I certainly wish you the best. I’m “working” the end of my LE and it is so very difficult to give up that experience, that fulfilling rush of loving another so madly, so deeply. On days when I don’t have my LE it is refreshing in one way, but also slightly empty and flat. It’s refreshing in that I don’t have that insane psychological bondage to loving her and longing for a response from her, but I so miss that LE high.

@same boat

I feel/function same as you: most of my
life I limerent to someone , besides SO.

I also feel embarrassed and ashamed.

I’m almost 40 now. When I was 20yrs I was going to a friends house & his cousin walked bc past me leaving. Our eyes met & there was something felt inside of me that I’ve never felt. I had a bf at the time & a couple years later I married him.

Fast forward 12 years. My husband and I went to a new church & that guy was there, our eyes met & the feeling came back in that instance. Nearly every Sunday for years now I see this man & he stares at me, it’s like he’s willing me to look at him.

I’m going crazy! Before he got married a few years ago he tried to compliment me, I think he wanted to talk to me & I pretended not to hear him. Outside of this he hasn’t spoken to me. I will go though spells of overcoming this attraction or whatever it is but just when I think I’m over it I will look at a friend & he’s there staring at me. Our eyes meet, he looks away then I do. I feel his eyes on me and I look and sure enough he is holding eye contact with me. I hate this. I want to quit but I also don’t. I want him but it’s not possible. What is happening, how do I break free. It’s like there is this magnetic force drawing me to him. I think about him almost every day, it’s obnoxious.

My So is wonderful. Our marriage is great, the sex is also fantastic. But I know how often my mind wanders. This LO is not even my type. But 12 years is a long time, I need to cut this cord.

Hello Sarah,

I was limerent for LO#1 from the time I was 18 to 45! NC pretty much after we broke up, but I dreamt about him intensely every night for maybe 4 years. That was really hard, as I was building a solid relationship with my SO at the time – I felt just like you said, “having a SO and whole meaningful life while still waking up and going to bed with thoughts of LO. It can feel like I’m living two lives at times, my real one and my interior one.” I used to wake up crying, and I called them “nightmares” as they were making be question my “real” life with SO (who I eventually married and had children with).

Eventually, over the years I dreamt of LO#1 only sporadically, but when I did, it did bring back the old feelings. I just learnt to live with it. Then, one day, out of the blue, LO#1 asks to befriend me on social media. Okay. I did so. And after a bit of interaction with some trepidation, the LE was over. Completely. No more dreams, nothing. I just wasn’t even remotely attracted to the person LO#1 had become (which pretty much goes to show how LOs are pretty much “objects” rather than a “real person”).

So, I was rather pleased with having shed LO#1 after a quarter of a century. But a few months later, I met LO#2, and boy oh boy, a brand new fresh LE is far more disruptive than an old tired LE! I wish I had kept my old LE, as it hardly interfered with my life by the later years, but this new LE – I was an emotional wreck, and crying, and longing, and hardly able to function. And here I am still waking up next to my SO, while living in my head with LO#2. At the age of 45! I cannot tell you how much this sucks. Why am I not limerent for my SO? (I never have been, but we have a wonderful life together.) I want to be fully present in my life with SO, but it seems not meant to me – I am just living with him and some imaginary object that obviously fulfils some function in my life. Is it so I am never truly honest and intimate with my SO – are the LOs just a way to keep myself a little bit emotionally distant and safe in my relationship with SO? Am I destined for another quarter century long LE with LO#2 (assuming I live that long!)

I tell this story for those of us in long-term LEs, to provoke reflection on the functions LE fulfil in our lives. I suspect if we want to be free of them, we have to understand what factors cause their existence. Also, it is a ray of hope – we can lead wonderful real lives, even while maintaining an interior world of longing for something else.

I can totally understand your moral dilemma Sarah, it is a really tough one. I do think it is vital for you to move on in life and it sounds like you are doing well in trying to deal with your limerence.
Does your SO have any awareness of your LO#1 problem? What would happen if you told him, carefully framing your explanation as a recovering addiction problem?
Have you done DrL’s emergency re-programming? I think it would really help you as it sounds like your situation could be much improved by you completely re-writing your mental narrative about your first LO. It takes time and mental effort to do this but it can be done and it does really make a difference.
What happened with LO#1?

I forgot to mention in all my ramblings that although my first LO is my longest and most painful limerence, I have been limerent multiple times throughout my life as I definitely sought new relationships as a way to emotionally regulate – and as a way to try and fill the void of losing my first LO. In that sense I agree with you that although it seems like person addiction, the fact that it can be repeated points to it probably being more of an “object to project upon” addiction. Although it is interesting that not all relationships can create it, even for someone like me, who is so ripe for limerence!