In the last post, I argued that there is an initiating “glimmer”: a frisson of excitement, that acts as an indicator that a particular person you have just encountered has the potential to become an LO. It seems that there is some sort of blueprint deeply integrated into each limerent’s psyche that the subconscious mind is able to rapidly access, and (if it spots a match) activate the limerent circuitry.
[quick side note: I’m going to be occasionally using unscientific terms like “psyche” and “subconscious” in the vernacular sense that most people understand them, to help illuminate ideas. I am not actually a mind-body dualist – these felt experiences emerge from underlying neuroscience]
An ultrafast connection is made that links all the various pieces of sensory input (physical appearance, body language, scent, tone of voice, laugh etc.) and triggers an response: arousal. I don’t mean here sexual arousal (although that is often present), but physiological arousal – similar to the fight-or-flight adrenaline response. This causes heightened awareness and symptoms of sympathetic nervous system activation (increased heart beat rate, pupil dilation, sweating etc.). In my experience, the nature of this limerent glimmer is distinct from simple attraction. When meeting someone especially beautiful or athletic or famous, for example, one also often feels nervous, tongue-tied and “over-aroused” in their presence. This is different. The glimmer feels more personal, more significant, and more charged with emotional power – as though the atmosphere has suddenly electrified.
How the limerent responds to this spark of recognition is likely to be the major determinant as to whether they progress to limerence. This is the moment to nip things in the bud if you do not want to succumb. An active decision to avoid the company of the potential LO is a wise move. An immediate decision to consider this person a potential danger rather than a potential friend is a useful mental device. This probably sounds a little dreary. Friends are good, but not friends who are going to turn your life upside down the more time you spend in their company. It’s a cost-benefit calculation.
The reason most limerents don’t follow this very sensible advice, of course, is that limerence is a bastard. Just as the subconscious is fast at spotting a limerence match, it is also fast at justifying why it’s a good idea to get to know this interesting person, and learn more about them and their insightful ideas. It’s the same arousal circuitry again, enhancing the salience of the person (making them seem to be the most important stimulus in the environment), triggering nice reward feedback that gives you warm fuzzies when interacting positively with them, and generally making you feel more alive and more motivated to seek that sensation again in the future.
Fortunately, as a species, we have an impressively swollen cerebral cortex, meaning our executive centres can override our lizard brains. The trick is to get the executive to implement good pattern recognition and initiate avoidance behaviour. More commonly the lizard brain persuades the executive to use its impressive powers of rationalisation to construct a pleasing narrative to justify giving the limerence everything it wants.
If you decide to indulge that pleasant reinforcement, you risk escalation of the glimmer to full-blown limerence. Finding the balance is the art. Like any potential addict, you are best placed to determine how much is too much. Many alcoholics swear off booze for good. Not a single drink. Only safe way. Many “social drinkers” convince themselves that everything is fine, and a bottle of wine or two a night is normal. Self-awareness is the heart of this. If experience has taught you that indulging limerence leads to massive emotional turmoil, you should probably try practicing a period of going teetotal and treating the glimmer like nectar-flavoured poison. If you can surf the frisson-wave for the thrill of the ride, then give it a go (and hope you don’t wipeout).
For me: I’ve settled on a strategy of passive exposure. I do not seek the company of potential LOs (and am vigilant about self-serving justifications), but if circumstances lead to an encounter, I try and enjoy it responsibly. Otherwise I might become a humourless misery-guts.
The glimmer, that first inkling that you are interested in another and that may be in you. Limerence aside, it is a beautiful thing.
It can be, but then again, so is “swamp gas,” aka “will-o’the-wisp,” aka methane.
” Wirt Sikes in his book British Goblins mentions the following Welsh tale about púca.
A peasant travelling home at dusk sees a bright light traveling along ahead of him. Looking closer, he sees that the light is a lantern held by a “dusky little figure” [aka your LO], which he follows for several miles. All of a sudden he finds himself standing on the edge of a vast chasm with a roaring torrent of water rushing below him. At that precise moment the lantern-carrier leaps across the gap, lifts the light high over its head, lets out a malicious laugh and blows out the light, leaving the poor peasant a long way from home, standing in pitch darkness at the edge of a precipice.” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp
Scharnhorst, ““dusky little figure” [aka your LO]” Excellent..
And thus the terror ensues when the LO proves to be not the dream come true we once thought they were. The light blown out…for all of us peasant limerents.
I’m very interested in this comment, how do you assess what are “self-serving justifications”?
I’ve settled on a strategy of passive exposure. I do not seek the company of potential LOs (and am vigilant about self-serving justifications)
I remember the first time I saw LO3 at work on my first day. I was at the coffee machine in the office kitchen trying to find a coffee cup in the cabinets. She walked in, opened the dishwasher next to me, and squatted down to take out a mug. I looked down and thought, “Hey, she’s cute, maybe I’ll just say something to her.”
So I asked her, “Excuse me, but do you know where the coffee cups are?” She looked up with a somewhat perplexed and embarrassed smile that told me she was thinking, “Why is this man talking to me?”, as if the idea of a person asking her where coffee cups were in the office was just something you didn’t do. But she just said, “No, I don’t,” and left it at that. I thanked her and thought, “That was a little weird.”
That was it. No glimmer. No flirtation. Just me thinking she was cute at first, not unlike many other women I see during the day, asking her a normal question, and then ending the conversation. With my first two LOs I was struck immediately, just bowled over. I felt nothing for LO3. In fact, she left me with a weird feeling like there wasn’t something quite right with her.
Over the next three weeks I would pass her in the halls and do the polite corporate “smile and hello” that we do with coworkers that we don’t really know. It’s not an attempt to talk, just a polite acknowledgement. But she would walk right by me as if I didn’t exist. Wouldn’t even glance in my direction and certainly wouldn’t utter a polite “good morning” back. I could have been on fire and she wouldn’t have noticed I was there. So I figured she was just rude, and if she was going to do that to me, then I would just ignore her right back. No reason to waste my breath.
A month into the job, my assessment now of LO3 was that she was just some rude young lady who didn’t have the maturity to be in an adult corporate office. In my younger life I had put up with so much BS from young women who thought they were God’s gift to mankind that I just refused to put up with their antics anymore, and LO3 was no different.
A few days after that, I happened to turn a corner and almost ran flat into her. She looked up at me and nervously said, “Excuse me.” Not giving two shits what this stuck up brat thought, I didn’t say anything, I just looked at her like “whatever, go away,” and walked back to my desk
And then… there was a very subtle change in her after that. She still didn’t say anything to me and vice versa, but it was this kind of nervousness in her. It was like her attitude towards me went from “Matt’s just another guy trying to bizarrely flirt by asking where the coffee cups were” to “I want to know why this guy Matt doesn’t like me.”
It was like there was this new nervousness in her towards me that I was expecting to subside over a few days as she came to the conclusion that I was just another asshole she should ignore. But the nervousness didn’t subside like I expected it to.
I started realizing that I had seen this nervousness in women before when they “noticed” me and didn’t know how to act around me. I started realizing… “this young lady… could be interested in me?”
And that’s when this rude, stuck up young woman morphed into LO3.
Soon afterwards I noticed I had this urge to search for her on Facebook… and I managed to keep myself from doing it for two days or so, but the urge became too great to resist. And it’s just gone downhill from there.
Such a long post… it was like therapy to me to write this out and remember exactly how it emerged, especially since it wasn’t the “love at first sight” experience as the previous 2 LOs were.
It sounds like you have a bit of a love/mostly hate dynamic going on with your LO, which can be equally – if not more – intense. I have that with my current (and longest standing) LO, although mine didn’t start at all with hate like yours. Mine has ended in hate, or what I would more accurately describe as “doing everything in my power to deny my feelings for him.” I sometimes think the deep craving us L’s have for reciprocation can be enough to either pick up on extreme subtleties or read into things that aren’t really there. How long has your LE been going on for? Have you had any interactions with your LO since the episode began besides sensing her nervousness? Words exchanged? Eye contact? Eye contact was a huge thing for me as a teen. I lived for eye contact with my unattainable LOs. That was enough reciprocation for me haha.
Oh goody. An article on The Glimmer. I was wondering if one such article existed, and found it by accident when using the “categories” search feature.
The glimmer, as a concept, fascinates me because I think if we can get to the root of the glimmer, we can probably understand what limerence is all about.
Personally, I experienced my first unambiguous “glimmer” when I was 17. I had a very sheltered childhood and wasn’t exposed to a lot of outside influences such as TV and non-Christian books, music, etc. So my theory is the glimmer is an emotional attraction as much as a physical one, and is possibly inspired by people who remind me of my parents. Alternatively, the glimmer could be narcissistic. (Am I emotionally attracted to people who remind me of myself?)
Freud would probably agree with the notion (indeed pioneered the notion) that boys marry their mothers and girls marry their fathers, metaphorically speaking of course. Certainly, I’ve been attracted to women who are similar to my mother. (Mummy issues much?) I think as we deal with issues relating to our families of origin, the glimmer we get from these particular LOs becomes much less potent. However, this is just my theory on the matter. Other people may have other equally valid ideas.
One possible implication of this theory is you shouldn’t be too offended if someone rejects you romantically – maybe you just don’t remind them subconsciously of their own parents?
@Sammy
Once I was on a blind date and at dinner the fellow said “Oh my goodness! You have the same profile as my mother! And we didn’t have a good relationship!”. After dinner we stopped by the home a couple I am close friends with and my date proceeded to make friends with the husband of the couple. He asked to talk to him privately and proceeded to WEEP about his bad relationship with his mother.
Needless to say, there was no second date.
I am not sure what Freud would have made of that!
@Jaideux. Oh gosh, that is so funny. Maybe it works in reverse too! Maybe there’s an anti-glimmer people can give off! Haha!
Awkward date for you, though!
Just out curiosity, did you pull the string on what that profile was?
How could you not pull that string?
LO #2’s parents were pieces of work, especially her mother. When I started watching “The Sopranos,” Tony’s mother reminded me of LO #2’s mother. LO #2’s mother had all the charm of a North Korean prison guard. In the 5 years we crossed paths, I don’t remember that woman ever cracking a smile or laughing. LO #2 had an affinity for cheaters and allegedly got pregnant by a married man.
LO #3 was a clone of LO #2 but I don’t know anything about her parents. She was a nurse and claimed that she’d gotten pregnant from some married doctor. Things can be a lot easier to deal with if you’ve seen it before.
LO #4 told me that someone had told her she had “daddy issues.” As she opened up to me over time, it was pretty clear that she did. LO #4 had an affinity for Narcs. I don’t think she ever met a Narc she didn’t try to rehabilitate. She could have been the poster child for “trying to get it right with the wrong people.”
My parents had a dismal 0-5 track record for marriages. Toss in my aunts and uncles, it becomes 3-12 maybe worse. Extrapolating that, my “glimmer” is an unhappy woman with lousy taste in men. My father knew a lot about women but had marginal taste in them.
So, if someone had floated one like what the guy told you over the plate, I think I would have swung for the bleachers. I don’t think I could have helped myself.
@Scharn. I just assumed Jaideux’s blind date was referring to his mother’s physical profile i.e. the outline of her face. The physical similarity sent him into tears. Of course, as you point out, “profile” can also mean a person’s psychological history. Either kind of profile would be fascinating I guess if resulting in a glimmer.
@Sammy and Scharny,
It was my physical profile. I turned my head to the side and he gasped and then explained why. He reassured me that he thought it was a very nice profile, but that it was identical to his mum’s which was problematic. I was polite, but my shields went way up and we went over to my friends after dinner and while he was weeping about his mommy issues in the back room with the husband, the wife and and I were in the front room with a drinkie, marveling and laughing at how I had, once again, got myself into yet another bizarro dating mishap.
@Jaideux. I thought that’s what you meant. However, Scharn’s abstract interpretation of your story delights me too. Haha! I.e. might limerents get a glimmer from people who are emotionally similar to parents? Or, possibly, do we learn “how to love” from our parents (and must unlearn any dysfunctional patterns of behaviour they may have instilled in us)?
My glimmer happened completely online over messenger. It was like we left this dimension and met in some place beyond time and space. After that encounter I had a kundalini awakening. My whole world turned upside down and I cried in fetal position for 8 days straight. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. I felt completely insane. He had reciprocated his feelings to me, but there was adversity in that he was still married. He ended up not responding to me for some time, and then came back… and we did that dance for awhile. We would get close, he would push me away. In February of 2020, I went to see him and it was the most magickal experience of both our lives. Then, things got more complicated with his divorce and we ended up getting into an argument and he ended it. That was 6 months ago. I still think about him constantly. There are periods where I don’t think about him as much, and I was able to find fulfillment and happiness in our separation by doing what I love. I feel like I have learned and grown so much from having had this experience, but like… I still believe he loves me and make excuses for why he hasn’t contacted me in 6 months, and still day dream and hold the vision of us being together. Which, mostly makes me feel delusional and crazy… but also persistent and not one to easily give up on people I love. I’ve never loved anyone like this. It’s so beyond this world. It feels like destiny, like fate, like… yeah.. I’m sure we all feel that way though…. sigh. So like, if he could just confess his undying love to me now that would be great. Ok, thanks.
OK but – he was married. From the start. What was he doing online, h’m?
That’s not an adversity – he had a commitment.
Married men who search out women aren’t trustworthy, period.
You were most likely manipulated my a narcissist.
I’m sorry. I hope you can unwind the limerence.
I don’t think all married men who have affairs are narcissists. Some of them are truly unhappy and suffering possibly from any number of other disorders.
I had what you had (met online and felt the same you did).
When I disclosed that I am starting to feel something for him, he excused himself and literally disappeared from the face of the earth. It felt literally as a mental breakdown for me. Very, very painful process.
Few months later I learned he was married with 3 kids. Which came as a blessing in disguise, as I could finally let go. It took me some time. One year further an I am still not completely over it, but I am good on the way.
Him disappearing was because he was married, not because of me or something I said. He did it probably because he didn’t get from me what he wanted, not because of empathy or consciousness or any other altruistic feeling. Although it still hurts and Im fighting intrusive thoughts of injustice being done to me on daily basis, in general I feel like I dodged the bullet.
Just re-read this article. I wonder – does the physiological arousal of limerence engage a different part of the brain to mere sexual arousal? From the article, it sounds like physiological/limerent arousal must have a strong emotional component for the limerent. I.e. the LO must awaken some deep emotional response and not just be somebody easy on the eyes.
I’ve certainly felt nerves in the presence of beautiful people of both sexes. It might be a wee bit difficult to distinguish “fan-girl, fan-boy” response from limerent arousal if LO happens to be very attractive. If LO isn’t spectacularly attractive, I guess it’s easier to identify them as LO or potential LO material.
The more I read about limerence, the more I think that maybe I’ve only had one LO, that is to say, only one limerent episode that involved the deep emotional response. The other experiences were “false alarms” in a way. I’ve felt really happy around tons of other people, for example, but I think that was just friendship or physical attraction or sexual/emotional chemistry minus limerence. Limerence really is a very specific thing, a special kind of animal. It would be a mistake every crush for a limerent episode.
I don’t know about my executive brain overriding my lizard brain. But I know I want to learn from past mistakes/very painful experiences. I know I don’t want to repeat very painful experience. Avoiding pain isn’t noble. But I guess it is a form of self-control.
Sometimes I feel like I used up all my limerent emotions on First Love, for want of a better term. A kind of “all passion spent” phenomenon. Having been through limerence once, and not having had it reciprocated, I don’t think I have much appetite to go through it a second time. I think my brain is “burnt out”. Can a really bad experience serve as a kind of inoculation against further episodes?
Sammy,
“From the article, it sounds like physiological/limerent arousal must have a strong emotional component for the limerent. I.e. the LO must awaken some deep emotional response and not just be somebody easy on the eyes.”
I think you hit the nail on the head. There’s a deep emotional component to limerence. I’ve had crushes on people and got over them pretty quickly, whereas the LE just hung on.
But I don’t agree with appearance being a deciding factor in picking an LO (or the LO being less attractive). I mean, the LO certainly can be less than spectacular looking, but I think limerence transcends appearance. An LO taps into your psyche. It’s a very hard thing to explain to a non-limerent because physical attraction is so tied in to physical appearance for them.
It would be a mistake to mistake every crush for a limerent episode I mean. **
If there isn’t that deep and deeply personal emotional response to a person the nascent connection must be something else, but not limerence, as all the right parts of the brain haven’t been engaged.
Not sure why my LO engaged my brain in an emotional way. Confusing!
Totally! I have had crushes too so I know the difference! Currently on LO 4 myself and I can say they are quite different feelings- with crushes it’s not usually a spiritual experience for example – and it doesn’t usually result in my finding some way to get the person into my life at any cost! I currently am trying to get LO4 into a relationship with my best friend so that I can be closer to them. How messed up is that! Haha
Thank goodness I read this blog. LO#1 lasted for 12 years and I only found out last year that he was about to get married. So I tried online dating only to find other LO candidates and finally landed on LO#2. I like the other post I read about focusing on the shame (NO MERCY!) – because it helps contraindicate the good about both LO’s – thing is they’re both decent guys and are good friends so it’s really painful and perplexing and I feel like I’m losing my mind. I keep telling myself why do create such stories in my head? Am I doomed to be alone forever if I keep this up? I’m 37 and have never been in a serious, committed relationship. 🙁 Glad to know I’m not alone or losing my sanity but Limerence definitely mirrors that.
Hi Delle, and welcome to LwL!
I am a lifelong limerent and I also found this made it much harder to get into a long term relationship when I was younger as I get incredibly shy and flustered around my LOs making starting a relationship with them virtually impossible. In the end, my first long term relationship was with someone I did not have an LE for – they were really into me and I think that made it much easier to relate to them in a normal way. I fell deeply in love with them in the end, but in a normal way as the relationship developed.
I am pretty convinced that focusing on shame is not a helpful strategy for dealing with an LE and will only succeed in making you more unhappy. Think of limerence as an addiction. Making yourself feel bad is good way of amping up your mind’s drive to obtain a big dose of its favourite drug – LE contact or fantasy. And what have you done to be ashamed of? Accept limerence as an aspect of yourself that is absolutely fine… you are a day dreamer and there is nothing wrong with that. Try to chip away at the addiction, focus on some self-love and trying to live a full purposeful life despite the LE. Creating alternative sources of happiness is a better cure than shame. Not so easy but there are many many gems strewn across this site that will help you.
Wishing you well.
Oh, that glimmer. The hyper-focus where I noticed the veins on thier hands, the scent of them, the beads of sweat that appeared on their brow (were they limerent, also? I’ll never know). I remember it like it was yesterday and every time I access the memory I flirt with losing myself to rumination.
Yeah. Thank Bob that’s over. That was THREE YEARS OF MY LIFE.
I choose to believe that I would not be where I am today without LO and my LE. I wouldn’t know I could actually become addicted to another person and I’d still be fumbling around in the darkness .
You don’t know what you know till you know it.
I’ve only just learnt about limerence, even though I’m onto LO3. LO2 was over 10 years ago and went on for a few years. I swore that if I got in that situation again I would cut off all contact with the guy. This one is a strange one as it happened over a few zoom work meetings with a man over the other side of the country, so it sort of doesn’t seem real, BUT That glimmer was there though. with the look in his eye, his smile, his voice all hooking me in. He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, but of course that doesn’t mean he’s single. It would be very unpro just to contact him. These meetings went on over a month and ended 2 months ago, but the feelings are just as strong. I doubt if he’d given me a second thought. I can’t remember everyone I’ve had zoom meetings with over the last year! I live alone, have been working from home a lot during covid and have anxiety: none of which helps the situation! Though going out and seeing friends recently hasn’t really lessened it, it just makes me think I’d rather see him instead of them. Bad I know! Especially as he’s not even someone I’ve seen in real life. I can’t help thinking I’d like to though….
Interesting. There was a guy in a zoom class I felt was focused on me. He was super nice, cute, smart, and married.
I never reached out to him, nor crushed on him, mostly since he was married. And he did not have the glimmer in my eye.
But he repeatedly reached out to me, tho strictly in the guise of helping me.
I also noticed that sometimes his wife would also join the zoom class with her own link (and with her video and off and silent) tho she was not in our class. That confused me, until I realized she might have been watching him.
I always replied to his messages in the briefest and polite way, if at all. I did not want to encourage any of it.
I like him as a writer and poet, and if he were single I’d be interested. But since he’s married – I will not even flirt.
I think that it’s correct as others have said, that “the glimmer” is an emotional response. Not biological or physical (although it becomes very physical with all the neurochemicals that get involved).
My understanding of this is that this person represents and touches something in us that either is related to needs that have been unmet for a long time in us, most often since childhood. They can be things like feeling seen, heard, understood, accepted, loved etc. This person either meets that need, or represents a promise of that need being met. Sometimes it’s as simple as the LO likes me, had feelings for me, first, and that really hits a feeling of being seen, lovable, important desirable, etc. Maybe there’s not much about the LO I really like myself. Maybe I don’t even think of whether this person is someone I would like to be with. The only thing that makes me feel that LE is that the LO wants ME, and that’s enough, because I have a deep, unmet need to feel loved (coming from emotional neglect in childhood, and no real person will ever be able to fill that need if I don’t do it myself first, by loving myself, as I would have if I had felt loved in childhood). So it’s just a fantasy of someone finally filling that void.
Or, it’s related to traits that attract us, because we lack them in ourselves. Like someone being really warm, friendly and open, when I would want to be like that, but I am emotionally repressed, cold and distanced, and maybe I blame that on my marriage and my spouse, when I’m reality it’s a trait that’s part of my personality, developed in childhood because of emotional neglect. So when I see this in my LO, I imagine they will make me feel whole.
Or it could be traits that remind me of a caretaker that I really craved love and attention from. Or someone I am drawn to “help” or “fix” because they have the same issues as a caretaker had. Like, I know some people who have been in limerence with guys who were drug abusers or alcoholics etc, because they had a father who was. This lasted until they fixed themselves, the wounds from childhood, and became aware of these things.
I absolutely believe LE is highly curable when we stop thinking these people are a biological match and “made” for us. And start looking within to heal the wounds and lacks in us that attract us to them. We must meet our own needs and become aware, and then we will begin feeling attraction for people who are good for us. And these attractions will be slower, calmer and much more healthy. That’s when we can build healthy relationships instead of fantasies and idealised relationships. And we can stop getting involved with LOs who will most likely turn our lives into nightmares and often into very toxic relationships. And/or ruin other possibly good relationships in our lives.
I’ve only recently discovered the word “limerence” and that it describes me completely. I’ve had many LOs, looking back, and discovering there is a word for it is both reassuring and horrifying. Long story but…i have a friend who has confessed to me that she has had this effect on people more than once. What she is describing is multiple people who were limerent for her, over a span of many years – men and women – without using that word. She does not know why she has this effect on people. These limerents get to the point where they do confess their feelings, and she tells them never to contact her again. She is either 1) a narcissist who can somehow sniff out the limerents and get them hooked or 2) is some kind of chameleon that knows just the right way to make an emotional connection that limerents find irresistable! Has anyone else experienced such a thing??
My most recent LO (whom I’m STILL trying to get over after four years) is one of those chameleon types, I think. Adorable but not quite beautiful enough to be intimidating, she excels at getting really into whatever the person she’s into is into. And that feels very validating–until she’s done with you and on to the next person. She’s quick with a sarcastic quip and asks a lot of questions, yet rarely answers deeply in response. I’ve come to believe she doesn’t have nearly the depth I envisioned. She was also a millennial (about half my age) and so a big text-er. All that texting was new to me…and kind of like crack. (So true that limerents are particularly turned on by the written word in social media: the asynchronous aspect and chance to overthink every line, which DrL talks about this week.) I think now our 3-mo “relationship” really was mostly just some 10,000 texts and a whole lot of reverie in my head. I did confess my feelings and I wish to god she had told me never to contact her again. But alas, that is not what happened. She confessed to having the same feelings (although I doubt now that was even true). We had a couple of brief physical encounters and I think that’s what has kept me still even thinking about her. That and the fact that I do still see her around and I don’t have any possibility of the consuming excitement of a new relationship to distract me. This is what happens when you are middle-aged and in an often-lonely 20-yr marriage. At least, this is what I keep telling myself. Over and over and over…
Be glad your friend is just a friend.
“i have a friend who has confessed to me that she has had this effect on people more than once. What she is describing is multiple people who were limerent for her, over a span of many years – men and women – without using that word. She does not know why she has this effect on people.”
@crut.
If only we could interview her! Not to berate her or anything, but to understand why some people are just glimmery. 😛
It sounds like she wouldn’t be able to tell us why she glimmers for multiple people – she doesn’t know herself.
Personally, I think the chameleon idea has potential. I had an LO who told me he was a chameleon – he changed his personality based on who he was around. The longer I knew him, the more similar to me he became, despite the fact he harshly criticised me for many traits I had he supposedly didn’t like in the beginning. It was confusing to say the least! I never knew where I stood with him.
I think some people might be chameleons simply because they haven’t figured out who they are as people yet. There’s nothing malicious about it. I think chameleons have yet to establish a strong sense of their own identity, maybe behave codependently in friendships, and this comes across as mixed signals.
This reply is a bit late lol but I recognise that quality oddly enough in myself. Since I was a child I’ve been the object of someone’s affection at some point. Then the crush fades and they move on. However the issue for me is that when I discover that someone has developed feelings for me, I then turn them into an LO! It’s not a good thing. I’m 43 now and it still happens with men I meet of different ages. I’m married so it’s not good for me to develop feelings myself. Nothing ever comes of it but I hate the angst that occurs for the brief time that it’s happening. And yes, I do possess the chameleon ability to morph into what they want me to be. Mostly because I’m still trying to figure out who I am myself. I have mental health issues too which are being addressed but sometimes it seems like that attracts limerents along with the way I look, which I have been told is very attractive. Add to that a flirtatious personality and it’s disaster all around for everyone! Thank God my husband understands and knows I wouldn’t actively do anything to jeopardise our marriage.
the glimmer! god! it’s so tantalizing and fascinating and exciting!
ugh.
just discovered limerence (the Marginalian, anyone?) and glad
to have found this site.
I recognized the glimmer of my current LO immediately and even without knowing anything about the concept of limerence yet I knew she was like a terrible drug I was helpless to resist and that she would ruin me. of course I went ahead and tried to negotiate a friendship. of course it didn’t go well. but then I became entangled with her (young adult) kids. and it all dragged on for so much longer… and now I’m on NC with them all and hoping desperately the limerence will finally fade away.
but that glimmer, man.
it’s like a damn freight train.
I am so so grateful to this site for your help with dealing with my previous limerent episode. It took almost four years, but I do finally feel truly free. The book was invaluable.
I also appreciate this article about the glimmer. Managed to apply the brakes sharply before heading down the road back to limerent madness!
Hi, Sophie!
How’s your son doing?
I would like to know what you ( author) mean by if you do encounter an LO, you try to enjoy it responsibly. It would help me to know what you mean by that. Can you elaborate?
Thank you!
Hi Opalle,
I mean: can you use the limerence energy for more productive and healthy purposes? I elaborate on the idea a bit more in this post, but the basic idea is that limerence can be a source of energy and motivation if you can manage your emotions effectively. But, it is like riding a tiger…
But, if you choose to try and ride the tiger…
https://livingwithlimerence.com/can-limerence-be-safely-harnessed/ (2018)
Interestingly, “Why Am I So Down On Limerence(2020)” has over 3 times the comments, 209 vs 65.
I’m stunned. To the point I’ve been laying on the couch reading this article and comment thread, and I’m practically paralyzed. But my hands are shaking. I’m an INFP, by the way. There’s a name for what I’ve been experiencing my entire life. It was never a term used in 4 yrs of therapy. I’m in the midst of a LE right now. I met this person on a zoom call as a physician treating a serious disease that took 2.5 yrs to diagnose. Had two long Zoom (40 mins-long by current health care standards) calls with him in early August, then met him in person mid treatment. It was electric. Glimmer, indeed. He’s not particularly handsome, but he is brilliant. In our previous calls I’d been able to make him giggle, which charmed me. And took away some of the fear of what I was going thru. But that initial meeting. It was like we’d always known each other. We were finishing each other’s sentences. The connection was instant. I could barely look at him because I feared he’d see it. In the middle of our discussion of what was happening in my treatment, he looked at me and said, “I really like talking to you.” To which I replied that I really like talking to him as well. That was in September. We continue to have zoom telehealth meetings. I’m obsessed. Thinking of him 24/7. Sexual fantasies. Social media stalking. Of course, he’s married. Though he’s no longer wearing his wedding ring. We’ve had odds bonding things come up. i.e. – we recently both lost a parent, on the same day. I have enough emotional intelligence to know I’m not going “there” with a married man. I won’t start an affair. (Thank you years of therapy for that boundary, and female sexual appliances.) He recently gave me his cell phone and said I should call him any time I needed him. Not using it other than to acknowledge his text. I’m keeping up all my social activities, within the bounds of Covid, and I’ve discussed it with a couple of friends, so I’m not keeping it a secret. The odds of this being anything permanent are tiny. There are days I feel crazy. I’m so grateful to have found this resource. I feel I’ll just have to emotionally ride this out thru my treatment and monitoring while trying to maintain my regular life. Thank you for writing about this and offering this forum. Big sigh.
Aaaaaah, Ann – I feel your pain/pleasure, haha. I am 40 and I only recently discovered this concept within the past few months. And I have been reading about psychology and self-help stuff for 20 years?? Why did we not know about limerence?? I am sending you good energy and strength. Your LE sounds magical/hellish lol. Awareness is the first step to…. something? I’m an INFJ myself.
I’ve experience this “glimmer” like love at first site. At first I think it’s normal but I realized recently how obsessed I’ve become with my LO. I can’t focus my attention away from them and always find myself trying to look for him. I also realized that I always have the urge to talk about him so often that I think my friends have noticed my obsession. My friend is actually the person who introduced me to the limerence concept which fits me perfectly.
My glimmers are almost always the same, but my most recent was quite obvious. My LO was the new kid who mysteriously hadn’t been coming to class for the first few school days and I didn’t pay attention to it. But the day he first came… I just got a odd feeling about him. I learned over time how shy and quiet he was and he seemed so mysterious that it infatuated me. Over time, I realized how I always looked forward to seeing him and how I always wanted to be involved with him.
I no longer have class with him but I became so obsessed about being close to him I make every excuse to try to get near him. I feel like it’s unhealthy and now that I’m aware of this obsession, I’m trying to reverse it but I feel so emotionally connected to him that I can’t help be fascinated by him and constantly have him on my thoughts.
And now that I think about this. I don’t think he’s my first LO. Is it normal to have multiple LO’s and trying to actually seek new LO’s out? I usually find myself trying to find new LO’s when my obsession or limerence for them has ended.
Hi Madi. I really can relate to what you are saying. I think shy introverts make good LOs because they leave us plenty of scope for us to project our fantasy person upon. So of course the person you obsess about, and feel connected to, isn’t really them, it is the custom-tailored version you have constructed in your mind.
The constant thoughts are the worst aren’t they? If only there were an off switch!
Once the LE is on the wane, I think it is pretty normal for the mind to try and replace the neurochemical buzz from the previous LE with another. I can feel that urge myself currently but I know that it would be a mistake to allow it. I must find other healthier ways to fill that void. A life of being in and out of limerence is a life spent lost in daydreams, not truly living, and missing out on opportunities for real human connection and fulfilment.
Allie,
“…missing out on opportunities for real human connection and fulfilment.”
I think fulfillment is a really strong word. How many things in life reach that level? To me, that implies a soul level, where a person is really excited by something or deeply satisfied, which I think why limerence seeps into the little cracks and gaps (or gaping holes 🙂 ).
I think I get what you mean. I think it is a mistake though to believe that fulfilment only comes from large, powerful, intense experiences, such as love and limerence. Of course these experiences can fulfil us completely in an almost effortless way but are so very rare. With the right frame of mind, you can experience fulfilment briefly many times per day from small inconsequential but lovely moments. But you have to be looking for them, and paying attention to the here and now. For me, limerence eclipses those moments completely so I don’t truly notice them or take the time to fully absorb that mini hit of pleasure. Before my LE, I used to actively do this and I did feel relatively content and fulfilled in life, even though everything was not exactly as I wanted it and some needs went unmet.
So my best idea to be able to resist that initial urge, when my brain starts to rationalize: “Just one talk, just getting to know them and then NC, I can do that!” is this:
I disclose to my husband right away. This is my insurance, that I can’t lie to him or myself, that I could be friends with this person in any way.
And then I give myself a reward, that is almost as good as getting to know a potential LO could be. Like smoke a cigarette (stopped years ago, still crave it like hell – but know for sure I won’t start again, because of my kid) and then go out for a really fancy dinner with SO. Do something spicy after, have a little adventure. Eat 5 chocolate sufflés. Buy myself a new dress. The decision then to not succumb to the glimmer is so much easier, if I have a really really good alternative. It’s expensive though, I know, it’s a luxury not everyone can afford. To be really honest, the cigarette would probably be motivating enough and I just enjoy all of the rest.
I wonder, can you manufacture your own glimmer? I swear I did it myself. I was talking to another co-worker about something and the subject of coffee came up. Casually I asked said co-worker about LO’s coffee preferences. She told me what coffee she liked and the coffee shop that she frequented.
The next opportunity I got to see LO, I stopped by said coffee shop and ordered her favorite drink and then got the rest of the office something as well. I got to the office and LO was the last to the break room, where we were all drinking our coffee. She looks at the cup sitting there on the table by itself and looks up at me and says “Adam is this coffee for me?” I told her it was. She says “Thank you Adam you are so sweet” and I swear I got the biggest dopamine hit I have in my entire life when I heard those words. I knew what I was doing. Maybe I didn’t know what the result would be. But I knew what the effort was targeted at.
Adam,
Glimmer is what attracts you. Buying her favorite coffee drink knowing she liked it is soliciting reciprocation. The reciprocation is what gets you high. You went fishing and she bit.
LO #2 likes Pugs. When she moved out on her BF, I sent her a Pug calendar as a “housewarming” present.
We “manufacture ” opportunities. Like those needless texts and emails.
Bruuuuh i feel you one time i wasn’t gonna come Uni bcuz of an illness i had and i told my group with LO i was gonna miss Uni for 2 weeks on Uni i ended up feeling better on first day and when she saw me her eyes lit up, big smile and said whilst walking to me ” i thought you wasnt gonna come” sat down said it again and then said it thrice that was the biggest dopamine i ever got 😭😭😂
How does one handle it when the LO is all warm during one interaction and aloof/disinterested in the next one. Does this signify a behavioral trait in the LO. Am struggling with this at the moment. NC would have been a good option, as it would have meant eliminating the interactions. Unfortunately, NC or even LC does not seem to be possible. I know the goal is to not be affected much by this. I am trying to not let this affect my mind, not succeeding a lot, as of now. Trying to replace LO thoughts with other thoughts, maybe it gets better with time. Thanks for listening and would appreciate suggestions.
AN…that is a very similar trait to my LO. She could be so warm at times that it sent my limerence into overdrive. I was so sure she felt a romantic connection to me. Then the next day she was very aloof. Sent me in a tailspin.
Over time I came to realize that my LO was a somewhat immature person. Her interactions are relationally shallow, and her aloofness became frustrating. This helped knock her down a few pegs. At the same time I invested in friendship with another woman in the office who is much more relationally savvy. She is everything LO is not when it comes to relational interaction. She is not an LO at all, I have no real romantic attraction to her, but I do desire friendship from her and find myself enjoying our interactions. This woman has helped suppress my LE a bit as well.
I have noticed, the more I make an artery to keep LO at more than an arms distance, the better my mood is. When I start giving in to relational interactions with her is when she is most in my thoughts. Having a different person to invest in emotionally helps distract me from investing in LO at all.
But…for you it will just take time. I’ve been at it for 15 months now.
Same here, AN. Except my LO will go beyond warm and into flirty territory (making allusions to past romantic conversations) and alluding to out PA (over for 9 months now). This is the worst for trying to escape an LE, as it is keeping you trapped in a Skinner Box. Ultimately, though, one can escape the Box oneself. It takes time, as close to NC as you can get, and a LOT of processing. I think Speedwagon has tried keeping his interactions with his LO very routine, so they are more predictable and without the kind of personal/flirty interactions that can send limerence into overdrive and interrupt one’s progress. So, if LC is not possible, then doing what you can to keep interactions polite but distant so your LO has nothing to be “warm” about, is probably your best bet. I also recommend the Emergency Deprogramming Course here. All the very best to you.
“How does one handle it when the LO is all warm during one interaction and aloof/disinterested in the next one. Does this signify a behavioral trait in the LO.”
I have wondered about this myself. I think it probably is a behavourial trait in some LOs. I guess the only way to know for sure is … observe if LO is like that with everyone? I.e. does the LO sort of switch between friendly/neutral with most or all of their social circle? If they’re like that with everyone, then I guess one can safely say it’s just a fixed personality trait?
The problem with limerents is limerents become emotionally dependent on LO’s behaviour. So if an LO is acting neutral, the limerent might assume that they, the limerent, has done something wrong to make the LO mad and/or withdraw, when the LO is just zoning out because zoning out periodically is just what they do i.e. a fixed personality trait.
I think the warm/aloof pattern of some LOs wouldn’t even be noticeable to most people. The only people who would notice ir and/or care are limerents.
I kind of liked somebody once. Over time, I realised that he didn’t really pay attention to the people around him. He only seemed to perk up when he was the subject of discussion. I don’t know if that’s narcissism or just being young or a combination of narcissism and just being young. But such frequent and unpredictable shows of disinterest would probably be disheartening to a prospective romantic partner… One moment he was bright and interested and engaged, and the next moment he was blank!
“tone of voice”
I noticed a lot of people talk about their LO’s eyes as sparking the glimmer.
For me, the moment I noticed LO for the first time was his voice. We were all in a lecture, going round introducing ourselves. I wasn’t even facing LO, when he started introducing himself. It caught my attention. I wouldn’t say it was attraction, just his voice … it wasn’t anything he said, but I felt like I could read so much in the tone and speed of speech. When I looked at him, he was all masked up (Covid) so although I eventually found him incredibly attractive, I couldn’t even really see him at the start.
Anyone else have a non-standard trigger for glimmer?
I absolutely love the sound of my LO’s voice. She has a fairly unique voice and way of speaking, and I don’t even know that most people would consider it attractive, but it’s intoxicating to me and has always triggered something inside me. I could happily spend hours listening to her read the dictionary to me over the phone.
My LOs voice is unique in its own way as well. To look at her, she does not look Latina. However she is and can speak fluent Spanish. Which is just sexy as hell, and adds to all her other 500+ charms, I am so freaking in love with.
I made a good choice today! Actually two!!
I was feeling kinda down today – my LO is inexplicably ghosting me this week, my SO was just diagnosed with an obesity-related chronic illness (and responded to the diagnosis by saying this is a wake up call for her, and then promptly skipped her workout and spent the evening watching tv and eating ice cream), and my Achilles tendinitis flared up bad enough that I know I have to take a couple weeks off from running.
So I think I was in a vulnerable state, and then as luck would have it I ended up having a long conversation alone with a coworker who will be leaving soon – we’ve worked together off and on but have never gotten to know each other that well, but today we ended up talking for like an hour, and she told me a lot of really personal stuff and then told me she didn’t know why she was opening up to me so much because she never opens up to people, and I told her some personal stuff too, and we were making lots of eye contact and smiling a lot. And she was exactly my type – a pretty Latina with sad eyes and a difficult life. And it all started to feel a bit glimmery… and I was feeling a bit vulnerable…
And then at the end of our conversation, she said she really wanted to keep in touch after she left, and asked if she could have my contact information. I was right on the edge of giving her my cell number and saying “text me anytime!”. But I paused, thought better of it, and reminded her that she has my work email and can use it to get in touch if needed. No exchange of numbers, no chance for texting and entering into the devil’s playground!
Then tonight I’m at the airport to catch a flight, and there’s a pretty young woman in the security line right behind me, and the line is moving really slow and she starts a little conversation with me for a minute, and then we get through security and she smiles at me real sweet and says “have a safe flight!” And I smiled and said you too, which for normal people would be the end of it, but of course I spend the next twenty minutes wondering if she’ll be on the same flight as me and if maybe we’d end up seated next to each other and that it would be nice to cuddle a bit… and then I got to the gate and found she was indeed taking the same flight, and I thought of the perfect thing to say to her to invite further conversation in a way that would have been friendly but not creepy… and then I put on my headphones, walked to the other side of the gate, and waited in a seat where I couldn’t see her.
So I think I recognized that I was just super vulnerable today, and actually made a point of holding barriers for myself. Get up and do it again tomorrow…
I’m really impressed, LiS. Especially as you were feeling vulnerable. I’m sorry to hear about your wife’s diagnosis. I suppose she was comforting herself with food but it must be hard to see.
Thanks C for cat! The theme of my life right now continues to be practicing acceptance. Accept that my SO may or may not choose to take care of her health, and I don’t get to decide for her. Accept that I can’t have a real relationship with my LO. Accept that I have these desires inside me that I just need to control and keep them from controlling me.
The Achilles tendinitis is a good reminder about acceptance. A sports medicine doctor I used to work with liked to say “100% of overuse injuries are caused by overuse”. Once you have an injury like that, you just can’t push through it – it’ll only get worse the harder you push. The only way to make it better is to accept it for what it is, respect it, and rest until it heals. Accepting it and backing off will let it heal. Anything else will only make it worse and cause more problems in the long run.
“Accept that I can’t have a real relationship with my LO. Accept that I have these desires inside me that I just need to control and keep them from controlling me.”
I think I need to get this tattooed on the inside of my eyelids, LiS!
I fell into a rabbit hole yesterday and sprained my ankle. A week before my play opens. I have no problem accepting that I need to rest to heal that. Probably because I have a big incentive – to be OK for the play! I need to bring my incentive to accept and back off my LO – my commitment to my SO relationship – to the fore in the same way.
Haha I think this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone use the phrase “fell into a rabbit hole” and didn’t mean it metaphorically! Hope your ankle is feeling better!
And agreed, it’s all about prioritizing incentives. Like I really want to find a way to spend time alone with my LO this week, but I REALLY want to live a happy life with my SO and my kids. And even though my desire for LO is more immediate and exciting, the other desire is deeper and more fulfilling so I need to just keep focusing on that.
-LiS
Yes, ironic really since I keep falling into the metaphorical one too!
It’s swollen and sore but I’m trying to rest up as much as I can.
This is brilliant stuff, LiS. I am really impressed with your choices. Well done, you!
In and out of this blog these days, trying to keep up with people’s stories when i can but the commenting format makes it difficult unless one is on here a few times a day. C for Cat I hope things are better (last post I saw was you had conversed with LO and agreed no eye contact, but you were very upset that he called time). Adam, I didn’t know you had told your SO about LO – very admirable and I hope that is helping you to move on.
But LiS, your story is especially touching to me. I must say I am jealous of your LO and the feelings you have for her. You seem like a really lovely person: your responses to Bridgelover were so thoughtful and caring. I’m kind of in love with you myself, tbh…
My story, for those who knew anything, has not progressed much other than my LO asking to connect through LinkedIn (I disconnected us a few weeks ago when I was triggered by one of his posts that had huge resonance for our brief PA, and I thought it best to not be exposed to him unnecessarily) and he flirted with me in a work situation. So I finally wrote him an email with most of what I would say to him if he ever bothered to engage – telling him how disappointed I was with how he dealt with a difficult situation, his hot-and-cold behaviour since (including asking me to meet then standing me up!) and how he made me feel. he responded immediately saying he wanted to talk, that he has thought about the situation many times and still doesn’t know what to say, he was sorry etc…We still haven’t managed to connect in any substantive way, mainly because of schedules (he is clearly not prioritising this) and barriers (we’d need an excuse to meet). But I am feeling much better since I sent the email and politely and concisely told him what I felt. It’s like so much of my pain was connected to him discarding me and not facing what he did. And how he knows the damage he did, and at least texted he was sorry. And I think he is. And that has helped.
Hi TP! Thanks for the kind words. I’m definitely still not exclusively making good choices these days, but I have learned a lot about myself and the consequences of my choices, so it was nice to be able to share a couple of examples where I could apply what I learned and avoid further mistakes.
“I must say I am jealous of your LO and the feelings you have for her. You seem like a really lovely person: your responses to Bridgelover were so thoughtful and caring. I’m kind of in love with you myself, tbh…”
Dang, you’re like the 3rd person on here in the last couple of weeks who’s told me something along those lines. I think I’m understanding more about how I keep getting myself in trouble in real life… but anyway – thank you ❤️, it’s always nice to hear things like that. But… I’m honestly not sure my LO would agree that she’s lucky – for counterpoint I present:
https://livingwithlimerence.com/good-los/
I think it might actually be a lot easier for her to move on if I was more of a jerk and she could cast me in the villain role and make a clean break. And while I think I’m a “good LO” to her in terms of being kind and thoughtful and consistently warm and available, I’m also a bad LO because I’m married to someone else, so I can never actually give her what she wants/needs/deserves, and the more goodness I show her, the more it just hurts her to experience just a little bit of what she can’t have all the time and forever. But I just can’t imagine treating her any other sort of way.
A couple months ago we’d been doing LC and I reached out to her after she’d started crying in the elevator the moment I got on. After we talked for awhile about all the hard things going on in her life and the depression she was battling, I asked her what effect I had on her mental health and if it was ultimately good or bad, helpful or hurtful. She told me something like “it is both… that’s why I know it’s not healthy for me to spend too much time around you”. Fwiw, I told her she had both positive and negative effects on my mental health as well.
Anyway, I think there are some nice things about having a “good LO”, but it can also just make it a lot more challenging to escape the limerence, and can make the fact of not being able to actually be with the other person so much more painful. I know that me and my LO, while never saying a single unkind word to each other and only wanting good things for each other, have cause each other many tears, sleepless nights and panic attacks.
I apologize that I don’t remember the details of your situation. Do I recall that he is married and you are single, and you had a relationship that briefly turned physical and then he ghosted you? That would be so incredibly painful… I’m really glad you got to send that email and that he responded – hopefully that helped you feel like you took back a little control over the situation and were able to at least be heard.
Your friend,
LiS
LiS, C4C and I still got room for you and your new friend down at the Coffehouse, lol..
Thanks for all that helpful context, LiS. I do think that even though you being a “good” limerent, and your LO being a “good LO” brings its challenges, I also think it behoves us well to treat others like human beings, with kindness and respect. And to that extent, having a “bad LO” who is disrespectful and inconsiderate, brings extra challenges, even for getting over the LE.
My LO and I are both married with kids, me very unhappily, he unhappily but more manageably so. To be very reductionist about it, we had a few months of a flirty EA, and then basically a one-night stand, after which he ghosted me in the sense of ignoring or playing dumb to my follow up messages (which were not obsessive or anything scary, in my defence) and wanting to pretend nothing happened. It’s an absolute mess, and one that could have been avoided with some human decency and communication. An LE is hard enough without being treated like dirt. I suspect DrL would say I’ve brought all the pain on myself for having a EA/PA but my marriage and family circumstances are so miserable, and I am so desperate for basic human connection that I lost my mind. And I don’t think asking for minumum consideration, even from a LO, is beyond any human being.
Hi TP!
Regarding my situation, I’m pretty sure that my LO is also limerent for me, so I’ve been spending some time thinking about myself as the LO as well as the limerent, and thinking about what effects my words and behaviors might have on her as she tries to manage her own feelings. That’s helped me to accept that sometimes when she goes cold and puts distance between us, it’s most likely a defense mechanism for her as she’s trying to control her own feelings and keep from doing anything she’d regret (she’s told me variations of this several times).
But yes, I agree 100% that we should always people with kindness and respect. In your situation, I can imagine reasons for your LO’s behavior – perhaps after the PA he felt much more guilt or much more fear of losing his marriage than he had anticipated – but IMO that doesn’t give him an excuse to just totally cut you off and treat you poorly. If he’d wanted to have a real discussion and tell you that he was sorry but just couldn’t continue on with the relationship with you because of guilt and obligation, then I think you’d have to respect that regardless of how much it would hurt, but to just be ghosted and have him not even talk to you at all is just too painful and cruel. I know I couldn’t ever do that to a person.
When things were really intense in my EA, my LO asked me a few times what would happen if we did get physical. She’d ask stuff like “if it did happen between us, would you hate me forever and never talk with me again?” “Would you feel so guilty that you could never look at me again?”, stuff like that. It was a really big concern of hers. I didn’t really understand it then, I told her it would honestly probably be the opposite, that it would make me feel even closer to her and would make me want to be in a full blown affair with her, maybe even leave my (relatively happy) marriage for her. To me, the risk of sex was that it would bond me to her so strongly that I would actually destroy my family for her. For her, she felt that the biggest risk of getting physical would be the guilt we would feel, and part of that would be the risk of me never wanting to talk to her again. I told her that I never thought I would blame her for “leading me astray” or anything like that, and again that I never could imagine wanting to end my relationship with her or cut her out of my life, but I admitted that I couldn’t really know how I’d feel if we did actually get physical, and I didn’t know how bad my guilt would actually be and what that might make me do, just because I’d never had that experience before.
Do you think your LO is struggling heavily with guilt? Like maybe he thought the EA was all fun and games and no one would get hurt, and then suddenly it got out of control and he ended up doing something he never thought he’d actually do, and then panicked? And now he’s trying to just pretend like it never happened out of guilt and shame? Or do you seem him as more of the people-user type who got what he wanted from you and then left you out to dry? I don’t condone his behavior in either of those scenarios, but the first would be more forgivable than the second.
-LiS
PS – TP, do you remember where you posted your story originally? I want to catch up on it without making you rehash everything, but it’s so hard to find people’s comments between all of these different comments sections.
Hi TP, thanks for thinking of me. Things are better; we agreed to try really hard to keep contact friendly, avoid being alone (which is fairly easy unless we specifically plan it, which we won’t do), too much eye contact etc. We both have a big incentive because we want to be able to keep doing the hobby we love and that means spending time together. We also both want to keep our relationships with our SOs. It is really hard, but we’re doing quite well with a couple of relapses. And obviously the physical contact we have to have in the play means a lot to us both and isn’t helping!
I’ve written lots of the most helpful (to me) bits from this blog into a note on my phone, as well as put a countdown timer for breaking a habit on there. I read that breaking a habit takes three weeks – obviously with limerence that’s not the case! – but I thought it would at least be a visual reminder to me. I set it for a week at first then I can extend it. And if in my weird brain I only have to be good for a few days at a time, that’s easier to manage!
I think we’re all a little bit in love with LiS aren’t we 😉
I’m glad you feel better for making things clear to your LO on how he made you feel, TP. I hope he’s not doing that thing where you pull back for your own sanity and he misses the flattering attention so tries to connect again. Being discarded and then not having any further contact to explain or apologise for the behaviour is so painful.
I’ve read your original post that you linked to, and I really feel for you. I wish you had someone who gave you the physical closeness you need, without the behaviour your LO is displaying. I mean, I wish your SO was that for you. Do you know the reasons he is like that? Do you think there is any hope for a future with your SO, if things continue like this?
Agreed, your responses to me were thoughtful and caring and I appreciate them greatly!
Thanks, LiS. I suspect you have captured the situation well regarding his reasons for pulling away, although I have concern that feeling his cold behaviour as a defence mechanism is wishful thinking on my part – very flattering to the ego. I know before we got physical he was concerned that sleeping together would “cause a certain chemistry to develop” and I assumed he meant me, as I don’t think he is the type to develop intense feelings. He certainly acts like someone who doesn’t give a toss. But of course I have no idea as he won’t talk to me in any substantive way.
So yes, I suspect he is in the former camp – feels guilt and shame. And 100% I would have understood if he had said the day afterwards that he felt bad about what happened and we can’t continue. He would have been absolutely right! And although I would have been disappointed in a way, of course I would have respected it and agreed with it, in my rational mind at least.
Here is DrL’s blog post inspired by my story: https://livingwithlimerence.com/new-year-purpose/
and the original story with a follow-up comment in this thread (there are a few follow-up comments throughout the blog but I can’t find them all now):https://livingwithlimerence.com/coffeehouse-limerence-at-christmas/#comment-37196
Hi TP,
Sorry I didn’t write back to you yesterday – I was with family all day and didn’t have a chance to do any writing. But I did read through your story in the links you gave, and I have a lot of thoughts I want to share with you – I should have time to write them all down later today. In the meantime, I hope you have as good of a day as you can!
– LiS
Hi TP,
I spent some time last night reading through your story. It just broke my heart for you, almost brought me to tears and definitely just made my heart hurt for you. And it also made me pretty angry on your behalf, thinking about how both of the main men in your life have treated you.
First off… this might be controversial, but I don’t think you have anything to feel guilty about with regards to your SO. Nine years without any type of physical affection?!? Withdrawing from you any time you try for affection, and not even seeing it as a problem to work on? I don’t know how on earth you made it that long, honestly. IMO, if he’s been withholding all forms of physical affection from you for 9 years, his right to expect sexual fidelity ended about 8 years ago. Anyone can decide for themselves that they want to choose a life of celibacy, but I don’t think they have the right to unilaterally make that choice for someone else.
Anyway, I have a lot of questions about your SO and your relationship, but I’ll save that for later if it’s something you want to discuss. But overall, i just can’t imagine the pain of being in a marriage devoid of any physical intimacy or even affection, and I don’t think you can be blamed at all for seeking it elsewhere.
Now, to your LO… I really tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Obviously I’m in no place to judge anyone for engaging in an emotional affair. And I’m not going to judge anyone for slipping into a PA either, because I know damn well it could have been me if my LO was a little more aggressive or less worried about morality. But I just can’t find anything to justify his behavior after the PA happened. I just can’t. It’s just wrong.
Ok, so let’s say he got freaked out when things got physical. He thought it was just a lot of fun flirting, things went to far, he got scared, decided it had to end. Ok, that’s understandable. But to completely ghost you? To go completely cold and deny you any sort of closure or resolution? Not ok. He got to do all the fun stuff with you, now he’s gotta deal with everything that comes after and not just run away from it. I mean, it seems like there’s two possibilities – either he cut you off to protect himself and his own feelings, or he cut you off because he didn’t actually care about you at all. In the first scenario, he’s a selfish and gutless prick. In the second scenario, he’s a narcissistic prick. Either way, he’s a prick.
But the worst part… he continued to flirt with you off and on since cutting you out of his life?!? Pulling you in just enough to go cold again? WTF?!? That’s inexcusable. Despicable. Seriously, f@&$ that dude. I assume he knows your situation with your marriage, knows how vulnerable you are, knows how much you were craving connection, has to know how much it would hurt you for him to pull away, and now he’s playing games with you? Sorry, that’s just complete bull$h*t. Just not ok at all.
I was so sad to hear about the thoughts in your head, feeling that you’re worthless, like garbage. NO! You are not! If anyone’s garbage it’s the dude who keeps messing with your heart for some kinda game… if anything, you could say that your “picker” is off and you made a mistake getting involved with this particular guy, but I’d say that’s something you can forgive yourself for. But his behavior… it makes my blood boil.
Of course, you can’t control him, and you can’t turn back time – you can only control what you take from this experience and what you do in the future. So maybe there are a couple of good things you can take from this – you learned some things about yourself and your own needs, and maybe this will be a catalyst to take some more actions to get your life back. But I’d just hate to see you stuck in regret or shame or being made to feel worthless because this other guy can’t behave decently. That’s his problem, not yours.
Anyway, I’d love to keep chatting with you more on here, to hear more about your story and offer support and maybe help you process things a bit and move forward. And I think you can help me as well – I feel like your situation has some definite parallels to my LO, and I’m just trying to walk such a tightrope trying to do right by both my SO and my LO while also managing my own strong emotions and desires, so I need all the help I can get as well.
Big middle fingers to your LO and your SO, big hugs to you, hope to hear from you more.
-LiS ❤️
PS – have you seen the movie The Fablemans? I watched it right before reading your posts last night. It’s a really powerful and nuanced movie about the same stuff we’re all dealing with. I think you’d get a lot from it if you haven’t seen it yet.
So I just posted some pretty strong opinions about TP’s LO and his behavior, which has me thinking about my own behavior as the LO to my LO. I’d be really interest in feedback in particular from the ladies who are in the tail end of LEs about how I can make things as good as possible for my LO at this stage.
I see my task overall as 2 parts – don’t let her down or leave her hanging, but also don’t escalate anything or raise her expectations or inflame her feelings.
The first part is the easier part to me, the part that comes naturally. That means honoring all the things I said to her about loving her with all my heart, about always wanting to be part of her life and always being there for her as much as possible (within our boundaries). To me at this point, that means being consistently warm and friendly to her, never being cold or distant (even when it would be protective for my own heart), always being available to talk and support her any time she asks for my time or support. It’s hard sometimes because I do feel hurt by her when she treats me coldly, and sometimes I do want to say unkind things to her or go tit-for-tat with the coldness out of my own hurt, but as long as I just pause and don’t say anything to her I couldn’t take back later, it’s actually pretty natural for me to be warm and loving to her – that’s the easy part because I do just love her so much despite all the tumult.
The harder part for me is probably the most important part – not doing anything to escalate her feelings or our relationship. While being warm and loving within our boundaries, I need to not push the boundaries. I can’t let myself make her promises I can’t keep, I can’t give her hope for things I can’t deliver, I can’t lead her on in any way. I really struggled with that a few months ago – we were existing within our boundaries, but I’d always be doing little romantic things for her which under other circumstances would be nice, but in our situation was probably actually really unfair to her, to be fanning the flames of her feelings while ultimately not being available for more. So now I’m really trying to just be warm and friendly and loving in a platonic way while being really careful not to make expressions of romantic love. Obviously she knows how I really feel about her, but I think some things are better left unsaid at this point.
I’m feeling really challenged right now, because my own feelings have been so up and down – she had gone NC with me in April, then right when I was starting to make peace with it, she unexpectedly reinitiated a warm relationship with me in late May, and then a couple weeks ago she pulled away again and now we haven’t had any contact in almost a week (I texted her to check in last Wednesday and haven’t heard anything back, and I’m doing my best to not initiate again until she does). And she warned me a couple weeks ago that she was getting really stressed and depressed about some things with her SO and her family, and that she’d need some space, so I’m trying to just remember that’s how she deals with those feelings and not take it personally or make it about me, but it’s hard. It’s just so hard to know she’s suffering and have to just let her be, but I know that’s what she wants me to do, and that she’ll reach back out if and when she wants to.
It’s also hard for me because I know she’s leaving for good in about a month now, so it’s hard not to feel like every day we aren’t in contact is a wasted opportunity to just experience a little bit of her warmth, but again, if she doesn’t have any warmth to share with me at this particular time in her life, then I can’t force it. I can just hope that I’ll get to feel her warmth again some day.
So ultimately, I’m trying to put my SO first (by being a good husband and father at home, not letting things escalate at all with LO, and being really discreet so she never has to feel any pain from knowing about LO), put LO second by doing all the stuff I mentioned above, and then myself last, and just trust that I’m going to be ok in the long run even if I go through some pain in the short term, and that in the future I’ll feel better about myself if I know I handled the end of this well and did my best not to hurt either of the women I love.
Does that sound more or less ok? Any suggestions?
Hi LIS,
I’ll try to be succinct and fair in your predicament with Lo and So.
As much as I like you and feel for your entangled situation, I feel , that the game is over… why? It’s impossible to love two persons at the same time with the same intensity.( My opinion.) You got to choose once and for all, and stop pretending that this will end well for all involved. Lo keeps testing the waters with you to see if you’ll have a change of mind by leaving your So so she can decide once and for all what she should do with her So, I think. Seeing that you keep reassuring her of your love, she has hopes that someday you will give up on your SO, I think, and be “All” hers. She doesn’t want crumbs, she wants the whole loaf, and as you said before, she has asked you if you’d leave your SO for her, to which you answered NO. But you keep on giving her some hopes. Soooo, dear, it’s time you make up your mind , because only you can do it, (Your So have no say because she doesn’t know about Lo). Do you really know what you want? Do you know Thyself like Socrates said? Do you really want to stay with SO??????
You say that you get hurt when lo treats you coldly, and that you love her with ALL your heart, ALL your heart, REALLY???? What part is left for SO??? (Examine yourself if this makes sense to you.).
You also say that it’s NATURAL for you to be warm and loving with LO, BUT not being available for more. Listen to your own words and see if it’s fair for LO to behave differently than she does. It must be so confusing to her! And it’s not in her hands to do anything because you keep being all that lovely with her. Someone has to put a STOP to it! What about having a realistic conversation the two of you? Do you intend to keep the relationship after she leaves the job? If so, this is going to blow up sooner or later, because it’s unsustainable for the two of you.
Wow, LIS, this is so hard to sort out! Love is such a compelling force, it’s beyond our strengths!!!One May think of the future and say: why didn’t I follow love then ( if you decide to stay with SO). Very difficult indeed for you. Since I have been following your story, I kind of like a happy ending with Lo…
But, but again, it’s your decision alone…. Hope you don’t have regrets when you get older. There’s always this nagging question: what if I had chosen different??? But again, who has the crystal ball to know???? I really don’t want to be in your shoes as it is now. I think you need to deeply examine yourself and weigh in all sides and make sure there’s no second guessing and that you’re surely satisfied with your decision. It’s a matter of giving up/losing something you care about so much but unfortunately the decision has to be made sooner than later. We can’t have the cake and eat too. Or sh$&&@?; or get off the pot. Someone is going to cry a lot unfortunately, can’t be avoided no matter what you do… this is not the movies or Hollywood, these are real people involved here… God have mercy and give you strength and the right solution.
Blessings.
No. This does not sound ok. I’m sorry, but you have a serious problem with flirting and engaging with women for attention. This has nothing to do with you “LO,” your “SO” or limerence. You have a serious addiction. My guess is that you are working with the wrong therapist who is not helping you be accountable for your actions or see yourself clearly. Enough with the psychoanalysis. A few months ago I was pretty sympathetic to your situation and you as a person. However, after reading about the existent of your deception to your wife, the degree of your emotional affair with this other woman- and how you try to engage with women in this forum to fill similar needs, I see you differently.
Sorry, but you are not the hero in this situation. This isn’t about these women- this is about you admitting that you need serious help. Even if your wife doesn’t know- she knows. You don’t think your constant deception contributes to her depression? Lying in couples therapy? You are not this superior person who “deserves” to lie and cheat. Sorry. Being a doctor does not put you in a morally different category. You can not keep explaining and defending your behavior away. You need help outside of an Internet forum.
You have used LWL as an echo chamber- but it’s time someone spoke up and gave you a different perspective.
You’re not the only one who speaks up.
Sometimes, LwL becomes kind of a mutual admiration society and feeds off itself. There are a few hardline posters but you can only come down so hard so often.
The site is called “Living with Limerence.” The majority of the site is aimed at transcending limerence via purposeful living and discusses its many facets (Excuse me, DrL if I’ve mischaracterized your intent.)
You can try to “Live with Limerence.” Like anything else in life, it comes with risk. Different limerents are at different risks. If you understand the risk and voluntarily assume it, a bad outcome is not a tragedy. It’s the proximate result of marginal judgment. Why any limerent’s judgment is marginal is unique to the limerent.
But, yeah, sometimes the place seems to spiral out of control.
Limerent Emeritus-
I know I am not the only one who speaks up. I imagine we mainly agree. I have a lot of respect for you perspective.
To your point that you can choose to “live with limerence” and accept the bad outcomes-
Yes. That is definitely true. However, it’s one thing if you are single- it’s another when you are married with young children and you continue to have emotional affair after emotional affair. I’m sorry. I think it is the height of irresponsibility. I absolutely think it is time for LIS to come clean to his wife (in therapy) and admit that he has a serious problem.
He is no hero. He is no nice guy. He is a charming predator. Until he is fully accountable for his behavior he will continue to look for attention and affirmation from other women. Women at the airport, women he works for, women on this forum… etc. etc.
This is the problem. Not how he is going to break it to his current affair. If he wants his life to improve he needs to accept that he needs help.
Time for a reality check.
Interesting. Am I being too sympathetic (for some reason I thought LiS had disclosed to his wife) to the limerent and too hard on the LO because I am currently in an LE of my own? Or am I generally harder on women than men? And why? Or… have I been taken in yet again by a charming man? I don’t know LiS and haven’t read his backstory because I haven’t been on here for long. I feel sad whatever the truth is.
Coldwater,
“I know I am not the only one who speaks up.”
The site of late has become enabling. A lot of that-a-boys for doing next to nothing. “Rah, rah for you! You didn’t text your LO today!” I don’t think it’s helping.
Hi Lost in Space,
I suspect that you are familiar with the practice of harm reduction. Of course my preference would be that you had been 100% faithful in thoughts and actions to your wife since the day you met, but I know that isn’t realistic and I’m not going to criticize you for your weaknesses. Lately, you recognize that you are in an on again/off again EA with your LO. Of course that isn’t ideal, but what do we do to minimize harm? I don’t know. Your strategy sounds as good as anything I can think of. I noticed that some of the LwL ladies want you to disclose to Mrs. Lost in Space. I can’t speak to whether you should disclose your EA to your wife. As far as your LO, well I can only share my experience with my EA that I had with LO1 because I didn’t have an EA with LO2 or LO3. I needed a clean break from him including no contact. It lasted maybe two years. I don’t remember. I recommend that you consider going no contact with your LO when she leaves. Another thing that might be helpful to share is that my current LO is engaging in behaviors that are helpful for me. He limits our conversations to training days and we mostly stay on topic. Any off topic chat is brief and still relevant to the discussion. I’ll give you an example. He ran in a different state recently. I said, “I see you are out of town.” He said, “Yes, I’m spending the week camping with my boys.” That was the end of it. I like how neutral and predictable our conversations are. Other than that we talk about training and strategies which has mostly been at the core of our conversations from the start. It’s very nice. I don’t get excited to hear from him anymore. It feels like a conversation with a friend and not an LO. The calm predictably is comforting. But it’s important to note that we never escalated to an EA. Predictable communication with your LO might not be doable. I don’t know. I wonder if you might consider downgrading from “warm” to “polite” until she leaves. Maybe you could approach it similarly to how Speedwagon is handling his LE. I really don’t know, but it sounds like you can’t go NC for another month.
I keep thinking about your SO. I can’t decide if I would want to know. A long time ago, we found pornography on our home computer. My SO kept saying he didn’t do it. It was confusing because he was so believable, but I knew I didn’t do it. Just the idea that my SO might have been looking at other women hurt my self esteem. I felt fat and ugly. But here’s the thing, I wasn’t fat and I’m not ugly. Even still, I questioned my value. It was rough. We figured out how to see when the images were downloaded. It was all during one week when we were in Alaska and had a house sitter taking care of our German Shepherd. Whew, but I still remember how it made me feel fat and ugly. I keep thinking that your wife doesn’t need anything in her life that makes her feel fat. She probably already feels awful about her recent diagnosis. On the other hand… remember how you and I talked about our spouses struggles with weight management? Well, LO3 is very attractive and fit which intimidates my SO. My SO started taking his health more seriously because of LO3. I had no idea this would happen, but my SO is losing weight and inches off his waist line. He looks great! He is even self-motivated to run. It’s amazing! I love that we share this passion. I couldn’t have predicted it. When people ask why he took up running, he says that he is running to keep up with his wife. He also told me things like, “I guess if you marry a beautiful woman, you can’t get upset when other men look at her.” And “We went different directions with our health and I don’t want this to become a barrier between us.” So I guess in a weird way, my SO was motivated to take better care of himself because I was talking to LO3 about training and LO3 is very fit. I can’t emphasize enough that I didn’t do this on purpose and I didn’t see it coming. But it’s nice. Running with my SO is so much fun! We make great partners. My SO thinks you should invite your SO to run with you again, btw.
Gosh, Lost in Space, I just don’t have answers for you. But I have to say something because I don’t like that you were called an insulting name. You are not a predator. You have charm, but that doesn’t make you a predator. I have never felt threatened by anything you’ve done or expressed on LwL. I do think you’re a flirt. I would guess you need some emotional intimacy and you discovered an easy way to get it from women. There might be healthier ways to get your emotional intimacy needs met. Ideally you would get most of that from your wife, close friends and family. But being flirty and being a predator are not the same thing.
Best wishes!
Hey LIS, my LO2 (current one is LO3) and I were mutually limerent for each other, but he’s married. I find “I think the world of you and care about you a great deal, but I need to disengage from you so that I can focus on my marriage” is a good way to say what needs to be said.
LiS, you are so lovely. I think you are tying yourself in knots trying to make life as easy as possible for your LO but she isn’t reciprocating in kind. Pulling away, going NC and then drawing you back in, even if it isn’t in a romantic way, must be so hard for you and I don’t think it’s really fair. I’m sorry, I know you love her and she is going through stuff but she knows how you feel about her so she should consider your feelings too, not just hers. OK, she’s suffering but so are you. She doesn’t need to be cold to you, and she doesn’t seem to be thinking about how her behaviour will have an impact on you. You said “she had gone NC with me in April, then right when I was starting to make peace with it, she unexpectedly reinitiated a warm relationship” – she’s not allowing you to be at peace with either of your relationships when she’s reeling you in and out like that..
You are trying to make life better for everyone except yourself, and you deserve to feel comfortable and know where you are with your LO. You are being exceptionally thoughtful and that is so lovely and rare; she should be doing the same.
In terms of my own situation, I’m feeling very down at the moment because, as agreed, my LO and I are trying to avoid anything that might fuel our mutual attraction but that means he’s pulling away, avoiding eye contact or being near me etc, which is really hard. I can’t help but feel rejected – I think rejection and not feeling good enough are at the core of my issues. So although my rational brain says it’s a good thing, and he’s trying to protect himself and me, my other, more insistent brain is very, very sad. Plus I’m injured, and tired, and stressed by decisions I have to make. But even with all that, I know the consistency will help to get me through this. As much as I long for the looks, the accidental touches etc, they would just drag me back into the thing I’m fighting to escape. And in return, I’m trying to respect the work he’s doing (at least, I think he’s doing, and he hasn’t just gone off me) and maintain a friendly distance too. Apart from the hug and kiss we have to do in the play, which just gets sweeter and sweeter :-(. But only a week of that left.
So what I’m trying to say, I think, is that you are doing your absolute best to be consistent too, and work out what that consistency looks like going forward, but you’re not getting it in return. And while she may be able to deal with that fine, I worry that it will hurt and confuse you even more and keep you in this limbo where she can do what she wants and you will just wait for her to decide when she wants to talk to you again.
I’m sorry if this seems harsh to you, and it’s hard to hear people say negative things about the one you love so much – and obviously I don’t know her – or you – but that’s my gut reaction in defence of a man who seems so loving and considerate but also vulnerable.
Ask and you shall receive…
Thank you all for the honest feedback. Coldwater in particular. You put into words a lot of stuff I already know deep down but have been lying to myself about.
I’m going to push back against one part of your comment, and I’m going to own the rest.
Calling me a “charming predator” is factually inaccurate. I refuse to own that. Maybe you disagree, maybe I’m just that blind to myself. But here’s the facts of my life – I was a really shy and awkward adolescent who always had crushes but never could work up the courage to approach anyone. I never had any sort of relationship until I was 19 years old, when a somewhat older woman very assertively started a relationship with me that lasted a year and a half. After we broke up, I was single for about a year, again having crushes on a couple of women I knew and was friends with, but never had the courage to make a move. Then I met my wife, we clicked instantly and things just took off pretty spontaneously. We’ve been together ever since. For the record, she initiated our relationship as well.
My wife and I have been together for 20 years. I’ve been completely faithful in heart, mind and body for 17 of those years. I’ve never had a physical affair. I’ve had 3 emotional affairs (or limerence experiences). The first developed accidentally with a med school friend as a result of just spending way too much time together – it wasn’t something either she or I was looking for. I quickly realized what was going on and I ended it. The second was with a coworker that I was again spending way too much time with, early in the COVID pandemic and less than a year after my wife and I had a major personal tragedy. I didn’t initiate that one either, just kind of fell into it at s vulnerable time in my life, and I didn’t do the right thing immediately and let it go too far emotionally and my wife caught on and was really hurt. I came clean with her, completely ended the relationship with the other woman (who I had never disclosed my feelings to) and my wife and I did a lot of good-faith marriage counseling.
This most recent EA/LE began about 8 months ago, when my wife and I were just at a really low point in our relationship. I hadn’t felt wanted or desired in many months, and then a coworker initiated a relationship with me – she initiated all the in-person contact, she initiated the texting. There was nothing predatory about my behavior – just a sad, lonely guy who responded way too enthusiastically to the attentions of an attractive coworker. And then my feelings just got way out of hand, and I justified a lot of things to myself that I wouldn’t normally ever condone, and I’m still doing it.
That’s the full extent of my extramarital relationships. Yeah, I feel attraction to various other women – women I work with on a day to day basis, women I meet at the airport, etc. I think most people do if they’re being honest. But believe it or not, I don’t actually go around flirting with anyone, and the vast majority of this stuff just lives in my own head.
This website has been both a blessing and a curse to me. When I first found it, it seemed like a lifesaver. I read everything I could, and it just made so much sense, explained so much about why I was feeling so out of control. After a few weeks of reading, I decided to make a username and post my story. I’d never actually participated in an online forum before – I’ve always just been a passive consumer of internet content.
At first, it felt really good to share here and get responses and feel like I was part of a community of people who really understood me. But I also could sense from the start that I could get some enabling from the community here. Once I realized that some folks were trying to manage their limerence rather than end it, I thought to myself “oh cool, I can do that too, that sounds way less painful than doing the right thing and stopping it completely”. And so again, participating here was a blessing and curse – I certainly learned a lot, I got to express a lot of my feelings that I’ve normally just kept suppressed, and I did get feedback at times that reigned me in when I was really on the verge of blowing everything up. But I also did find that I could continue with my emotional affair and get a sympathetic ear from a lot of people, and while that felt nice, I know it’s not what I really needed.
And then a few weeks ago, a female member started suggesting a relationship between us to “transfer limerence”, and I enthusiastically went along with it – partly as a fun distraction from my real life, but I also really did enjoy the attention and the flirting. I told myself that it was totally harmless. And then a couple of other women posted things about being kind of in love with me and whatnot, and I lapped that up as well. I kept expecting someone to call me out on my behavior, but no one really did so I just kept going.
I think the record here shows that I didn’t initiate any of the flirting and affection and stuff. Again, I disagree with the “charming predator” label. I think I was just being myself, for better or worse, and other people initiated that stuff with me. But I responded. Oh Lord, I responded! And that’s the problem, right? That’s the story of my life. All it takes is a woman saying or doing anything at all to signify attraction to me, and then all of a sudden my mind is going all sorts of places, and if I let it go beyond just fantasy in my mind, then before I know it I’m engaged in all kinds of behavior that’s clearly inappropriate and frankly embarrassing.
I’ve always been wired to want to please people, to want people to like me. I can remember being a little kid and feeling like it was really important that everyone liked me, very sensitive to perceived rejection. I’d go out of my way to please people, perform for people. I’ve always been that way, still am. At the heart of things, I feel insecure and restless, uncomfortable with myself and empty, and I am constantly seeking things that keep my mind occupied and fill the emptiness inside of me. For a lot of years it was alcohol, now it’s not. Now sometimes it’s work, sometimes it’s hobbies, sometimes it’s seeking the affection of other women.
I also know in my heart that this website has become a definite negative for me. I’ve managed to get a lot of reinforcement for my bad behaviors, and recently have been engaging in bad behaviors on here as well. It’s actually been encouraging me to think of myself as the Byronic hero that Dr L wrote about recently, and to give more expression to that shadow side of myself. It’s also become just another venue for me to seek approval – I post something on here and then compulsively check back throughout the day to see who responded and hope they say nice things to me. That’s become an unhealthy compulsion in and of itself.
I also suspect that it’s actually keeping me more stuck in my EA – writing about it all the time is not helping me to move on. I suspect that my LO has been able to separate from me more effectively than I’ve been able to separate from her in large part because I’m always on here rehashing every little detail of our relationship ad nauseum, all in the guise of processing my feelings or helping others. It’s keeping me stuck. Finally, my involvement with this forum has also become another secret that I’m keeping from my wife, and has encouraged more secretive behavior and compartmentalization of my life, which is the last thing I need.
So, I’m going to say adios to everyone here. My continued participation here is hurting me more than it’s helping at this point, and I think I’m also hurting other people who are genuinely trying to recover. I’ve really, truly appreciated all of the discussions and conversations I’ve had here. I feel that this is a community that allows a lot of expression of things that are hard to talk about in real life, and taboo issues are discussed largely with great civility and respect. I really care about everyone here and will be wishing you all the best in your journeys. I may drop back in sometime down the road to give a life update (hopefully to say that my life is back on track and I’m fully over this), but otherwise I think it’s clear that this is where I need to get off.
LiS out.
LIS-
I may have crossed a few lines in my comments. I don’t know you or your history, other than what I have read here. You defended yourself well on being called a predator. I apologize if my words were too harsh.
Only you know if this forum is doing you more harm than good, and if it’s time for you to leave.
However, I think it’s a shame that just when it looks like you are acknowledging things you already knew deep down, accepting some critical feedback, you want to quit.
LWL may not be the place for you to process everything, but I hope you find a person who is going to help you be accountable and giving you the right support.
Your most recent post was probably the first time I thought you were going in the right direction. Hopefully, this is just the beginning of moving forward. It will be hard work and take a lot of courage.
If you choose to stick around or come back after a break, know that there are people here (believe it or not, myself included) who just want to see you get control of your life.
Either way, good luck.
Hey Lost in Space,
I’m sad to see you go, but I’m not surprised. The attack you endured was brutal. I don’t think you did anything wrong by opening up here. It used to be a safe place to talk about hard things. You were trying to navigate a tricky situation without hurting other people. You made some mistakes along the way, but who doesn’t? This forum that was so civil suddenly took a turn. You became the punching bag for someone else’s frustrations. You don’t deserve it. You are not the “predator” that you were made out to be.
Healing takes place in community. This community was nice while it lasted. Celebrating baby steps in the right direction is how you encourage people to move in the right direction. Attacking someone for their weaknesses isn’t helpful. Can you imagine someone at an AA meeting treating someone the way you were treated today? It doesn’t happen because it doesn’t work. If someone falls off the Band wagon, you say, “Okay, thanks for your honesty, don’t be too hard on yourself, let’s move on.” You don’t resort to name calling. Anyway, good luck! This experience will cause stress and you will want to engage in a coping behavior. Since your ankle is injured and you can’t run, may I suggest swimming or cycling. Try to avoid your negative coping behaviors if you can.
Best wishes! I enjoyed getting to know you. Your presence here will be missed.
Lovisa,
I’m sorry, but I disagree with you. If I used a few terms that were too harsh- then I apologize.
LIS is not a new to LWL. People who are just figuring out what limerence is should be given time to adjust and learn what they are dealing with. I would never have said any of that to a newcomer.
However, at some point continuing to indulge in someone’s limerent fantasy is not helpful. It’s hurtful. Encouraging a married man to transfer their limerence, instead of dealing with his EA is not helpful. Giving tips to person on how to hide their EA is not a kindness.
Compassion and sympathy can easily turn into pampering and coddling.
Again, I apologize if I was not civil. That wasn’t my intention. However, I do not think I was cruel. I was honest- as I saw the situation.
LiS, I hope you see this. I feel very guilty for not responding to you sooner, but I have actually been in a couples therapy workshop the last two days trying to get my marriage back on track (I was really pleased with how it went!), and now is the first chance I have had to check in. And boy, lots to unpack.
I’d like to thank you for your very kind and thorough comments to me yesterday (or was it Sunday?) about my situation, and sympathising with me over my LE and my home situation. I was the person who said they were a bit in love with you, and I am sorry if that was provocative to you or any other commenter – I meant it tongue-in-cheek: I’ve never met you, don’t ever expect to know who you are, where you live etc. I was trying to convey how sweet and tenderhearted you seem.
I would agree with Bridgelover: as someone whose LO was enabling and (probably) unwittingly manipulative, a clear and unequivocal “we need to stop this” would have been so much appreciated by me. So much of my pain was that I ignored the signs that he was not really into me (partly because there was in fact stated reciprocation) and allowed my confirmation bias to overlook the red flags. And my desperate state led me to do stupid, hurtful, self-sabotaging things that got me deep into a hole that I am still trying to get out of. What I would have appreciated as a limerent was if my LO had said to me “I cannot have a PA with you, and we need to stop any EA right now before people get hurt”. Or, given we did have a PA, when he realised it was a mistake and he could not continue, said something like “I realise I made a mistake by letting things get physical. it is not right for either of us, let alone our innocent families, to go any further. I am sorry for my part in doing that, but this must end” and then leave me alone. My pain since our PA ended was 5% the fact he ended it, and 95% the fact he did it by stonewalling and ghosting rather than having a respectful conversation, and honouring my very flawed humanity (and his).
So I would say that if I was your LO and you know you are not going to leave your SO for me, I would want you to say something like the above, and then tell me that for both our sakes you are going to go LC until I leave work, and then NC when I do. And STICK TO IT. Don’t torture you or her any longer by equivocating.
There is more i could say but I am conscious that you are likely to go offline soon and I wanted to get my main points to you ASAP while I could snatch a few minutes to write.
As for the general statement about how enabling this blog/comment thread has become, I don’t have a clear sense of that as I have not been following as closely. So I can’t comment on the general tone. I have always appreciated the compassion shown on here, but also the “tough love” when needed. But maybe that has not been the balance lately. Best wishes to all in their recovery.
LIS,
“All it takes is a woman saying or doing anything at all to signify attraction to me, and then all of a sudden my mind is going all sorts of places, and if I let it go beyond just fantasy in my mind, then before I know it I’m engaged in all kinds of behavior that’s clearly inappropriate and frankly embarrassing.”
The problem is that you’re taking all of this way too seriously. Flirtation is usually just an exchange of energy. It’s just a nice moment with someone. That’s all . It usually doesn’t mean “I’m willdy attracted to you” or “I want to go to bed with you” or “I’m hoping something starts up with you.”
It’s just supposed to be temporary fun, and most people don’t intend to do anything about it. It’s about as serious as something floating off into the ether. Roughly ninety percent of the time it means nothing.
Hi Lis,
I’m so sorry you had to say adios to this site due to harsh comments. The harsh comments were not to push you out (at least not on my part) but rather to awaken you from the stagnation of your LE, that is causing you and Lo so much pain and misery. I understand how difficult it is to think straight and counciously while in the “influence “ of limerence, where your mind is taken hostage and you feel totally helpless and obsessed with Lo. Your story is “unique” because you and Lo are both in agreement about each others feelings. It’s a beautiful romance story . And I love happy endings… but in this case it’s difficult and complicated as hell.
I don’t want to be critical or judgmental, but rather, I want to help you find an agreeable solution to your agony. Never mind the insults, it happens everywhere all the time.
First, my opinion, you should not disclose to SO and make her part of the unfolding drama, unless word comes out …
Second, you should be true to yourself and see what it is you really want in your life at the present stage of your life? Again , are you really happy with SO, answer this question to yourself and only to yourself, with your hand in your heart. No one is forced to stay with a person out of pity or what have you. You don’t own anybody, and nobody owns you. Third: Do you think LO will fulfill your inner needs that you’re craving and longing for all of your life? Is she the person that would make you happy?
Before asking these questions yo yourself, you have to be at peace within yourself , and right now you’re going through a great turmoil that probably will fog your mind more than it is now. It’s your life it’s your future. Only you can make the decisions here on how you want to run your life. No one else.
Have patience, try to be at peace with yourself, stay in touch. We will miss you a lot. Good luck in your journey and God bless.
I’m sorry to hear that, LiS, if you’re even here any more. You basically sound like a male version of me and I’m also guilty of needing approval and affirmation, in real life and online. I’m sorry if I was one of the ones who enabled you- perhaps it was because I recognised so much of myself.
What I will say though, is that as someone who’s wading through the treacle of pushing back against an LE for the first time, for me, tiny steps do deserve encouragement. That’s the only way I’m managing at the moment.
Hi C for Cat, I’m impressed with the progress you’re making towards your goals. I suspect that many of us will be attacked soon and called “enablers.” Here is the thing, when I met you, you were struggling with some bad behavior and you wanted to change. You wanted to do better. I could have shamed you. I could have cast judgement on you, but it doesn’t work. You don’t need to be chastised, you need to be accepted and encouraged to do the right thing. I have no doubt that I’ll be labeled an “enabler” by the people who attacked Lost in Space today. I really wanted to stick around and encourage you in your recovery. I’m so sorry, but I think I’m leaving, too. This forum feels like chumplady, today. There is a lot of name calling on that site and a lack of kindness. It is repulsive to me. LwL was encouraging and patient. I guess that’s over.
I wish you the best! I’m cheering for the real person behind the internet name, “C for Cat.” If you relapsed, I would encourage you to do better and I would still accept you. I guess that makes me an enabler to some people. I don’t think it does, I think it makes me a fellow human being who cares. I don’t think you are an enabler either, btw.
Seriously, good luck, C for Cat!
Oh Lovisa, that makes me so sad – you have been so kind and helpful to me in the short time I’ve been on here. It took a lot for me to confess my behaviour on here; I was worried I’d be criticised, so I was comforted when I was accepted and encouraged to work towards escaping my self-destructive pattern. I’ve found lots of really helpful advice in the blog posts but also the comments – reading about other peoples’ experiences and successes helps a lot.
I still have a really long way to go and I am struggling with my head versus my heart in terms of the next play, which I should step away from to give me a chance of NC but which is something I’ve always wanted to do and will never get the chance to again. But now that’s all mixed up with my LO and spending time close to him. Am really hating my brain at the moment; it messes everything up.
Anyway, I wish you weren’t leaving but thanks again for your patience and belief in me, even when I don’t believe in myself. I hope you stayed long enough to see this, the time difference doesn’t help.
xx
Adam and Momma, I hope you see this. I want to say goodbye. I’ve enjoyed getting to know you two. Thank you for your friendship. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for sharing your experiences with us.
Best Wishes!
Well this is certainly not the situation I wanted to see when I decided to come log in and see what’s going on. Miss Lovisa I hope that you are still checking in and see this. You were the first person to greet me when I came here.
https://livingwithlimerence.com/new-year-purpose/#comment-37495
Your kindness, understanding and patience with me and my limerence has helped me more than you will ever know. One of the things that I like about this community is the varied viewpoints, perspectives and angles that people take to help others, especially new comers. A lot of people were there for me when I first came here. Some are still here and others have moved on or only post rarely. I would be a dysfunctional mess if not for the lot of you.
I understand that people need to move on. But I don’t have to like it. Goodbyes are never easy for me. I’ve said too many in my life. From childhood friends, to LO, to other co-workers, and apparently now some of my friends here. And now I am reading old comments and saw one of Limmy’s. I miss her posts. She was always compassionate and motivating for me when I first came here. The people of this community have done so much for me. You even welcomed my wife to post here.
And how could we get along without LE’s articulated intellectual posts? Plus he’s got good taste in music. Always makes you think from a different angle that you never thought of yourself.
Or Nisor, this community’s own motivational speaker. Always with the positive outlook for the future. Able to make you smile behind your keyboard no matter how down you feel. She the optimistic yin to my pessimistic yang. Couldn’t get along without her.
frederico whose always fun to chat with. Whether it’s limerence or just bs. I’d have a blast having a beer with him. Though I think he probably drinks craft beer. Maybe I can him to try an oatmeal stout. Those are good.
MJ; even though our LE’s are very different I feel some kind of commonality with him when it comes to limerence. He so dearly cares for LO. I can see that he only wants the best for her. That’s the mark of a true gentleman and someone that is a gift to this community.
Speedwagon always with good advice and a veteran of limerence. Also a very good writer. Whenever I read his posts if he’s telling a story I can see all the people involved in my head, all the settings and backgrounds. It like reading a novella.
Allie, Cordelia, C4Cat, Bridgelover, LiS, Lost Child, Sammy, why, Amara, Beth and a lot more posters whose names escape me or post only on occasions. This community means a lot to me. Dr. L’s posts are very informative and helpful. They give practical avenues to take to turn your limerence into a purposeful way to change who you are. To look inward at yourself and be honest as to why limerence hit you. This community’s comments give your the motivation, strength and push to put Dr. L’s suggestions into practice.
Miss Lovisa I hope that you change your mind. I know that I will greatly miss you. But if you never come back to posting know that you have changed my life and that I will never forget you. God sent an angel to help me and it was you. And I mean that. I always look forward to seeing if you are on the recent posts when I log in. And I’d miss you when life got busy for you and I wouldn’t see you for some days. But if this is something you need to do than good luck to you Miss Lovisa. God will surely look out for such a dedicated soul to him as you are. And I know there are more people that need help and that is your gift to the world.
Thank you for the kindest words Adam. You also are a valued asset to this community. A fantastic writer and you give an honest account of what you are going through in your struggle. I commend you for the progress you have made. I had worried since I didn’t see you post anything yesterday, if you had abandoned ship too. I was happy to see you post again today.
At work today, I was thinking of some things and in addition to what I posted in the section here yesterday, I want to mention my disappointment about LiS and Lovisa suddenly getting out of the forum. Both of them were very instrumental about giving me honest advice when I first got here a few months ago. True I didn’t want to read some of it, as it even made me very anxious and sad, but it had to be mentioned. They still supported me in my issues and were non-judemental. They will be sorely missed here, should they actually not return. I think I read in a post somewhere awhile back, that Lovisa was like the good Den Mother here. Having a sympathetic ear, watching over the forum and giving positive advice when needed.
I am disappointed they both chose to let one voice silence them, when they were such strong and good posters here to the blog. I guess I figured they had more in them to withstand backlash. It is my hope at some point, they will reconsider and return. Until then, I think all of us can hold it down. Although I don’t believe I can ever match their caliber.
MJ, it was probably more like the final straw, for their own individual reasons.
Hi Adam
You’re so sweet! We need more people like you in this world!
We all like a taste of honey after so much sourness…and we should be able to take the sweet and the sour as adults. That’s life.
Let’s stay United in this community so we can make Dr L proud of us all, by being kind, and respecting one another, but also ready to take a spank here and there to wake us up. Many a time we need a good “spanking”…. We are all sensitive creatures and we are here because we’re all Broken. Living with limerence is not an easy task, but we’re trying very hard to break this bondage and break loose from limerence chains.
“Hearts are not practical until they are made umbreakable.” I think The Wizard of Oz said that.
United we become strong, United and in one accord we can come out triumphant! Let’s aim high even if we feel wounded now, it won’t last forever, I hope.
Hugs to all that are down and dealing with this limerence monster alone, and also to those who came out of it or are coming out of it. Courage, lots of courage!!!
Sorry, have to post once more. I just took a look back on here and saw some hard feelings erupting on my behalf and that’s the last thing I want. I love this place and I love all y’all and certainly don’t want to cause problems between anyone else here.
I’m not leaving because of anything anyone said. Coldwater said what she said because she had to say it, I accepted what I knew was true, stuck up for myself regarding the part that was wrong, she apologized, that’s that. No hard feelings. No beef. I appreciate her honesty and perspective. I’m a big boy and I can take criticism. It makes me better. Seriously, thank you for it.
For real, I’ve been thinking for awhile now that I need to get off of here, for all the reasons I listed above. But more that anything, it’s because it’s just become another secret activity that consumes my time and separates me from my wife. I can’t tell her I’m on here, for obvious reasons (I know her better than anyone and I know 100% that disclosure to her would be devastating and unrecoverable), so all of the hours I’ve spent reading and writing on here are done in secret. I stay up late writing after she’s gone to bed. I get home late from work because I was sitting in my office writing. It’s like I have this whole other life with other friends that she knows nothing about, and that’s actually starting to feel just as harmful for our marriage as my relationship with LO.
That’s why I’m getting off of here – not because of anything anyone said, but because I realize that this has become another secretive, consuming addiction for me. And I’ve known it for awhile, but it’s been really hard to acknowledge it and pull back because I really like all of you and really like all of the conversations we’ve had. But I know it’s time.
Anyway, I’m not quitting the process of recovery or self discovery or self improvement. I just know it’s time to get off this train and onto another one.
And because I hate goodbyes, lemme say this – if anyone has anything they want to say to me, anything at all, I’ll check back here a couple times over the next couple of days (although I won’t reply), and I also promise that I’ll post again in 1 month to give an update on my life.
Be good to each other,
LiS
LwL community,
I’ve learned a lot from many of you. I enjoyed our time together. I wish you all well in your lives. Best wishes!
-Lovisa
Well isn’t this a bunch of crap. I step away for one day and the whole place goes to hell. My good friends are leaving and now I’m not even sure what I should do. Let me just try to get caught up with the other sections. I guess if anyone else wants to bash me over the head for any of my silly limerent behaviors, I guess let me have it here.
C for Cat,
Hey, let me know if you’re still here or sticking around. At least I’ll have you here if you are. 😉
Hey MJ, yes, I’m sticking around, I need all the help I can get at the moment as I try to do Low Contact-while-actually-having to have higher Contact!
I try to stay out of the drama and weirdness of this place sometimes. I like to keep my involvement mostly to blog topics and some interaction with people in my same situation struggling with LE.
This is all I will say about LIS and Lovisa and those critical. Please look at the bigger picture. The alternative to LIS being here and working thru his mutual LE one baby step at a time and bettering his relationship with his SO is simply that he gives in, has the full PA, blows up his life and others, loses his job, and the respect of his friends and ends up posting on the affair and divorce recovery website instead of LwL. I think I prefer him here as would his SO I am sure.
The self control he has shown with his LO is amazing to me considering what I feel for my LO so I would never cast a stone his way.
I wish him well and hope he continues to recover.
“ alternative to LIS being here and working thru his mutual LE one baby step at a time”
Perhaps. However, that is not how LIS feels. He just wrote,
“But more that anything, it’s because it’s just become another secret activity that consumes my time and separates me from my wife.”
Maybe taking a break from commenting on LWL will actually be helpful. Look- everyone is different- but I don’t look for advice from someone who is going to always tell me what I want to hear. Sometimes, you need to hear things that don’t feel great.
I don’t think LIS’s self control was that admirable. He continued in that relationship even when he said he knew if was not great for his marriage. He could have gone LC many times. I’m not trying to kick a guy when he’s down. LIS is a great writer and always has interesting thoughts. I know it’s sad when people move on.
But by his own admission, this place had become it’s own obsession. At this point (months of being on this forum) it was time to hear another perspective.
I regret that I spoke so harshly. That was unfair and uncalled for. I apologize.
But I don’t regret the gist of my message. I actually think it will be more beneficial for him in the long run.
Coldwater, I wanted to say that in my previous post I neglected to mention posters like you, and Marcia come to mind that are the ones that say what needs to be said. I know I had a few of those comments when I first came here. They felt harsh then and almost hurtful. But in hindsight when I read those old posts of mine I know how delusional the limerence had made me about LO and my marriage. I needed to hear those things to snap myself out of it. And then other comments were there to encourage me to move forward.
It’s like the two step punishment I would get when I was young; mother would dole out the corporal punishment then father would tell me why I got punished. My mother, then was the bad guy, and my father the nice one. Now, as an adult, I see I needed both steps and neither were bad.
Thank you, Adam. I REALLY appreciate your message.
I wish I had worded things differently, but also know that there are contrasting opinions and approaches in this community.
It has been pretty amazing to see how your posts have changed over the months. I know what you mean about how at the height of limerence it can be hard to hear any negatives.
Thank you, again for your message and thank you for all the support you give to people on this site!
I like what Limerent Emeritus had to say
“Different limerents are at different risks. If you understand the risk and voluntarily assume it, a bad outcome is not a tragedy. It’s the proximate result of marginal judgment. Why any limerent’s judgment is marginal is unique to the limerent.”
While I do believe that sometimes there are posts here that enable limerent behaviors more than help alleviate them, I don’t think it’s ever safe to call out someone’s failure to “get it”. I know this isn’t AA but I agree with you Speedwagon, that LiS is better off here than in divorce recovery. My only issue with him was his amount of posting. Not that I didn’t mind the reading material, it’s just who has time like that to post so much?? I sure don’t. But good for him if he has the time. I didn’t necessarily agree that there were things he was withholding out from, in therapy, but I do think he was trying. Even if this is just a sounding board. At least he had some support here and Lovisa and others were rooting for his marriage.
I look at it like this. Some people go to comedy shows and get offended by the comedians jokes, so they heckle the comedian and may just ruin the whole show for the poor guy.
If a person is likely to be offended they can get up and leave or have made the choice never to have come at all. It’s their call.. It’s a very controllable situation for the attendee. I look at LwL like it’s the same thing almost. Not everybody is going to like everybody. I try to interact with those whose LE run along similar lines with mine. And I just like reading how LEs are effecting others.
I’m probably guilty myself of using this site as another excuse to ruminate and expect a pat on the back for it. But it’s not my end game.
We are all here because we have a fascination with someone. Just because my LO is single doesn’t necessarily make that a reason to be more limerent. Half the time, I think I’m on her nerves anyway, but I still persist. Doesn’t make me a better man. I just think she’s beautiful and I wish she was in my life. That’s the gist of it.
Hi All,
Chipping in to say that I’ve not been keeping up with comments as diligently lately (both due to demands on my time, and the volume of posting!), but to thank everyone for staying constructive and respectful.
I aim to run LwL as a place where people can speak openly and sincerely, and be exposed to the different views that others have about conduct during limerence. As you would expect, I agree with some of what has been said, but disagree with other comments. What I am gratified to see is that there are few personal attacks. The “predator” comment came close to the line, but LiS pushed back fairly on that, and Coldwater acknowledged that it was harsh – I think that is how progress is made best, by finding the boundaries together. (For clarity, I think “that behaviour is a bit predatory” is a better formulation than “you are a predator”.)
I do worry about the enabling risks of the comments section. There does come a point at which ruminating about limerence is feeding, rather than illuminating, the obsession. It is a hard balance – finding community is a great way to heal, but forensic analysis of LO behaviour is usually counterproductive.
Overall, people coming and going voluntarily as they see fit is the simplest “fix” for now. LwL will have different value for each limerent at different stages of recovery. But if anyone is concerned about specific posts, feel free to drop me a note via the contact form if a speedy response is warranted.
@Dr. L.
Thank you for fostering what I have always experienced as the lovely and respectful atmosphere at LwL. 🙂
I should mention, though, that I found LwL quite late in my limerence journey. I was already in the third leg, or “deterioration phase”, of limerence when I got here. Hence, any strong emotions roused in me by limerence weren’t really “fresh” or “raw”, as must be the case for countless people who are still in the early stages of limerence. 🤔
For example, there was a stage of limerence – I’m not sure whether it was crystallisation or later on – but I was, like, offended by literally everything anyone could ever say to me! Hahaha! It was like my brain decided to be “offended by advance” by other humans, so the content of comments didn’t matter. I don’t know if other people have experienced a similar phenomenon? (Does limerence make people abnormally sensitive to rejection in general, and therefore easily offended due to always anticipating rejection?) I think being easily offended is a sign one is still wandering the limerence wastelands in search of solid ground…
Limerence, during its worst parts, certainly made me paranoid. I was paranoid mainly that other people were judging me, and it felt like I couldn’t do anything right. I felt like there was some deep intrinsic fault in my personality, and that I needed to locate and fix the fault to prevent future rejection. In hindsight, I realise there was probably nothing intrinsically wrong with me as a human being. It was just that super-intense desire fosters an equally strong level of self-hatred. Limerence as a rule makes perfectly delightful people feel like lepers/outcasts.
Faulty limerence reasoning: if the only person in the world I want doesn’t want me, then it stands to reason I must be defective in some way. Fear of being defective or fear of being found defective by others leads to extreme defensiveness. I’m not saying anyone else here is showing defensive reactions. I am merely reporting on my own emotional responses from decades ago. 😉
I had a platonic male friend. (Straight). He was non-limerent, but I didn’t know that at the time. I tried to communicate the depth of my limerence-related distress to him, but he didn’t get it. He was never mean to me. He didn’t say anything hurtful. He was good-natured and jokey and as supportive as he could be under the circumstances. But limerence was something that … laid beyond his experience of reality. We couldn’t communicate at the end of the day, despite the fact we both had good intentions and probably did love each other very much. This friend wasn’t an LO. He was merely someone I was seeking out for support.
The point I’m trying to make is … if one is limerent, please remember that limerence is going to make one feel a little more brittle and a little more irritable than usual. Getting offended easily could be seen as an “adjacent symptom” of limerence, if not an actual symptom of limerence. One can become quite cross at people who don’t understand the infatuation, or who appear unduly critical of LO.
It’s funny, because now I’ve come full circle in my life, I realise I likely come across as good-natured and jokey and “unhelpfully helpful” to limerent sufferers, in much the same way my platonic male friend did. Limerents are swept up in pure emotion at the height of limerence. The rest of the world is NOT swept up in pure emotion, and when people aren’t swept up in pure emotion, they’re probably going to make a few facetious remarks – or at least remarks that feel terribly invalidating to the recipient.
Every limerent, in the full swing of limerence, wants the limerent obsession affirmed. This is the ego talking. This is something we are all striving to overcome. But it’s good to be aware of the thing we’re trying to overcome. I mean, given my own history of extreme defensiveness and rejection sensitivity, I’m amazed anyone here is still talking to each other!! 🤣
In unrelated news, Limerence Theory has explained to me the communication difficulties in my family of origin. Basically, my father and my younger sister are non-limerent, and have always gotten on amazingly well as a result. They have natural chemistry and communicate instinctively. My mother, my older sister, and I are all limerents. (Three limerents in one family! Can you imagine the constant misunderstandings and the ridiculously overwrought emotional exchanges?) 🙄
Since coming out of limerence, I realise I actually have no problems whatsoever communicating with my dad. I thought he was a closed book. I was wrong. He’s a chatterbox. He’ll talk about everything and anything. Once you get him started, you can’t shut him up again.
I don’t know why I didn’t have a good bond with my father growing up. It must have been some vibe I was giving off as a brooding wannabe Byronic hero. At least one friend in the past told me I have an invisible force-field around me that says: “Don’t look at me. Don’t touch me. Don’t speak to me.” Apparently, I came across as “unapproachable”, largely because I was living so much inside my own head, but that isn’t the case anymore. 😉
That’s a really interesting response, Sammy. I also have a fear of being seen in a negative light, in any way. My first response to any kind of perceived (PERCEIVED) slight is to think I’m awful, boring, etc and that the person doesn’t like me. Even if it’s a close friend. When limerence gets involved it becomes even worse. I’m really struggling with my LO pulling away – as agreed! – because it feels like the worst rejection in the world, even though I know it is the only solution and I am trying hard to match it and do my part. The contrast between the warmth and physical affection he used to show me, and still shows others, and the polite distance he now keeps from only me, is like a knife to the heart.
I’m very interested in what you said about your family – how do you know your mother and sister are limerents?
Dr L, thank you for commenting and clarifying. I wasn’t sure, being newish to the blog, whether you were still directly involved in the comments but I appreciate your sensible and balanced response. I’m guilty of getting carried away in all areas of my life, online as well!
Hi everyone, one more post and then I’m going for real… but I just felt compelled to write one more time to try to avoid leaving any hard feelings behind for anyone, and to explain myself a little better.
I really truly didn’t decide to leave this forum because anyone was mean to me or because I got my feelings hurt. Now I know the timing seems…suspicious, right? It’s like the kids at the playground were calling me names and suddenly I remembered that my mom wanted me home for dinner ten minutes ago, but it has nothing to do with little Johnny calling me a stinky doo-doo head and making me cry… but I swear that’s not how it feels to me in this situation. And I just really don’t want to leave anyone feeling badly about anything, and I especially wouldn’t want to cause any of the “hardliners” to hesitate about speaking out in the future (not that they probably would anyways 🤣) because those voices are super important. Limerent Emeritus in particular has saved me from myself several times with his doses of harsh realism – LE I have a ton of respect for you and will always be grateful to you.
My habit for the past couple of months has been to wake up early, make my morning cup of coffee, and then start my day by reading all the LwL comments that had come in while I was asleep. Occasionally I’d dash off a quick reply before work, but most of the time I’d contemplate the posts throughout the day, and then do my own writing at the end of my work day before heading home, or later at night after my wife had gone to sleep.
This past Monday morning, I logged on to find several posts that were pretty hard for me to read. As usual, I didn’t respond right away, but spent time reflecting on them as I went through my day. Two lines in particular kept coming back to me:
“You have used LWL as an echo chamber” – Coldwater
“As much as I like you and feel for your entangled situation, I feel , that the game is over… why? It’s impossible to love two persons at the same time with the same intensity” – Nisor
So I spent the day thinking about why I was still so caught up in my limerence so many months after the most intense period, and about what my relationship was with this forum and whether it was more helpful or harmful for me at this point. And the three conclusions I reached were:
1) At this stage, constantly thinking about limerence, reading about limerence and writing about limerence is NOT helping me overcome my limerence, and is likely just helping to keep it alive and strong.
2) Being so involved in an activity and a community that I have to keep secret from my SO is NOT helping me to live with integrity and be honest towards her.
3) I do feel guilty about my behavior on this site recently. Dr L – I owe you an apology. You’ve spent thousands of hours creating and nurturing this site to help people. I, like many addicts, decided that I knew better, that I could run my own program and ignore your program that had helped countless other people. And worse, I used your forum to share some of my thoughts that are completely counter to your philosophy, in some cases actually encouraging other people to continue in affairs and other activities that are opposed to your philosophy. At the end of the day, this is your site, and I don’t have a right to come in here and say things that undermine you and your message. I feel like a bad house guest – you took me in, fed me, gave me a place to stay, and I responded by drinking up your best wine and peeing all over your living room rug. I am truly sorry.
So ultimately, I’ve reached the conclusion that my participation in this forum, at this particular stage in my journey, is hurting me more that it’s helping me. I don’t have any hard feelings at all toward anyone who criticized me, and again I want to make it clear that no one drove me away by hurting my feelings; rather, their words were the catalyst for me to do something I knew for awhile I needed to do. So again, thank you all for your support and your honesty – that goes for everyone here.
Lovisa – if you read this, I’d ask you to reconsider your own choice about continuing here or not. Your situation is fundamentally different from mine, in that your SO knows about your involvement here and supports it, so it’s not anything that’s separating you from him or worsening the deception. If you’ve truly reached the same conclusion that I have, that participating here is keeping you stuck in your limerence, then by all means go and Godspeed. But I don’t feel like that’s likely the case, and I’d hate for you to give up something important and beneficial for you because of your outrage on my behalf, especially when I don’t feel any of that outrage myself.
My goal this next month will be moving forward, letting go of the past and embracing other activities that move me forward. Most immediately, I need to change my morning routine – I feel certain that starting every morning by reading the latest LwL comments just primed me to spend the day ruminating about my LO. I’ll try some different things out this coming week for my morning routine – read something else, do a little yoga, do a little work in the back yard, go for a walk… it’ll be a good change.
I’ll come back on here and post an update in about a month. Let’s say circle your calendars for August 30th – that’ll be a couple days after my LO (hopefully) leaves the workplace for good, and I’ll be on a little out-of-town trip so I can post for a couple of days without taking time away from my wife. I’ll give you all an update on my life after a month of LiS Lw/oLwL 😀
Peace and love,
LiS ❤️
PS – just realized August 30th is 40 days from now. Hmm, 40 days in the wilderness alone reflecting and contemplating, that feels significant somehow…
PPS – MJ my friend, when I come back next month, I want you to tell me one new thing you did to get yourself unstuck. Tell me about a Saturday you spent volunteering, or a little trip you took, or a class you signed up for, or the new keyboard you bought, or a nice single lady you took out on a date. Just give me one thing – deal?
By then, I will hopefully have been unambiguously rejected so I can get out of here too. Best wishes. I think your analysis is on point. 🙂
LIS- all I can say is well done. Well written. I’m excited for you and am looking forward to hearing how the next month goes. Thank you for being so gracious. I especially appreciate it as I’ve been regretting my choice of words in past messages to you. I also hope Lovisa comes back if that is the right thing for her.
You might like this podcast as you look for something new to do in the mornings.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dear-therapists-with-lori-gottlieb-and-guy-winch/id1523340696
I think you will like it, and it might be a good distraction as you take a break from LWL.
All the best of luck- although I have a feeling you will make your own luck.
@LiS,
So glad to see you back friend, but very sad to see you go. I wish you would reconsider, but you give plenty of good reasons why you think it’s best. I will miss your extensive posts. Still not sure how you made time for all that. I always thought you were an excellent poster. I appreciate your friendship and camaraderie. C for Cat liked sharing our space in the coffeehouse with you. We will miss that.
To keep it 100 with you though, I will try to work on a goal for you, like you mentioned. I appreciate you believing in me. I wish we could meet so I could shake your hand and thank you in person.
However, let me also add I don’t think I can promise you a goal. I think I am mainly here at this point, working through my chronic depression. LO being a main reason for this depression. Talking about her makes me feel better but I’m really only fooling myself. This limerence has got the best and worst of me. I like the Community here because I think I need the support to get me through, reminding myself I’m human. No matter how messed up or wrong issues get discussed about in the forum.
I wish you the best of luck when LO leaves you at work. Because when LO left me, I felt like my world caved in. Like it was the worst breakup. And how do I know I’ve lost my mind admitting to that? Because in my mind it was the worst breakup and yet we were never even together. Not a word was spoken. And yet not a day has gone by, that I haven’t cried over that Woman. Her leaving has left a huge chasm in my heart and almost dead on the battlefield. I feel that sad. And it’s a sadness I can’t shake. Yet if I don’t cry over it, I don’t feel complete. What’s even crazier is LO only moved about 1000 yards away to a big building next door. I can literally go see her whenever I want. Or if by luck she comes by at lunch. Yet I’d rather play the sad card because it’s all I seem to know. I’m just that pathetic. I need help. Perhaps this place isn’t helping me either, but at least it’s a sounding board for something.
When LO leaves you, I can’t tell you how you will feel. Because I’m not you. You and LO obviously have connection. If it affects you in any way like it has effected me, then keep the tissues handy. I can’t even begin to fathom how hard that will be for you. Knowing how the both of feel for each other. I can only dream of connection like that with my LO.
If things ever get that bad or take a turn for the worst when she goes and you need to talk, I’ll probably be here. As many of us will be hopefully. I will look forward to that time.
Till then, I will wish you the best of luck and may God bless you with grace.
Your Friend,
MJ 🤗