Personally, I am rather surprised at how hard it is for people in general to disillusion an unwanted romantic admirer. And I’m surprised at how reluctant people are just to be blunt. I can definitely see how “extra friendliness” could be counterproductive in a limerent situation. It’s just more fuel to the limerent fire…

I’ve realised that in my entire career as a “lifelong limerent”, I have only ever had one person tell me that my apparent interest in them made them feel uncomfortable. This suggests the following possibilities to my mind:

(A) I’m really good at hiding limerence.

(B) My LOs are oblivious to my limerence.

(C) My LOs notice my limerence, but are either super-polite or utterly indifferent, and so don’t bother saying anything.

(D) I’ve only ever experienced true limerence once – the one time I made someone feel uncomfortable – and everything else was “generic crush/random physical attraction” material, and nothing that anyone wasted any time worrying about.

Thanks to this site, I feel I’m over that one LE where even the LO called me out on it. I feel I’m at peace now with how it all played out. I can let it go mentally.

There is one guy who I’ve been quite strongly attracted to in recent years. He’s what might be described as a “friendly LO”. He’s friendly to me. However, whenever I give him an opportunity to get closer to me, e.g. a prolonged hug or a conversation that goes beyond mere pleasantries, without fail, he gently brushes me aside, even though he is both gay and single. He’s very good at brushing me aside – he hasn’t hurt my feelings yet. He’s one very tactful little bunny rabbit. 😛

On the basis of advice I’ve gotten from this site, I’ve decided to stop pursuing him altogether. He likes me as a friend – nothing more. He’s being nice about it, too. If I push for more, I’m only punishing myself and likely alienating him in the process. I don’t want to put him in an awkward position. Of course, giving him up as a current/potential LO means giving him up as a friend, too. But I think the benefit of a “mind at ease” outweighs the cost of a lost social connection.

I want to let him be free to fancy whoever he fancies and evidently that’s not me. Enough said. Time to let go. I don’t want to be the recipient of “extra friendliness” again. I don’t want someone mincing their words around me because they’re scared of causing me pain. I’m comfortable sitting with my pain now until it passes. Plenty of life experience under my belt. Yeah, I think I’m good. 😛

How did he get so emotionally close to you? Did you confide in him about the breakup, etc? Not to be accusatory, but I am hypervigilant now not to ignite limerence in others as I know I have shown a lack of self awareness and done this in the past. I now am acutely aware of the agony of limerence and as difficult as it is I no longer lean on male friends or let them lean on me as someone always ends up getting burned. It’s really hard with reliable, decent, funny, helpful “platonic” friends but I am trying to use self control. Especially when they “play it cool” I think I am safe to be their friend, and I cannot hurt them, but then I remember that I played it cool with my LO’s and thus welcomed them continue feeding my limerence. Sometimes we cannot prevent or prolong others becoming limerent for us, but sometimes we can.
I think talking about his wife was not a punishment, it was a kindness. I am sure your motive was to help him. Hopefully his limerence died down and he fell back in love with his wife.

It sounds to me like you did everything you could to avoid feeding his limerence. Talking about his wife might have helped him in the end. Do you think his limerence is over now?

Fast forward a few months, and we were working the same place. We ended up going on a business trip together. He offered to book our hotel rooms, but I declined and booked my own. Somehow, though, we ended up with adjoining hotel rooms on the trip. I was friends with this man’s wife, so it was incredibly awkward, and in fact I punished him the entire way home by talking about his wife non-stop the whole way. He deserved it.

Dr. L, you are right. I would admire Jane too, for finally having some spine in her limerence, and not going. Doesn’t matter a whit what people think, particularly LO.

@Scharny….I think this is good advice and a good cautionary tale.

In light of the update, shouldn’t this be changed to WIFE? LO isn’t a “loon” – he knows what he’s doing. He’s looking to cheat on his wife.

With respect to the “secret” wedding, there may be a perfectly benign reason for this.

My parents both died in the 1970s. I have their wedding album but I can’t find a single thing that provides a date. Looking at the pictures, I recognized the church they got married in. I called the church office and based on when he was in college, gave them a starting date. About 15 minutes later, the church secretary called back and gave it to me. She said there was a note that a civil ceremony had been performed about 6 months earlier. She said that was odd.

I told her that it wasn’t. Dad had said that he and Mom had lived in married student housing his last semester. To get into married student housing, they had to have a marriage license. It made total sense.

As for him not telling Jane, yeah he’s a schmuck.

Update:

Jane got in touch again with more news. It turns out (prepare yourself for the shock, folks) that LO is a total loon! I know! Shocker.

Jane found out from a mutual friend that LO and bride are already married. They had some kind of hurried secret wedding, and this “wedding celebration” event is some sort of… cover story or something? Obviously, LO didn’t feel the need to tell Jane this, even after saying he would to their mutual friend.

That settled any last vestige of guilt that Jane might of been feeling about declining.

(I really did pick the featured picture well for this one!)