This week’s video is about that most painful of limerent situations: what to do if you are married but limerent for someone else.
It breaks down the dilemma into three possibilities:
- The marriage is good
- The marriage has problems
- The marriage is bad
Obviously, the action to take would differ in each of those cases, but the challenge faced by many limerents in the thick of this difficult situation is: which option applies? And if the marriage has problems (as all marriages do to a degree) how serious are they?
My starting point for the analysis is that you should get some distance from your LO before you stand any chance of making good decisions. Under the influence of limerent intoxication, your judgement is going to be screwy.
Once you feel you have found a moment of clarity, ask and answer these eight questions:
1. Have you experienced limerence before?
If so, you know what this is like. Limerence passes, and you are left with the same person after the fireworks have ended. Serially seeking new sparkles is not a sensible strategy if you are looking for a long-term relationship.
2. Were you limerent for your spouse?
If so, you know what happens next if you pursue your LO – the limerence will burn brightly, and then burn out. If you were not limerent for your spouse, it could feel as though this new, astonishing sensation is a sign of extra special love. For more on why the strength of limerence is not a predictor of the quality of a future relationship, see this post.
3. Have you had any life stresses lately?
Bereavement, redundancy, health problems, can all make you seek escape and transformation. If you’ve learned to use limerent fantasy for mood repair, you should be wary about whether your subconscious is seeking an LO for escape from the pain of real life trials.
4. Do you feel your life has purpose and meaning?
Discontent can grow slowly but surely in the background of an unexamined life. Benign neglect can leave you vulnerable to limerence as a shock of excitement in a life through which you had been drifting.
This sort of discontent is not really a marriage problem, it’s more of a purposeful living problem.
5. Were you unhappy before the limerence started?
Not now, compared to the imagined utopia of being with LO, but then.
If someone had asked you in the past whether you were happy in your marriage, how would you have responded?
The urge to rewrite history to make a story of “limerence as thwarted love” work is very powerful. Try to remain objective.
6. How do you rank in the objective measures of marriage quality?
There are some key indicators that all good marriages have in common. How many are in yours?
7. Are you proud of your conduct as a spouse?
Leaving aside the whole limerence for another person business for now, how would you otherwise rank yourself as a spouse?
Do you meet the standards you would want in a life partner? Does your spouse? If not, what could be improved?
8. If you knew for certain that your LO would reject you, would you still leave the marriage?
This is the big question because it cuts through all the fog of insincerity. If you knew beyond doubt that you didn’t have the LO to run off with, would you still want to leave your marriage?
If so, the marriage problems are clearly very serious.
If not, then that tells you something very important.
It might be that you are clinging to security, but more likely, you do value and love your spouse, but also want with an addictive, supernormal intensity to gratify your limerent urges.
Making decisions
I end the video with the exhortation to make a decision as the key next step. What that decision is will depend on the outcome of the questions.
If your analysis has been mostly positive, then it’s likely you fall into the first situation: your marriage is good, limerence is an unwelcome distraction, and you should begin the work of deprogramming yourself and recommitting to the marriage.
If the analysis is mixed, then your marriage has some problems to solve. Time to have some serious conversations with your spouse, and consider disclosing your limerence to them.
If the analysis is mostly negative, then it’s time to confront how seriously your marriage has deteriorated. Consider the signs that your partner doesn’t respect you, and focus on rebuilding, or ending, the marriage.
Regardless of which option turns out to best describe your own marriage, the next step to take doesn’t need to involve your LO.
Always start from the perspective that any marriage issues need to be addressed before you start looking beyond the marriage for solutions to your problems.