I’ve written a few posts about what makes someone unusually attractive, why some people seem so addictive, and what kind of people are good at provoking infatuation – what makes them, in short, limerent objects.
A common theme of those posts, and one of the leading theories in psychotherapy, is that the attachments you experience in childhood come to shape the people you are attracted to in adulthood.
Here’s a video from the School of Life that offers a good summary of the ideas:
For limerents, I’d say the subconscious recognition of a particular personality or physical match is what starts the glimmer. Our personal history has effectively programmed our “limerence circuits” to fire up in response to spotting an LO.
As the School of Life point out, learning to understand what your own triggers are is really useful for making purposeful decisions about who to bond to. You might feel that limerent euphoria is essential for you in choosing a partner – it fits the romanticism ideal after all – but you should accept the downsides too. Limerence doesn’t last, and it isn’t a good predictor for who will make an abidingly good long-term partner. It very much depends on your own triggers.
That’s why self-awareness is so key to purposeful living. Once you learn who you are and why you are that way, you can make much better informed choices about how to improve your life.
What a lovely little video! My take away is that I should get a dog and be done with romance. 😉
It just seems so much safer!
Yeah, I agree. I get intellectually that the people who dig my bell aren’t good for me. In fact, it’s precisely because they aren’t good for me that probably makes them so tantalizing. But how do you rewire your brain to find the healthy options more appealing? It’s like getting off junk food. Yes, you can make palatable, “healthy” alternatives (it seems to be so time-consuming to cook healthy food that doesn’t taste like cardboard) … but there’s always the allure of the cookie aisle in the grocery store. Which is calling to you, at 3 a.m. 🙂
Always remember: the cake is a lie.
Hello Marcia,
What a sense of humour !! Fully agree . I only am attracted to men with certain physical and personnality traits. Basically, very slim , intellectual , introverts, with a full head of hair and not overtly masculine behaviour . Even fully knowing that the long term compatibility might not be there , these are the only types that I find emotionally and physically attractive and I cannot get involved on a physical level , if I don’t have that type of attraction. Basically an all or nothing situation.
Unless it’s a cookie, looks and smells like a cookie , I will not try start a relationship. My type of cookie brand, are also few and far between, so I am mainly on a no food diet! I am either anxiously attached to them or totally avoidant.
Knowing yourself and being able or wanting to rewire are 2 different things.
I did not like the video, makes choosing a mate sound more like choosing a suitable job, and who wants to sleep with their job ?
In my opinion, some romance should be there, otherwise why not just get together with a friend and skip all the rest of the beginning of a relationship the sex, excitement, longing etc. As these will inevitably fade
Bonjour, French Lady,
I could have written a lot of your post myself.
I have the same physical type as you, though not necessarily intellectual and introverted. More impish, flirtatious and inappropriate. 🙂 The problem with not overly masculine behavior is … over time I have a tendency to get frustrated with the passivity, like I am doing everything.
I have been reading that it’s better to pick someone you have a medium-level attraction to. You can actually see them clearly but are still attracted. It feels like the “healthy alternatives” aisle in the grocery store to me. You don’t need potatoes. Eat mashed cauliflower! 🙂
“In my opinion, some romance should be there, otherwise why not just get together with a friend and skip all the rest of the beginning of a relationship the sex, excitement, longing etc. As these will inevitably fade”
But doesn’t all the excitement fade, no matter how it starts? A friendship with sex is where it ends up in the end. And that’s if you are lucky and even like the person once the excitement fades. All that luscious sexual tension .. gone. 🙁
🙂
I’m becoming a broken record on this, but I’m convinced that we have to understand both the basic mechanisms of limerence (neuroscience) and how our own personal history has programmed those mechanisms (psychology). It’s obviously useful to know how the past has shaped your emotional landscape, but it’s not in itself enough to reprogram in the present.
Dogs are much simpler.
“Childhood experiences always predict the nature of adult relationships.” – Shari Schreiber, – https://sharischreiber.com/do-you-love-to-be-needed/
Attachment Theory explains the “Why.” Neuroscience explains the “How.” Combine them both to get the “Who” and “What” Fate decides the “When.”
I skimmed the link, but from what I read, this only explains people who are compulsive givers. Not every attachment type is related to people who see themselves a rescuers, nor do they want be rescuers.
Marcia,
“Not every attachment type is related to people who see themselves a rescuers, nor do they want be rescuers.”
You’re correct about the context of Schreiber’s articles. If you look at the body of her work, the main focus is the relationship of borderlines, narcissists, and codependence. I don’t think I ever saw limerence in her work.
At it’s simplest, the definition of “predict” is “to say what you think will happen in the future.” https://www.macmillandictionary.com/us/dictionary/american/predict
I agree that “always” is an overstatement but what she says is the context specific version of “Apples don’t fall far from trees.” True, not every limerent is a rescuer/caregiver but more than one poster on LwL is/was. I’m not a caregiver but I definitely was a fixer/rescuer.
And, even the best bookies get the point spread wrong occasionally. Bad bookies don’t stay in business long. On the other side of the coin, successful gamblers usually make more money betting the point spread than betting against it. Longshots are longshots for a reason.
LE,
“I’m not a caregiver but I definitely was a fixer/rescuer.”
To me, “fixer/rescuer” has negative connotations. I’m a woman, so if I meet a man who needs fixing, that implies he doesn’t have his s**t together, which to me is not sexually appealing. And then if he thinks I need fixing, he’s implying I don’t have my s**t together and that he is psychologically superior or more evolved, which is, frankly arrogant. I have never met anyone who doesn’t have their own stuff. And then there’s this whole idea that the ways in which the rescuer tries to help can turn out badly. For example, I took my current job based on the offer of “help” from a family member. But I have come to realize this person is not just a glass is half-full but a glass-is-spilling- over person. Meaning: they are not realistic and a little bit off. So they completely misrepresented the company and how great it was. It was ultimately my decision, but there is a part of me that resents the fact that I made a life decision based on someone else’s frankly wack interpretation of the world, based on their need to “help” or “rescue.” It would have been entirely different if I had made the decision without their input. They I’d only have myself to blame. 🙂
Marcia,
In my mind, I didn’t want to fix or rescue them, I wanted to make them better. I even knew that if I ever did actually modify their behavior, either I’d lose interest in them or they’d lose interest in me.
I’d be Henry Higgins to their Eliza Doolittle. Fixing someone who doesn’t ask to be fixed is bad, helping someone achieve their unseen and untapped potential is good. You see something in them that they don’t see in themselves. I didn’t see it so much as fixing or rescuing them as I did tinkering with them. It’s arrogant as you can get. It’s an ENTJ thing. 🙂
As one therapist put it to me, my fixer tendency was “narcissism disguised as altruism.” And, the driver for that was trying to do for another woman what I couldn’t do for my unhappy, alcoholic mother who took off on me. It defined my LO prototype. Go figure.
The EAP counselor said that I’d been trying to rescue LO #4. I disagreed but I lost that argument. The EAP counselor wasn’t going to let me get away with anything. Apparently, when I attempt to fix/rescue someone, I have this really annoying habit of attaching to them so it’s more a matter of them losing interest in me. But, I’m much better now.
Damn, therapists….
So, are you looking for a new job?
LE,
“As one therapist put it to me, my fixer tendency was “narcissism disguised as altruism.” ”
I suspect my family member is like that. He’s a flurry of activity, always “helping people.” When you ask him how he is, it’s always a long list of how other people are or what he’s doing for them. I suspect it’s a way to deflect people and keep them at bay. I mean, he never says how HE’s doing. No one ever really gets to see the real him, if there in fact is a real him. And he’s a horrible listener, too. And you know that’s one of my pet peeves. 🙂 Funny in that they he sees himself as so giving but makes no effort to really get to know someone or ask questions.
“I have this really annoying habit of attaching to them so it’s more a matter of them losing interest in me. ”
Why do you think they lose interest in you? I don’t know what you mean by fixing, but I don’t like someone fussing over me. Or endless acts of service or gifts that I didn’t ask for. It feels like someone is trying to win me over, and I see it as weakness/neediness.
“So, are you looking for a new job?”
Yes. Just had an interview last week. Fingers crossed.
Song of the Blog: “Don’t Cry Out Loud” – Melissa Manchester (1976)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4Zz_UNFLmw
“Baby saw that when they pulled that big top down
They left behind her dreams among the litter
The different kind of love she thought she’d found
There was nothin’ left but sawdust and some glitter”
“Once you learn who you are and why you are that way, you can make much better informed choices about how to improve your life.”
Definitely. However, that knowledge rarely comes cheap. Some of us get lucky and get it right before we understand why. But, a lot of people aren’t that lucky.
And, some people never learn.
It is bizarre to me that everything under the sun now gets predominantly explained based on childhood events. No doubt it is useful, and for people whose childhoods were dyfunctional or traumatic a big determinant of later events, but I feel like the field of psychology has just taken it too far. What about all the neuroses that materialize in response to conditioning in early adulthood, a time of great confusion for many people? I am someone who has been lucky to have nurturing loving parents, a childhood I am very fond of, and yet I have made some terrible choices in partners. What gives.
Yeah, I hear you Reader. There is a bit of a “I’ve got my attachment hammer, and all emotional problems look like nails now” vibe to the narrative, but it is also true that childhood experiences will inevitably shape our adult instincts.
It’s a factor in the mix for sure, but how important it is for any individual will no doubt vary – as with most other aspects of personality and behaviour…
I agree Reader. No childhood is perfect, no family relationship is perfect and every parent unwittingly shapes their children in some negative way since no parent is perfect either. But as you say, while our upbringing shapes us initially, brains remain plastic so our experiences, intentions and actions as adults change us too.
Surely as adults, we all have the power to do something about our unhealthy mind habits… it seems more productive to focus on what to do about them, or how to live well despite them, rather than over-focussing on the cause.
But then I am speaking from the perspective of someone that was only gifted a couple of minor childhood neurosis, but was generally healthily loved and well cared for. Seriously bad parenting or childhood experiences must be so much more impactful and harder to overcome as an adult.
“But then I am speaking from the perspective of someone that was only gifted a couple of minor childhood neurosis, but was generally healthily loved and well cared for.”
Same, Allie. I also know that I am coming from that place of privilege. But it still isn’t at odds with the fact that, like you say, we continue to experience things and change well into our adulthood, probably even to the end of our lives! I am pretty certain that my limerence was ignited by insecurity-drive needs that emerged in my early 20s and then, combined with the glimmer and the right (rather, wrong) conditions, crystallized into a powerful LE. The LE has been devastating but it has given me the gift of seeing this stuff clearly for the first time in my life, and this self awareness has helped me take action to address these insecurities and to be more content with myself than I have in a very long time. For other people with SOs there may be things that developed during their marriage that, in combination with their own personal histories, created a void that the LE fantasy came torpedoing to fill. It differs from person to person but I think all these things are important to understand, in addition to any childhood issues, also to max our ability to let go of LO and to benefit from the lessons.
“It is bizarre to me that everything under the sun now gets predominantly explained based on childhood events.”
@Reader et al.
The problem with linking everything back to childhood events, in my opinion, is that it can confuse “cause” and “effect”. For example, I could argue that I fell into limerence because I was feeling lonely/isolated and my feelings of loneliness and isolation were due to something terribly amiss in my childhood. (Parents not being attentive enough, for example).
However, the truth is – massive family dysfunction aside – I was actually very happy with my life up until about the age of 15. I feel limerence hit me really hard for the first time when I was on the cusp of turning 16, and all of a sudden I had all these feelings of sadness and loneliness and isolation and passionate yearning from seemingly out of the blue.
I mean, I was a loner before limerence, but I was completely happy being a loner. “Loneliness” didn’t cause me any distress. “Loneliness” was very welcome because it allowed me to focus on my hobbies without distraction, etc. My first LO was present in my life for 3 years before I fell for him, and I honestly never really thought that highly of him. Well, I thought he was physically attractive. But I had no particular desire to talk to him or be close to him. (He was just one more yucky teenage boy to be avoided at all costs). 😉
So I think … maybe limerence is just a biological state that hits us shortly after puberty, because finally we’re physically mature enough to mate, and along with limerence comes this idea of “oh no. I can’t be happy unless I have someone to spend every waking moment with”. As a fourteen-year-old stamp collector, I had no romantic feelings or fantasies whatsoever, other than the two-dimensional fluff I could glean from an Agatha Christie novel. I just wanted to collect more stamps! I was always happy. Shy and nerdy for sure, but still very happy. 😛
So I think limerence might bring on all the soul-wrenching emotion, and not the other way round… It’s just Mother Nature’s way of saying: “Put down them stamps, and go make babies.” (Go make babies eventually, that is, after securing commitment from a suitable high-value mate following successful courtship).
I DO think, however, childhood events and relationships might explain the LOs we drift toward. My father was a much more capable and dedicated caregiver than my mother, for instance, when I was young. (My mother really couldn’t be bothered making bottles properly, apparently. Impatience always got the better of her. My dad consequently took over bottle-making and bottle-feeding of the super-slow, super-fussy, possibly autistic baby boy, yours truly). 😛
Maybe my subconscious mind was like: “Dad’s a less-threatening, more reassuring presence than Mum. Better latch onto someone with Dad’s stoicism, etc. Mum’s too needy/too easily agitated. But Dad has surplus resources to give away, and he’s patient too.” I imagine my extreme comfort with male bodies throughout life has its true origins in being bottle-fed for hours by my father. I have always associated masculine bodies with comfort and pleasure and not aggression. Getting close to a man physically for me means … sustenance. 😉
I like my barista friend (most recent suspected LO) because he knows my coffee order by heart and makes it before I can reach the counter. He even physically resembles my dad in terms of looks and colouring. My subconscious mind is clearly like: “Yay. Big Reward Alert. Here comes the nice, easy-going, comforting, reassuring man with the bottle. AND he treats me like I’m jolly important!” 😊
I’m not saying fathers should avoid caring for their young sons, lest their sons turn out gay. I’m just saying that positive (and negative) emotional associations probably stay with us for a long time. My dad was definitely the nurturer in my family, and he enjoyed it. He wasn’t ever overly-expressive emotionally, but he made every effort to respond to the physical/material needs of my sisters and I.
I also think Nature Nature might have intended me to be a girl baby and not a boy baby, and something went off-track in the womb. (Or I didn’t get enough androgens to turn into a real boy. Maybe my mother was under a lot of stress while pregnant). When I was a little boy, for example, I loved nursing the dolls that belonged to my older sister. My older sister had no interest in said dolls – she just dumped them in a cupboard and forgot about them. She wasn’t a nurturer, either. She was a tomboy! But she was very loving to me in her own way.
She’s a fellow limerent by the way, an INFJ, and a nonbinary lesbian something-or-other. (I’ve lost track of what she is. Every time I see her, she comes out of the closet all over again as something new, and I do my very best to act surprised). 😛
I guess what I’m trying to say is … maybe really comforting or pleasurable experiences from childhood can also inspire and/or reinforce limerence? I seem to have been an usually gentle and sensitive child, with nurturing instincts. Every member of my family really did dote on me. Then limerence came along and wrecked havoc on my moods and mental stability. But some positives have come out of limerence, too. I’ve shed my shyness as a direct result. Now I stand up tall when I’m around other men, including LO. I look people of both sexes in the eye when talking. I smile and use more body language. And I project my voice. 😛
… Sammy. I’m not entirely sure we can put our sexuality down to parenting other than some situations may mean that you grow up feeling more at ease or assertive in expressing non-hetero aspects.
In terms of Daddy issues my dad used to beat the sh*t out of me (and I do mean beat) fair regularly. I’ve sometimes wondered whether that made me gay – looking to find a man who won’t beat me. Not to be too dark on this but I’ve been successful at times, less successful at others.
For me though I come back to this, we are both of us a sample size of 1.
There’s plenty of exclusively/predominantly heterosexual men who had doting fathers, and plenty of them who had dads who terrorised them. There’s also plenty of gay men with emotionally stable, middle of the road dad’s who expressed love healthily and disciplined proportionately.
So I don’t think that what my dad did had much bearing on my gendered relationship preferences. My mother tried her best to protect me… So she was the primary source of affection in my family, but I’ve never felt romantically drawn to women – not even ones who look like my mother! 😀
… Then again… Do I think my general tendency to feel drawn to and ignited by emotionally unreliable, unstable and sometimes threatening dynamics with other men comes down to attachment? Well it’s what everybody thinks these days it seems, and it makes sense. I’m drawn to the familiar.
‘Maybe if I try again, he’ll see that I’m very good, and be nice to me. But if he’s nice, maybe I’ll be bad because then I’m back where I started. Familiar.’
I’m currently not looking. I’m not sure I’m fit for human consumption… And therapy isn’t cheap.
But… This is partly where the understanding of limerence has been very helpful. Especially this site and this community. Because I’ve found it very empowering to see that whatever the differences between us, there seems to be a shared process at work, and THAT can be nipped in the bud.
But, as said here and elsewhere, I think there is some grieving process I need to go through giving up the idea of finding love with an LO. Because feeling ignited and electrified and out-of-all-proportion adoration for somebody is the bar I’ve got used to setting myself in terms of selecting potential partners. But with better understanding that this is limerent objectification, and not to be trusted (I have a string of case studies which show this to be true), I’m left thinking. What now? If not an LO…
Then who?
“But, as said here and elsewhere, I think there is some grieving process I need to go through giving up the idea of finding love with an LO. Because feeling ignited and electrified and out-of-all-proportion adoration for somebody is the bar I’ve got used to setting myself in terms of selecting potential partners. But with better understanding that this is limerent objectification, and not to be trusted (I have a string of case studies which show this to be true), I’m left thinking. What now? If not an LO…
Then who?”
@Thomas
Ditto. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Upon knowing what makes me tick as far as romance goes, it is unattainable for me probably because I want more than what I received as a neglected child. Yet because I was neglected as a child I did not learn how to recognize a emotionally supportive and loving partner. Nor did I ever learn how to behave in a loving supportive relationship. Limerence for me is like a fairy tale or, Marcia put it, junk food. I crave it but there is no sustenance.
So it is sort of rewiring process that I am going through now. Learning how to “eat better” I guess I could say for lack of a better analogy, or as Dr. L is constantly driving home – live purposefully.
Ditto. Lik
@Thomas.
Thanks for sharing, mate. The stuff you say is very moving. And the “sample size of 1” remark made me laugh out loud! 🙂
The more I think about sexuality the more I realise that it’s just an incredibly rich and complex topic, and there are really no definitive explanations for why people are the way they are or feel the way they feel. I like to play around with (admittedly outdated) Freudian ideas. But plenty of people reject Freud and his theories outright. Like I said, there are no definitive answers – only a lot of very interesting hypotheses. Freud’s explanations of sexuality, while clearly flawed, are still as good as any I’ve come across… 😉
I can see how limerence could fall under the rubric of “unhealthy pleasure” because it’s addictive. This makes me ask the question: “Well, what does healthy pleasure look like then?” I feel like there must be room for pleasure in human life and human relationships. I don’t think life should be some Herculean effort to avoid pleasure… I feel that it’s a good thing that human beings are drawn to pleasure. 😉
I sometimes feel that “fear of pleasure/sexuality” does way more damage to the human psyche than pleasure/sexuality itself. Fear of anything just ramps up OCD symptoms in my personal experience. And, as we all know, OCD is one-half of the limerence equation.
It sounds like a lot of people’s limerent episodes aren’t really caused by either sexual repression or attachment issues. So, yeah, that’s interesting. It’s almost like we’ve found a problem with no known cause and only tentative solutions…
I’ve just realised I seem to come from a long line of quite “soft” men on the paternal side of the family – my great-grandfather, my grandfather, my father, and now me. I think that something is being passed down on the Y chromosome. I didn’t inherit my soft and nurturing (i.e. feminine) qualities from my female relatives. 😆
It’s so interesting you don’t have an outsized romantic response to a woman like your mother, since your mother was obviously a very positive force in your life from the sound of things… 😛
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had some uplifting experiences with men and some unedifying experiences with men. That’s rough, mate.
😢
I’ve read that falling in love involves the dissolution of ego boundaries. When I was limerent in my early 20s, and hospitalised following what I believed to be a nervous breakdown, it was like my entire personality collapsed in on itself. I felt like my personality had become fragmented. I now recognise this as the sweeping away of ego boundaries and the desire for ecstatic union with my male LO. (Who, hilariously, didn’t want to “merge” with/melt into me with quite the same level of enthusiasm. Oh well! Live and learn!) 😛
I think limerence takes us back to that time in life when we were fused emotionally with our early caregivers – the bond between infant and mother/mother substitute. I think about how good it felt, as an infant or as a toddler, to have my needs met by a seemingly all-powerful caregiver, and I usually didn’t even have to ask for my needs to be met. That all-powerful caregiver VOLUNTEERED to take care of me, and treat me temporarily as the centre of the world. Infants naturally objectify their caregivers, and there’s nothing sinister about that. Very young humans are completely dependent on older humans, usually parents, for survival.
I wonder if limerence, for me, was/is a continuation of that infant-caregiver bond, and/or a desire to recreate it with an adult partner who just happened to be male? 🤔
I think our romantic scripts as adults are at least a tiny bit shaped by our interactions with our parents, and whether or not we found those interactions satisfactory. As a young human, I was totally dependent on others. After limerence in my early 20s, I became radically independent, as I couldn’t stand the pain of wanting someone who didn’t want me back. Becoming super-independent was my way of “getting revenge” on the man/men who rejected me. Now, the pendulum has swung back again, and I’m increasingly attracted to “cautious interdependence” as a relationship model.
I think my ego boundaries, which collapsed in my early 20s, have snapped back into place more or less. I’m much less likely to feel engulfed by a romantic partner now – I have a much stronger sense of my own identity. I’ve also realised that ongoing fear of and/or avoidance of attractive-and-randomly-friendly-straight-men (my LO archetype) would be impoverishing to my overall humanity. I don’t want to ostracise people who enrich the lives of people I love. 😛
On the other hand, I don’t think we can erase our pain totally or exorcise our inner demons completely. I think we just have to deny our inner demons influence over our minds. Let me phrase this another way. Someone might be extremely triggered by something. What is the route to health? Is it avoiding all triggers indefinitely? Or is it coming to terms with one’s triggers?
I’m not interested in manipulating my triggers, or in avoiding my triggers. I am interested in controlling my emotional response to my triggers, so that my triggers no longer trigger me, and I can peacefully go about my day. My LOs have a right to be themselves. People have the right to be intense, unstable, narcissistic, borderline, etc, etc. But I have rights too – including a right not to buy into all the fantasy and all the fluff and all the nonsense. 😉
Yup, I’m an essay-writing mode today! Actually, I’m a little triggered at the moment, truth be told. My former (conservative Christian) high school has just hit the headlines here in Australia after releasing a shocking new enrolment contract for students that pretty much tells students that they must actively discriminate against LGBT+ peers. In other words, you can be kicked out for supporting anything or anyone perceived to be LGBT+, or for failing to denounce “immorality” in a sufficiently convincing manner.
Unfortunately, the school defines so many things as “immorality” that one could be forgiven for thinking the college wants to raise the next great generation of miserable neurotics in my country. (Good news for future shrinks at any rate). The school’s new policy is very divisive and creating a huge community backlash from upset parents, students, and teachers. Personally, I’m appalled… 😲
That’s why I’m on my “wait-a-minute-sex-is-also-for-pleasure-and-comfort-yeah” bandwagon at the moment. (And I think even monogamous straight couples would be happier if they adopted a more pleasure-centric view of sexuality themselves, if they haven’t already done so. Pleasure is for everyone – monogamous straight couples included). Ah, Thomas, don’t mind me – you’ve caught me on one of my rare emotional days. The icy INTJ intellectual reserve is giving way to waves of volcanic passion and incoherent fury! 😆
@Thomas.
Guess what, mate? You’ve helped me put two and two together!! What’s being passed down in my family on the Y chromosome from generation to generation, and most noticeably from every eldest son to his eldest son, I think is the genetic foundation for autism…
Autistic genes, which might not manifest as actual diagnosable autism, would probably explain why the males in my family seem “softer” than other men, why my dad is so “soft”, why I’m so “soft”, etc, etc. Would also explain why the males in my family get along so well with each other (strong inter-generational bonding) and why there’s so little of the overt aggression that characterises the males in other people’s families… Might explain my rosy-coloured view of men in general. (I’m lovely; therefore, all men must be lovely). 😉
The women in my family don’t seem to inherit this collection of genetic traits, so that’s why I think it’s being passed down on the Y chromosome. It’s a genetic trait linked to biological maleness.
To tell you the truth, I have always been insanely popular socially, despite the fact I’m an introvert of the most retiring kind and have never sought out attention. (I ran away from people as a kid and hide in the bushes until my mother’s surprise guests/visitors went home). Nonetheless, despite my innate shyness, I’m a people magnet. I think people are captivated by my “latent autism”. 🤔
At last I know why straight men are so nice to me and often go out of their way to be kind to me! They’re not hitting on me. They’re not attracted to my sexuality, which is invisible to the untrained eye, and largely irrelevant to them. They’re not attracted to my “femininity”, which is more likely than not a figment of my imagination. It’s always been my subtle aura of autism that draws people in!!
I think I finally understand why I’ve always felt like an outsider!! And yet an outsider who is very much loved by so-called insiders!! A popular man who can’t understand why he’s popular. 😲
Straight men love me. Straight women love me. Gay men love me. Lesbian love me. It all makes sense… I’m different in a good way.
In high school, girls used to come up to me and touch my hair without permission, because my hair felt so soft, softer than the hair of actual females. Straight men often touch me in a non-sexual way when I’m out and about. I think they want to reassure me, or re-orient me to reality. I tend to walk around looking a bit lost. 🤣
Gay men tell me I have “a face like a guinea pig” and “dress like a farmer”. It’s all coming together in my mind. People respond to me the way they do because they subconsciously register my autism. People like me, but they don’t understand why they like me. They do understand, however, I’m actually LESS threatening on an purely energetic level than the average male my age. I have “non-confrontational energy”. My male LO never had any sinister reason for befriending me. He truly liked me for me. I’ve been torturing myself with guilt and shame for years completely unnecessarily…
Also, autistic genes might explain why I’m prone to limerence in the first place, if limerence is in part about unmet needs. It’s hard for a father with autistic traits to meet the emotional needs of his spouse and children. It’s hard to a son with autistic traits to ask for any of those needs to be met by his father, let alone by his autistic father.
In light of this new knowledge/understanding, I feel completely absolved of blame. I realise I’m not an intrinsically bad person, and shame/guilt is an inappropriate response to my past struggles. 😛
My relationship with my dad improves out of sight when I stop seeing him through a “neurotypical filter” and start seeing him through an “autistic filter”, as a fellow autist. There’s common ground between us suddenly. It’s like: “Oh, he struggles to fit in, too! He’s not being arrogant and withholding. He’s autistic. He’s on the spectrum just like I am. We are like two peas in a pod.” 😉
I even kinda like beardy bloke in the picture with the theatrically wandering eye and clear disrespect for his current date.
God help me. 😉😂
God help us all!
The brunette nearly has a full house, if her name was **** I would be deploying the anti-limerence measures🙈
But seriously:
Thomas says
But… This is partly where the understanding of limerence has been very helpful. Especially this site and this community. Because I’ve found it very empowering to see that whatever the differences between us, there seems to be a shared process at work, and THAT can be nipped in the bud.
Well observed, more power too you!
@Sammy
I am always fascinated to read what you write. I do agree with you that while childhood events may not explain limerence, early emotional attachments in our life can explain who we drift towards. I am a straight woman and my two most serious relationships each had elements that very strongly resembled each of my parents (one guy had a lot in common in terms of core positive personality traits with my mother, the other with my father). However, people are complex and maybe in my mind I simplified each of these men. In each I gravitated only to the positive aspects, which reminded me of my loving parents, and ignored or did not see the negative and toxic stuff until much latter. So the dysfunction cannot be explained by childhood emotional connections, but despite them …
“I am always fascinated to read what you write.”
@Reader.
Thank you. I am always fascinated to read what I write, too! 🤣
Sammy,
A lot to unpack there.
“It should be noted, that if a nourishing symbiosis with Mother isn’t possible during infancy, and a far more attentive/loving attachment is forged with the father, an emotionally sound adult might eventually emerge. But if the father should leave through divorce, death or remarriage, the abandonment trauma this invokes will significantly impact all future relationships. Anxiety surrounding potential loss of another who might have substantial meaning and value, can exacerbate personality disorder features and inhibit or destroy healthy, gratifying adult connections.” – https://sharischreiber.com/do-you-love-to-be-needed/
Is your father still around?
“Contrary to popular belief, you are not attracted to someone who’s like your opposite sex parent (boys to their mothers, girls to their fathers). You’re attracted to someone who’s like the parent (of either gender) with whom you had the most difficulties or issues!” – https://sharischreiber.com/course/there-must-be-a-pony-in-here-somewhere-sorting-your-way-through-the-bpd-madness/
I could be the poster child for those two quotes.
And, the last, and I apologize in advance, “I’ve never met a lesbian who didn’t have significant issues with her mother. This isn’t to suggest they don’t exist–I just haven’t encountered one during the course of my personal or professional life.” – https://sharischreiber.com/course/the-lesbian-borderline-for-the-love-of-mother/
One of my Navy buddies has a lesbian daughter and from what he tells me, she and her mother had significant issues. So did he, for that matter. They’re divorced. One of his sons, won’t let his mother alone with her grandchild.
The last two links require a paid subscription. It’s only $10. I think it’s worth the money.
Nothing you said comes as any kind of surprise. You seem to have gotten on things. The rest of your life is ahead of you.
If you can’t be happy because of the past, be happy in spite of it.
@Limerent Emeritus.
“Is your father still around?”
Yup, my dad is still around. Actually, I live with him full-time and we get along great. However, when I was mid-20s, struggling with limerence and its immediate aftermath, I was consumed by something that felt almost like pure hatred for my father. I think subconsciously I blamed him for the emotional pain I was in. And I compared my father extremely unfavourably (in my mind) to my LO. 🤔
“You’re attracted to someone who’s like the parent (of either gender) with whom you had the most difficulties or issues.”
Schreiber may be onto something. At times I adored both my parents and at other times I loathed both my parents. I think I felt powerful feelings of ambivalence toward both Mother and Father. Adolescence intensified these feelings of ambivalence.
I feel like my biological father was the “Good Father” in my life. And my LO was the “Bad Father” (Bad Boy) I needed to experience at some point in my life to serve as a counterbalance to the Good Father. My real dad met my needs, unlike many people’s dads, whereas my LO was a rubbish version of the same thing. Maybe I needed a “lousy dad figure” in order to see and cultivate independence as an adult virtue?
“I’ve never met a lesbian who didn’t have significant issues with her mother.”
No need to apologise in advance. That’s my all-time favourite lesbian quote. And I’m sure my sister would enjoy it, too.
I think there’s a common misconception among straight people that gay people don’t have a robust sense of humour about being gay. We’re not defensive and militant all the time. Most of us are quite introspective. Do you want to know what gay people do when straight people aren’t around? Nothing shocking or outrageous. Mostly, we just sit around like pot-plants, drink endless cups of Earl Grey tea, and psychoanalyse ourselves… 😜
We don’t psychoanalyse ourselves because we feel bad about being gay. We psychoanalyse ourselves because it’s entertaining to peer into the murky depths of one’s own soul. (Why do some straight people shun introspection?) I am fascinated by my own failure to conform to some cookie-cutter mould. There are days when failing to fit into society feels like a remarkable achievement!! 🤣
Actually, my sister falls for “damsel-in-distress” borderline women. So, when it comes to affairs of the heart, she’d actually has a lot in common with heterolimerent straight men. She has the same fixer/rescuer fantasies. 😉
“If you can’t be happy because of the past, be happy in spite of it.”
Thank you for your well-wishes. Much appreciated. 😛
@Sammy
I’m sorry to hear about your high school. It doesn’t seem possible to discriminate these days with the younger generation being so fluid, but maybe that’s just me. I’m a heterosexual female, but sexually I feel fluid. I’ve had sex with women, maybe that makes me bisexual, but I’ve only ever been limerent for the opposite sex. My point is you can’t really label someone, it puts you in a box, and believe me no one wants to be in a box.
@carried away
Thank you for your kind sentiments. You know, in my ghastly old age, I can actually see both sides of the debate. I can understand why a religious institution wants to enact rules to retain its essential religious character, otherwise what’s the point of identifying as a religious institution in the first place? On the other hand, I can understand the hurt and anger felt by students who feel alienated from their social/educational milieu, and misunderstood by key adult figures in their life. 🤔
I’m actually 39, so it’s a long, long time since I attended high school. And most of the ghosts of the past have been well and truly laid to rest. But it took a long time to find something resembling “inner peace”. 🤔
I am utterly fascinated by my own sexuality, because it seems impossible to pin down or categorise. As a teenager, I did have a few genuine “ecstatic moments” with girls i.e. when the girl in question appeared to reciprocate my attraction to her in full. However, at least one seemingly straight, possibly bisexual male dragged me into a limerent episode that went on for years and years. (What was going on in his mind? The truthful answer: probably nothing). 🤣
Why did a male and not a female trigger such a troublesome limerent episode for me? Am I more attracted to boys than to girls in general? Did this particular limerent episode constitute some final word on my sexual orientation? Or is it just that I encounter really straightforward, honest girls who don’t play mind games and really crazy, unpredictable boys who do play mind games? Hahaha!
Or – here’s another thought – do I just have “unhealed wounds” in my life/soul regarding males and the same issues don’t crop up with females because I don’t have degree of emotional woundedness regarding females? Does it just come down to what kind of wounds I carry around with me? 😉
I’m not in any way homophobic. I don’t want to change myself into some kind of socially-acceptable male. But a part of me would really like to have genuinely platonic friendships with other men of whatever orientation. This is mostly intellectual curiosity on my part. I want to “see” human males without the romantic haze of limerence getting in the way, and distorting my perceptions. I want to see the world as objectively as possible, and I think the dream of romantic love or of finding romantic love can get in the way of that.
There were times in my late 20s when I preferred to interact with women (platonically) rather than men in social settings, given the choice, because I knew at that stage in my life no woman was going to make me feel super-nervous. That is to say, at that point in my life, interacting with males was intensely stressful and intensely pleasurable, whereas interacting with women was mostly soothing.
Sometimes it was easier to avoid men altogether. Sometimes it was easier to forgo both the heightened stress and the heightened pleasure. Women at that stage in my life didn’t make me high. But nor did they stress me out by their mere presence and conversation. Women weren’t glimmering at me, in other words. (If you flip these observations, you’ll understand what a young straight man feels around females when hormones are racing through his body). 😉
I did have a chance to date a girl back in high school. She may have even been briefly limerent for me. I think her fatal error was she didn’t buy me chocolate. 😉 I brought her chocolate, which she gladly accepted and ate, but she didn’t buy me any chocolate in return. I thought to myself: “This young lady isn’t paying attention. Clearly, she’s not that into me – I see no offerings of chocolate.” 😆
I think my obsession with chocolate as a teenager, which I no longer have by the way, was/is an autistic foible. For a long time, romantic love and chocolate were intertwined in my brain. I expected a would-be romantic partner to buy me things. Jewellery is nice, yeah? I wouldn’t say no to a diamond bracelet. But given a choice between jewellery and chocolate, I’ll always take the chocolate. 😉
As you can see, I’m delightfully non-materialistic. 😇
Oh, and in my 20s I went on plenty of dates with males. I always bombed out on such dates, though, because I proved more interested in the food than in the person sitting across from me. Maybe I don’t need to date a human being? Maybe I need to date a chain of restaurants? Or maybe I’m just really into my nosh? 😛
Sammy,
You’re on a roll!
Check this out: https://thoughtcatalog.com/brianna-wiest/2022/01/when-youre-ready-this-is-how-you-heal/
Song of the Day: “Blue Skies” – Ella Fitzgerald (1958)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nB-xqDZbEVQ
“ You know, in my ghastly old age, I can actually see both sides of the debate. I can understand why a religious institution wants to enact rules to retain its essential religious character, otherwise what’s the point of identifying as a religious institution in the first place? On the other hand, I can understand the hurt and anger felt by students who feel alienated from their social/educational milieu, and misunderstood by key adult figures in their life.
@Sammy
I don’t know, the church I attend is very open and affirming. I would think these institutions would have to be if they want to stay relevant and attract younger members, and hahaha if you think 39 is old wait til you’re 55.
“But a part of me would really like to have genuinely platonic friendships with other men of whatever orientation. This is mostly intellectual curiosity on my part. I want to “see” human males without the romantic haze of limerence getting in the way, and distorting my perceptions. I want to see the world as objectively as possible, and I think the dream of romantic love or of finding romantic love can get in the way of that.”
I’m at the point in my life where I’m not looking for romantic love so platonic relationships with both sexes are really what sustain me now. It is quite liberating when you can give up the notion of romantic love in the limerent sense. That or maybe I’m just getting older and want to focus on other things that make me happy and bring me joy.
Who doesn’t like chocolate?😋
I didn’t watch the video but I will.
Do we ever, or do we often make corrective attachments? I find for me, I may have not connected as deeply with my mother as I might have with another stronger, more feminine, more intellectual, more fully-formed woman. I might not have totally trusted her as a caregiver. Not early-early – I remember resting my head on her bathrobed shoulder and feeling loved then, and I have fortunately felt loved my whole life, but adolescense, perhaps. I think in that era I felt some disconnect that sent me to the altar of all women who were beautiful, strong, fashionable, intelligent. Soon after, my life as a crusher would begin. I feel there must be something in there…