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.