #2 was in that apartment, I don’t remember ever seeing one of her neighbors let alone meeting any of them.
The woman said, “You were LO #2’s boyfriend” and said, LO #2 was “right over there” and pointed behind her. And, she was. Talking to one of the other receptionists. Before I could say anything, the woman calls out, “[LO #2], your ex-boyfriend is here.” LO #2 stands up, looks at me, and comes around the desk. She’s wearing a calf-length dress and low Doc Martens. Totally appropriate for the workplace but the Doc Martens aren’t something I would have expected to see her in.
She comes over to me and pretty much all that comes out of my mouth is, “You’re looking really good.” She came back with, “Is that what you came here to tell me?” I was thinking I didn’t come there to tell her anything but the alarm went off before we could continue the conversation.
I got nothing on this one.
Sorry Scharnhorst, I don’t have anything constructive to add either.
Do you dream about your LO’s often? I don’t , very rarely.
Periodically but not frequently.
With the exception of the very intense dreams I had after LO #2 & LO #4 sent the FB requests, they’re pretty benign.
One of the best ones was when I dreamt I walked into the cafeteria at work to see LO #4 and the non-LO co-worker I was crushing on having coffee together. It was one of those “Oh, sh-t!” moments.
So, I said not long ago that I had never had a dream about my LO (well not one I remembered anyway). That was true until this morning, when I awoke quite upset after dreaming that my brother was dating both my current LO and the last LO I had over 20 years ago simultaneously. I felt incredibly betrayed, and it took me quite a while to realize it wasn’t real. It took quite a while for me to get over the upset and realize it wasn’t real. After that I couldn’t sleep so I got up really early. The funny thing is my brother isn’t into dating at all these days and he has been my confidante about my LO. The funny thing is I maybe felt slightly more upset and jealous about my previous LO from 20 years ago than my current one. Another weird thing is both of my LOs in my dream lived next door to each other and my brother was visiting a dog park with both of them simultaneously in the dream (both ladies are dog people, as I am). Any ideas as to what this is telling me or is it complete nonsense? By the way, this dream included my brother, not my brother in-law, who features prominently in my current LE.
Sorry this one was so poorly written – maybe because my SO is sitting next to me on her device!
I haven’t dreamt about my any of my LOs in quite awhile. But, I had one about LO #2 last night.
This dream was different. I don’t remember how we encountered each other but we were in the present. Unlike other dreams about LO #2, this one wasn’t confrontational or acrimonious. I wasn’t looking for any answers this time.
We talked like old friends and ex-lovers. She was married and I was married and we were both happy with that. I brought up what I’d left on the table and she brought up what my subconscious thinks she left on the table. One weird thing was she said she’d had a child which to my knowledge she doesn’t but, hey, it’s a dream. One therapist said our last meeting wasn’t a goodbye, it was a fight, started by me. This may be the goodbye I should have had.
It was the first truly pleasant dream I’ve had about LO #2 in 30 years.
I had another dream about LO #2 last night. I have no idea what’s driving them.
In this dream, I’m in my driveway and a large flatbed truck pulls in with something on it, I don’t remember what but it was pretty big, like you’d need a crane to lift it. The driver got out and said he had a delivery. I wasn’t expecting anything. When I looked at the paperwork, it was the wrong address. The driver apologized and got back into the truck.
As he was getting ready to leave, LO #2 pulls up. I wasn’t expecting her, either, but we didn’t seem surprised to see each other. We embraced and I said, “We never had a proper goodbye.”
She said, “We could make one.”
I replied, “Neither of our spouses would likely approve of that.”
Then the alarm went off. I hate it when that happens in a dream. It’s like I’m almost letting go of things after all this time.
It’s been awhile since I’ve had any dreams about my XLOs. Last week, my doctor made a medication adjustment. She said one of the potential side effects was vivid dreams. The medication is OTC and legal everywhere.
Last night, I had a dream about LO #2. In the dream, I went to her place to help her dig out from a recent snowfall. We haven’t seen in each other in over 30 years and we live 2500 miles apart. She didn’t seem surprised to see me. She wasn’t either happy or annoyed.
Her place had steps to the street. I was at the sidewalk using the snow blower while she was at the top of the steps. Her long-time BF, now husband, arrived He didn’t seem surprised to see me and we waved. I finished and was waiting inside the house for her. She and her husband talked awhile and he drove off. She came in, thanked me for the help, and said goodbye.
I asked her if we could have a hug since we didn’t have one when we said goodbye 30+ years ago. I just got out of her car, walked away, and didn’t look back. She said, “Sure,” and hugged me. I started to cry. I was listening to see if she was crying also. She wasn’t.
She took my face in her hands and said, “It’s all right. We did OK for ourselves,” and walked away. She was comforting me.
When I think about my dreams about her, until she got remarried, they were all in the Bargaining or Anger stages of grief. In none of them had we ever not broken up or ever reconciled. Since she got remarried, her husband has appeared in every dream I’ve had about her and we get along well in them. We never discuss the past. We don’t become friends in any of them or renew the acquaintance but the rancor is gone. I knew when she got divorced the first time and I wonder if I’d been subconsciously holding out some weird kind of hope that we might reconcile.
Now, that’s she’s moved on, it’s like I can let go, too.
Ooh, old dreams are always fun to discuss. I have so very few dreams these days.
I had a recurring dream about my LO. I was always searching for him in the school playground and couldn’t find him before the bell rang, meaning I had to go back to class, my desire to see him unsatisfied. LO had “vanished off the face of the earth”. I think the meaning of this dream is pretty straightforward.
Like Jaideux, I had some toilet-related dreams during limerence, which might relate to feelings of anxiety or shame or stress or “emotional incontinence”. Common images were blocked toilets or toilets that would overflow if I flushed them. I think all the plumbing imagery relates to blocked/out-of-control emotions. I certainly felt enough anxiety around public/school toilets as a kid.
Dreamt once that LO and his girlfriend were husband and wife (before they actually married in real life) and brought a house next door to me. LO and his SO were in a white car parked outside the front of my house. I walked over to the car to welcome them to the neighbourhood. Didn’t interact with LO at all, but his SO turned out to be a giant wooden doll sitting in the backseat, dressed in a beautiful wedding gown and veil. (I’m not sure if that’s wish fulfilment. Did some unpleasant part of my unconscious want LO’s partner “out of the picture”?)
Sometimes had dreams in which I ran into LO while swimwear shopping – think this reveals my largely-repressed physical attraction toward LO. (A desire to see him in tight/skimpy clothing perhaps?)
Also, had a dream about another male who ALMOST became my LO. I used to dream of him in ripped clothing and his flesh beneath the clothing was solid gold. He was like a god/alien/statue. Very strange dream and I would wake up afterwards feeling euphoric. The dream alone was enough to give me a high.
During limerence, at times, I couldn’t remember LO’s face clearly either. In dreams, his face was a beautiful blur, a fiery outline. I think this face-blurring effect is a result of rumination. Gazing at LO is like gazing at the sun. If you stare too long at any image or painting, it starts to become hazy in your mind. Oddly enough, out of limerence, I can remember LO’s average-looking face just fine.
I am so glad I am not the only one who had “dreams du toilette”. Happily mine are now long gone.
I had an interesting dream last night. I dreamt that my original LO came up to me and started bragging about how he was now going to be part of my study group.
He’d won over the other members or something. (The dream had a vague school-like feel to it). Being the gracious (or naive) person I am, I opened my arms and said, “Welcome”. However, when I hugged him, I didn’t feel any euphoria. I didn’t feel much of anything. It was like hugging any other friend. He had gone back to being an ordinary person for me. There were no fireworks … no sexy sparks.
I think that means the limerence spell cast by this particular man has been broken. Even in my dreams, he’s just a regular guy again. 😛
Apparently, it’s weird dream week…
I have had two interesting dreams with roughly the same themes.
tl/dr
Dream 1: My wife and I were out. The girl I should have dated in HS walked by had I not been the idiot I was, then [I’m much older now but can still be an idiot]. She was wearing a mauve midi-dress and looked preoccupied. My wife said to go talk to her.
I went up to her and introduced myself. She smiled and gave me a slight hug. Overall, the expression on her face was pretty flat. I would have expected more from someone I hadn’t seen since the late 70s. Something like, “Wow! What a surprise! What have you been up to for the last 45 years?” None, of that. I asked her a few of those questions and I got cursory and vague responses. She wasn’t interested in talking to me.
Dream 2: I was standing on the bank of [name omitted]. I’m 2500 miles from home and I have no idea where my wife and kids are or if I’m even married. LO #4 lives/lived on the other side. I was supposed to deliver something to her. It was a key ring with two keys on it. The key ring was attached to something like a circular medallion. I don’t remember what the medallion had inscribed on it. The keys were identical and looked like everyday house keys. They were in a Ziploc bag. I have no idea why I had them or how I got them. My job was to deliver them.
I was on foot. The [name omitted] is pretty wide and can get choppy. There was no bridge nearby and no boats or canoe. Somebody with the right training and the right gear could probably swim it, but I wouldn’t ever try it. But, I had no other choice so I started looking around for the narrowest point.
I noticed the tide was going out and a sand bar was emerging. People started going out on the sand bar to dig for clams and look for oysters. By the time the low tide ended, the bar went almost all the way across and getting across looked doable. I was able to wade the rest of way.
I got across and started walking along the beach. After a short distance, I realized that I was going north when I should have been going south. I pulled out my cell phone, which surprising survived its salt-water bath, put in LO #4’s address, made sure I still had the keys, and headed south.
I came upon something like a marina on the water. It turned out to be a Zen retreat. A man asked if he could help me. I told him I was looking for LO #4. He pointed up the bank and said that she lived up there. He told me to feel free to look around and take advantage of the place.
It had nice meditation rooms, small gardens, and sitting areas overlooking the water and mountains. It was serene and soothing.
I looked up and saw LO #4 coming down the stairs. She was wearing yellow walking shorts and a sleeveless blue top. I met her at the bottom of the stairs and introduced myself. She said, “Wow! Hi!” but her expression said, “What the hell are you doing here?!” Before, she could say anything else, I told her that I was supposed to give these to her and handed her the keys in the Ziploc bag. She looked at them and said, “Oh, ok. Thanks!” That’s it. So, I left. When I got back to the retreat, I looked up and she was sitting in a chair reading her book. Apparently, my sudden appearance didn’t freak her out too badly.
I went into a room to find a bunch of senior citizens, including my aunt, doing crafts. My aunt’s best friend was there. Her friend was murdered over a decade ago. She looked like Terry Kiser in “Weekend at Bernie’s.” I have no idea where that came from. My aunt does live in the PNW so seeing her was not totally outside the realm of possibility.
I asked my aunt where my mother was. My mother died in 1974. Instead of looking at me like I was crazy, my aunt told me my mother was at a nearby Indian casino and would be back later to pick me up. I had some time to kill.
I walked around. I came upon a place that offered Zipline rides. There were 3 guys in uniforms that made them look like a NASCAR pit crew. LO #4 was there with a young girl, 10ish, with long red hair. I think LO #4 was part of the crew. The kid looked like what I’d imagine LO #4’s daughter might look like if she had one, which I’m pretty sure she doesn’t.
I wanted to approach LO #4 and talk about what had happened between us but it was obvious that I’d be intruding if I did. So, I left. Then, I woke up.
Neither woman wanted to have anything to do with me. I’m not important to them. I have no idea why my subconscious feels the need to keep emphasizing this. But, it does.
The EAP counselor and I went through my mother and LO #4 in great detail but I’d almost be willing to pay to have that dream analyzed.
This sounds like the movie twilight… Edward telling Bella she is like his own personal heroine
One of my doctors recommended that I give CBD a shot. Now that I’m retired and no longer in a drug testing program, that’s an option. I’m still tinkering with brands and doses but I think I found one that gives me some really vivid dreams. The dreams aren’t either bad or good but they can be pretty weird.
So, last night, I’m dreaming that I’m having lunch with a former coworker. I do this about once a month so nothing out of the ordinary. Until, my former coworker says that he met my “red headed friend (LO #4)” in a bar. He knows nothing about LO #4.
The last known sighting of LO #4 put her 40 miles outside of Seattle. This encounter would have taken place in Virginia. I asked what she was doing there and he said, “She likes to drink.” OK, LO #4 did tell me once that she drank port until she passed out and, if you look at a description of INTJs, which LO #4 claims to be, it says that they’re prone to things like over drinking when under stress. Toss in that I work part time in a distillery now and booze could easily be on my mind. I asked my coworker what she was like. I never actually met LO #4. All he said was, “Well, she likes to drink.” That’s it.
I think that says a lot about my current state of limerence. The best that I can come up with in my dreams is a former coworker runs into an XLO in a bar.
It’s been awhile since I’ve had a dream about an LO that I can remember. I remember having a few but not the dream itself. Last night I had one I remember.
In this dream, I was on a trip by myself and was due to fly home the next day. I went to a diner to grab dinner. LO #2 and her husband arrived at the same time. She was returning from a trip and meeting her husband at the diner.
She introduced me and we took seats at the counter. I sat down first. She didn’t sit down next to me. She took a seat one stool over. Her husband sat between us. I don’t remember much about the conversation except that there was no tension and I spent most of the time talking to her husband.
I went to the men’s room and when I came back, there was an aluminum bowl of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce on it. Her husband said, “Everything here comes with dessert” and said he’d taken care of the check.
We finished and got ready to leave. The goodbye was cursory. They left ahead of me. I turned around to grab my laptop which I’d left on the floor by the stool. A woman had already taken my seat so I had to excuse myself to grab it. When I started toward the door. LO #2 and her husband were just outside the door. She gave him a peck and said, “I’ll see you at home.” He went left toward his car, she went straight toward her car. I just stood there and watched her walk away. She never turned around. I thouight that she looked pretty good for 68.
I thought of the last time we saw each other 35 years ago this April. She dropped me off at the Seattle ferry terminal. That time, I walked away and didn’t turn around.
I think this is what acceptance looks like. It took a long time.
I’ve noticed that lots of these dreams seem to be about LOs rejecting the limerent or some form of closure. Mine are the opposite – with both my last LO and my current (I should probably say – the one I am currently moving on from (hoping that saying it helps!) I’ve had dreams that miraculously circumstances change and we are able to be together. They aren’t nightmares but feel like that because waking up brings a heavy sense of disappointment because the dream was so real. Although the first LO changed in my dreams as time went on – at first he was going to leave his wife but then he changed his mind. But then his wife was OK with it! Weird.
C for cat
You’re catching on real fast. You make me smile w your posts. You should call yourself tigress 🐯 for you’re not a pussycat at all. You must be fun to be around with. No wonder Los fall for you. You stay well and behave good …good night and sleep well.
Within 6 years of my current LE, I recorded most of my dreams (especially during hypnagogic & hypnopompic stages) about LO, many of which were so intoxicating, keeping me “high” for days afterwards….
The dawn of the last day I saw him in May (1 month after I already told him in person to end our “friendship”and went a partial NC), I dreamt he was my ideal rescuer/savior LO in a reenactment of the trauma (I experienced in middle school): for some unknown reasons, everyone in the workplace was ignoring and isolating me while I was desk-arrested in a big empty classroom (except one black metal desk and one matching chair in the middle of it) without a door but an open entrance (w/ a door frame). Everyone passing the hallway could peek at me at any given moment, and no one ever came in to greet me. I was not upset sitting in that lonely desk grading.
Only LO stopped to chitchatted, joked, and flirted with me in a high spirit each time he passed by the open entrance. With his attention, I felt deeply touched and exhilarated with no fear of any kind — I neither knew what was my “crimes” and nor was upset, as long as LO kept showing his warm, flirtatious face.
They (?) did not like this communication situation. So I was suddenly tele-transported to the basement into a dusty, jammed supply room (also w/o door) without even a desk or chair for me to sit down. Outside there were several mechanical rooms filled with huge, ugly gray machines. I stood in the middle of boxes and scattered paper, determining not to get upset. I also strongly sensed that LO would look for me and somehow find me down there.
Not sure how long, the elevator’s beeped, LO came out looking around. By then all the ugly machines somehow walked out their rooms and jammed the entire hallway. So the tall, slim LO was squeezing through the machines while waving his hands at me and cracked a joke about my “promotion”, which made me giggle again feeling very joyful…
Before he reached the supply room, I woke up with a profound contentment and joy sitting on my chest literally! I also felt this dream cured some of my middle-school trauma at the unconscious level, much more powerful than any talking therapies or meditations I had! I was grateful of this miraculous dream!
I think our unconscious is more powerful than our consciousness. I still question how our conscious decisions and behaviors could affect the unconscious.
It just dawned to me that this “joyful” dream seems to symbolize the limerence prison I was self-imposed on, with LO in sight occasionally but never reachable… my feet unchained but “glued” to the metal chair and desk in the totally isolated classroom with no door… then the bottom of LE hell with massive inhumanity further blocking my way out for a real living or even surviving… and my fantasized joy and contentment for just a brief appearance of LO, who could not save or even reach me…
Back in May, I did not know what limerence is… Now, reading through LwL and writing about a LE dream enlightens my blind eyes…
“In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude – the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation.”
Carl Jung
I listen to a great deal of my unconscious; that’s why I recorded most of my remembered dreams in details, the process of which not only makes them my “real” experiences but also allow me to peek at another part of my Self, which I can not and will not ignore.
“The dream-content is to be taken in all seriousness as something that has actually happened to us; it should be treated as a contributory factor in framing our conscious outlook. If we do not do this, we shall keep that one-sided, conscious attitude which evoked the unconscious compensation in the first place. But this way holds little hope of our ever judging ourselves correctly or finding any balance in life.”
-Carl Jung
I think you might be a kindred spirit, Snowphoenix ❤️
I feel the same the first time you advised me on 7/30 in another room, Cordelia 💕
Even if I can hold up my psychological sword against LE/LO in my waking hours, what would I grab in my dreams?
In my last dream 5 nights ago, LO went NC on me caused my real chest pain for a couple of waking hours. Last night LO (merged with the Phantom again) and I had a catch-up affectionate reunion (after the NC for 3 months in person, 2 in writing) —
I went back to a big campus (not the realistic one), students had not returned yet. After a quick examining and coming out of a big empty classroom, LO’s tall figure majestically appeared in a very wide, shinny, empty hallway! We so affectionately greeted with each other and locked our eyes, in which I felt tears were circling — what my Unconscious is saying?
Then we hand-in-hand ran into an old, beautiful wooden library, sitting down on the shinny wooden floor and leaning on beige wooden bookshelves, while some students were walking and chatting around. Like two young lovers long absences, we were eagerly asking about each other’s summer… could not remember what we said, only our joyful moods.
Then as we were walking out the big reading room, two of my students (in reality my two college classmate-suitors) came up asking about a class coming up in 2 weeks, I told them it was cancelled due to the under-enrollment, they looked disappointed and I felt sad, with LO was standing next to me looking cheerful. I knew I was leaving him 😢
At that moment, I woke up seized by uncontrollable sadness 😭 that completely melt down the conscious mind to continue my NC. I even felt an urge to disclosure my LE in writing immediately in the middle of night!
But I did a meditation session that induced a deep sleep with another dream, in which my girlfriend tried to set me up with a much younger, good looking guy, which just repulsed my depressed heart in the dream!
It’s thought that the Unconscious dominates our moods and controls our instinctual drives, could the conscious mind with manmade efforts really resist its infinite pulls all over the universe?
I still consider myself lucky to live a “double” lives which compensate each other in adventurous ways, making my waking hours seldom dull…
Alexander Pope (?) said, “if I know what’s going to happen tomorrow, I’ll kill myself today.”
But limerent or not, every heart seems to long for instinctive affections and certainties. If we are unable to get them in reality, dreams sometimes grant us our unfulfilled desires, isn’t our brain brilliant!
3 nights later, my unconscious is “punishing” my conscious mind double fold —
There were this casual professional gathering in the packed lounge (realistic one but on a top of a hotel). LO, his wife, and more than 10 of others were chatting gleefully. A young, skinny, fragile woman was present, I did know her. (Looking like one from a music video)
As the party was finishing and most of colleagues left the room, I turned around and shockingly found (Ouch!… not as big as the one after accidentally eye-witnessing LO’s glomming at his secret new LO in the reality) LO was passionately kissing the young girl on a very long coach, while another male colleague was standing by watching with a smile. I asked whether I could take a picture of it, (I think?) LO said “sure…” after letting go of the girl’s face.
At that moment, the wife came back, took LO’s sitting position, and tightly hugged the young women like a mother, when LO, the colleague, and I were standing around watching; I was confused less “ouch” inside me….
Later, the other colleague told me that the girl (not working there) appeared “lost” on the top of hotel a few months before, pregnant but not knowing who was the father. The baby was given away right after the birth…. LO always treated her with deep sympathy whenever she showed up on the top floor the hotel-building with a shinny revolving door.
Then I thought that must be the reason why the wife also showed her sympathy; but, how a passionate kissing was considered as sympathy?
At that moment of wondering, I woke up with a rumination again: Is the Unconscious punishing me by making me watching the vivid kissing scene and then excusing LO’s wanton behavior in the dream (& reality), or is It trying to harden my wobbling willpower to continue NC in person, as I’m approaching the returning day to the school in 10 days?
*Sigh*….
Just had a dream of LO its my first one. We have had just one exchange of one email in 5 months.
The dream answered the outstanding questions I had with LO and provided more fuel for the fire by adding in an “audio” message as I haven’t heard her voice yet. It also suggested more to come and I could even expect some NSFW images!
Can this kind of dream provide dopamine hits while we sleep, Can we then wake up coming down off these hits and slide into hell again. … I really don’t want that.
I’m a literally dreamer of every night and remember at least 50% of them, had a lucid scary one this morning and almost made me late for work.
Based on Jungian theory and my own experiences, all dreams images and narratives come from our OWN Unconscious, eg. our inexpressible emotions, repressed desires, past memories, fears, cautions, fantasies, wishful thinking….they’re all jumbled together, appearing wired, sad or fantastic. They are very real when we’re dreaming, working like a dopamine or a devil from 666 movie…
But once waking up, do NOT ever believe that dreams could predict anything in reality, they are just SUBJECTIVE “reality” in our dreams (not even in our waking hours). When able to clearly compartmentalize dreams and realities, one won’t “slide into hell” or rise up to a fantasied heaven.
Dream along….
From today’s Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/02/29/lucid-dreaming-benefits/
This is a really interesting article and has some big potential implications for limerents.
I can vouch for two things in the article:
“Another reality check is to try to read some words, look away and try to reread them, something that is often difficult to do in a dream, Dresler said.”
When I was in college, I dreamt that I got a letter from a good friend. In the letter, he talked about me dating LO #1. I put the letter down and walked away. Then, I had the thought that I’d never told him anything about LO #1. I went back to reread the letter and couldn’t find any reference to her.
“The more familiar you are with your dreams, the more you will notice themes that recur, Baird said. These themes are signs you are dreaming.”
I have recurring dreams that I’m in college and I realize that I’m midway through the term and have never been to class. I can’t find my schedule, I can’t find the registrar, I can’t remember the classes I’m taking although I know I’m taking some. All the locations are different but it’s always the same dream. Sometimes, I have roommates in a dorm, sometimes, I’m living alone. But the theme is always the same, I know that I should have been somewhere, doing something, and I cannot remember what or find it anywhere.
I always wake up knowing that it’s been a dream. I have them every 3-6 months. I’ve told my wife about them. She said there’s obviously something on my mind but neither of us has any idea of what that might be.
Can you imagine what a limerent could do with this?
I have that same reoccurring dream, but it’s usually high school and I can’t remember my locker combination or where my locker is located. It’s midway through the term and I haven’t attended most of my classes, but I want to do better. I want to catch up. I’m frustrated because I don’t even know my schedule. I hate that dream. I have the showing up to class unclothed nightmare sometimes, too. Do you dream that you’re in class without your clothes? I wonder if these are just common dreams.
As a daily dreamer, I have had 1-2 lucid dreams once a year
At the early and middle stage of my LE, I had some lucid dreams — about LO #7, which should warn me my true unconscious state, but…. They felt so real — I was half aware I was in bed with the room scene fading in and out:
1. LO came to my left side from nowhere and held my upper torso up gazing into my eyes, just like Butler holding Scarlet in that well known poster…. I wanted to hold it longer but work up.
2. , LO came from my head area out of the wall, gently lifted up my head and shoulder, I felt deeply settled for a second then I woke up….
3 (not lucid). LO and I were extras on a movie shooting site on a top of a mountain. In an open tent under sunny sky, we were fully clothed in greenish army outfit, lying a foot apart, under a blanket, on a bamboo bed giggling and chatting. Mom suddenly came in and sat on a stool next to the bed, silently watching — I woke up.
4. (Lucid): On my bed at my home, LO and I were relaxed chatting in the morning around 9am. Mom suddenly yanked door opened and then walked straight to my coach across the bed, sit down, silently watching. LO made a grin face and reluctantly got up standing in the center of room, with his pajama pant and short sleeve T-shirt… I woke up…
****
In reality: Mom would just run to my home anytime without announcing in advance (did all her life before I left). Later I had to take one of two keys from her, and lock the both locks when I am at home. That’s one example of a Narc control!
Mom IS a bogeywoman living in my reality and Unconscious!
After Mom migrated here, she lived with me for 4 months before I found a separate apt. that she agreed to move in. I had this nightmare —
I was alone in a small hospital room lying on a surgical bed waiting to be treated. Then Mom came in alone with a tray! I sat up immediately and truly believed that she’d kill me on that bed, legitimately! Then I grabbed a small surgical knife from her tray, jumped off the bed, and began to stab the knife on Mom’s shin. it would go in! Then, I woke up…
This is one example of cptsd, originated and subsequently repeated by its direct source. There are many more in my journals.
***
After recording my remembered dreams, I’d tell LO in my monologues about all nightmares related to Mom, in order to reduce my anxieties and miseries. In this regard, LO served his “forced” role — an idealized, surrogate parent.
Snow,
Yeah, some dreams are kind of special.
I remember having a dream about some woman. No clue as to who she was. We had a wonderful time. I was married. I remember waking up and thinking, “I have no idea who that woman was but if I ever encounter her, I’m in big trouble.”
After another dream, which I don’t recall at all, I remember waking up and thinking, “Don’t open your eyes or the magic will be gone.”
In another one, I had a dream about a girl I knew since I was 8. We grew up together and she gave me my first kiss on my 13th birthday. I don’t remember if I had the dream in HS or college. All I remember was she was wearing a sky blue teddy.
Some things just stay with you.
LE,
If I print out my dream journals, it’s really amounted to a 📖. I could not even possibly disclose all LO or LE related dreams here, they’re psychologically linked to my cptsd symptoms, forgotten traumas, repressed fears, in all sorts of logical or twisted images and narratives…
I consider it’s a “blessing” that a lot of my unconscious stresses got relieved through my usually vivid dream narratives, images, my recording of them in organized writing and self analysis. (Also worked with therapists in the past).
Oh wow! I have this same dream too a couple times a year. I have forgotten about a class, usually college, and halfway thru the semester I suddenly realize it and am desperately trying to catch up. What’s up with that?
Last evening, after discussing with Marcia in length about old stuff in my LE and learning more truths about it, I was feeling upset, regretful, angry, self-berating, and some other unnameable dark emotions. But I felt I had emptied out a lot of dark interactions with LO, it’s a kind of relief.
Then, last night I had a RETURNING dream regarding LO —
****
Scene 1:
A COO childhood gf living in Paris (since birth, our parents were very good friends) came in town visiting me, and we were sleeping in two full-sized beds in one room at my place. It was chilly and the window was blown open, we both only had one thin blanket. So I said, “why don’t you come to my bed, and we could use two blankets together.” She came over, and I felt warm feeling her close. (No body touching or hugging).
Scene 2:
I brought the gf to LO’s class [I’m currently auditing in reality]. LO gave out a slip of paper for everyone’s individually assigned essay (recurring theme in my dreams). I took a close look at mine (forgot the word now), it’s quite complicated, religion(?) related. I asked him, “you want me to write about this heavy theme?” He answered with a smile, “that’s what I intended.”
Then I introduced my gf to LO and told him that she’s visiting me, and how I knew her entire family including her older sister with a mental disability, and how her parents had helped me handle Father’s funeral in Paris and consoled me during that hard time [which is untrue in reality, Dad passed away in COO]. My gf smiled sitting quietly at a desk.
Scene 3:
After the class, LO was alone with me stepping out of the empty classroom into a dark empty hallway, and I was trying to talk more about my assigned paper. But LO [couldn’t remember well now] was giving me this flirty, seductive look (?), I felt confused (?)
****
I woke up and unwilling went to bathroom. It was too early to get up, so I went back to bed, recalling this dream a little bit while trying to meditate. In 20 minutes (by my smart watch), I fell back to sleep and went back to MY prior dream! —
Scene 4:
The class with LO continued! He brought the entire class to a small museum in Paris. In a cave like “barren” room with scattered stones on the floor. There was light shined through an open door, and another open door led to another section of the museum. LO was explaining how to speculate the piece (we were supposed to write about) with light from different angles. But I could not see the piece, there was no paintings or collages on the grayish ragged walls! So I sat on a stone, thinking it must be some kind of conceptual collage including the cave-room itself. But was what it ??
On this field trip, two COO female college classmates (FCC) and a bunch of COO giggly unknown teenage girls came along as students in this class. And they asked dashing, handsome LO to take individual photos with them. He flirted with them and took smily pictures with 3 giggly ones, individually, their arms and hands were all over him! I got very irritated; my two CC were also sitting on stones, watching quietly.
Scene 5:
Back to the campus into the classroom, the giggle girls were all gone, but two FCC remained in LO’s class. [One of them was my covertly jealous “rival” in college, told in detail by another mutual gf years later.]. This pretty FCC asked LO to take an individual picture with him on a soft bench, then my jealousy reached its peak — their happy and intimate smiles spiked my previously unknown jealousy! [it’s so vivid that I can’t forget the image now, Damn it!} But I still could not protest or say anything….
****
Then I woke up for the second time, feeling my stomach churning… still churning as I’m typing at this moment…
This dream brought me the memory of a total forgotten limerence of 1.5 year (LE #4.8)! Limerence can go away to the point of being forgotten!
This dream and this forgotten LE made me wonder — if I became asexual while in the middle of limerence. In both cases, I was rarely turned on in front of LO, and was avoiding LO’s amorous contact or advance. While in my private reveries, I got turned on by imagination of interacting with them; their icon-like images in my head and my longing for a reciprocation were 24/7! Such an idiot brain!
I want to say that Limerence really is a sickness/addiction. It is supposed to be driven by pair-bonding desire; however, when a pair-bonding opportunity is provided (legitimately in LE #4.8 w/ a divorced LO, totally feasible, safe in a dream), limerent like me tried to avoid it with some unknown fears. How ridiculous and sad this is! (My stomach is still churning now… )
Yes, I will try my might to AVOID another LE!
DrL,
This morning I was also thinking:
Could limerence make limerents to CRAVE something (usually unclear) SOOOOO badly that when what is craved has arrived in front of limerents, they would be either too scared to take it, or become “incapable”/overwhelmed of taking it, or vaguely aware that is not what they have so deeply desired for all along?
Is it a neurological, or psychological, or some other kind of phenomenon?
Or is it that limerants crave for an EA so much more than PA, that when a PA chance arrives without the craved EA attached, limerents just back up or escape?
I now remembered clearly I avoided some distinctive, amorous eye contacting/reaching from LO and xLOs, so they backed up in their realistic interactions with me, perhaps thinking I did not romantically desire them. On this side, I could not turn off my nonstop longing for their “love affection”, is it merely emotional reciprocation?
If the desired EA does come, would a limerent ecstatically take it or still runs away, or the limerence would just die quickly, like in my xmarraige?
Whatever is warned against Glimmer is affecting not just my conscious mind but also Unconscious — had a horrible, returning dream about Romeo in the Dawn of 3/16 ——
******
Scene1: In the late morning, I went to tutor Romeo and found that he barely just got up. There were kids (4-6?) running in a huge loft room [looking like my x-mother-in-law’s loft], but I could not see the mother’s face under the sheet. I didn’t feel any jealousy, but annoyed by the messy scene.
Romeo had mustaches (looked like Orlando Bloom) , messy hair, rough face, topless. He was walking around with a sweater pants and said “I’m not ready for the class”. I responded, “Then you needed to inform me earlier. You’ve missed several classes.” Then, I began to leave the loft and reminded him that he had not paid me for several sessions. He said again, “I’ll pay you later.” He was irritable, and I was pissed.
Then, when I was outside at a small railway station (looked like out of Dickens’ novel in 19th century) looking for a right entrance for me. The sky was cloudy, and it was cold.
Romeo, an upper class gentleman, wearing his expensive black winter coat, accompanied by his woman, a tall brunette also in a brownish fur coat), were also standing outside of first-class entrance. He put 3 or 4 $100 and a couple of $20 bills into my hand and said with an irritating tone, “Here is your payment!” Then, He pointed to another dirty, rugged-looking door, “Over there is your entrance!” So I went there.
Once I got on a two-car steam-engined train, I realized it’s a cargo train. It smelled terribly like a huge garbage dumpster. 4 or 5 rough looking mechanical workers, in dirty blue jean overalls, walked to and fro on board. No other passengers but a couple of broken seats were on broad. So I stood there lending on one of seat-backs. Then, I got a frightened that those men might violate me since I was the only passenger in a clean, Mary Popping’s governess’ outfit. I could not jump off the running train. But those men went to the head of the train to shovel coals.
Standing there, I realized that I was tricked by the cruel Romeo to get on a stinky, cardo train!
Scene 2: Suddenly, I was brought by the cargo train me to a completely isolated orthodox Jewish village in a valley. It was a bright and sunny morning, green farmfields, huge (5 times bigger than a normal size), black dotted, pink pigs, a few cows, sheep were grazing around, a couple of joyful looking young women leisurely greeting each other, in front of small shops… It was very quiet, not many people out in the late morning. I wad stunned after getting off the train. Then the train vanished immediately without a trace!
I stood in the front of small shops, confused. I looked into the distance — It’s a Shangri-La one could have ever imagined! It’s like in a fairy land with a lot of green fields under bright, sunny sky, and a couple of elderly women and kids were near those gigantic, spotted pink pigs at a bottom of the valley!
Dazed by the scene, I still wanted to go home — I did not belong there. So I asked an innocent looking young woman, in a farmer’s outfit — a light colored blouse and a long, burgundy skirt, how to get out this place. She said, “No one has ever got out of here, I don’t know how.” She was very sweet and did not ask me any questions, although I was practically an alien to them! I became more confused and jaw dropping, but not afraid.
Then, an elderly man came around and said something like, there was a metal bucket that was dangling on a single-line cable in the air (not far away from where I was standing). If I get into that bucket, I could be carried out of this place unnoticed.
So I walked over to the place the old man pointed. There was a metal bucket standing on the ground, only one person knelling down could fit in it. The cable in the air was very thin, almost invisible. I went in the metal bucket, knelt down, and closed my eyes, as instructed. Zoom —
*** I woke up for nearly 20 minutes*** lying in bed sheepishly to recall those beautiful pink pigs with the huge black spots all over their bodies [like Dalmatian dogs]
Scene 3: Falling back to sleep, the cable bucket teletransported me back to an unknown place, now sunny and summery. I climbed out of the cable bucket and found myself on an empty street with some birch trees. I did not know where I was.
Scene 4: Back to Romeo’s loft again! This time, I was not his teacher, but his barber! When I got there, he was sitting on a wooden chair, and another male barber was in the middle of cutting his hair! So I yelled, “you’ve already got another barber, why did you call me here!” He just sat there, with a barber’s apron around his neck, grinning [still looked like Orlando Bloom] as if gloating at his trick over me!
So pissed 😡 that I finally I work up! I jumped off my bed, worrying I’d fall back to sleep for another continuous part, serving this cruel Romeo and getting abused again‼️
***
Look what my Unconscious is doing to my Glimmer, after my conscious mind told Marcia that I’d keep a realty check this time and not to put any fantasy coat on Romeo‼️
I’m also thinking that my Unconscious might be telling me that if I could get away from Romeo (even if tricked by him), I’d land on a Shangri-La. However, my idiotic, restless limerent’s brain pulled me back to “serve” cruel, ugly Romeo again!
My Unconscious made Romeo a villain, a place away from him a Shangli-la in my dream, while my conscious mind only wants to stay cool-headed, not fantasizing Romeo when dealing with the new glimmer!
Now, the Glimmer seems to have gone already, in one month exactly…. It’s Unfair!
🥹😞
Am I the only prolific limerent dreamer here?
I woke up before 5am, and immediately felt being seized by a deep sadness — my tightening heart FELT the D-Day’s approaching, like I was hearing its steps matching towards me (in a movie); LO is going to disappear soon, gone with wind….
Lying quietly, I realized that this time it was not my head objectively knowing, but it was my heart cringing the D-day’s arriving… the gray, desolate sky and scenes afterwards… Rare tears began welling in the eyes….
After a quick bathroom break, I continued staying with my sadness; then I slipped into a lucid/hypnagogic dream — 4/7/24, at Dawn
Scene 1: LO suddenly appeared in the room in the morning — not my current bedroom, but a strange room with a stack of wooden storage trunks on one side of the window and a vanity table and a chair on the other side. I was sitting on the edge of a bed. Dressed up in his brown suede jacket, beige hunting pants and brownish angle boots, LO was standing in front of the trunks without saying anything; he seemed to wait for me to go somewhere.
Suddenly, I noticed that LO’s one big hand has 6 long fingers (5-6 inches long) and 6 or 7 fingers in another hand as well, I became speechless. He then stood in front of vanity mirror with his one hand laid on top of the other. I saw 12 or 14 fingers neatly lined up in two layers. I exclaimed, “My god, I never noticed that you have 6 fingers!” He said, “that’s how much attention you’ve paid me!”
I could not help staring at those long, straight fingers which kept swinging sideways , making me feeling dizzy. Then I noticed that one finger was out of the line from the rest of five, and his wedding ring was on this 6th finger!
Then I woke up a tiny bit, recognizing my room and knowing that I was half-dreaming….
Scene 2: LO and I arrived at the HS, a three flat peachy colored building surrounded by a woods with tall trees. [ In reality I I just turned down its offer, after the demo, due to its culture and long working hours]. [in the dream] I changed my mind and wanted to ask the school for an offer reconsideration. LO and I was wandering through different corridors trying to find a right personnel. LO asked me whether I was sure wanting to work for this school [in reality, he supported my decision not to take the offer]. I briefly spoke with a strange woman and she said she’d pass my word.
So, LO and I hopped on an elevator intending to leave. As it slowly going up with only two of us inside, I finally felt a courage and suddenly dashed up to kiss LO. As he bent down closer, his mouth seemed to have touched mine, I tried to sense it. But before I could feel his lips, a montage of blackness suddenly seized and swallowed both of us inside it. I could not see, hear, or touch LO at all — I was alone in this edgeless blackness! I felt my feet was losing balance at one point…
Then, suddenly the normal sized elevator opened its door at the 6th floor, and in front of us was an extension of the elevator — about 50 meters long track/escalator slowly moving. Tall tree were standing on both sides of this moving metal track. We simply stood on top of it in the open air, and it continued carrying us to the other end.
When finally arrived at the other end, I saw a bunch of different ethnic women (20-30 of them) sitting or squadding on both sides of the track chatting! Watching LO and I walking along the track, they began to giggle and gossip, as if they’d witnessed a secret rendezvous from us…
Before able to get off the metal track, I woke up.
***********
My earlier sadness was gone, but that montage of gigantic blackness was still sensed by me, it was so real as if I could touch and feel its texture…
I’ve been tearing a little bit all day off and on, not quite sure where they came from… I also 😂 about those 12-14 extraordinary long fingers of LO — a limerent’s altered mind even in dream!
Hi Snowpheonix,
Your daytime mind is so occupied by D-day, preparing for it, doing applications and interviews, imagining what the future holds, maybe even packing up your office soon(?), that it is no wonder that your subconscious is bringing this into your dreams.
I must say that, apart from the “black montage” part that maybe stems from the uncertainty, your LO seemed very benign in your dreams. This must be some comfort? If he were behaving badly in your dreams, you’d probably find this even more distressing than all the changes and uncertainty that you already have on your plate.
Change is hard. I can’t imagine how it must be but I am rooting for you. We have to assume that good things lie on the other side of all this disruption.
Courage, mon amie
Hi Bewitched,
Actually, I’ve been actively in denial to the D-day, until you mentioned IT in your post to others; then it came up to my radar again. I haven’t packed anything yet, I was busier in off-hour tutoring, and heavily engaged in debating with Marcia at night. When the notion of D-day bumped into the mind, I knew it’s real and irreversible, but I could not FEEL my emotions about it.
In terms of approaching separation anxiety/sadness in my dreams, I think it’s due to my conscious avoidance. Based on Jungian’s theory:
“The Alter-Ego’s role is to balance the Ego’s real-time status, in terms of content. So whatever position is taken by the Ego, the opposite potential will be immediately adopted by the Alter-Ego — in compensations, for the purpose of homeostasis — that is self-regulation of the (personal) psyche, in real-time.”
That would explain why whatever I have avoided in my waking hours would show up during my sleep.
My LO is benign mostly in reality and in my dreams (my 3 major glimmered LOs are all quite decent people with individualistic flaws and vulnerabilities, respectively), aside from his Sensor nature and his keeping a distance from me. I tried deprogramming and demonizing LO, but they ultimately failed (I dislike imagining possible negative sides of an enigmatic person, anyone); my strong intuition based on his behaviors beat up repeatedly my logical thinkings or deductions, which makes this final farewell extremely distressing to bid!
The truth is that I do NOT want LO to disappear in my life: with his ordinariness, wariness, wrinkles manifested more on his face, he seems to have changed from a LO to a friend in my eyes, even more attractive than that much younger, fitter, and sexier Romeo. limerence creates certain, irreplaceable meanings in our head about everyone and everything around us. The surrogate parental tie through my three year ordeal is just impossible to be served easily. So my conscious mind cannot and refuses to accept the imminent, metaphorical death!
Yes, uncertainties and some sorts of changes are ahead of me in exact one month! I cannot afford to assume good things on the other side, but can prepare for the worst to come. Yet, this life-change unknown is just like the montage of blackness in my dream, in which I could see nothing besides feeling its texture…. I like the dream’s ending: after a brief blankness, LO was still with me standing on the edge of that moving metal- belt/escalator, clank, clank, clank…
I so appreciate your care 🫂 and will keep you posted…
I had my first ever dream about LO (that I remember at least!) and lo and behold, there is actually a place for these dreams on Lwl! It wasn’t a nice dream (going on week 4 of NC) and it’s easy to interpret. It probably came from spending time on Lwl…
In the dream, he was married – as he is – but a married ex-colleague of mine (a beautiful woman who doesn’t know him) just walked up to him, they exchanged some words and then full-on kissed. I felt so bad – so he didn’t reject me because he was married, he just wasn’t that into me. (Hello, low self-esteem!) It didn’t require much from this other woman to get him.
Then they went on to play golf, of all things! And I tagged along, not even playing. She was slaying too! Finally I told them I’ll grab a club and actually join in the game. Then the dream ended. So a great third wheel experience that I probably picked up from reading experiences here!
Dear Trifles,
I think that this might be one of the dreams that you will look back on with a smile, one day. Dreams can indicate where our daytime mind is at, I believe, so they’re a bit of a marker in that regard, albeit slightly lurid versions of our daytime thoughts. A funny story – my LO showed up in my dreams in golf gear once. He was wearing a loud diamond-patterned tank top, plus floppy hat in the same colours. This is not a man who is normally given to wearing this type of stuff. It still gives me a giggle.
What was your LO wearing and was it funny?
Miss Trifles
I remember a dream I had about her a long time ago. Than it was a very sad dream. But like Bewitched said, later on I understood it. The recounting of it is probably in this post thread. That morning I told my wife about it as she already had suspicions.
I was at a company picnic. She was a former co-worker. Well she surprised me by showing up, but with her gentleman friend. (She was really seeing a man at the time that she left the job.) I was surprised and happy she showed up. I told her that I wanted to give her something. So I rushed back to my truck to get her the gift I had bought for her. When I got back she told me that she couldn’t accept the gift. Right then her gentleman friend showed up and asked her “are you ready?” and they walked off hand in hand with me standing there with the gift in my hand.
I remember recounting it to my wife. She said, if I remember right, that it was my subconscious’ way of telling me it’s time to say goodbye. I don’t want to dwell too long … but yeah thankfully dreams aren’t much of an issue. That was a long time ago and I haven’t had one about her since.
Bewitched, funny that golf also featured in your dream! That sounds like a good image of him to keep in mind to avoid idealizing him. Sadly I don’t recall any details about clothes (though I’m sure there were clothes!). But the funny thing is that I’m 99% sure that neither of them play golf in real life. I however have played, in my 20s when an ex of mine got me into it. And yet I still sat out of it in the dream! Poor me… And yet I am slightly laughing about the dream already, helps to have a sense of humor about myself.
Adam, oh I can imagine your feelings in that dream. Your dream seems to have had the same pattern as mine, with the clear rejection from LO. Your SO probably had a good point about it meaning it’s time to say goodbye. Mine is still about working through the rejection.
PS. What a great community that I can just post my dream and not one but two sympathetic people will comment on it!
Ooh! Oooh!
If DrL ever puts on the LwL weekend, he should hold it at a golf resort! It could be a two person mixed, or not, scramble or best ball. Partners would be drawn at random from whatever pool you want to participate in.
I can think of several posters that I wouldn’t mind killing 6 hours [including drinks afterward] or so with. I can also think of one or two with whom we might not make it to the third tee.
Golf is full of sexual innuendo. Talk about performance anxiety…
Dear LE,
That’s an intriguing idea. Golf is a “mental” game and so is limerence, so there are many parallels 😀
I drive past a golf course every day on my way to and from work (I live in a beautiful and remote place, somewhat spoiled by the gold course). And this time of year I start to see the golfers crossing the road that I am driving on and they always look really proud of themselves, like “look at meeee! I am playing golf!!!”. Its totally different from the looks on the faces of the cyclists, joggers, or walkers that I pass on the same road. I don’t know whether its because they are just so blissed-out from their game, or whether they are just way too smug and complacent.
(And who has 6 hours to spare to play a round of golf anyway)?
My mind just free-associates golf with silliness at this stage!
Limerant Emeritus, you crack me up! Nice to meet you by the way, I’m new here. Heard so much about (from) you!
I would go to the Lwl golf tournament! Even though my skills are rusty at best. But how you play and handle your nerves says a lot about you.
I was wondering if anyone would start to analyze the innuendo of my golf dream, at least the part where I finally grab the club. (Sorry, it’s getting late here…)
Bewitched, silliness is good – go with it! And I don’t have six hours, that’s part of why I quit (other part was splitting up with bf I played with and falling out with my friend who was my other golf partner).
LE,
That would be awesome. We could make a day of it. 36 holes and a fish fry after the first 18. Drinks flowing too of course.
Imagine all us limerents together in one place, for that amount of time. The world just might implode.
There’s a post of what the meetup might look like buried in an old blog. If I have time, I might try to find it.
The highlight was going to be the award show for different categories. The statue would be called “The Limmy.”
Some categories:
– Limerent of the Year
– Most destructive LE
– Best LE with a coworker
– Best relapse
– LE which most accurately follows a work of art, song, opera, etc.
– Lifetime Achievement Award [I’m claiming this one because I’ve been on LwL the longest]
Tuxes and ball gowns required.
DrL said the same thing about the world imploding.
I’ll take the award for most destructive LE. Imo, lol..
Either that or the song that follows my LE.
Like perfectly.. 😍
I rarely remember my dreams, but this one I still remember vividly over a month later.
I was in a bank. This was a dimly-lit bank with beige walls and brown doors and chairs, like something from the 1980s. In the middle of the bank was an oval-shaped (not completely round) teller counter that was like a donut. The counter went 360 degrees and the tellers stood in the middle of it. Some modern banks have this, but the decor was 1980s. This was basically a mixture of my personal bank (center teller counter, but brightly lit) and my business bank (dimly lit with a lot of purple and teal like the 1990s), but with 1980s earth tone decor.
I walked up to the counter and a lady was helping me with a transaction. She left the teller counter to go gather more information so she could further help me. I couldn’t tell exactly who this person represented, but she had dark hair. The lady in the dream had no distinct facial features. She could have been of Asian or European descent.
While she was gone, I waited for several minutes. To my left about 18 inches away, there was a cup that usually holds pens, but the cup was empty. My business bank has a cup of pens just like this, but it’s always filled. As I waited, someone walked into the teller counter and ended up in front of me. It was my LO with a handful of pens! She didn’t look at or acknowledge me in any way. She simply put the pens in the cup and walked away. I don’t remember her being in the dream after that. I did not try to speak to her.
At this point, I remember my daughter being with me, and she was getting bored. The teller still hadn’t come back. We noticed a few video game machines in the back right corner of the big room. We went over and played video games for awhile. Maybe 30-45 minutes, maybe even an hour. At some point, I realized while still playing games that everyone had left the bank building. The bank was flooded with evening sunlight, but I don’t recall any artificial light.
We realized we were alone. I told my daughter, “We have to go. We can’t be seen in this bank with no employees around.” Thinking we’d been locked in, we tried the door, but it flung wide open. Hadn’t been locked in any way, not even from the outside.
After we walked out of the bank building, I debated calling the bank to let them know we’d been left behind and that no one locked the door. I didn’t know who to call, and I didn’t want them to be suspicious of us as to why we were there after closing.
This is all I remember of the dream. I must have awakened shortly thereafter.
My LwL related dream:
I was hanging out on the steep roof of a small cabin that was right next to other cabins laid out in a row. The roof was full of snow. There was a small attic window jutting out. Two guys were hanging out on the roof of the nearest cabin, talking amongst themselves. A joyful woman with her child (balloon in hand) was also nearby on the ground.
Only a rickety ladder led up to the roof. I realized I might be slipping on the icy roof soon, and I realized I was noticing this well in advance, because I wasn’t actually slipping yet. But I decided to call for help in advance so that it would get there in time. So I started calling, but the guys didn’t initially hear. After a while (I was already sliding), one of them set off to help me, only to promptly slip and fall off his own roof. 😂 (He was okay.) Then I decided to save myself by climbing down the ladder. It rocked hazardously back and forth once, but after that it was easypeasy. Once on the ground I fixed the positioning of the ladder to be more stable. Voilà, danger averted.
Interpretation: I’m happy and smug with myself for coming to LwL well in advance this time, to get help/advice. But I realized I can save myself, don’t need the help of any men at least. 😂 I might have put some guy (the friend I referred to in my transference post?) in danger in the process, but at least he was fine after his fall.
I had a dream last night that I was in my old place of work with my husband and LO walked in. He had a big bushy moustache which was new. He Bumped in to his husband in the lift and they kissed (he doesn’t have a husband but a female partner). I told my SO that I was going up to say hello. When I got to LOs floor there were lots of people there including my new work colleague who doesn’t work there. It was too busy to speak to LO and then I left.
Not a pining or sexy dream, bizarre but very boring apart from the bushy moustache haha. Strange.
Whoomp
I had a dream (been watching too many horror movies/shorts lately) Monday night that there was a some monstrosity chasing me. I kept looking behind me, and this nightmare was slowly catching up with me. I look ahead of me and there is Momma, LO, her daughter and Lady Friend, 500-600 feet ahead of me. I knew I would be the first victim. This thing I had no chance with. I kept screaming in my dream, but no words came out. I was trying to tell them to keep running. My death would give them a few more seconds to get ahead.
I woke up sitting up in the bed screaming “Momma!!!!” Thankfully she was still awake. My unconscious brain make the right decision to what to send to my vocal chords. Progress. I guess.
Last Sunday (7/7), three days after coming back from COO, I had this decisive dream that made me proud of my Unconscious — :
[Reality: in the Capital city of COO, my college gf and I visited a spa for hot- spring bath and body scribbling service. In a huge room, there was a small rectangle pool and four individual deep, jacuzzi tubs surrounding it. My gf and I each took a tub, deeply submerged in the blueish, warm spring water.
We chatted a bit and watched a few young and middle-aged women walking around completely naked (there were tons of clean white towels neatly laid on several shelves in the room) — not my cup of tea, especially more than half of them were out of shape… I was certain that I’d never become a lesbian…]
In my dream, this spa room had thin, white steams and it allowed me to exterminate matters I no longer wanted in my life (a bit like the gas chamber of the concentration camps 😰). In my dream, my father was seriously talking to me in Capital city on a foot of a stone lion statue, far away from this spa.
My father’s back was facing my observant 👁️ in the dream. I could not remember a clue of our conversation; only that his back was uptight and my body was very tense. I did not like whatever he was saying and determined it was no longer good for me! So while still sitting with him, I magically (in my mind) “threw” the matter to the spa room and turned on the steam switch — just like a light switch on a wall.
Then, everything in that spa room completely disappeared without a trace, including my father far away from it… then I woke up with a kind of horror, but also a deep settlement — something unpleasant/unwanted is gone with a click — I can tune it off anytime!
While unable to remember the matter I exterminated in my dream, some thoughts did spring out in my mind as soon as I woke up:
1. my childhood traumas have been largely healed — no parental figure is needed anymore; absolutely no one in the world is able to play that role to me; and nobody, except my own Self, could “abandon” me again in any fashion/form.
2. the fear of childhood abandonment, aggravated in the past 6 years since Dad’s sudden death, existed/perceived only in the foggy mind, in the bodily memory, in the negative imaginations but not in my reality.
3. I’ve finally become free from others’ judging lens — negative or positive. Especially during this COO trip after watching into old classmates’ and relatives’ puzzled, surprised, disapproving, envious, or admiring eyes, I have realized that I no longer care(d) at all about what and how they think or feel of me, except that I really appreciate(d) those sincere friendships and concrete cares some male and female friends genuinely demonstrated during our excursions together.
After this decisive dream, I felt/feel so settled and confident: my cptsd has been mostly “cured”, although some residual impact may come up again in the future; however, with my full awareness, I’m not worried at all.
The “side effects” of my six-year limerence (the first 9 months after the glimmer, I did not slip into LE) is that my battle with my life-time cptsd, assisted by my imaginations of the LO #7’s unintended, passive, “parental” functions, has largely won! My biological mother looks even more “shrunk” nowadays, and I feel a parental responsibility for her (who still irritates me a bit).
Who says limerence journey is merely negative? It really depends how one treats/makes use of it, w/o LwL knowledge and wisdom…