Hello KHB,

To answer your question, “… what happens when limerence and purposeful living are hopelessly intertwined?”

Honestly, bad things can happen just like if the limerence isn’t related to your purposeful living. You need to assess the situation for yourself. We have some community members who choose to play with fire after assessing the pros and cons of an LE. Weigh the pros and cons for yourself. Maybe you could start with these questions.

Are you at risk of damaging relationships if you continue with your music group?

Are you willing and able to endure the emotional stress that accompanies limerence?

If you choose to expose yourself to your LO, what safeguards can you establish?

Best wishes!

I met my LO a few months ago through a local music group. Since then, I’ve been inspired to practice my instrument seriously for the first time in a decade, and I’m loving it so much. But I’m about 50% loving it for its own sake, and 50% loving the opportunity to impress him.

Moreover, going NC now would mean leaving the music group, which is my main source of purpose. Yes, there are other music groups, but for various reasons, none of them work as well for me as this one. It would be just about perfect, if I didn’t happen to be hopelessly obsessed with the guy who leads it…

Hello Ghostzoned,

thank you for reading my post and for the warm welcome. I’m finding this site very enlightening and helpful for the reasons you already mentioned. I’ve read Dr. L’s first book (Living with Limerence), but I’m less familiar with Lucy Bain’s writings, though I’ve read some posts on her blog. Just today I read a post on non-romantic limerence that was very helpful and gave me hope that this particular episode may be over sooner, but you’re right about me needing discipline and good boundaries. I can’t go NC, but I can refrain from seeking contact when it isn’t necessary. I had been stewing over our last interaction a few days ago, and I finally decided to delete our conversation so I’m not tempted to go back and re-read it.

Thanks for sharing your experiences and what has helped you. I’d never heard of the term “Oneitis” before. I just looked it up and it sounds very much like limerence!

I wish you all the best!

Huh….that’s odd…I’m a New Yorker too…most New Yorkers I know live by one cardinal rule: Mind Your Business

If you are judgemental in this town you can probably barely make it down your block without losing it bc everyone is doing their own thing…and nobody cares one bit about your judgements!

this space is a lot like that.

be well

Thanks for sharing your story, Onemama.
It must have finally been a relief to voice what has been screaming inside.

This site has lots of helpful articles.
The forum is not so helpful, more like an echo chamber really (except when someone brain-farts what we all know, like any a-hole on reddit).

You probably already have Dr L’s book, it’s a good reference.
Tennov’s work less so, I only found a couple of chapters enlightening, and nothing I couldn’t pick up from articles here.
I found Lucy Bain’s three books, and her site, useful from the start. But then, her situation and mine are similar (toxic LO).

Like you, and many others here, I experienced limerence whilst already having a longterm SO.
My situation was the easiest to recover from, a toxic LO and a No-Contact period that was difficult for me to breach even if I wanted to.
Your situation is the opposite, a kindly LO who you are going to be seeing regularly.

You will need to be mindful of your boundaries.

To get over this is going to require discipline.
And self growth.
You will come out of this a better person.

I did not use a human therapist for my LE, although that is what many will prescribe.
I tried them in the past for a non limerent issue, and the garden-variety therapist just fed me back my own thoughts in other ways. Little different to what a.i. could offer, that is.
I utilised a.i. extensively, with varying results, and I may post on it in the next blog (which deals with a.i. vs human therapists).

I think, what helped me the most was:
* Self help material, especially relating to “Oneitis” (which is the popular term, but does not differentiate between limerence and regular crushes).
Most of the best stuff is in the manosphere, though.
* I injured myself on my journey, my AC.
Faced with a potential life-altering condition, my LE was eclipsed (I am recovered from that, btw)
* after 6 months, I felt comfortable enough to approach my LO and tease out part of her story
(approaching LO goes against common wisdom, incidentally. But I had to know her motivations).
On her part, no malice seems intended, perhaps post-breakup validation seeking, ie it was nothing to do with me, but her own situation.
{In vulgar parlance, LO was in her “slut-phase”, although in her case, it wasn’t exactly a phase..}
She is still sleeping around, which she’s been doing since her teen years..

Lucy Bain says that you know when you are over your LO when you can look back and say “wtf did I ever see in them?”
I could start saying that around the 5-6 month NC mark, and I could believe it from around 9-10 months post NC (ie current).
But some here have been limerent for years, decades, even..

Hi Fellow New Yorker,

I agree with your principle, and have tried my best to stick to it (I never had SO when I had LO or LE). Morality and judgment should be practiced first and far most on oneself before preaching it and using it to judge others, especially sufferers.

Majority of posters here have SO (married or attached) and most did not want to have LE, or even knew what they had/have. They come here to find some causes and all possible solutions to get rid of it hopefully once for all. It’s very unfortunate mental condition, like other addictions.

If you can’t accept this “mental aliment” in “inappropriate” people, a part of humanity, like any other big or small diseases, you may get your own “mental disease” — inability to accept reality, which could inflict depression and melancholy. Is that what you want?

Be peace with you!

I’m trying to say this in the kindest way but being married throws this whole limerance concept into a different category. I’m a New Yorker, we judge so I’m going to make a harsh judgment here: please get a therapist because emotional infidelity is harming another human being. It is one thing to harm yourself but I don’t believe in blurring the lines when a third person might get scarred for life and never recover. I haven’t read your comment passed the I’m married part because I already felt sick to my stomach. Sorry not sorry for not offering a safe space.

Hey all,
I’m glad my small musings and sharing my experience with LO vis a vis severe stress at least made you smile (with pity, I suppose?)
But it’s a true story and one which sadly, has no official ending as of yet

Have I reflected on how being near destitute forced me to perceive LE through a different lens? Oh, words cannot express this part in particular. Am I “out of the woods” with my problems? Absolutely not and there’s no ending in sight. What’s that saying? When it rains it pours? Well, it’s been a shitstorm of very unfortunate events for me and so to reiterate where I’ve been in the past few months… when one is literally fighting to survive and has to engage in crisis management mode, there’s no mental bandwidth to fantasize about LO. Yesterday I was on the phone with my mortgage company for hours in effort to try to negotiate payment arrangements then I almost collapsed from exhaustion. My life issues are affecting my physical health too so there’s not much energy to even masturbate to photos of LO (don’t laugh, I know some of you do it- no shame)- like I used to for years
And you know what else? These trial and tribulations made me humanize LO a bit, not sure the correlation exactly but a friend said something the other day and that resonated too and it all clicked even more. The friend simply said: “you know, Emilie, he shits and wipes his ass like everyone else”… yes, vulgar and primitive way of thinking but if there isn’t a better way to humanize a human, I don’t know what it would be.

NOW, will I slip into my old ways? Likely, eventually, I suspect and when my life stabilizes but not in the same way ever again. Why? Because I’ve done just enough work on myself to recognize this obsession really stems from my fluctuating self worth and not being able to handle rejection which is my own issue. My LO wasn’t romantically interested in pursuing a relationship and I’ve spent the last 6/7 years making it my part time job figuring out what’s “wrong”
with him. Is he autistic? Avoidant? Traumatized? Secretly gay? He’s an odd duck, a strange bird, a lone wolf, single for years and knowing that’s the culprit of my attraction, this limerance will have to run its course. Strangely enough, I’ve gotten so comfortable with LE, it has felt for years like an extension of my identity. I’ve got a weird story, I’d have to write it out on here one day.

I don’t know if what I’m experiencing is limerence, but it sure feels like it, minus the icky romantic feelings.

I’m married and I’ve been limerent several times. First time was for my first boyfriend, who swooped in and carried me off like a knight in shining armor, all to drop me six months later. Knight showed up when I was feeling empty and ashamed because I’d just returned from my first attempt at leaving home. That LE lasted almost three years.

My second LE was more enjoyable. I was living on my own, and LO and I had a lovely internet relationship that progressed to letters and phone calls. I ran up some eye-watering phone bills, but I had a job and wasn’t spending money on much else. I dropped him when I met my hubby, but by then, there wasn’t much coming from him, and my life was much more fulfilling.

Fast forward ten years, and LO 2 resurfaced in my life. By then, I had three children and my marriage was going through one of many crises. We found each other on Facebook, back in its heyday. We had some fun conversations on Facebook chat, and soon, I was evading the boredom and frustration by getting lost in daydreaming about LO and meeting him. That LE lasted two years or so. I deleted him as a contact when our communication dried up and I wanted to end the obsessive thoughts around LO.

I thought I was immune to limerence when I fell again. This time, my LE is most disconcerting. As I mentioned above, I’m not even sure this thing fits the definition of limerence, and it’s different from my previous LEs.

I met this guy, who is significantly younger, a little over a year ago. He’s a friend of a family member, and they both came to spend some days with us. He was nice enough and fairly good company, but I can’t say that I experienced a glimmer or anything of the sort. He came, he left, I forgot all about him. Until he called me one day out of the blue to tell me about an opening at his place of work. I was looking for work, so I applied and they took me on. The job is online.

Anyway, ever since, I’ve been dealing with these very disturbing and unsettling feelings towards him and the attention he started lavishing on me, and then NOT lavishing on me. It’s strange.
A week into starting my new job, my husband left. No, he didn’t leave the marriage; he moved his father back home (in another country) and stayed there. This colleague and I were talking a lot on the phone because he was teaching me the ropes of my new job. He got wind of our family situation because he’s my youngest BIL’s friend, so he would ask how I was doing. Even though I refused to share personal details with him, his probing and his interest in me at a time when I was quite vulnerable seemed to switch on that part of my brain I wish could be disconnected.

Now I’m struggling to create the distance I know I need. I don’t like him romantically or think he’s amazing, but I’m overreacting to his positive attention and his withdrawal. Right now, it’s withdrawal. I wish all this would go away because I don’t want to leave this job!

Anyway, thanks for reading my story!

One mama.

Ha @ Emilie

Yep, I sure know that feeling. In another world, we could be under-the-bridge neighbors, I could sit there in my broken lawn chair, at the door of my cardboard box, and tell you how I decided to trade my perfectly good life and career for Some Random Dude At the Gym and His Breadcrumbs.

…yeah, I am a multiple limerent too. I’ve done the same. Used those fantasies to help me cope with a reality I didn’t want to see, or wasn’t ready to handle.

Do you feel like, now that you went through this extreme time, you’ve had your last dance with limerence?

I am trying to learn ways to prevent sliding into it accidentally, again. It’s hard. But…I feel I have learned my lesson with this last one. It was horrific.

You really are a great writer…funny, true.