Hi Niniane,

Yeah, that was a mistake 🙂 I meant Daisy, but haven’t read the book in ages so did a quick Google search of characters and blundered. I decided it wasn’t serious enough to pull the video over – and Myrtle is married too so there is that slim justification for my error.

Forbidden fruit was actually the hardest one to think of examples for. Which might be telling me something interesting…?

Hi Niniane,

I agree with you. The LO in The Great Gatsby is Daisy Buchanan. I suppose you can stretch and say Myrtle represented some sort of Forbidden Fruit, but it would be a big stretch. Tom had no real desire or love or affection for Myrtle. She was just a convenient conquest.

Nice video on Jungian archetypes! However, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think one of the examples you cite for archetype #5 must be in error : the Forbidden Fruit figure in THE GREAT GATSBY is surely Daisy Buchanan, not Myrtle Wilson (who was Tom Buchanan’s mistress and the hit-and-run victim toward the end).

Otherwise, loved the video–thanks!

First up, Dr. L, I would like to say I love the way you’ve recently been integrating your blog entries with your YT videos. (Here I am referring to your “Romantic Archetypes” video and your “Valentine’s Day” video). I think integrating YT videos with blog entries makes sense from a brand/business point of view – people can check out one resource and be referred back to the other. Also, it’s a good strategy from a pedagogical point of view. If people haven’t understood something in one medium, they can seek out more information/clarification in the other medium.

Secondly, Dr. L, I would like to say you come across as remarkably endearing in your videos. 🤣 You come across as this really sweet man. I don’t say this to butter you up. I think this is a quality that all limerence-prone people have, and most limerence-prone people don’t realise they have it. Obviously, it would make little sense for God/Evolution to endow people with this pair-bonding drive if the people blessed/cursed with this pair-bonding drive were completely undesirable as pair-bonding partners i.e. conspicuously unattractive and/or unpleasant.

I think your “sweet side” isn’t a function of your looks. Rather, your sweetness comes out in how excited you get when explaining your ideas. It’s weird seeing a roughly 50-year-old man get excited about ideas. Oddly enough, you remind me of a younger version of myself (personality, not sexuality). There’s this excited, excitable, sweet, wistful, boyish energy going on. Personally, I hated that version of myself, because I hated myself in general. However, I think you actually pull it off. Fingers crossed, your self-esteem has always been a lot more stable than mine and you are not tempted to despise yourself for a long list of very strange reasons.

Thank you for making a video about archetypes. I know by your own admission you’re not a hardcore Jungian or anything, so it was kind of you to take the time to cover said material for the people who are interested in said material. Children’s bedtime stories must be very entertaining affairs in the Bellamy household, given your own love of ideas and your flair for communication. 🙂

Incidentally, the way you say that word “okay” is incredibly cute. Must be the English accent, although Australians pronounce the word the exact same way. 😆 Or maybe your “okay” sounds cute because you’re hurrying from one point onto the next, and the transition isn’t as smooth as intended. It’s like you’re so excited about your ideas that you can’t wait to rush onto the next point. This enthusiasm isn’t a problem necessarily – such enthusiasm is frequently infectious. 🙂

Fenna Van Den Berg is another You-Tuber who specialises in limerence. (I believe this blog has referenced her work at least once). I feel she has the same “unintentionally endearing quality” going on in her videos. Let me explain what I mean. Fenna says “hope can be so toxic” (in limerence) and of course she’s right. However, Fenna is also objectively an extremely beautiful woman. Logically, therefore, even as a homosexual male, I understand where Fenna got her “toxic hope” from. I.e. a heterosexual man would have to be blind not to see that Fenna is drop-dead gorgeous. A heterosexual woman would also have to be blind not to see that Fenna is drop-dead gorgeous. Fenna’s physical beauty is undeniable, even if hope was toxic for her at some point in her life. In contrast to the lovely Fenna, I am a forty-two-year-old man who looks like a forty-two-year-old man. Right now, I possess all the sexual magnetism of a mouldy potato! 🙄😜🤣

In the past, I did a lot of research into feminism. Currently, I’m doing a lot of research into transgenderism. (For the record, I am neither a feminist nor a man who identifies as a woman. I just enjoy researching esoteric topics). Second-wave feminism appears to have grown out of Marxism. The modern transgender movement seems to be a fascinating mutation of ideas drawn from both feminism (bizarrely adopted by the male sex, no less!) and postmodernism. What Marxism, feminism, and transgenderism all have in common is that they can function almost as bona fide religions for the people who truly embrace them.

I see links between the convictions of people who embrace Marxism, feminism, transgenderism and the convictions of people experiencing limerence. That is to say, in limerence, limerence itself (understood as a super-charged form of romantic love) can be elevated almost to the level of a private, personalised religion. Marxists, feminists, and trans activists often don’t require science to support their beliefs. Beliefs are a matter of faith, not science. And limerents are often the same way – clinging to beliefs which for them become articles of faith.

Limerence might be so powerful (in theory I think) because in addition to the urgent biological need for human beings to form pair-bonds, it activates some sort of religious impulse, or the same impulse that religions and/or successful cultural movements activate. People may turn to limerence for pleasure/some innate reward (like some trans folk). People may turn to limerence for social reasons/emotional satisfaction (like Marxists/feminists). And people may turn to limerence for its apparent ability to endow their life story with meaning that feels at once ephemeral and timeless, ordinary and transcendent (like Christians and the members of many other traditional/conventional faith communities).

Typo: it should be “self-berating mind”…

HJ,

In the blog right after the US election, I sensed that you’ve had some “ties” with China, My (thinking + judging) intuition is proven correct again! (📣 LaR!) It’s almost impossible for one to get sensing or feeling intuition online.

“I was an english teacher in a middle school near Beijing at the turn of the millenium, “

An international or local middle school? Two students-bodies were very different.

“there weren’t many tv channels…”

Everything on media centered around the government’s agendas: economic development, more opening to the outside world, beating the West in all fronts, bla, bla, bla, right?

“we were definitely an object of fascination, solely for being quite ‘exotic’, i guess peoples lives were fairly humdrum.”

Of course, you were, all from the Mars or Jupiter, with colorful hairs and eyes and that Big Nose” (heard that addressing to you?), which almost frightened my guts out when I was 5 upon seeing 5 or 6 of Russians for the first time in a candy store.

Now, Imagine I was possibly one of your students, staring at you, imaging what your free life would be on the Jupiter…, while we were stuck in our gray, controlled existence…. Can you imagine one of your Earthen students would be one day limerent for“exotic”, colorful Martians? 😁

“No, all LOs have been deeply similar to me in terms of background, education, culture and archetype, the tortured soul, highly capable but plagued by self doubt and depression. “

That’s what truly puzzled me most after migrating to the West: with so much material abundance and mental/physical freedom/choice in life, why so many Westerners seem to have suffered so much psychological/addiction problems — what MORE do they need/want in life? Why they seem unhappier or more tense or lonelier (seen in the street) than most of us from the developing world with so little tangibles in hand and limited intangibles in mind…

I had three goals for my American dream: Fresh Bell pepper (hard to find in winter in the far north), daily hot shower (a luxury over there), and an ideal love ❤️ with an astronomical Glimmer 🤩 — “forbidden/taboo” and mocked in COO! Your Buckingham palace and all its glory aspects/association had and still has little lure to me; nor I acquired those Western memetic desires (probably due to my “unknown” cptsd). After physically getting out the prison. I just want(ed) my habitually self-censured, salt-berating mind to be totally “freed” and the wounded heart truly “loving” (of which Eros alone is incapable),

“Im still puzzling through what it means, but i think im hoping to help LOs inner joyfulness and confidence emerge, and to help them fulil their potential, but symbolically it could be me or my father. “

It sounds very much like your LOs were representative of your father, and you’re craving to right something wrong, which you were unable to in childhood/youth — symbolically “saving your forever lost Dad through LOs. You subconsciously believe your mature adulthood would be able to achieve this (subconscious) goal; it’s just my guess.

I guess me, a superficial warrior with hidden cptsd insecurity, subconsciously looked for a mother figure in a heterosexual man — a white knight who could mother and pair-bond with me, but not authoritatively father me. I hated/detested macho, patriarchy male figures! (Dad was only superficially stoic.). None of my X-crushers were similar to Parents, except two Narcs. (#3 to Dad, #6 to Mom), most of them appeared very feminine (two were often mistaken for a gay)

“The whole thing fits an Archetypal pattern, but not a shadow i think. It is people who mirror my part of my persona i struggle with that glimmer.”

I see, you glimmered at those who mirrored a part of your persona, the part you like or dislike? I was opposite, those xCrushers or xLOs had something that was missing or repressed in my shadow, so Glimmer stuck me with that mind-boggling familiarity, as if I saw my own ghost in their eyes….

“The other female archetype list i have seen on google would suggest i fall for the Enigma, which obviously allows for lots of (probably very unfair) projection by me.”

Despite all my xCrushers were strangers, Enigma, did not and could not catch my intuitive eyes. That familiarity had to strike/glimmer my core (somewhere inside everyone) first. Now, after LwL, I’ve learned how to kill it, if its carrier is a mismatch with me.

If to be categorized in Western types of stories, my mild “archetypes” puzzle myself: I see my inner self (not much shown on surface in reality) in the stories of: Voyage and Return — Gone with the wind; Tragedy — Madame Bovary, Hamlet; Rebirth — The Snow Queen, Groundhog Day; The Rule of Three — Goldilocks; The Hero with a Thousand Faces — a chameleon…. So what types of LO I ignorantly sought or glimmered at in the past ? Or who could eventually suit to be my SO❓

In DrL’ 7 archetypes, I feel I’m drawn to a combination of: 5, forbidden fruit, 6 the Man of Mystery—myteriously familiar, and 7. the free spirit — all in a degree a bit more than moderation. A bit of “blood” of the most ancient civilization is still left in me, even after shredding my skin several times — “Tomorrow is another day!

“Thats my half formed analysis.”

I don’t have a formed analysis. Every post here (a mirror) I read made me to reflect something on myself and jolt down a brand-new post (could take from hours to days…) .

“ Definitely want to think about cross cultural Archetypes more.”

After having tasted cultural flavors of China, you could now come up with your Heebie Jeebies cross-cultural archetypes. It would be a fascinating new world to explore.

Hi snow,

I was an english teacher in a middle school near Beijing at the turn of the millenium, there wernt many tv channels… we wer definitely an object of fascination, solely for being quite ‘exotic’, i guess peoples lives were fairly humdrum.

No, all LOs have been deeply similar to me in terms of background, education, culture and archetype, the tortured soul, highly capable but plagued by self doubt and depression. Oh god, it’s so cheesy…. its embarassing to write it down, but its a clear trend…. Im still puzzling through what it means, but i think im hoping to help LOs inner joyfulness and confidence emerge, and to help them fulil their potential, but symbolically it could be me or my father. My father was lost in alcohol, my mother suffered under it but was somehow blind to it, and i had no male role model or advisor as i transitioned to young adulthood, then limerence emerged as i sort of basically failed at the first go at that. Well, i had a role model, but he was drunk and asleep on a sofa most nights… so my role model was my mother who is great, but in total denial. The whole thing fits an Archetypal pattern, but not a shadow i think. It is people who mirror my part of my persona i struggle with that glimmer.

The other female archetype list i have seen on google would suggest i fall for the Enigma, which obviously allows for lots of (probably very unfair) projection by me.

Thats my half formed analysis.

Definitely want to think about cross cultural Archetypes more.

Heebie Jeebies,

Let me see if I could express myself or my current lot better based on your points.

“– living in harmony with limerence – understand it is your objective”

Yes, not just with limerence’s two sides, but everything else around myself and has happened to/in me, including possibly dormant lymphoma. One’s attitudes/moods towards LE or life in a bigger canvas are up oneself to manage. I also try to keep some creativity sprung out of my lengthy LE; otherwise, I’d plunge into depression.

“but I have been limerent for 3 people,…. one time in contact one time without. “

For all my previous big “crushes” (unqualified as true limerence due to their total or partial reciprocation or lack of realistic interactions), I feel/think the same as you do: I rarely think about them (unless I travel(led) in their town); and when I did once in a blue mood, it’s just intellectual curiosity (passed in a day or so) — how those people (rarely objects) are doing in their life. They are kind of like dream characters in my memory. Those big infatuations all ended before I knew what limerence is; otherwise, I do not know how I would have treated them.

“In that sense LE2+relapse is something I would ideally like to end in the same way, I don’t want to live in harmony with it.”

Despite its intensity in both benefits and “harms” (still not sure whether my lymphoma was indirectly triggered by LE’s huge stress and consequent panicking attacks, or the other way around), I still want to live with it in harmony. As I said before, I even wish to become a friend with ET, as I (an xLO) had done so for my several “crushed” friends (they don’t know changing me and vice vista) from the past.

“I would though agree talking about it a lot leads to a degree of harmony with the problem or at least acceptance. “

True! But if one is still in the middle of LE, without doing effective treatments— purposeful, curing steps (silent meditation or physical workout) and distractions (other mental or artistic pursuits), excessive talking and analyzing can lead to fueling LE, causing more anxiety, and elongating LE’s altered state of mind, as we’ve seen here. Some left LwL because of the intensified pains after verbalizing them.

I like or even enjoy talking about other life topics, which have “naturally” distracted my mind from LE itself. I did not want to dwell on LE/ET, unless compelled to chat about it/him so sometimes. Each time I did, old regards or pains would resurface and the harmony would be “damaged” for a while. Then, I get irritated/triggered by other’s repeated “glorification” of their respective LOs, about whom all of us limrerents, in our active altered state of mind, have distorted views.

“My understanding is you have mainly had one episode”.

Some of my past unrequited crashes lasted long as well, the intensity of “obsession” was not less, but there wasn’t this pull-n-push interactive dance. Still, the crushing-object stuck in my head anywhere from 1-4 years, while my emotional life went through bumpily as well.

“my experience suggests limerence is more or less an aberration, and does end. But maybe that can’t be forced.”

It can’t be forced at all, but through at last acceptance and total NC; for some limerents, neural activities in the presence of LO is just uncontrollable and can repeat endlessly. Even if LE is somewhat “aberration”, its passion, imagination and exaltation have inspired tons of artistic, creative and inventive fruition throughout the history, especially in the West. Without them, particularly processes of those creations, how boring life could have been!!

Harmony seems to exist more in Buddhistic nations, but what practical or artistic masterpieces (aside from temples) have they invented or created? Except, by PROPORTION, more people are more relaxed and more content. Didn’t you feel it while walking in the street over there?

“– I do think that similarish concepts to seeking harmony exist in western modern culture, it is acceptance (not closure) with roots back to the stoics virtues, but agree the root of those ideas are fundamentally different”

Of course, the similar concepts and practices still exist in the modern era. Only by proportion, Stoics practitioners are much less, probably even less than unprofessional “narcissists” (I do not work on sociology but listen to some serious podcasts)

– I would be very surprised if there are not common archetypes across the various east asian cultures, which have more overlap with each other than those in the western cultures.

Despite sharply different political systems (3 totalitarian states over there), one common traditional element in the East is: dominantly patriarchal and macho culture, women are in an inferior social and economic position. Up to 1949, wealthy Chinese men can take a 2nd, 3rd, and 4th… wife, did they “need/want” a limerence?

The common archetype virtues for ordinary women might be: accept your lot, if marry a roaster (dominantly arranged marriage), stick to and learn to be content with roaster —don’t look at a peacock! For men, if you have money (or power), get mistress(es) (today), the society keeps one eye open, one closed. However, it’s not the other way around. Look at women’s position in Japan, India, and countrysides of China — who is a real boss inside a family/union?

Much fewer (by proportion) extramarital affairs (limerence??) have occurred in both sexes throughout history, but the women get more severely frowned upon or even punished (still rarely stoned into river in some remote areas of modern China). DNA drives are universal, but what one would do with it is a quite different issue in those powerful macho cultures.

There was/is little/no chivalry or romanticism traditions in the East (check their classical literature), attractive women are often depicted/viewed as sluts (named “old shoes”) even if they cast an extra look at men or chat with them in public, in except some legendary fairytales in which star-crossed man and women were equally in love but always sadly, eternally separated by fate or died of lovesickness — if one did not die of lovesickness/limerence, one’s considered NOT have loved enough — superficial.

One Eastern archetype: you naturally love and devote to one spouse all your life, like a swan! (Only Taiwan and Thailand approve guy marriage so far)

“When I used to live in the east 20 years ago I remember watching the TV films and thinking that there were a bunch of stock character types in different films that were unfamiliar to me, but seemed common across different stories. “

I’m not sure which Asian country you have lived; there are a great deal of differences between North and South Korea, Taiwan and China, or South and East Asia — they do share one thing in common — material wealth and social prestige/status as ultimate life goals, everything else is considered abstract or nonsense. True Taoists are rare in reality.

Unless I know your specifics, I am unable to discuss about my own views, and I know little about South Asia. I probably understand Orwellian“1984” better than a lot of Westerners…

“I dont think the archetype itself is important, more whether the person for whatever reason is more likely to have limerence triggered by a specific one.”

I agree with you here. My previous post was saying that Jung’s Collective Unconscious theory baffles me a great deal (he visited India a few months here and there but not truly lived in it). I don’t know how he could categorize Eastern spirituality, mentality, and their collective unconscious.

There is saying, “Once westerner, one is always a westerner.” You can take me out of the ideological or savage “prison” and liberate or civilize me, but I can never put you (back) into it. You can visit the prison to see/sense/describe what it is like, but you’d never know how your bones feel like being born and growing up in it. I would not have known it is a prison, until I came out of it and had a comparison.

7 archetypes of LO may have some their practicalities in the East, but definitely not in their forms and intensity — Eastern damsels are everywhere (maybe more), but no existing white knights would save them. Even ordinary men could take 2nd or more “damsels” behind a door (one Chinese official a couple of years ago was caught to have 9 mistresses and 10 children). You’re a damsel? Swallow or beat it with whatever psychological or spiritual means you can conjure up. (Several of my k-12 classmates have faced it)

“Even if social and individual harmony is more pronounced than egotistical interaction, the hierarchies, roles and life stages that archetypes draw on are still strongly pronounced”

Yes, I just summed up a little bit above, based on my observations. I’d like very much to learn more from your experiences of living in the East. It’s fascinating when I took my Western students to study aboard and watched their interactions and reactions with local people… one girl of 16 quickly had a crush for one of my students… They’re my cultural “ginny-pigs”.

“– I think it is a mirror of something quite fundamental that defines me, but which I can’t directly view with my conscious mind, which for me really echoes well with Jung’s ideas. “

Yes, I agree with you here. Based on Jung’s idea, everyone with whom we interact is a mirror to us, big or small. One has no social identity in a total isolation; one defines one’s identity by interacting with others. Sartre portraits it in “No exit”; it’s “scary” that we rely on others/external world to see ourselves. Sometimes we appear a different person in front of different personnels (or cultures in my own case). A LO probably mirrors some of our traits, hidden/shadowy or obvious/light.

“I can see the triggers, I can feel the emotions driving me, i can see the commonalties of the people who have ‘triggered’ me, but I can’t directly ‘look’ at and know myself”

I can’t help agree with you here, and it also helps me see that limerence is a universal experience, because xCrushers/xLO are from different races and personal backgrounds. Yet I saw that undeniable, mind-boggling shared familiarity in their eyes within just first 5 seconds — I heard/sensed “click” in my head, literally as if I had seen a same ghost (a part of myself?) in their EYES (heterosexual, homosexual, and a bisexual)! Yet, what was/is this part of myself, aside from the pair-bonding drive?

By the way (you don’t have answer), is your long-distance LO2 from a different racial/cultural background?

Non-negotiable:
– Male adult
– physically attractive and physically fit (in my opinion)

A la carte:
Positive reenforcement in form of
(pick no fewer than 2)
– eye contact
– conversation
– laughter
– playful activity (intellectual or physical)
– flirting (intellectual or physical)

Substituting salad or sweet potato fries is extra $2

POSITIVE reenforcement has to come first. If they give me negatives, I’m not interested. It’s a kind of playfulness, igniting hope for me.

Then, after that, it’s the drip feed, breadcrumbs, mixed signals. The uncertainty on my end. The wondering. The hoping, trying. The illusion of connection. The fantasy.

That is the cocktail, for me, for full-blown limerence.

I am wondering, and maybe this isn’t the right place to ask this. Do you any of you ever wonder if you would know real love if you found it?

I am starting to wonder, am I just terminally limerent? I fall into it so much. I think I know why…but I feel powerless to feel like I could ever have a “real” relationship with anyone, that I would enjoy. It’s either totally safe, and I am “content” but not happy. Or, it’s all out mind-mess of limerence. And that’s torture.

Maybe I just won’t ever find “love”. Maybe others know what it is…they’re always talking about it like it’s something one can find if they really want to. But…I’m starting to wonder, would I even understand it? If I do make changes in my life, to try and live a more honest life…would I even know love? Presumably, I would be hoping to find it, like so many others. But maybe I would not know what it was….

Do any of you ever wonder this? I really do wonder. It doesn’t mean I won’t make my changes. It just means…maybe I can’t set expectations to ever know what love really is….at least, not love the way others talk about it.

Thoughts?
CSC

Bewitched, I am officially a one and a half book expert…. so probably completely wrong. It’s just my guesswork and some additiosn of my own after reading a book about Jung and starting The Undiscovered Self.

Apaprently Jung himself didnt get very far on Archetypes, and it was Neumann in The Origins and History of Consciousness who actually fleshed out the ideas. The wikipedia page for that book has some links to counter arguments.

I definitely agree I struggle with the evolutionary bit, as it is untestable. I can kind of follow why certain behaviours might be useful for survival, but we can never know if they have changed.