Oh and, ” I came to the conclusion that maybe we were fated to meet and be attracted so that we would work on our marriages! That was the most useful part of the experience!” This is it exactly!

If we’re talking ‘spiritual’, for me thats waking up to who we truly are. And that seems to always happen by meeting specific people who will bring up/unearth exactly what we’re unaware of brewing beneath the surface in our subconscious, that in fact is not actually ‘us’, but merely distorted BELIEFS of who or what we think we are and/or feel about ourselves.

The LE nails that for me every fucking time. When I find myself in a LE, its a heeeerrrrreeee we go again, back on the INwards journey.

In my experience of EVERY LE I’ve had, its never ended up being about ‘them’, even though every fibre of my being at the time is screaming ….ITS ABOUT THEM!!!!

“To me, limerence is more about dealing with yourself and your internal issues than it is about the out of control emotions for someone else.”

YES!! I’ve been reading a LOT of the comments on this site really wanting to feel the crux of what Limerence ‘actually’ IS. This is the closest I’ve come across. I believe its for sure internal. In other words, its not even really about the LO. Its what the LO brings up in YOU.

@Sammy
Am enjoying reading your post as really resonates with me.
I think the human tendency to try and fix people or their problems is a very common one. The pain of others can be unbearable to witness so we are all strongly driven to remove both their pain and, in doing so, our own discomfort. I too have a strong tendency to “fix” and have to remind myself frequently to try not to.
Because as you say, what most people really need is to know that you feel and understand their pain, that you care and that you have faith in their ability to resolve their problems themselves. This is how we lend them our strength.
I find sharing another’s pain yet doing nothing to solve it is so much harder to do but this is what true empathy is. And often, doing just this is enough to provide them with some degree of relief.
Interesting tangent 🙂

I understand. I just think there is a freeing, shed-your-skin kind of thing when we let of the past. I read an interview with playwright Edward Albee, who made no effort to find out who his birth parents were when he found out he was adopted. He said, “I know who I am. Once I figured out who I was, I had no interest in finding out where I came from.” That’s deep.

It’s not a bad or good thing to feel connected to the past. You feel the way you do and you’re entitled to your feelings.

I didn’t revisit the past because I like it there, I revisited the past because I had problems in the present that could continue causing problems in the future.

To fix those, I needed to understand how I got there.

LE,
Hmmm… I am trying to think of someone who I’ve met who I could say started my life, but I can’t. I was watching a documentary last night on clothes designer Halston. He was this glamorous, successful person living in New York who’d come from the Midwest and reinvented himself. A different look. Even a different voice. He was being interviewed and asked about his childhood and his past, and the interviewer couldn’t get much out of him. “I don’t want to talk about history crap. I want to talk about today.” The older I get, the more I understand that. In terms of romantic relationships, if these people were so important, they’d still be in my life. At the time, of course, it felt that the world was at stake. 🙂 I spent a lot of time thinking about the past, but lately I don’t even feel that connected to it. And I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.

“I wasn’t lonely in my 20s. I had a core group of friends. Talked to them on the phone every day. Hung out every weekend.”

Once I settled in on the first submarine, I had a group of close acquaintances, two of whom are still my closest friends. Most of the group were either couples in the group or others with SOs who weren’t in the group. We worked out together, hit bars together, all kinds of things.

But I was still lonely. I think my life began when I met LO #2. She showed me happiness was a possibility. She gave me things to look forward to. I stopped merely existing and started living. The first two years we were together, I was happier with her than I’d been in my entire life until then.

I didn’t get what I wanted from her, but at least now, I learned what I wanted and that those things existed. I found them with another woman.

Sammy,

Continuing on the tangent…

I don’t see it as a gift. It’s what led me into the LW with LO #4. I could see she was in pain, the guy that should have been there for her wasn’t (turns out he was causing a lot of it), and I made the mistake of butting in and trying to comfort her. It blew up on me. Good intentions don’t always give good outcomes.

I’ve kind of always had the ability to read people it but it didn’t start to develop it until I met LO #2 and got close enough to someone that I cared about enough that it was important to be able to read them. Someone whose happiness was important to me.

That gift goes both ways. LO #2 said that I’d say something and she’d “melt.” She said it was like there was an angel on my tongue. She stole that from U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” My wife says that I can say the most amazing things at exactly the right time. My wife also says that when I go after someone that I know exactly how to inflict the precise amount of pain I want to. She says it’s not one of my better traits. If you want to check it out, watch this clip from Heinz Kohut.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ6Y3hoKI8U

You can start at the 1:45.

It took a marriage counselor to really get me to see that “Do you want coffee?” could be more than a “Yes” or “No” question. My wife and I have vastly different communication styles. The marriage counselor said she didn’t know how we could agree on a restaurant, let alone discuss significant emotional issues, especially when we didn’t know ourselves what baggage we were dealing with. We couldn’t have expressed ourselves to each other even if we knew what we wanted to express. It took years but we did it.

Sometimes, what MBTI profile you test out at doesn’t seem to fit who you think you are. I tested as an ESTJ twice at work. But, ENTJ describes me more accurately. They give a possible reason for that. They say your external environment can force you to operate in a way you wouldn’t under different circumstances.

I think I was always an ENTJ. But, as the child of two alcoholics, one pretty volatile, I couldn’t rely on intuition (N), I had to keep my eyes open for the next shit-storm (S). I also learned to keep a really low profile, suppressing the (E).

I joined the Navy and served on submarines. It’s a very literal world. We believe what we see on the gages, dial, and meters. We believe what people tell us. Nuance doesn’t exist on a submarine. As I got out of that environment, I think my (N) was able to emerge more.

A lot of it’s conjecture but it makes me think I understand myself better.

@Limerent Emeritus.

Thank you for your interest in this admittedly tangential discussion. I think I’ve strayed a little bit away from limerence and into general psychology. I’m trying to understand my own blind spots and weaknesses in interpersonal relationships, actually. 😛

The angle from which I’m trying to approach the whole personality thing, which probably isn’t very clear, is … emotional rapport. I realise I’m not as good with people as I sometimes think. People don’t automatically see my good intentions – there’s a communication breakdown somewhere. I’m not good at validating people’s feelings, which is different from agreeing with people’s opinions. End result: I often feel a strong sense of connection with others, but others don’t feel the same strong sense of connection with me. Other people might assume I’m laughing AT them and not WITH them.

In short, as a matter of course, I’m not giving other people what they need…

I realise when people come to me with their emotions, they often walk away feeling unsatisfied or unheard or dismissed. My responses to other people’s pain can seem unhelpful in the best of times, even cold, despite my best attempts to find the right words or offer wise counsel.

For example, the other day, on this very forum, you said something to someone, and I noticed what you said actually helped matters. What you said made the other person FEEL BETTER. What you said provided comfort to someone who was looking for comfort. You said the right thing at the right time. You spoke “a word in season” to “the weary” (Isaiah 50:4). I don’t know if that’s some gift you’ve acquired as a result of being a father? But you did something I couldn’t do, and I admire that and I envy that. It’s hard for me to switch from “logical brain” to “emotional support brain”.

I tend to miss emotional cues in conversations. I miss the cue that says: “It’s time to stop kidding around. Jokes are great, but now it’s time to be serious.” I want to stay in sarcastic, jocular mode long after the conversation has moved into bleaker terrain. I don’t want to give up childish things, to borrow your Biblical quote. 😛

As an INTJ, historically, I’ve been tempted to throw up my hands in dismay at friendships involving “drama”. Now I see that maybe said drama wasn’t something I needed to walk away from per se. In certain situations, all the other person wanted was for their feelings to be acknowledged as real. I didn’t need to come up with any brilliant solutions to the problems presented to me. I just needed to listen, show some sympathy, etc, let both parties be human beings.

There are a lot of INFJ/Ps on this board. This is what INFJ/Ps do well – listening to people talk about their feelings, without snickering, or clowning around inappropriately. INF- types do have a sense of humour, but that sense of humour seems to be very well integrated with their empathy circuits, so it’s rarely jarring. Jaideux, for example, has been wonderful. Her comments always make me feel better. Allie has been wonderful. Marcia has been wonderful.

Basically, what I’m saying is, when I give people in my life purely logical responses to their emotional petitions, I end up offending said people, and then wondering why said people are offended. I kind of understand what’s going on now. I.e. people aren’t always looking for logical answers. If I can learn to let others share their feelings with me, then mutual connection will come about naturally.

There is just something powerful about emotional connection by itself. I always thought I had to give more than emotional connection to be “of value” to my friends. I thought I had to fix people. Giving less might be the key to success in relationships for me. I need to stop resisting other people’s energy fields. Marcia, for example, “leans in” to people, but she doesn’t stop being herself. I feel like I can be myself around her because she is so much herself. She shows me that connection doesn’t mean losing/hiding oneself.