Thank you, Anna. I’ve thought about going no contact, but that would require me to have to lose my entire friend group. Instead, I’m going to focus on going low contact and reminding myself about the rejection and the one negative thing I can think of about my LO to try to get over her (she seems to like bad boys and that’s certainly not me). I’m not even saying she’s definitely off limits for me for all time, and it could be that she’s just afraid to get involved with a married man. There are some signs that she might like me. Having said that, I do need to focus on stopping the obsession over this woman, catching up at work, improving my finances, getting fitter and thinner and ending my marriage. Only then should I be thinking about someone else. It’s possible that LO #3 might be The One someday, but somehow I doubt it. For now, I have to take her rejection of my friend request at face value and use it as fodder for recovery.

Sounds like you have lots of upheaval going on Vicarious Limerent.
It was good to read that it was time for you to focus on recovery and there is nothing happy or optimistic about your LE.

I had to get to that point too before I actively did anything to push myself forward. I sat in limbo for a very long time waiting for some magical star alignment to make everything better.
The only force is in you.

I don’t have an SO so I can only imagine what you’re going through especially if your marriage is dead.
Sounds like you are going to sort through that before focusing on someone else. That’s a great idea. Could be that LO#3 is just a distraction.
Our minds work in mysterious ways.

Just my humble opinion but if you can go NC that would even be better. I’m not sure of your situation with your LO but the more you can avoid her the better.
I’ve been 10 months NC now and as I still have my not so good days, it’s so much better now! The fog is lifting and I’m actually engaging in life again.

I just wanted to chime in and let you know that I’ve been where you are now. Focus on yourself and the things you need to do to better YOUR life.
Cause that’s all that matters.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UVCX-3vhcQs&pp=ygUSaGVhdmVuIHNlbnQgZG9ra2Vu

This song makes me think of her. “Heaven sent but baby you’re not the one.”

I just typed out a heartfelt reply to myself but I couldn’t post it because it was supposedly duplicate content. The gist of it was how I now realize just how much my limerence for LO #3 has become a destructive force in my life. There is no longer any pleasure here. It’s all pain. Time to focus on recovery and very low contact. I’ve cancelled my Facebook friend request to her and it felt great to get back some dignity and self-respect. I’m even considering blocking her so I don’t see that she’s online. There is nothing happy or optimistic about my LE. My only focus has to be on my situation and getting out of my marriage.

What’s currently causing me grief is my LO’s fantastic awesomeness and some mixed signals she’s giving me. After not seeing her for two months, I’ve seen her two weekends in a row (and I was supposed to see her the weekend before that but the show we were supposed to go to got cancelled). She is getting more active in our chats too. I was thrilled to see her again. As I suspected, I think she was trying to get back with a guy she used to date who ended up very dodgy. She has cut all contact with him.

She sits beside me now, she hugs me goodbye and she stood beside me through two bands the other night, talking away to me. She also took off her jacket and she was wearing a rather tight t-shirt. I was on Cloud 9 after that. I told my friend I couldn’t have been happier with how the other night went. He even mentioned to me how well it seemed to go before I even mentioned anything to him.

The problem is she didn’t accept my Facebook friend request after that. She might not have seen it yet, but it’s been a while and I know she’s been online (I can see her activity because we’ve messaged each other in the past). Her best friend accepted my request right away. I know my LO is quite a private person, and I believe she is selective about whom she accepts friend requests from. But she is Facebook friends with many of my friends (including guys). It kind of put a damper on my happiness and excitement from the other night. I’m kind of sad actually. I know it’s just Facebook but it feels like a rejection. She might not have seen it yet, and she could just be waiting a bit (playing hard to get). I don’t know. She might also feel that we got a little too close the other night, and now she is dialling it back. She did once tell me she wouldn’t lead me on when I mentioned I was married, but she knows by now that my marriage is totally on the rocks. I still will not cheat, but maybe I am engaging in a bit of monkey branching here. The problem is this lady is so perfect for me. I’m besotted with her. This feels like how things were with LO #1.

I am thinking about going no contact now to get over her, but what would that achieve? I would eventually become limerent for someone else (someone likely less suitable), I want out of my marriage, I see her as a potential partner for a serious long-term relationship, and I would have to ditch my friends in order to do that. I so wish I could end my marriage. I wish I was single. I wish I was thinner and fitter. I wish I could just ask her out and just get over the rejection that would invariably come by dating someone else. Limerence is hell living in a dead marriage — especially with a “perfect” LO.

@Sammy – That’s really rough. Glad you’re through the worst of it and may it never knee cap you again!

@Lee.

“Nice to be remembered.”

Your legacy remains an important one. 🙂

In the thick of limerence, I was tired. Good golly, I was tired. I thought I loved my LO, but the attraction I felt toward him drained the life out of me. I once even told him I was tired, and he looked at me with his usual mix of disgust and incomprehension. (Why did I love that boy? I have no idea. Must have been the dopamine).

I had many non-limerent friends during that time. Most of those people were very loving and fairly non-judgemental toward me. I’m embarrassed to say this, but I thought they were all stupid. I even accused one of being a “brainwashed cult member” simply because he couldn’t wrap his head around the concept of limerence. Even after being accused of being a cult member, he was kind toward me.

In hindsight, I was so confused. I assumed other people in my life, including family members, were intentionally withholding love. I just didn’t feel loved on a visceral, emotional level. Now I know I didn’t feel loved during that period in my life because I was suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms related to limerence. (If LO didn’t love me, my brain spuriously reasoned, then nobody loved me).

@Sammy.

Nice to be remembered.

Oh wow Snow, that’s a thinker!

So yes, we can agree it that the said ‘glimmering’ happens internally, and the LO doesn’t do anything – or anything deliberate – to cause it (exceptions may apply), and may not see or otherwise witness it at the time.

Even with that understanding in place, my chosen formulation “LO glimmered for me” can be broken down as:
‘LO glimmered …’ (there was something about her/him at that moment)
‘…for me’ (that set something internal off or pushed one of my internal triggers).

Why I don’t prefer “I glimmered at LO” is that the word ‘at’ suggests LO would always see it – and we are talking about an internal (to the L) process. This way round, “I glimmered at the thought /sight/ prospect of her/him” seems more apt. I have seen others here use it like you do, so accept I am in the minority!

“I would have never be able to say what I have said accumulatively in LwL in my native tongue, I know why….”
Is it because a language only evolves words for ‘allowable thoughts’? So if a culture forbids thinking in a certain way, the words to do that thinking never come into existence? There are probably examples for you both ways round – like, concepts and words in your COO / first language that don’t translate (in thinking or words) to the Western world. And those would then be nearly impossible for you to express on LwL as accurately as you’d like?

English native speakers are often jealous of German language because of the rich long compound nouns – we’d need 9 words to express “the feeling of melancholy that a rainy day brings”. I just plucked this example out of the air and so I don’t know it to be true – but German probably has just one long noun to express these 9 words!

@LaR

“the same dodgy LO could try all the same tricks on two people, and with one it would all bounce off them, with the other they’d fall deep into limerence. So yes, it IS all in how we react! We might not be able to control the reaction but it is still OUR reaction that determines if limerence occurs.”

Yes, you’ve got what I meant. Reaction to a reality appears “real/objective” (after being digested/reacted in our mind), but it is not an objective reality out there, in just about all aspects of life.

About who glimmered at whom, I had exactly confusion like yours. Initially, I thought it is LO glimmered to my eyes (alone), shinning like a comet ☄️ . Then after learning more about LE process, I came to see that it was our subconscious, instinctual “explosion” that brought glimmering (at LO) into our eyes, thus DrL describes it as “glimmered at” LO. In this way, the focus is not on LO, but our REACTION to LO, either physical or mental/emotional.

In my cases, it took sometime for LO (a few minutes, days or months) to even know my existence, so I definitely had no excuse to blame them for my mysterious glimmer and attraction. Some LOs (Sensor) responded my glimmer because their humanistic ego just LOVE a limerent’s gigantic infatuation with them. I did CATCH the latest LO’s glittering eyes when he spotted (chatting with another in the hallway) my glimmering at him in that moment as I was passing them. I knew instinctively, he was “glimmering” at my glimmering smile at/for him, not ME as a person (proved later). But at the time, Aphrodite told me that he was mutually glimmering back at me… then later on, the fated events and more interactions with LO led me further into the third stage of LE. Again, I can’t blame LO alone, even if he is a Sensor.

“My Apollo enjoys languagey stuff as you can tell.”

I love language as well; speaking in another foreign tongue always exotically appeals to me, the sounds of Romance languages are just so much more attractive than my native tongue. Then the culture behind those languages also play a critical role in my thinking/feeling — switches between using the two — I would have never be able to say what I have said accumulatively in LwL in my native tongue, I know why….