Thanks @Lim-a-rant and @ghostzoned. I find it strange how my Limerent rumination isn’t nearly as bad when I see my LO in person. There is something about pictures that gets me going. I’m going to have to resolve to really avoid looking at them. As for the group chat, I’m going to try to go on there once a day and avoid oversharing and obsessing over whether she has checked the chat. The truth is she is part of our group but she isn’t really a core member. She mostly just lurks, although she does comment occasionally. She only comes out with us once in a while too. It’s probably best to focus on my core group who do spend time with me regularly.

As for my marriage, I have talked about this elsewhere, but I have clearly and unequivocally communicated my desire for separation and divorce to my wife literally hundreds of times over the past 3.5 years. She is completely resistant, and there are legal, financial, logistical and emotional barriers to separation and divorce in my case. One day I’m hoping to get out, but I feel like I’ve waited long enough!

Damn, VL, that sounds nuts!
Actually, it sounds like your situation with unhappy marriage and job have a lot to contribute to your susceptibility to limerence.

But surely your marriage must hold some value for you, to remain in it?
Else you would have gone the route of your friend.

I was in a “bullshit job” some years ago – very cushy but niche, and everything I did had political undertones.
I moved sideways into a tougher department, and am much happier, or rather.. “outcome indifferent”.
I now know that happiness won’t come from my employment (that only applies to the self-employed).

Hi Vicarious,

My LO has minimal social media so I get a pretty free pass there. But I want to share one thing in response to what you said. Checking whatsapp to see last activity and read/unread can become the devil incarnate, can’t it? I trained myself just to stop ‘checking’ my LO on whatsapp to avoid doing this to myself. It was hard to train it out, but it was sort of based on repeating the mantra “nothing good can come of this, you will feel worse not better after doing it 99% of the time”. Eg if I looked on there late at night and she’d been active, my mind ran instantly to ‘what man is she texting?’. Or if not active, to ‘I hope she’s OK’. No good result.

For a spell, to see this through I had to pretend whataspp broke on my phone and put all comms between us back to old-school text (and remove my ‘last seen’). Now I am strong enough about it to trust myself not to check her, and I do use whatsapp agaIn without falling down that hole.

I shared it because with hindsight it was one of the early positive steps I took to take some heat out of the LE. It was a cutting off of one of the oxygen lines that fed the rumination.

@ghostzoned, thankfully I don’t have any pictures of her saved. I haven’t gone down that path. I haven’t taken any pictures of her either, although I could have. The problem is we have quite a few mutual friends, and I can easily browse tons of pictures of her on Facebook. She’s very beautiful and photogenic (at least to me). I also constantly check to see if she’s viewed our group chat messages. I’m not sure why it matters to me, but it does. I really enjoy her company in person. She’s a sweetheart. We seem to get along well.

This is so hard because if I was single, I could just ask her out, get rejected and then move on. I wouldn’t wish living in a dead marriage with a completely resistant spouse on anyone — particularly in a limerent state. This is a special kind of hell. I just can’t bring myself to go NC or delete social media. It would have a negative impact on my social life and my mental health in other ways. I’m so envious of my friend who was married to a boring and miserable woman. He just had to tell her once it was over, and now he has a great life and is marrying a fantastic lady. Why can’t I have that? I’m living in Groundhog Day with a job and a marriage I hate. I can’t get out. I feel so trapped!

Ugh, can relate.
Checking out LO’s online is limerence-porn
(in my case, almost literally, since my LO’s social media is a showcase of semi-naked photos of herself)

But don’t beat yourself up about it, slipping up can happen less than a minute.

Instead, take steps to avoid it recurring
eg https://lifemathmoney.com/why-you-should-delete-your-social-media/
(especially https://m.facebook.com/login.php?next=https%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2Faccount%2Fdelete&refsrc=deprecated )

If you by chance have saved some of her pictures, it’s a no-brainer that they should be wiped, for your own sanity.
However, if you cannot bear to delete them, shut them away in a password protected archive.

Hello Rooth,

After reading your question, I suspect that you are the SO of a limerent. I would like to offer you a resource that might be helpful to you.

https://livingwithlimerence.com/dealing-with-limerence-in-marriage/

Also, I want to answer your question. You asked if limerents are concerned about how their SO will feel about their limerence. They are absolutely worried about their SO’s feelings! I haven’t met a limerent who isn’t worried about their SO’s feelings. Many of the people on LwL came here because they want to get over their limerence without hurting anyone, especially their SO.

Does nobody on here think for one minute what their SO or partner feels about this when discovered? It is totally heartbreaking.

Lolol!

Ghostzoned,

now you are faced with the opposite of me last year- in six months she might work with you, mine was „in six months he might leave for good“.
I advise not to ponder on it, on her decision etc. Your hopes will go up and down and you will waste too much time on speculating how it would be etc.
If she comes to work with ou, you‘ll cope. Maybe you will even realize that she‘s not that great, you‘ll see some flaws and she won’t be the MPDG anymore, only MG or whatever.. Ypu can not know now anyway, so don’t think too much about it, don’t reinforce the limerent neuronal pathways.
Wondering and pondering if my LO will leave or not and how it will be, what I will lose etc didn’t help me one bit and actually spawned the whole LE, uncertainty being a powerful drive.