If you disclose to LO when you have a loved/cared partner, you’d complicate and mass up things in all sides — just in your psyche. You may also lose both LO and partner or one of them soon or later in reality.

If not in long distance (NC will naturally take place and kill LE eventually), I also agree that it is not possible to be an authentic friend with LO — we suffer internally for wanting/wishing more from LO.

I’ll quote Dr L. for this one:

“Well, I’m going to take a hard line on this one. No. It is not possible to be an authentic friend to an LO.”

https://livingwithlimerence.com/cant-we-just-be-friends/

Hm, is there no other way to check for chemistry or compatibility than disclosing? If you are friends you spend time together, maybe you could feel it?
Since you are both single now, there might be not much harm in disclosing, and it doesn’t have to end the friendship. I‘ve got a friend who disclosed and we are still friends, he‘s now happily married.

LO and I were both involved with others. I got my LE down to almost nothing. Then, as fate would have it we are both single now. At the same time. I actually was cruising along just fine with being friends and would have left it at that (who wants to be in that torturous state of being in a LE?), but recently, I started thinking of LO in a romantic light again. The fantasies are starting again – lightly. I don’t know how LO feels, but they just seem friendly – a good friend, nothing more. I am concerned we will lose the friendship (which has been genuine and one that I value greatly). I am concerned about what our families and friends will think (us getting together will be slightly scandalous and I would not enjoy having to tell people we are together). I am scared to find out what LO feels. I don’t think this is to the level of LE as it was when it first struck (OMG), I think partially because I know LO really well this time as a friend and person. I also wonder … if we have no chemistry or compatibility, then I would have blown up everything for nothing.

Thoughts? Opinions? What does the community think I should do?

My apologies by the way, my English seems to get worse and worse🙈🙈

I agree, anger can be liberating and a good step away from LO. Through anger you can glimpse a refreshing view of how easy and beautiful life could be without that LE, at least that happened to me in a past LE.
The f..you attitude gives you back your self-respect and backbone.
I still felt closure only when I managed to haven‘t any strong feelings anymore for the LOs, be they positive or negative.

Hi PC,
I think our LEs are different, because I was limerence for my good friend whom I know for at least 10 years, and I know all his good and bad sides, way of thinking, family etc.
That made it difficult to go NC because I didn’t want to lose this friend, but it helped me in that I had all „weapons“ to get him down off that pedestal. He always was someone whom I sometimes loved very much and who sometimes exasperated me and even got on my nerves.
I kind of had to go for a while into the „goes on my nerves“- rut, so to speak.

The limerence was like tinted glasses that I put on for a while, and because I knew how he looked without them, I finally managed to come back to that view.
Don’t know if I explain it well.
Also, it could be fragile, because I haven’t seen him in person since, and I still like him a lot and won’t kill that feeling because the friendship means much to me. So we‘ll see if I really managed or if I could slip back into limerence any moment.
But I don’t think so, somehow.
So it‘s a different situation to yours.

But aside from that, what helped me was that I had two LEs before, and that I realized that although the LOs were different and all special persons, that I experienced the same stuff-excitement, elation, pain, jealousy, word centering round them, obsessive thoughts and behavior.
I realized that although the LOs ARE special persons, most of the stuff going on came from myself.
I managed to see the limerence as separated from the LOs, as some beast inside of me.
That helped.

“I do like the idea though. My inner b**** is warming up…”

One of the best scenes in “Lord of the Rings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbXNJMrBbF4

“I guess this concludes negotiations.”

Ok, so maybe you don’t have to take his head.