There’s nothing like falling in love. The world fills with colour, life is full of promise and possibility, your mood dances a jig, and your body fizzes with excitement and euphoria. Heady stuff.
So… why does it stop? If an experience that extraordinary is so positive and life-affirming, why would we have built in mechanisms for making it end?
This question tends to occur to people under two different circumstances.
The first is frustration about the loss of romantic connection. When we feel the giddy excitement of infatuation for someone special, we want it to last. It seems such a core part of romantic attachment that the fading of attraction during a long-term relationship that is otherwise good is distressing.
The second context is when we cannot turn off an infatuation that has become a problem. This sort of obsessive infatuation is known as limerence and can be well understood as addiction to another person. During unwanted limerence, we have the opposite problem – romantic infatuation won’t fade, even after it’s causing us harm.
So what’s the answer? Why are romantic feelings so unreliable?
Some straightforward answers
A quick google search on why romantic feelings fade throws up some common answers:
- Getting to know someone intimately removes the excitement of novelty
- Time causes a transition from lust and infatuation to companionship
- You can’t sustain euphoria forever – you’d be exhausted
- Our neurochemistry shifts from dopamine and noradrenaline highs during infatuation to hormonal contentedness during attachment
These answers aren’t wrong, but they aren’t complete either. We all intuitively know that familiarity eventually decreases excitement about someone you are attracted to, but how does it happen and why is it different with different people? Similarly, it is undoubtedly true that the firing in reward and arousal circuits in the brain decreases with time, but that’s kind of just describing the machine through which our feelings operate. It’s a bit like saying that deceleration in a car is caused by less fuel being injected into the combustion chamber. Really, it was the decision to take your foot off the accelerator pedal that caused it.
I think most people asking the question “why do romantic feelings fade?” are curious about what factors trigger a change in neurochemistry, and – perhaps most importantly when it comes to life satisfaction – whether they can they be hacked to slow or hasten the process?
Why feelings of pleasure fade
Pleasure fades over time. It’s a central feature of psychology and, as you might therefore expect, there’s a large body of published research that analyses the problem from multiple perspectives. Turns out that it’s complicated.
There are multiple levels of desire and multiple levels of satiation. There’s more than one way to experience a pleasure, and lots of ways to get tired of a reward. Perhaps the best studied case is the pleasure of food – and it’s a good one as it demonstrates these multiple levels very effectively.
If you gorge yourself on a lot of sweet food, you will soon feel sick of it. Sugar still tastes good and activates the same sensory neurons in your mouth, but you’ve shut down the desire to consume it. What seems a simple system turns out to involve multiple levels of control.
At the most fundamental level, there are physiological feedback mechanisms: a full stomach becomes distended, taste receptors are overstimulated, and blood sugar levels rise. All those processes suppress your appetite.
At the next level up, there is the idea of eating more sugar. After bingeing, the thought of eating more sugar becomes aversive, even nauseating. Over time, however, that distaste will pass – the overindulgence becomes a memory, and once you have recovered from the excess, the desire for dessert re-emerges.
Finally, at perhaps the highest cognitive level there is how you think about sugary foods intellectually. This can depend on your general mood, values, and attitude to life and health. You might resist the idea of sweet reward because you are sticking to a diet, want to avoid the post-sugar slump, or because you have developed diabetes. Alternatively, you may feel especially drawn to seek immediate rewards because you are depressed, stressed or overwhelmed.
These multiple levels of desire all need to be understood if you want to know why romantic cravings pass sooner or later than you would like. However, I’d argue that the key point of control is at the “middle” level.
Habituation
The process of learning to suppress a response is known as “habituation”. It’s a fundamental feature of neurophysiology, and describes the phenomenon where repeated exposure to a stimulus (either good or bad) leads to a diminished response over time. You get used to things that happen repeatedly. This process allows you to stop wanting things that are easily obtained and stop fearing things that are easily avoided.
If you repeatedly listen to a song that you really like, you’ll tire of it. If you eat your favourite meal every day, it will lose its appeal. If you constantly consume erotica, you’ll become jaded. Habituation is the mechanism through which exposure to rewards leads to fading desire. But, there are some subtleties that explain a great deal about the unreliability of romantic feelings.
Habituation is a learned suppression of response, and how well and how quickly the lesson is learned depends on the stimulus. Specifically, here are some of the key confounding factors:
- Stimulus strength: more powerful desires take longer to habituate.
- Stimulus rate: if a reward is presented frequently, it habituates quickly. If it is less common, it will habituate slowly.
- Stimulus variety: if a reward is predictable, it habituates quickly. If it is unpredictable, it habituates slowly.
- Spontaneous recovery: if a reward is inaccessible for a long time, the habituation process can reverse.
- Dishabituation: if an extra stimulus is given with a habituated reward, or the strength or context of reward is changed, habituation can reverse.
- Sensitization: some rewards initially increase in strength before habituation begins.
The strength of your romantic desire, and how long it lasts, will depend on all these factors.
Habituation in long-term relationships
When you have been with someone for a long time, habituation of the arousal and pleasure responses to them inevitably occurs. This is an active process, and requires lots of hormonal and neurotransmitter systems, but the key focal point seems to be our old friend the dopamine reward system.
Desire is a combination of excitement and motivation to seek reward. As previously discussed, feedback from the prefrontal cortex to the striatum is the main mechanism for regulating reward-seeking, and making sense of desire. While this is important for self-discipline, the same pathway regulates the habituation process too. This feedback decreases dopamine release in the pleasure centres of the striatum, diminishing the animal desire for your mate.
If your relationship is stable, your trust for your partner is good, and you enjoy regular intimacy, this system will work as intended and you will become habituated to your significant other. Bluntly, there is no more need to secure reward, because you can access it without barriers.
A quick look at the list of confounding factors above though, shows how easy it is to throw this process off balance.
Habituation in limerence
Let’s say you’ve become infatuated with someone you shouldn’t have. Let’s say they are unpredictable, access to them is uncertain, that you sometimes get to spend wonderfully arousing time with them, but then have long stretches of time where they are unavailable, or moody, or with someone else.
A quick look through the factors that influence habituation show how this would affect your brain. Stimuli that change in strength, are unpredictable, sometimes inaccessible, or experienced in different contexts resist habituation. If you are trying to get over infatuation for someone you cannot be with, it will be difficult to “naturally” suppress the desire.
This also explains how limerence can change in severity even after you start to feel less obsessed – a period of success in avoiding the object of your infatuation can cause dishabituation, making them even more desirable when you next encounter them (especially if it is by chance).
As a final observation, addiction is defined as a craving that is difficult to resist even after the pleasure has passed and it is having a negative effect on your life. There is pretty good evidence that the habituation process in the dopamine reward system is compromised in addiction (as least, for drugs of abuse). It’s not hard to believe the same is true when you are caught in a debilitating romantic obsession like limerence. The feedback from the prefrontal cortex to suppress the Limerent Object-seeking behaviour just doesn’t work effectively.
Hacking habituation
This understanding of how the habituation process is regulated in the brain is useful for explaining both loss of desire in long-term relationships, and the insatiable craving of limerence – but it’s also useful for scheming about how it can be exploited to get the outcome you want.
If you are frustrated by a stale relationship that has lost its spark, then you need to do things that will promote spontaneous recovery or dishabituation. That means disrupting the stable routines of romantic life, introducing new stimuli alongside romantic cues, and adding some unpredictability to your romantic rewards. The old advice of spicing things up, doing new things with your partner, seeing them in new contexts, and being less habitual in your behaviour, really do have a justification in neuroscience. You might never recapture the thrills of early love, but you can definitely improve on mediocrity.
If you are frustrated by the insatiable desire of limerence, things are less simple. You can’t habituate by forming a stable bond with them, but there are strategies available to decrease the reward that they offer and to activate your prefrontal cortex to drive feedback suppression indirectly. That is where self-reflection as the high cognitive level of desire comes in – cultivating self-discipline, avoiding using limerence as mood regulation, and looking for new, healthier rewards through purposeful living can work wonders.
Romantic desire fades because our brains are built to habituate to predictable, repetitive rewards. This is an essential feature of life in a complex environment, but it is a shame that it also means that healthy, happy relationships can tend towards romantic suppression, while wild infatuations remain powerfully hard to resist.
More positively, in either scenario, there are practical steps you can take to work with the intrinsic properties of your neural systems to regulate desire.
This also explains how limerence can change in severity even after you start to feel less obsessed ā a period of success in avoiding the object of your infatuation can cause dishabituation, making them even more desirable when you next encounter them (especially if it is by chance).
Remarkably prescient, that has literally just happened to me. 3 months NC with anincreasing sense of intellectual and emotional mastery of all my issues and her issues that had promoted my limerence. Chance meeting in a pub with mutual friends just a week ago. She moved seats towards the end of the evening to chat with me. Accepted a drink from me.
We had become estranged after I called for NC, she was firmly in hurt/angry or indifferent NC with me. Always hard to tell what her emotions towards me were, which of course is limerent rocket fuel. We spent many intense hours wrapped up in each others company. Nothing in it according to her. Deniable plausibility position I think it was, but never sure.
So we both had our reasons for NC. By Thursday I was offering to go round with a takeaway to her place. She declined it on grounds of already having eaten. No guiding emotional context as usual. Within an hour or two of trying to be in her company again I felt inappropriate and out of control. I was feeling pretty depressed it about this morning, I have overshared with her again online and I think she has closed down again. I felt mad and a bit hopeless this morning. This blog post has rescued my battered self esteem. Thanks once again Dr.L
“Always hard to tell what her emotions towards me were, which of course is limerent rocket fuel. ”
Whoa! I get it! I finally get it!
“She declined it on grounds of already having eaten. No guiding emotional context as usual.”
YES!
“Deniable plausibility position I think it was, but never sure.”
THIS!!!
You just made everything I just went through for the past year and a half make sense, finally. They hold their cards close to the vest, while playing the game. We *think* there is something there, but the lack of clarity makes us obsess. We can never relax into it.
It’s not a fantasy relationship per se, but their lack of willingness to bring clarity or definition to the situation causes us to have to fill in the gaps with our assumptions, ie theories ie fantasies.
It’s a form of gaslighting, honestly.
Really interesting article, thanks DrL.
This confirms what I always suspected… that forced LC due to my LO and his hot/cold behaviour has been a huge confounding factor in my ongoing limerence.
1. Mutually intense feelings to start with;
2. See LO only infrequently since Covid;
3. LO contact is totally out of my control and random;
4. LO randomly switches to being moody, cool and withdrawing or avoiding me;
5. On occasion, LO is warm, friendly and caring, but less frequently over time;
I really think if Covid had not happened, and we had carried on working together daily from the office, this LE would have burned out due to habituation far sooner.
On the plus side, after more than 3 years, I have for the first time, finally done something that is a step AWAY from my LO at work. I have asked to be replaced on his project. I wish I could say this made me feel good and strong but it does not, I just feel very sad. I suspect he will be feeling relieved which makes me feel even worse. Part of me believes this is for the best… but I fear the other part of me will forever wonder what-if.
I will still have random infrequent contact with him however so it does not solve the problem entirely… maybe even makes it worse due to 2. Stimulus rate and 3.Stimulus variety.
I can see why forever NC is by far the best way to rid yourself of limerence.
Ali, your situation eerily mirrors mine. I can relate to every you have written.
“5. On occasion, LO is warm, friendly and caring, but less frequently over time”
I think, Allie, that one of the trickiest moments to manage in limerence is when you feel you have had a definite spark with someone and now that person is slipping away and there’s nothing you can do to reel them back in – assuming they were ever on your hook in the first place!! Casual words and actions fail to reignite interest. Little hints and subtle remarks fall flat. The dream appears to be dying, but poor widdle limerent doesn’t want to give up hope just yet… š
This is the moment when people are tempted to chase LOs, and make colossal fools of themselves, and I would strongly advise people against chasing LOs and making colossal fools of themselves. The people who DO chase their LOs at this juncture often confront a very chilling reality indeed – that the “definite spark” was in fact never there as far as LO was concerned. The limerent, apart from feeling tremendously embarrassed, comes off looking like a deranged twit. Now I don’t know about proper English folk, but us Aussies, we have an aversion to coming off as deranged twits – especially deranged twits in front of The Bossman! š¤£
My heart goes out to you. Really it does, my dear. There is nothing worse than liking someone who may like us back a little bit, but who doesn’t understand the INTENSITY of our liking for them, and who will probably be freaked out if they ever learnt of the true intensity of our feelings. I think the number one mistake all limerents make is that we don’t recognise the extent to which we’re living INSIDE our own heads, and our LOs aren’t privy to what’s going on INSIDE our heads. š
Just because someone is making us euphoric, that doesn’t mean we’re making them euphoric. Sometimes, the euphoria trail is a one-way street. Alas, alas! ššš
Wishing you well, as always. š
Sobriety from limerence isn’t all that different than from alcohol. The intensity is thrilling and fun just like the high from alcohol. (At least for me.) It is also an escape from the reality of life. (At least for me too.) As a lifetime drinker I can see the similarities. And in the sobriety from limerence it is easier to see (and from reading posts of mine even four months old now) how effected my actions and thoughts were by the intensity of limerence.
But thankfully, like even when I drink, for the most part my rational mind is at least still in some operative mode to keep from acting like a “deranged twit” lol But I think in sobriety even being there on her last day might have been close enough to “deranged twit”. Granted I asked her if she would have minded and I did actually do some work and got a few other things accomplished. But everyone knew why I was there. Thankfully in my old age I become more mellow when I drink. The worst I do is forget I told my wife something and then try to tell her the same thing the next day :-/
It’s really difficult to see that it is mostly, if not all, in our head. For me common courtesy, friendly smiles and kind words become way more than they were. But that was all in my head. That was just LO being a nice lady, nothing more. But you cling on to those things unknowingly blowing them out of proportion. If you don’t get any positive, or even negative really, feedback in just fuels the intensity. The uncertainty is the gasoline on the fire of intensity.
That was one of the most difficult things about LO. Even with negative feedback at least I would know to pull back, give her some space, cool it down. But none is the worst. Does she smile at everyone like that? Does she hold eye contact when she talks to everyone else? Does she laugh at other people’s stupid dad jokes? It’s maddening.
I am sure I was saved by the fact that in the second half of my limerence, when LO was still working, was that she was seeing someone. And even in limerence I know better to get involved with someone, even if I was single and available, that has an existing relationship. That’s totally disrespectful and something I could never do. It takes two for infidelity and one party, in my opinion, is no less guilty than the other.
And her happy and still in said relationship is the biggest motivator to maintain NC and let her live her life. I’ll be looking forward to the day that I can finally tell LO goodbye.
“It takes two for infidelity and one party, in my opinion, is no less guilty than the other.”
Yeah, being an affair partner is kind of like driving a getaway car.
Technically, you didn’t rob the bank.
You were merely an accomplice.
Your entire comment makes so much sense.
ā I think, Allie, that one of the trickiest moments to manage in limerence is when you feel you have had a definite spark with someone and now that person is slipping away and thereās nothing you can do to reel them back in ā assuming they were ever on your hook in the first place!! Casual words and actions fail to reignite interest. Little hints and subtle remarks fall flat. The dream appears to be dying, but poor widdle limerent doesnāt want to give up hope just yetā¦ ā
It describes my situation soo well. We met, we felt spark, we talked about it, but it was all very safe because we are in different cities. But get this: there was understanding that what we were doing was only to stay virtual (think sexting), and cannot be anything else, because both are married and not looking to break our marriages. But I thought it could be our special thing and we can keep doing it and bond over it, and help each others confidence and ego. Only after some time, there was no more mention of it, we kept on talking a lot and helping each other, but there was never any mention of what we did. And the longer time it has passed the less and less likely it is to be, but poor little me cannot accept it. I miss the butterflies and he was giving them to me and I want more. I donāt want or expect to be in a relationship, even thought I am limerant and itās affecting my life more than I want it to.
And I will never admit it to him because I donāt want to be a fool. I donāt want him to feel sorry for me. I donāt want my pride hurt.
Yesterday, we approached this subject againā¦ and there was some evidence that he might still be attracted (only sexual, nothing more), but he pulled back and abandoned the conversation.
“I really think if Covid had not happened, and we had carried on working together daily from the office, this LE would have burned out due to habituation far sooner.”
Allie, this is my situation. LO and I are in a very routine working relationship week in and week out and habituation has tampered the highs/lows of my limerence for sure, yet it has not burnt out. At least not after 15 months and maybe it just needs more time. I “try” to keep to a strict LC routine with LO and for the most part our interactions are quite dull. Mostly work collaboration with a little superficial chit chat thrown in. I don’t go anywhere with her alone, I don’t engage in deeper personal conversation with her, and I don’t text her anything personal ever…occasional work matters only. Even then I try not to text her about work. I just try to walk a very narrow path with LO because anything that becomes unpredictable or out of normality with her sends me back into LE turmoil.
Of course I can’t control her every behavior and occasionally she goes off my script so I manage and scramble emotionally as those moments occur. But luckily she is fairly predictable and honestly she leads a rather boring life which is sad for her but better for my LE.
I think habituation is a great strategy for workplace LOs where NC is not a very viable option. But it takes a strict LC approach and some time for the habit to set in. For me…maybe 6 months. It may not be the total cure like NC can be but it can very much lessen the turmoil of an LE.
Well done, that takes real determination to do.
I completely relate to this but as the person on the receiving end of your approach. Being the receiver not the do-er changes everything.
The parallels between of your description and my LO’s behaviour has really pulled on a loose limerent thread in my mind and I feel compelled to ask… Would anything have been different if, when you disclosed to LO, she had fully reciprocated your feelings rather than claimed friends only? Or would your approach have been exactly the same regardless of her response?
Hi Allie…if she had fully reciprocated my feelings then I wanted to pursue, at minimum, a controlled EA with this woman. So the answer is no, my actions would be different if she felt the same as me.
Are you a mutual LO and you believe your LO is purposely keeping you at a distance? I can’t fully remember your circumstances.
There were intense mutual feelings for sure, not sure if he is a limerent though. We have never spoken about it. Not totally sure if he knows I reciprocate… he probably does but this is a huge source of limerent uncertainty for me.
Yes I can tell he tries to keep me at arms length these days. E.g. Limits conversations, limits coming to the office on the days I am there, avoids being alone with me, avoids anything too personal, avoids long text exchanges, eye contact avoidance, etc. Basically everything you are doing! I always assumed it was becuase he wanted nowt to do with me out of respect for his marriage but I forever wonder if it is just to dampen his LE to manageable level.
Out of curiosity, what did he used to do that made you think he had intense mutual feelings?
I think it’s completely possible he is keeping his distance because of attraction, but like you said, it doesn’t mean he is limerent. He could just have a strong moral boundary if he senses attraction on your part or his part or both. But his behavior does sound similar to mine in a lot of ways. It’s hard to know the why for sure and I completely understand how this kind of thing might fuel the uncertainty and intensify the LE.
“Out of curiosity, what did he used to do that made you think he had intense mutual feelings?”
Many small things. E.g. When the attraction started, there was a period of unprecedented warmth and playfulness between us. His attention was hyper focussed on me, lots of long mutual eye contact and grinning. Then he suddenly went very cold & distant and avoided me. I cried in the car on the way home from work a few times during that period.
On my last day in the office at the start of Covid, he was really miserable. As I was leaving he ran towards the door to me but then didn’t know what to say and backed away with a sad and confused look on his face. I was confused and too fearful of his cold treatment to call him back (he is my boss after-all).
His voice caught in an emotional way saying “hello” once when he saw me after a long time apart due to Covid… others probably overheard. He then ignored me for a month or so, to the point of avoiding all eye contact or even looking in my direction – he even turned his chair to look away from me during meetings and would not even look at me when he spoke to me. More crying in the way home…
Other things too. Mostly classic hot-cold behaviour, like he tried to avoid me for while but then weakened switched to warm and nice again to get a dose if that back from me, but then got too close and closed off again. It seemed very obvious to me.
Allie, that sounds pretty extreme on his part. I don’t avoid warm interactions, eye contact, smiling and laughing with LO, precisely because I don’t want to make her work experience awkward and because, honestly, the warm interactions are pleasant and they help feed just a little of the reciprocation I want from LO. If I try to act all cold towards LO, then I find I get more agitated myself. Since I have to coexist with LO, I have found, by trial and error, a balance between getting some level of interaction with her but not too much that it sends me into a depressive state over my unrequited desire for romance with her. For me, the entire relationship with her is what makes me comfortable that isn’t awkward for her. Does that make sense?
Your situation before LO went cold sounds very similar to my situation. A lot of long gazes and smiling, fun conversational banter, texting, and what not. But then of course I disclosed and in some regards it was nice to let that air out of the room. I tend to agree, that a relationship can get so muddled with what is not being said, that things need to be said.
What would happen if you confronted him and told him you feel like he is being distant and cold to you and you want to know if you did something wrong? Just frame it in an employee/boss kind of way. Maybe he is dying to let the proverbial cat out of the bag and he might say a whole bunch and you might break through this awkwardness.
Yep. All of this, Allie and Speedy. I am trying to get to the point of giving up trying to work out what is going on in my LO’s head and why he acted/acts the way he does. But the hot (ok, at most warm) and cold behaviour, and his lack of follow up to our last interaction (when I told him point-blank he “threw me away like a piece of garbage” when he ended our brief PA coldly and cruelly – and he said we should talk) makes me wonder if I imagined everything. Like to the point of “am I imagining the sex?”. Seriously – I can’t imagine how this got to be the mess that it is. I cannot work out how someone can be so willfully avoidant of another person and their feelings. This is truly crazy-making.
LimEmer’s point about speculation is very well taken, but yes I agree with Speedy – we’re all here because of LEs, and we’re all trying the best we can here. Grace is warranted.
Thanks for the support, much needed and appreciated.
“What would happen if you confronted him and told him you feel like he is being distant and cold to you and you want to know if you did something wrong?”
That is what I should have done a long time ago, I very much regret not disclosing. But too much time has passed now, he is more balanced out these days, his personal distancing is more subtle, he interacts fairly normally with me in a work context, just rarely comes to the office on my office days. I worry that he has found a balance that works for him and my confronting him now will upset that and so would be selfish on my part. Besides, there would never be an opportunity as he would never go anywhere alone with me.
Again, it does just help to vocalise all this so thanks for ‘listening’.
Focus on facts, peeps.
Why an LO says or does anything is presumption and speculation. You can’t read their minds.
Even if they tell you, they may not even know why they’re saying or doing something or they may be lying to you. There are any number of reasons for an LO, especially in a professional setting, to lie. Maybe DrL could do a blog on Limerence and Lies. Not wanting to lie to LO #4 partially drove my disclosure to her.
As I’ve said before, WRT limerence, it’s not the facts that kill you, its the presumption and speculation that kill you.
“WRT limerence, itās not the facts that kill you, its the presumption and speculation that kill you”
100% agree. If only knowing that fact flipped a mental switch to stop it!
Life would be so much easier if everyone could be more honest and straightforward with each other, and more tolerant / less reactionary with it. Much less fertile ground for uncertainty then.
On the better side of this LE it makes me feel like more and more she knew she was getting special attention and was not going to do anything to disrupt that. Possibly even encourage it in subtle ways that passed by my radar. Or was that my presumption or speculation? Humans are complex and we can’t always ascertain people’s intentions. But the uncertainty is certainly one of the most debilitating aspects of limerence. And as someone posted here, who doesn’t like validation? And I was giving it to her at a time she wasn’t getting it from anyone else. But when she found someone else ….
Adam I read somewhere (on a LwL blog article probably) that women often tend to make different assumptions about a man’s friendly attention than a man does about a woman’s.
If a man is warm and friendly towards me, I would not usually assume there is any attraction. I would feel free to be enjoy the attention (who doesn’t love to be liked!), and be warm and friendly back, and all that would mean is that I like and enjoy him as a friend. But I gather many (hetero) men struggle to be good-friends-only with a woman.
“Why an LO says or does anything is presumption and speculation. You canāt read their minds.”
True…but presumption and speculation is a part of the nature of LE and coming here to work that out in your mind is better than letting that monster grow in your head untethered.
Give Allie a little credit and grace trying to work this limerent branch out.
I’m not trying to bust Allie1’s chops. It was a general comment.
I can’t claim any moral high ground on this subject.
I got an “A” in rationalization. I understand how to infer intent and actions from indicators. I did it for a living. We want concrete indicators but frequently don’t get them. The more reliable the indicators, the better calls we’re able to make. I pressed pretty hard to get LO #4 to reveal herself directly. She never did. After she said “goodbye,” it didn’t matter.
Two of the best blogs on the site (IMO) are:
https://livingwithlimerence.com/the-stories-we-tell-ourselves/
[to me unappreciated]
https://livingwithlimerence.com/if-i-only-knew/
It seems that most of the people at LwL are trying to craft a narrative that they can live with and to make sense of it all. To some people, that means trying to make a place for their LOs in their lives, to others, it’s trying to get their LO out of their lives. Their lives, their call.
Whatever the goal, focusing on facts will only help with that.
I agree with this whole heartedly. There are so many moments where I have to check myself and let my rational brain determine if something was a cue of attraction I so desperately desire or if it was just friendliness. My limerent brain cannot turn off the speculation and it is easy to fall down that rabbit hole day in and day out if I don’t resist. I have got to the point now, and disclosure helped a ton, that I can see my warm interactions with LO as just her being friendly. But it can be hard when LO seemingly acts “different” than others with me. For me it is mostly her eye gazing, glances, and smiling at me a lot. It’s easy to keep asking the question why and wanting to answer it but instead I just remind myself, so what, it is just how she is. Doesn’t mean anything.
Some limerents have the luxury of stopping all the madness by going NC. Others of us like Allie and myself, do not so when these limerent thoughts enter our brain to a point of confusion it’s nice to have LwL to work it out.
“Whatever the goal, focusing on facts will only help with that.”
I completely agree with this. Focus on the facts of what is actually happening. For me, it was pretty simple: Was my LO calling me outside of work? Emailing or texting me outside of work? Spending time with me outside of work? Disclosing to me? Heck, just trying to meet me at the Motel 6. No, he was not. That’s all I needed to know.
Me trying to decipher his feelings and thougths was a waste of time. Even if he did feel something, nothing was obviously going to happen.
Yeah, Marcia,
I had all the evidence I needed but I stayed in the game with LO #2 because I had nothing else going and I thought if I waited her out, she’d come around. She didn’t. She might have if she hadn’t gone over the line and pissed me off. After that, I wasn’t about to give her any more chances. And, by then, I had something else going on. I met my future wife.
In the aftermath of her breakup, LO #4 told me she was back in therapy trying to figure out what had happened work through it all. She thanked me for opening up her eyes. She said therapy sucked. And, she’s a therapist.
I told her that I could see when she started to turn, when she understood what was happening, when she started validating her observations, and when she took action. I was able to point it out by her blog posts and in her correspondence. I had the trail. It was there but she didn’t see it. I was watching from the upper deck of the stadium and she was on the field. I’d been listening to her.
She said that she was amazed and it looked like I’d nailed it. She said it all made sense as I laid it out. She said that I likely saved her weeks, if not months, with the therapist.
When I told this to the EAP counselor, she said, “And, yet, you wonder why you two attached to each other.”
All by focusing on facts.
“Focus on the facts” is a great mantra but, like a lot of things, it can be easy to do but really hard to believe what you see.
PS: This may be one of the few times that you and I agree on something!
āFocus on the factsā is a great mantra but, like a lot of things, it can be easy to do but really hard to believe what you see.
PS: This may be one of the few times that you and I agree on something!”
You’re a much more logical person than I am. š But with limerence … focus on the facts–looking at the cold, hard truth– works.
Focus on what is actually happening, not what you want to happen, not how you are interpreting things … It doesn’t matter what you think they other person is feeling.
It’s like having a crush on someone who isn’t asking you out. The facts are not that you think they also feel the chemistry. The facts are … you’re not going out with person.
As Robin Williams put it, “Reality, what a concept!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaZ2GG9t8Lo – “Come Inside My Mind”
@Limerent Emeritus, Allie I, Speedwagon, Marcia, et al.
Great discussion here! Why do all the good chow-wows happen when I’m not around? Never mind. I’d like to weigh in anyway… š
Limerent Emeritus says: “As Iāve said before, WRT limerence, itās not the facts that kill you, its the presumption and speculation that kill you.”
Limerent Emeritus, I whole-heartedly agree with you. Regarding limerence, facts by themselves are harmless. Facts alone don’t trip us up. Facts are actual words that were said or deeds that were done. Facts can be verified, otherwise they’re not facts. It’s always our INTERPRETION of the facts that trip us up. And limerence does that obsessive thought-loop thingy, yeah, where we can all generate three dozen equally appealing alternative explanations for one bland, miserable, pathetic little fact? š
Speedwagon says: “Give Allie a little credit and grace trying to work this limerent branch out.”
I agree. The fabulous Allie is not on trial. She is a beloved member of our community. And it’s actually very hard to be open about one’s limerence struggles.
I for one can totally see why Allie is confused. On the one hand, Bossman could be acting avoidant because of mutual attraction. That is not an impossible interpretation of his behaviour. However, on the other hand, because of my own experiences with limerence, I’m inclined to put the most negative spin on his behaviour possible… š
This is my speculation and presumption. I think Allie’s boss probably did flirt with Allie – just a little bit. Maybe there was a bit of a fun, playful, mutual spark at first. However, what I suspect happened is that Allie’s boss realised that Allie was taking this fun flirtation a little too seriously, being the lovely soulful conscientious INFJ she is and all. I think Allie’s boss is now avoiding Allie because he (a) knows Allie is attracted to him and (b) is uncomfortable with the fact she is attracted to him, because his attraction to her was only in jest. I.e. he didn’t want anything serious or meaningful.
I think Allie’s boss is probably horrified that his fun flirtation has been taken seriously by a quality woman who works for him. I think he feels embarrassed that he has flirted with the wrong class of woman – a married woman with morals, who probably doesn’t enjoy being trifled with. š
Alternatively, someone may have taken Allie’s boss aside, possibly his wife, possibly an upstanding male colleague, and explained to him that his behaviour is inappropriate because it constitutes – among other things – “leading somebody on”. And let’s not even get into possible workplace-related ramifications of improper behaviour.
I think Allie’s boss is feeling a bit ashamed because he knows he did the wrong thing. He was a bad boy. He flirted with a woman who might call him out on his bluff, and he didn’t bank on that. INFJs are smart – scary-smart. I personally love INFJs, but I also know INFJs holds themselves and the people around them to high standards. Basically, Allie’s high standards probably throw into relief her boss’s less-than-stellar high standards. š
Allie says: “Life would be so much easier if everyone could be more honest and straightforward with each other, and more tolerant / less reactionary with it. Much less fertile ground for uncertainty then.”
Sing it, sister! Honestly, I couldn’t agree with you more! Where are all the straightforward people hiding? You know, all the delightful INTJ people like me? (No, just kidding. INTJs are blunt but still manage to confuse the heck out of everyone. Actually, I think my “straightforwardness” confuses people! People are so startled by my honesty they think I’m speaking a foreign language). š¤£
Marcia says: “Focus on what is actually happening, not what you want to happen, not how you are interpreting things ā¦ It doesnāt matter what you think they other person is feeling.”
Marcia, ma cherie! So glad you are still with us! Hope all is well… š
Your explanation fits the facts poorly.
“Your explanation fits the facts poorly.”
Sorry for being presumptuous, Allie.
Upon reflection, I realise I was actually thinking of some situation from my own life and applying information that might have been true about that situation to other situations that are completely different and unrelated. I stand corrected.
I.e. I realise that once I got cold feet the second I realised that someone liked me. I was wrong to talk about your boss, who I don’t actually know. In reality, without realising it, I was talking about some past version of myself and what I must have been feeling at the time. Whoops! Embarrassing! Please excuse the ramblings of this well-intentioned but sometimes very disorganised brain!!
No problem Sammy, I had assumed it was related to your personal experience., though it gave me a moment of sickening self doubt!
My first ever LE was based on a huge over estimation of LOs feelings for me. I humiliatingly disclosed and learned a lifelong lesson from that. Ever since, I rarely believe it when I suspect someone I like reciprocates – I do not trust my judgement at all. It takes repeat solid evidence that cannot be rationally explained any other way. Even then I will have doubts.
I also learned that disclosure is the first step of recovery for me and have disclosed to every LO accept current one.
Allie
“Your explanation fits the facts poorly.”
But the only real facts are that he is currently being chilly and pulling back. He is putting up a boundary. Unfortunately, you’ll probably never know why. You’ll probably never really know his true feelings. Accepting that is, I think, one of the first steps to recovery. Letting go of trying to decipher and understand the LO’s feelings. And accepting that there is a high likelihood the LO is and was being intentionly obtuse about his/her feelings.
Great subject! When I was twenty six years old, I had a three year exclusive relationship which lasted three years. I now think we were both Limerents for each other. We lived in a bubble by ourselves, careless of what was happening around us. We used to meet twice a week for dinner in a fancy restaurant and then go to either my apartment or to His for intimacy and we would spend ten to fifteen hours together each time. But as time passed by, by the third year I realized (woke up!) that this was a very strange relationship, not moving forward to the next level. So, I decided the last time we were intimately together to rebel, and behaved as cold as an ice rock, he noticedā¦ tapped me on the shoulder, but I said nothing, neither did he ask. He got the message. After that he asked me out to the park for a walk, the next time to a bar, no sex, but both times I was bored to death though I longed to be with him, but doing other things together, sharing .I wanted to make sure this was not a merely sex relationship. I wanted to be loved for who I am. I realized that we got comfortable with just a twice a week relationship, that his quota of desire was met but not mine. It became habitual and I got boredā¦ I knew he loved me and I loved him, and we desired each other so much, but it had to end because I had given myself too much to him. I thought he would dump me, so I parted ways quietly. He called and called, but my roommate would say I was not home. He went to see me at work but I behaved cold and indifferent though I wanted to scream āI love you with all my heartā, but kept it to myself. I had made up
my mind to walk away for good. Somehow I felt that if we stayed together I would get hurt . I was very naive then. He called again and made his ādeclaration of loveā but now I felt it was too late; I would have liked it better if he only asked for the reason of my behavior. Perhaps we could have come to
an understanding of the situation .(Communication is very important to
maintain a healthy relationship.)But he didnāt and I didnāt explain either. So that was the end of a very romantic relationship. Iāll never know what could have happened if I have stayed in the relationship. I believe it was too much too soon, too little too lateā¦ It was the lack of communication and my introversion, that added to the misunderstanding. I do now believe that a relationship to work has to have boundaries when it comes to intimacy , not too frequent so as to keep the balance and desire alive.
I learned my lesson not to give in so fast sexually .Later I married , though I was not limerent for my husband, we have had a healthy marriage and sex life together . For desire to continue one must be healthy and have a purposeful life with your partner, having the same goals and visions for the future, taking care of your appearance always. And helping them accomplish their goals and dreams , be there for them as they should also reciprocate to you. Living and sharing with someone else is not an easy burdenā¦
Life is weird. Since last May I have become limerent for my ex boyfriend ! I found him
after fourty nine years! I called him and he remembered me. We have talked two times in ten months, as friends, but the tension is thereā¦ Iām living back on time and is hellish with these intrusive thoughts and rumination. Who could believe this could happen to and old lady!!! But it happens alright!
Excuse the errors, English is not my original language.
Thanks for your storyā¦.Limerence can happen to anyone, any age. Hope you will find your inner peace soon.
I didnāt even feel attracted to my LO – he used to occasionally flirt and pay attention to me (work colleague). Then all of a sudden he withdrew the attention and I missed the ego boost, started paying attention (flirting back), he noticed, stepped up the attention and now? Iām fully limerent (obsessed, canāt get him out my mind etc.) and he seems indifferent ! Iām praying to the universe to feel like I used to i.e. couldnāt care less (he was like an annoying fly buzzing around)
This is an interesting phenomenon and you are not the first here to say something like this. I wonder why this happens when initially you are not interested when the other person is pursuing? Then the pullback and bam! Romantic interest. Weird!
I’m in pullback mode with my LO but she seems about the same towards me which is basically indifference with shades of mild interest every now and again.
Thanks for replying Speedwagon. This is my modus operandi when it comes to limerent feelings – they show some level of interest and then pull back and BAM obsession on my behalf.
Heās quite a bit older than me and I just didnāt find him all that attractive to begin with. He started to lightly flirt with me and I remember thinking to myself ācan I get excited about this? Nah I donāt think so.ā And just didnāt overthink it. Then suddenly he didnāt pay me any attention and I started overthinking āwas he attracted to me before?ā And it seems the more I thought about it, the more I became limerent. Then I must have started showing signs of attraction to him because he responded in kind (brushing up against me, sustained eye contact, being around me more etc.). I was then on a full high. Then I went on holiday for a while, come back and it was back to just general work colleague interaction. But by now my mind was in full limerence.
So to sum it up, it was the hot and cold that got my mind thinking and analysing that created the attraction.
This article reminds me of a song I have been listening to a lot lately as I am quite guilty of it. Letting limerence take priority over my existing relationship.
“And I see love hungry people
Trying their best to survive
When right there in their hands is a dying romance
And they’re not even trying to keep it alive”
Limerence was exciting at first. LO was dazzling. Twenty-three years together and here comes something I vowed I would never do. Let another woman in my heart.
It’s so easy to let the routine of life habituate your spouse. My job, my errands, one boy in high school, one in college, bills, money, relatives, car problems, etc. easily keep you in a loop of knowing that the one person you love more than anyone else isn’t going anywhere. So you start checking in on them less and less and let life in general be the driving force in the time between waking up and going back to sleep.
You start forgetting the important things. The small things. My wife falling asleep with her laptop in her lap and hunched over last night. So I took her laptop and set it on the shelf by her side of the bed. Pulled the covers up and tried to get her to situate more comfortably in the bed so she would be sore the next day. While watching one of my favorite movies that I’ve seen a hundred times and have some drinks and try to go to sleep myself. Just looking over at her asleep and realizing what a damn fool I’ve been. And you know what? I didn’t have one minuscule or intrusive thought of LO. Because my mind was on what it should have been, the woman I vowed “till death do us part”.
In my case, I might as well been offered an apple from the Devil himself, because that is all my limerence was. A temptation of the forbidden. And I took it. Thankfully she hasn’t banished me from paradise.
“And if love never last forever
Tell me what’s forever for?”
So much to unpack and reflect on in this post, DrL. Thanks for another corker! I know she turns many people (e.g., Lee) off, but Esther Perel makes similar points about maintaining desire in LTR. I think the habituation/exposure vs. NC/avoidance debate is an interesting one. And of course I wish I had the answer.
Some conflicting news for me: first, I’ve had a real set back in mood lately. I found out that my boss (who lives in another city) was visiting the city that LO and I live in. And while he was here, my LO invited him and the two other colleagues who live here out for dinner and did not invite me. I know I should be grateful, but it just seems so cruel. Mean-girl behaviour. And of course I’ve heard nothing for weeks from LO, despite us “agreeing” 6 weeks ago that we should talk. Combined with some really hard times with my son and marriage, and I have been having suicidal thoughts. Wondering if it is the only way to end the pain (of rejection and being treated so dismissively by LO) and hopelessness (of years/decades of unhappy marriage and difficult parenting). I keep telling myself just to get through one more day. And then another.
For all of you LOs and limerents out there, please please please never ghost someone. If you’ve hurt them, say sorry. The pain of feeling like you’re not worth an apology is excruciating. Unbearable.
The positive news is that I took a practical step out of the LE this week: I attend an interest group with LO that has an attendance list so you can see who is coming. Usually in the days leading up to it I check it compulsively, refreshing the RSVP page like a lab rat to see if he will be there. This month, I asked myself “What would I do with that information?” (HUGE thanks and chapeau to Sharn/LimEm!!). I knew that if I saw he was coming, I would rehearse conversations, ruminate, obsess over how it would go etc. And that won’t be helpful to me. So I haven’t checked at all since RSVPing myself. I have strategies in place for avoiding him if he attends (he usually does not and I expect not this month, too). I know this is really minor step but given how hopeless and desperate I am right now, I’m going to take the win.
Sorry for hijacking the post.
Aaaw… so sorry you have been struggling that much TP, sounds like you are caught in a bit of a perfect storm at the moment. Wishing you the strength to get through it.
“please never ghost someone”… “The pain of feeling like youāre not worth an apology is excruciating.” Yes, so agree. I feel similarly about the slow withdrawal technique. Same as ghosting but the rejection and uncertainty is more drawn out.
Well done on taking that step away from LO! I find each step away is bitter sweet emotionally, but does put us back into the drivers seat of our own lives again.
Wishing you well.
Hi TP, I am concerned about your struggle with suicidal ideation. I have been there. After my son was arrested, it felt like my world crumbled around me. I believed that I was the cause of my familyās problems. I believed that they would be better off without me. Now I know those thoughts were not true, but I believed them at the time. The only thing that kept me from taking my life was that I couldnāt make sense of the way it would affect my family. I donāt know anyone who has experienced loss due to suicide who isnāt traumatized by it. I couldnāt picture my kids talking about the death of their mom without it causing problems for them so I never went through with my plan. Ironically, it was limerence that pulled me out of that state of mind.
That is my story, now letās address your situation. You and Allie are right that ghosting someone is cruel. I am so sorry that happened to you. I am sorry that you are in pain. I wish I could help. Something that helped me was physical stimulation. One time I jumped on the trampoline just so I could feel something. Another time I jumped into a cold swimming pool and then went back and forth between the pool and hot tub. Eye contact helped me a lot so I would go in public and smile and greet people just to get eye contact. One time squeezing ice cubes helped. Letās take steps in the right direction, how can I talk you into going for a walk? Can you call an old childhood friend? Running is my favorite mood regulator, do you like running? What do you like? What did you like before the depression took hold?
Thanks, Lovisa and Allie. I do try to get out for a walk every day. I try to keep busy and it works in a sense I get through the day but I don’t experience any joy. I often think that my son and husband wouldn’t care if I wasn’t here anymore, and they’d be better off without me. I just don’t know what value there is to me in staying around just to bear excruciating pain every day – wondering why almost a year after LO withdrew cruelly and without conversation he hasn’t apologised or discussed it. We live 15 minutes from each other. He could meet me for a coffee if he wanted to. But he just thinks I am a piece of sh*t. And he’s probably right. I did the wrong thing for my marriage and my misery is my punishment.
That is some heavy stuff, TP. You question your value. You wonder if your contribution to society matters. You feel like you could slip away and no one would notice. Maybe Iām wrong. I would love to be wrong.
Your depression could be a symptom of a medical condition. Any chance youāre seeing a doctor or therapist? The situation with your LO is definitely hard, but there could be something else effecting your mood, too. TP has infinite value regardless of what LO thinks. I mean, LO is just a person. Your value isnāt tied to his opinion in any way.
It also sounds like you have some shame weighing you down. Whatever mistakes you made, they were just mistakes. They donāt define you. Guilt is āI did something wrong.ā Shame is āI am something wrong.ā Shame holds us back. Guilt propels us forward. Guilt motivates us to make positive changes. Shame leads to hopelessness. That is just my understanding of it. I could be wrong. I would love to see you acknowledge your mistakes, make an effort to repair if possible, and then move on. Your mistakes donāt define you. And it is so important that you respect LOās boundaries. If he doesnāt want contact, okay. You canāt change his response. He has to navigate the world his way.
You are not a piece of anything. Please donāt entertain that destructive inner voice. You are a wife and mother who deserves respect.
When my daughter went through a depression, we played a game called āWhat went well?ā I was surprised by how well it lifted both her mood and mine. It is something we still do whenever someone seems low. You name three things that went well during your day and they can be really small things. When you feel ready, you expand on those things. Iāll go first.
My back isnāt as sore as usual because I am tapering for my race on Saturday. I will explain. I pretty much hurt all the time from running. But since I want to be in good shape for Saturdayās race, I havenāt run as much this week and my runs were easy. This allowed my body to recover and I can actually bend over to pick something up without planning out my strategy first. Itās kind of nice.
I made my bed this morning and I love how my bedroom feels when my bed is made.
My youngest ate some breakfast this morning. We have been struggling lately, for some reason she doesnāt want breakfast and then she is cranky. Today she ate a few bites of the egg sandwich that I made for her. Then she said she would eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich so I gave her one of those. She ate a few bites. Itās not ideal but it is progress.
Your turn. Tell me three things that went well.
Aaaw TP, it sounds like you are in a really bad place right now. Big virtual hug coming your way. You absolutely have value and you do matter! I can see that from the contributions you make on this site. You slipped up, that does not change who you are. All of us humans are by our nature imperfect and slip up regularly in a huge variety of ways. You are a good person.
Are you struggling from lack of connection with people? I have found my LE does that sometimes. All I really want is connection with LO and that tends to make me pull away away from other connecting with the other people in my life. Is it possible to tell SO you are feeling low and need some nurturing attention from them?
I can’t really comment on your LOs behaviour other than to say that there are a myriad of reasons for them to behave as they do, most of them are more about what is going on in there life, and is purely a reflection of who THEY are and not at all about who you are or what they think of you.
Do you have access to any professional support? I really thank that would help.
“For all of you LOs and limerents out there, please please please never ghost someone. If youāve hurt them, say sorry. The pain of feeling like youāre not worth an apology is excruciating. Unbearable.”
While I didn’t get an answer (not that I asked) why LO was leaving the job, she was gracious enough to call me and tell me she gave her two week notice. And when I asked she said she would like for me to come to her location on her last day for a visit. She was always so gracious. And when that dreaded hour of 5pm came she left and said goodbye as if I was just another Friday and I would see her again Monday. And then drove off.
I couldn’t ask for much more even if she had an idea of my feelings for her. Which I seem to radiate pretty transparently if everyone else in the office could see them.
If I was the reason that LO left in any amount, small or large, I fear that in my limerence I violated a boundary of hers. And the thing is, LO when I met her, was divorced because she was cheated on. I had no conscious intention of violating any of her boundaries, but had I, even unintentionally that might have been part of the reason she left. She is a good woman with good morals. And if she thought her presence was a danger to me, she knew that was the best option.
Maybe your LO is in the same mode, he just didn’t take the gracious route. He knows that you are married and out of fear of you endangering your marriage over him, he felt escape was the best way to save you from yourself. I often wonder if put LO in the same position. I’m on the better side of my LE now. But it took me a year and disclosure to my wife for me to be where I am today. Hopefully it won’t take you that long with your LE.
When my wife and I finally hashed it out, in a productive conversation, what the “short comings” so to speak, were in our marriage with each other and how they affected my falling into limerence and my wife feeling the distress she did over how she was seeing my relationship with this female co-worker of mine because it was different than it was from my other female co-workers it helped us both. To talk out our issues. I don’t know the circumstances as to why you consider your marriage unhappy. For me ours was more stagnant. Sure it was unhappy but with effort and communication we are starting to turn it around. I don’t mean to say my story will work in your story. Just hoping that if you do find a way to work this LE that you will be able to come out on the other side happy and with a happy marriage.
Every little step counts. As long as it progress in a positive direction for you than that’s progress. And you can pat yourself on the back for that. I know the pain. When LO left I really just floated unpurposefully through my life. I increasingly drank more and more. Doing things that were not productive to healing. So good for you TP for taking this step and finding more steps to take if you do run into him. You are doing good. And you are worth it. People need you. You may not see it but there’s people that need you in their lives. Keep coming back here and posting all you want. We are here to listen. You take care of yourself young lady.
“I would feel free to be enjoy the attention (who doesnāt love to be liked!), and be warm and friendly back, and all that would mean is that I like and enjoy him as a friend.”
I think this is the last shred of limerence I have to deal with. The intrusive thoughts are almost gone. I can concentrate on work, my life, my wife, and family. The last nagging of limerence is whether I am any reason she left. If the attention was unwanted or invading her personal space to where she has a bad view of me now. I know it really doesn’t matter as I don’t think I will ever talk to or see her again. Despite the limerence I have a positive view of her and am glad to have met her. I hope that is her final thought of me too. I don’t know why I care, but I do. Hopefully this is the last of it and I can finally move on.
“Despite the limerence I have a positive view of her and am glad to have met her. I hope that is her final thought of me too. I donāt know why I care, but I do.”
That’s pretty common. You can drive yourself nuts if you get stuck here. It may have taken me years, but it at some point, it really doesn’t matter.
“Whether you’ve chosen to step away from a new relationship or a long-established one, how you orchestrate that ending is crucial, because it’s typically what someone remembers most about you.” – Shari Schreiber https://sharischreiber.com/whos-doing-your-dirty-work/
The EAP counselor asked about my goodbye with LO #2. When I told her, she said that it wasn’t a goodbye between two people who’d once loved each other, it was a fight and I started it. It was true but, at that point, I didn’t care what LO #2 thought.
LO #4’s goodbye was pretty gracious, all things considered. She could have just ghosted me but she didn’t. I wasn’t entitled to any kind of explanation but LO #4 gave me one, albeit, somewhat indirect. I take that as a win.
There are a lot of considerations that go into any goodbye with an LO. Goodbyes with LOs in a professional environment may be the hardest of all.
There’s so much you want to say but the risks probably aren’t worth it.
“You can drive yourself nuts if you get stuck here.”
Yeah and I am trying really hard not to. Because I can see how easy it is to use this last thing as a reason to not let go completely.
But the quote from Schreiber helps put me at some ease. I kept it 100% professional the whole work day and listened to my better judgement on my words and actions, even if inside my head I was screaming to beg her to stay. That would have no doubt been disastrous and not worth the risk as you said.
I’ll have to come to terms with realizing that I may never know but that’s not important and finally let go and move on. I am trying. But sometimes it seems so impossible.
You have a supportive SO and your LO is gone.
Things are going your way.
Focus on the positives and let time work its magic.
Yesterday I was so busy commenting on other comments (meta-commenting perhaps?) that I forgot to comment on the main article. So I’ll share my reflections today…
I’m obviously not in the “romance fades too fast” camp. I’m obviously in the “romance doesn’t fade fast enough” camp. Actually, I was thinking about this the other day – how limerence can affect one’s perception of time. When deep in limerence, time sped up for me. I felt like the earth was rotating too fast and I wanted to hop off. Now, post-limerence, time moves slow. I don’t feel like I’m in a rush to do anything. The earth has stopped rotating at such dizzying velocity.
I have always had a somewhat romantic view of relationships. I don’t understand couples, especially young couples, who talk to each other in a very casual manner, as if they were friends and not intimate partners. I think to myself: “Where is the awe? Where is the reverence?” I thought the honeymoon phase was supposed to involve just a smidgen of honey? I.e. emotional sweetness toward one another?
I can understand if the two members of a long-term, established couple might adopt a bit of an offhand tone with each other, and even take each other for granted. A long-term couple probably has earned the privilege of occasional nonchalance. But I find it odd to encounter younger, less-established couples acting in the same manner – unless they’re just very comfortable with each other from the get-go?
I think romance took a long time for fade for me for a number of reasons:
(1) I’m an introvert. I think introverts have a lower threshold for stimulation. That is to say, we need less stimulus in order to feel excited. And we live in our heads a lot. I think introverts can probably conjure up an entire feast from mere crumbs.
(2) I was shy and sensitive as a child, in addition to being an introvert. This probably means that by the time I reached adulthood, I hadn’t really become fully acclimatized to other people yet. People still felt quite novel to me, and hence still a potent source of reward. I guess what I’m trying to say is I was a late bloomer. I think extroverts, on the other hand, make a lot of friends from a young age and hence don’t find people and relationships so novel once they reach adulthood.
(3) My LO represented something I felt I lacked, but wanted to develop in myself. I think my LO represented some kind of culturally-sanctioned masculinity, and I was fascinated by that, and kind of wanted to learn how to be masculine in that way too.
Now I don’t think there is such a thing as “pure masculinity” or “pure femininity”. A man who is “purely masculine” would be a caricature of a human being, a cartoon figure, just as a woman who is “purely feminine” would be a caricature too. But I liked how my LO seemed to have some kind of ease with himself.
I liked his confidence without extreme self-consciousness. I think I wanted to jettison my extreme self-consciousness. My LO was a bit cartoonish, but not in a bad way. I don’t think he minded making a fool of himself. He was like a template I wanted to model my own masculinity after. I mean, I liked my dad’s version of masculinity, but I wanted to add a couple of other layers to the finished product. LO offered me some macho inspiration from someone of my own generation.
If I took a long time to get over limerence, I think that’s because it’s taken me a long time to figure out the precise form of masculinity that I want to embody as an adult man. I catch myself acting just like my LO sometimes, which is both creepy and amusing. I know I am sarcastic like him, and I probably smirk at people too. I don’t feel like I’m imitating my LO when I engage in these behaviours. I feel like his influence on my life and mind brought to the surface traits that were always there, but buried under a protective layer of extreme self-consciousness. š¤š
This is rather interesting when considered in the animus-anima framework which was brought up recently. You are basically saying for you, your LO is the equivalent of women’s animus – their hidden masculine side.
I certainly suspect that my hyper-masculine LO represents certain masculine traits that I am attracted to because I lack them in my own life. I also recently realized that my LO is more similar to my father than I had realized (my dad was totally alpha). I picked my SO partially because he was so different from my father, who sometimes terrified me (don’t worry, I was safe, just … scared).
“My LO represented something I felt I lacked, but wanted to develop in myself.”
I also noticed that the more I integrated masculine traits in myself (as I seek out my purpose in life), the less of a hold my LO has over me. We are attracted to Other, and when we integrate them, attracting them is no longer required to feel whole.
Hi Sammy. I admire your deep writings. You got an admirer in me. Unfortunately English is not my language of origin and my vocabulary is very poor to express myself comfortably the way I wished.
ā I was shy and sensitive as a child in addition to being an introvert.ā
I definitely can relate to that myself!( And till my late 20s) . I just didnāt find many people interesting enough to engage with, as friends or otherwise . They got me bored soon enough. Like you, I was a very very late bloomer! Too busy at work and head buried in philosophy books, poetry, essays , music etc. I lived in a world of my own, oblivious to what was going on. I felt I didnāt fit with the rest of the world. ..
LO was the first person I allowed to love me and get close to me, and I allowed me to love him back. ( I think I was a fearful avoidant) He complemented my inner being, and I liked how he seemed to always look calm, cool and collected. An admirable person, he inspired calmness and perfect peace in me. Perfect joy.(and I was scared of that joy, too good to be true, and I messed it up, by walking away, because I was afraid of it, huge regret!!!)
And yes, he was a template I wanted to model my own life, that is: his inner peace, securedness, assertiveness, politeness, temperament etc.
(We stayed in an exclusive romantic relationship for three beautiful years. He was 33, I was 26.) I loved his personality, the way he made me feel, loved and desired, whole. He was charming and authentic, genuine. I admired and respected him and he treated me like a real princess. He left a great influence in my life which I still cherish and marked my life forever.
And as you mentioned: āI feel like his influence on my life and mind brought to the surface traits that were always there, but buried under a protective layer of extreme self consciousness.ā Yes,yes! There youāre! That is so true for me!!!
Thank you for your insights. Love it! Stay well and courage, always looking forward, not backwardsā¦peace and love to you.
Poem: ā Miniver Cheevyā by Edwin Arlington Robinson, Poetry Foundation org.
Sorry, donāt know how to post it directly. Not technically savvyā¦
Thanks Sammy, wise words as always. I found this and really needed it today. As a ‘proper English person’ š¤£ I would certainly also rather not come off as deranged! Even though I know my feelings were at least partially reciprocated, imagining anything more is going to end in disaster for me. I will try to look at facts, as LE and Marcia say later (I am notoriously bad with facts, found that out when I had some CBT years ago…)
C4Cat
Youāre British? Now I see why you got MJās attention. Nothing better than a gal with a posh British accent. š
Oh yes, and if she can talk to me like Dua Lipa, she might just turn out to be LO2.. š¤£
Haha! Not all British accents are posh you know ;-).
MJ – Ashamed to say I had to google Dua Lipa as I’ve never heard her speak but she’s got a similar accent to me – just a bit more London and I have a few northern vowels
Ok, I’m sold. I love it.
š¤£šš
Us Anericans always imagine every gal is posh. Its the American equivalent to to a gal with a southern belle accent. And Momma has one *oh my.*. I imagine you sound like Diana Rigg in The Avengers.
Haha, Adam – she was definitely posher than me! But I can do accents so I can sound posher than I am.
Hi C for cat.
Sometimes we try to fool ourselves with things that arenāt there. And itās better if we wake up from that dream before we get deeply hurt. Facts speak louder than wordsā¦
Someone said:
ā If he misses you, heāll call just to hear your voice, if he wants you, heāll say it. And if he cares, heāll show it. If he has a thought about you, it will come out of his mouth.
If youāre on his mind non stop, heāll do anything he can just to see you. If he truly likes you, he wonāt let anything get in the way and fight back just to keep you in his arms.
If not, heās not worth your time, because youāre obviously not worth his.ā
Hard to digest. But love isnāt really that complicated to show to someone you really care for . When itās mutual, you canāt hide it or control it. You know it for sure, it clicks, yes, you known it.
If weāre to lose someone, at least letās not lose our dignity or self respect. Letās withdraw with graciousness and pride. My 2 cents.
I wish you wisdom and discernment to help you handle this situation graciously and without much pain. Ouch! Iām aware of the pain !!! Blessings
Nisor,
The flip side of that is … if the woman is into the guy, and she can tell he’s trying to approach or chat her up … she’s going to help him out. Stick around in the vicinity, open body language, maybe smile at him, etc.
Hi, Marcia. Thatās correct. It goes both ways. You know that you know you click and canāt hide it.
I was super shy in my early 20s, maybe too innocent and ignorant, but I graduated later on: I asked my SO to marry me!!! He did immediately! 46 years now and countingā¦
Love is in the airā¦
Wow 46 years Nisor. My folks are close to 50 years if not there. My sister is a year older and before that mother had a miscarriage that have would have been my oldest sister. Congratulations on such a long time together. That is amazing. Hopefully for us love will live over limerence.
Nisor,
“Hi, Marcia. Thatās correct. It goes both ways. You know that you know you click and canāt hide it.”
That’s one thing I learned from my last LE. If it feels like having to move heaven and earth to get things off the ground (and it’s taking forever), it’s probably not going to happen. It shouldn’t be that diffiult to get together.
Thanks Nisor. It’s complicated by the fact that although the attraction is mutual we can’t act on it, we’ve made a decision not to and have to stand by that. I’m trying to keep the limerence at a manageable level until I can come through this LE, so that I just feel a bit of sadness and longing rather than out and out despair.
But yes, I liked “If weāre to lose someone, at least letās not lose our dignity or self respect. Letās withdraw with graciousness and pride.” I’ve been guilty in past LEs of losing all dignity and self respect in desperation over an egotistical and harmful LO. I will keep that in mind. I think I’m already doing better than previously but it’s early days.
Yes Marcia, moving heaven and earth is really too much work and waste of energy to have somebody interested in you. Letās make it Simple. Yes or noā¦