One of the questions I was asked last week by the producers at Treefort was “why do limerents feel guilty?” Having had time to reflect, I think I kind of fluffed that question.
I talked mainly about the magnitude of the emotional response, and how social pressure tends to discourage outward displays of emotion, especially in Britain (although less so nowadays; I am quite old). This means the limerent bottles up feelings that they are ashamed of having, without a healthy mechanism for release.
I don’t think that answer is wrong, but it’s certainly incomplete. So with the luxury of being able to write a considered response at leisure, rather than answering on the spur of the moment, here are some more thoughts.
1) They are undeniably romantic feelings
This is the obvious point, in retrospect. Limerence is a desperate desire for another person. If the limerent has a partner or spouse, such feelings create an internal conflict that will understandably cause guilt – or at the very least, cognitive dissonance. You can be in love with your partner – proper, healthy, securely-attached love – but overwhelmed by feelings of desire for this other person. Really, there are only two obvious ways your subconscious can react: recognise it as a mental betrayal of your partner and feel guilt, or try to eliminate the conflict by devaluing the partner.
Limerents that react defensively (or resentfully) to feelings of guilt can even deliberately devalue their partner, in order to assuage the terrible feeling that – God forbid – they might have done something wrong.
More well-adjusted limerents will accept the guilt, because at an emotional level it is a betrayal, in the sense that most of us would like to be able to sustain the monogamous ideal of simple, uncomplicated love for one person without being put into a spin by inconvenient other people hanging around being all intoxicating. But that’s the world we live in, so we need to find ways to take responsibility for ourselves and cope.
2) It’s disproportionate and we know it
The second source of guilt is how powerful the limerent response is. It’s all encompassing. Life consuming. But despite the urgent demands of our limerent subconscious, we somehow still retain enough mental awareness to recognise that the response is completely over the top. LO isn’t, objectively, that special. We know it, but don’t want to admit it, because that lessens the good feelings. It also makes us feel foolish and self-deluding, because who goes to pieces over an ordinary, everyday person? Not us! No. LO must be astonishingly special because otherwise what idiots we would be! Better shut down that nagging guilt within that we are behaving like ridiculous lovestruck adolescents with poor impulse control, over someone who is no more or less remarkable than any of the other millions of souls struggling through life.
3) Limerence laughs at self-discipline
Linked into the previous idea, is guilt caused by persistent failure of moral fortitude when LO is around. Like a self-indulgent child with their hand in the cookie jar, the limerent keeps going back for more even when they know it’s bad for them and they are already starting to feel a little queasy. As a generally fairly self-possessed adult man, I was pretty ashamed of my lack of self-discipline when in the depths of limerence. I knew it needed to stop, but hadn’t yet developed the psychological toughness to resist the siren call of LO. That took time and trial-and-error experiments, and so every self-indulgent fix along the way was followed by the guilty nausea that I’d failed again. It’s not nice to continually resolve to change and then fail at the very next test. It feels… shameful.
4) Why can’t we just be friends?
Another – perhaps more subtle – guilt comes from the fact that we usually find that our LOs are great company. LO kindles something within us and makes us feel happy and safe and contentedly-connected to them. The sort of thing that would make for a great friendship if we weren’t consumed by romantic desire. So, our inability as limerents to be a good friend to someone we care about is another source of failure and shame. Why can’t we stop being so overwrought and just hang out with them as a friend? Are we really so weak-willed that we have to cut them out of our lives completely? I mean, it’s not their fault we’re so emotionally incontinent that we can’t spend time with them without getting tangled up like a ball of string that a cat’s been at.
5) Should we feel guilty?
So, there are several causes of guilt, but are they justified? I’ve touched on this before. In my view the simple answer is: your behaviour is what counts.
If you are making dreamy eyes at LO, hinting at your desire for a strong connection, and testing their keenness, then you are breaking the commitment you made to your partner. If you are getting physical with LO then – well, I don’t think any functional adult really needs to be told that, yes, that is a betrayal. Whether your partner is willing to forgive any particular moral lapse depends on their own perspective on monogamy, and where their own red lines are, but generally speaking, it’s when you do something to vocalise your feelings or act on them that you open yourself up to the judgement of others. That’s the point where you move from an internal conflict to an external action that affects other people. That’s the point when guilt is appropriate and useful – if you can learn from it rather than wallow in it.
When you shouldn’t feel guilty, in contrast, is while the conflict remains internal. I really dislike the idea of feeling guilty about thoughts or emotions. Use them as a guide, certainly. Use them as a way of recognising that your thoughts are in conflict with your moral compass. Definitely learn from them, but feeling guilty about having thoughts or feelings that make you uncomfortable is feeling guilty about being human. It’s essential that we are able to explore wrong, transgressive ideas in our minds, and work through them to understand ourselves better. Any time we challenge ourselves we will feel discomfort. And if we feel guilt or shame, it’s a good stimulus for examining what’s going on in our lives and what our subconscious is trying to signal to us. That internal monologue is normal and healthy.
Feeling ashamed of being limerent is in the same category for me as feeling ashamed of being gay. It’s a toxic denial of an aspect of your own identity that will not make you a “better” person, but will just cause pain and self-loathing.
By chance at the moment, I’m reading a book by Ellis Peters (one of the Brother Cadfael mysteries) called The Raven in the Foregate, which seems pertinent. In the story, a new priest is given the “cure” of a parish, and turns out to be so strict and pedantic about canon law that he terrorises his small community into fear and self-doubt. One quote about how some of the more sensitive parishioners were affected struck me as especially powerful:
They look within for sins they may have committed, unknowing. They are no longer sure what is sin and what is not, so they dare not breathe without wondering if they do wrong.
Insecure people can be made to feel guilty and flawed over nothing but their own internal doubts. Your thoughts are yours to use as you please; other people only become involved when you put them into action.
100% spot on for me.
The guilt is probably the hardest part of the limerence for me.
Guilt was what stopped it from developing into either disclosure with rejection or a physical affair for me. At least therapy (and support from this site) has helped things improve a bit.
I felt guilty towards my SO during the height of Limerence, mainly because my mind was elsewhere and I knew that was the case but couldn’t stop it. We’d be out for dinner, sat at home watching tv or lying in bed together and I’d be either texting LO or thinking about her. It wasn’t crippling guilt, just there constantly at the back of my mind.
Now I feel guilty about being NC with LO. I was her mentor, the career choice she’s just made was with my encouragement. Without me guiding her and opening doors for her she would have done something very different (and worse). Now I’ve vanished and she has to fend for herself.
She’ll probably be fine, I know that, and i did the right thing by her. I’m also now doing the right thing by my family and myself. But I feel uneasy nonetheless.
In my more rational moments, I’ve experienced much of the above but when in full limerency mode I find that guilt is easily pushed to one side. During an LE, normal compassionate thinking goes out of the window because there is only one thing that really matters.
After a recent period of NC I experienced a new type of guilt, thinking that I might actually be leading on LO when in reality I have no intention of leaving my SO and starting up a new life with her (although this stance seems to fluctuate). It’s really selfish of me to put her in a position that could risk what she already has, just for my own ends and particularly as I’m older and should be wiser.
Well I didnt feel guilty to be honest – as harsh as it sounds. Dont think i was/am getting the emotional connection with SO so getting it elsewhere felt nice and an ESCAPE. Once I learnt about limerence and how i had a limber beast inside me, then I did feel guilty as realised the damage i must have been doing to the relationship. Over Dec and Jan I was showing more attention and even SO noticed that I was hugging more and paying more attention at home as I realised how she must be feeling – feeling lonely whilst Im elsewhere mentally, even though physically next to her.
It all sounds bad – but this is the power of Limerence. Luckily nothing physical happened so dont need to feel guity but it did emotionally as I was buying gifts and meeting her on her own and not being truthful with SO about these meetings and never disclosed gifts. so a tad guilty about that.
I had to do some fancy mental gymnastics to handle the cognitive dissonance but I’d been doing that since I was a kid so it wasn’t too hard. The therapist said I had an answer for everything. It wasn’t always a good answer but I had one. I’d covered all the bases.
I’ve never been a big fan of guilt. Guilt’s like voodoo. It only works if you believe it and someone else can try to instill it in you.
I prefer remorse. It wasn’t guilt that helped get me on track, it was remorse. I knew I’d gone off the rails and it was my responsibility to get back on them.
This link has a pretty good explanation of the difference:
https://feverinsidethestorm.com/2008/07/05/guilt-vs-remorse/
Guilt and shame are about how you feel about your actions. Remorse is about what you do as a consequence of guilt (or sober self-reflection).
Not to put too fine a point on this distinction, but I think it’s important: Remorse is about what you might think to do to make amends in response to feeling guilty about something you did. But shame is different. It’s more about who you are (or believe you are); therefore, it cuts deeper. Guilt and embarrassment can be motivating. But shame is destructive and soul-crushing.
As mentioned the other day, I am actually feeling a bit better lately about my limerence, but I think I am starting to analyze my thoughts and beliefs a little more. I am thinking more about limerence itself and my own LE rather than my actual LO, if that makes any sense. This is a really good post about guilt. I do feel some level of guilt, and I suppose that is a good thing, but for the longest time I started to question myself and wondered if I really was as morally sound and decent a person as I thought I was. Limerence really began to make me question myself, despite the fact it is quite understandable and “normal” that I would develop limerence for another woman given the current strain on my marriage and home life. I also had some thoughts I wasn’t proud of, but I now realize that we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for letting certain things cross our minds (especially if we later reject them or dismiss them as not being something we would ever actually want or put into action). Dr. L puts it so well when he says the following:
“Definitely learn from them, but feeling guilty about having thoughts or feelings that make you uncomfortable is feeling guilty about being human. It’s essential that we are able to explore wrong, transgressive ideas in our minds, and work through them to understand ourselves better. Any time we challenge ourselves we will feel discomfort. And if we feel guilt or shame, it’s a good stimulus for examining what’s going on in our lives and what our subconscious is trying to signal to us.”
I am not trying to take morality out of the equation here or say it isn’t important, but I really think this is helpful. Thankfully, we still haven’t criminalized “thought crimes” and the above passage speaks to why doing so would be such an awful idea.
Thank you for this DrL, I’m happy to rediscover older blog posts which are so helpful.
I agree with you VL, we shouldn’t feel guilty about our thoughts, as long as we don’t act on them. Nevertheless, my Limerence *has* an impact on my behavior, as my mind is often elsewhere, and for that I do feel guilty. I know my SO is suffering because of that. I’m also feeling guilty that I’m not telling him what’s going on in my mind. But I can’t disclose, it would kill him.
Only thing I can do about it is working hard to fight my limerence. Recently I have managed to take a lot of distance from my feelings for LO. Somehow it must have a positive impact on my behavior at home, as my SO is less criticizing and reproaching towards me. I on the other hand don’t feel that the distance I take from LO makes me be closer to SO. It just makes me feel so empty and sad. Disenfranchised grief as DrL wrote about before.
“I am thinking more about limerence itself and my own LE rather than my actual LO, if that makes any sense. ” Makes total sense VL and I think I’m experiencing the same currently. I hope it means progress.
Thanks Emma. I haven’t been there for my wife either for the last five months. I have disclosed to her, but she doesn’t understand the magnitude of my feelings for my LO. Lately I lied to my wife when she asked me if I was thinking about my LO. I am feeling tremendously guilty about all of this (as well as the fantasies), but I do give myself a bit of a pass due to my situation. The syrupy-sweetness from my wife is killing me though (although she does slip up sometimes and she and my daughter are still at each other’s throats). I am so damn frustrated that this stupid pandemic has put so much on hold in terms of improving our marriage and my own self-improvement.
Funnily enough, I think I may have seen my LO the other day outside a supermarket near where she lives (my wife and I went there to get something our local store was out of). A woman who looked like her was looking at me as we walked by (we were on the way in and she was just leaving). The thing is I don’t have great eyesight for distances and I only wear my glasses for driving. I also have a bad habit of seeing people and not recognizing them (one time I even failed to recognize my own brother for a few seconds). It may have been her, and if it was, I am a little disappointed she wouldn’t have said anything (provided she was certain it was me). I would never knowingly ignore her, even if I was with my wife (and my wife wouldn’t be rude to her or anything like that – she knows my LO was/is into her brother). The funny thing is I am not that worried about this though. A month ago, I would have obsessed over seeing her, but not now. Chances are it wasn’t her, but it might have been (I actually saw another woman a few minutes before who also looked like her). Sure, I am still thinking I see her in every crowd (not that there are many “crowds” these days), but I am not all that flustered about it. I suppose that is an improvement as well, especially given how much I obsessed over what I would say or do if I ever saw her again?
Yup, I’ve always felt massively guilty about my limerent feelings. It conflicts with my moral ideal that human beings (including myself) should be able to practise self-control. Sometimes I tried to shift the blame on an LO for the situation, but the blame-shifting never worked. I knew deep down I was the one with the problem.
Also wonder if the guilt feelings are tied in with the OCD aspect of limerence? The obsessive fear that some OCD-prone people have that they’ve done something wrong? Sort of like being blessed (cursed?) with an overactive conscience you can’t turn off? Does anyone else find themselves obsessing over moral trifles?