I feel every letter written in this article, it brings tear to my eyes.
I am think what a miserable life I had/have . I had too many LE . Passing through all these LE makes my feeling more miserable and after every LE my insecurities increased .
But there is an important issue not articles answered it ; in all articles the authors are talking about THOUGHTS of unattractiveness , what about if it is not just THOUGHTS !!
I am really not attractive to the opposite sex ( females ) and I know It is very very difficult to find a girl that interested into me , it is not thoughts I am sure.
That’s why my self esteem becomes lower and lower and there is no way to regain it . My self esteem now is subzero

I am general I think fairly healthy with my own self esteem. But who doesn’t crave validation in general? Both single and married I have had women show interest in me. I wasn’t beating them off with a stick or anything but it wasn’t like crickets in a field either. And never up until LO did I seek any kind of validation of myself from a woman since I have been married. At least not THAT kind of validation. With how I feel about myself I should have been resilient to limerence. But she is one of only two women in my life that have reduce to being hesitate, second guessing and clamming up in their presence. (Though I was nervous meeting my wife in person for the first, since we met on the internet. I think I squirmed a little lol)

But in the midst of the limerence it gave me the confidence that I was lacking of in some ways. Here is a young lady, a single young lady, talking to me, and giving me attention. Was she just a friendly gal? Well in hindsight, yes. But in that moment …. ?

I took positive steps to find out. My motivation was in the wrong place at the time (my wife even questioned my motivation and I wished I’d listened to her at the time), but after the fact now, they are overall positive things I did to improve my confidence, health and self worth. Was this single young lady talking to me? Or talking me up? (Damn mid life crap!)

I completely changed my wardrobe from jeans and t-shirts to business casual. Over 9 months I lost 45 lbs. I tried to quit smoking. (I haven’t 100% yet but drastically cut back to just a few smokes in the evening after work with my wife.) All these positive things for my health and self esteem. But the motivation was misplaced. Even if I had no intention of ending my marriage why court a line a married man shouldn’t? And it is not fair to LO for me to be fishing for some kind of validation from a woman I knew I couldn’t have an actual lasting mutual relationship with other than being co-workers.

The proper thing would have been to seek that validation and boost to my self esteem through my wife. I could have reaffirmed to my wife that I still desire her, find her sexy and always will. I greatly desire our “close the bedroom door” time. Build up her self confidence by showing her how much I love and desire her. Not get limerent for another woman.

It’s been a hard time for us with one boy leaving for college last year. Concentrating on our youngest in his lacking school work to motivate him to do better. My wife has little family left in the vicinity and my parents live in another state, so we have little support. Concentrating on the needs of our boys and 2020 and other stresses, yes they took a toll on the time that we have for each other. And of course limerence for another woman isn’t going to help the situation any better. I may have personally improved myself but at what cost? So far not my marriage. But as Dr. L says the sufficient time for me to get over this limerence is not up to me, it’s up to my wife.

SAME. I’ve never really been insecure and never had a LE until now. But the midlife thing hit me very hard. And I think you are exactly right on how the development of the insecurities leaves you open to a LE. I wish I could say I have the perspective you now have on the other side of it, as I am still awash in uncertainty, barriers, jealousy, insomnia, depression etc. But your take is very inspiring. Thanks.

This is so inspiring. Well done Vincent. You give hope

As time has worn on though, and I’ve got progressively older than the people I’m surrounded by, self-doubt crept in. Am I still attractive to the opposite sex? Am I old, boring and washed-up? Being married of course there were very few opportunities to test this, and of course I wouldn’t go looking for them. Hitting 40 though really brought these thoughts to a crescendo, especially when combined with an assessment of career achievements and all the other ingredients to a mid-life crisis.

So when LO started to knock-down my walls it was unusual but also the antidote to my insecurities. Here was someone young and attractive and yet seemingly into me – wow! It was great to be with her and feel young again, funny, wise, attractive…

With the benefit of hindsight of course this was a total sucker punch as all it did in the end was make me focus on all my insecurities even more when the uncertainty, does she / does she not stuff started to dominate my thoughts.

With a lot of reflection I can now see how the insecurities left me open to a LE. They weren’t the only driver but it was a big part. What they did do was force me to work on myself physically and mentally. I’ve now lost weight, look better than I have in years and can now appreciate everything I’ve got: SO, kids, career. Maybe this would have all happened anyway without LO but she was the catalyst and despite 9+m NC I’m keeping up the exercise, mindfulness, self-improvement etc. Now though it’s for me, not her.

“All I could think about was why would he want to be with me? Once he sees past the facade he will not be interested anymore, he’s going to dump me, etc, so I decided to break it off. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I thought about him every second during lectures and I was so crazy about him and so fearful that he would leave me once he knew me, I had to break up.”

As LO #2 put it to me after our breakup but before I cut her loose.

“I can’t control you. You don’t need me. You were only with me because you wanted to be. There was nothing to bind you to me. I was afraid that one day you’d wake up and not want to be with me. If I gave myself to you and you left, I’d be devastated…You did everything I ever asked of you. The harder you tried, the more I resented you for it. I made things so hard for you.”

My response was that I didn’t need a mother, I was looking for a partner. I told LO #2 that I had a mother and I wasn’t too impressed with her. The therapist said that my ex-girlfriend would say something like that and I snapped her to my mother was very significant and we’d come back to it.

The therapist said that LO #2 made a confession. Everything I needed to know about our relationship was in that paragraph and once I understood that, everything else would fall into place. It took a few years and multiple sessions but the therapist was right. I told the therapist it took a long time to tie LO #2 to my mother. The therapist said I was wrong. She said, “You knew.” I had tied LO #2 to my mother then but since I didn’t understand my relationship to my mother, I didn’t understand my relationship to LO #2. That took things in a whole different direction.

I really like your statement that confidence can be built, I can vouch for that. I realized at some point that every time you change your school, go to uni, change company or a job, you basically present yourself on a blank slate. You can be anyone you want. So I usually try to reflect how I don’t want to be seen, and make the conscious effort to try to eliminate those stupid behaviors that I don’t like about myself. Fresh start. Not saying you should be fake or someone that you’re not, but you have the chance to present yourself in a new light! Just recently I had to present at an event and host a session, and a participant that spoke to me afterwards would not believe what a shy kid I used to be (my heart used to pound like crazy if we were just asked to state our name in an introduction round in a small group of people). I’m a big believer to learn from past experiences and hopefully I can take huge lessons learnt with me from my current LE!

Thanks, Lee!
My jogging is about 3 miles but I brisk walk about half of it. I am also trying to get back into some flexibility, balance, body weight, and coordination exercises from the following website:
http://www.gmb.io
This is a great resource for anyone who has fitness goals as part of their purposeful living agenda. There are incremental steps to learn things like handstands and cartwheels (also simpler things to deal with joint pain or flexibility struggles, etc). Exercising like this can take the mental focus away from limerence issues. The programs let people go at their own pace so achievement and progress are self-regulated. There are a lot of free tutorials to try first before purchasing a program. It is kind of like going through a second childhood to roll around on the floor and play with movements!