Thanks, again, Sammy!

I never thought people were unkind to me. I was taught to say what I was thinking and not talk around it. A lot of discussion here is abstract.

A lot of my posts deal with the nitty-gritty of how things played out for me. They ranged from the exquisite to pretty ugly. I escaped most tangible consequences for my marginal choice but those were more by accident [or Divine Intervention] than by design. One therapist said the nicest thing LO #2 ever did for me was to decline my marriage proposal. As she put it, “Your life could have been so much worse.”

Candor serves you well in the military but not always as well outside the military. When I quit working for the Navy and went to work for a civilian agency, my boss told me to tone down the candor. What I said was true and correct but it made people feel uncomfortable. My boss was on my side but we “didn’t want to melt the snowflakes.”

I was always eloquent but now I write from a different perspective. When I arrived at LwL, I was a pilgrim like most people who land here. To use a bad analogy, I’m a Realist movement artist, I’m not a Romantic, or God forbid, an Impressionist. IMO, Impressionist artists were possibly suffering from lead poisoning stemming from drinking bad water in Paris. They couldn’t see clearly.

My favorite writers are de Maupassant, Twain, and Vonnegut and my favorite genre is short stories. I chose the Fantasy Lit class over the Sci Fi lit class. If I ever wrote a book, I’d call it “Memoire of a Limerent.”

One of my English professors said that my writing style reminded him of James Joyce. He said the my punctuation was grammatically sketchy but when read aloud, it sounded wonderful.

From my perspective, how your father dealt with things is different than the way my father dealt with things. When my father left my mother, he took me with him. My father had the means to do it and his parents were willing to take us in and watch me while my father worked. I was spared living with my alcoholic mother. I learned a different skill set observing my “wearing the pants in the family” matriarch grandmother and her Passive-Aggressive consort. The family dynamics my father and mother demonstrated while they were together sucked and my grandparents were several decades into their marriage.

There’s never an unintended consequence.

@Limerent Emeritus.

“When LO #2 told me that she was seeing someone after we broke up it felt like someone kicked me in the stomach. I thought I was going to barf on the spot. Then, the oddest thing happened. I felt a wave of calm come over me like someone had hit me with a shot of Demerol. I later learned that the wave of calm was the body flooding my system with endorphins to keep me from going into a full blown panic.”

I came across this paragraph of yours, too. lower down in the discussion. In this paragraph, you’re both eloquent and you have no problems identifying your own emotional responses. What happened to the old Limerent Emeritus? Have you been holding out on us regarding how eloquent you can be when you want to be? 😆

I am sorry posters here have sometimes been unkind to you, or misunderstood things you’ve said. You’re a good man. Being good doesn’t mean being perfect. Being good doesn’t mean being nice always. Being good doesn’t mean never being tempted. 🙂

I think my mother may have BPD. About two years ago, my father had a non-fatal heart attack, just from the stress of sitting next to her while watching TV. (They’re divorced, but my mother was visiting us). I’m not blaming my mother for maliciously causing the heart attack. However, some women with BPD, just by virtue of being their lovely dysregulated little selves, can unknowingly put a lot of strain on a man’s cardiovascular system.

A lot of men are detached from their emotions, so they don’t realise the woman is stressing them out. Often, the woman can’t de-escalate her emotions at will even if she knows that would be the most loving and humane thing to do in the situation. I think when a man pair-bonds with a woman with BPD, he’s always going to be expected to absorb a great deal of emotional strain.

My father become a lot more emotionally open with me after reaching his 60s and facing a series of health crises. He started telling me stories from his childhood. He started sharing his honest opinions about things, and his real feelings about events from the past. I was like: “Wow! There’s a real person in there! You’re not a robot or a zombie after all. You’re the one who invisibly kept the family afloat for years while hiding behind that poker face.” 😜

For some reason, my father sort of “donated” me exclusively to my mother when I was a little boy. For a long time, I didn’t understand this decision and resented it. As an adult, I think he “rejected” me because he knew that (a) my mother would never hurt me, though she was very cruel to other people, and (b) since my mother had BPD, she needed a constant companion. My father actually understood my mother’s psyche a lot better than he ever let on. 🤔

Cross ref to the post mentioned in my last:
https://livingwithlimerence.com/good-los/

Gallant,

” It is so easy to be the LO … It’s a win/lose situation. A win for the LO and a loss for the limerent”

I’d like to unpick this a bit. In the two situations below, an LO would feel
like they win like you say:

1. LO doesn’t know of or sense limerence, receives all the limerent’s best behaviours towards them with no strings
2. LO does know or sense, but is a narcissist or enjoys having someone on a string.

But here are five more where the LO is more likely to feel they lose:

1. LO senses the limerent’s feelings, nothing is said, LO doesn’t reciprocate (attention gets annoying)
2. As 1. except LO does reciprocate and still nothing happens (frustrating)
3. As 2. except LO isn’t sure of feelings or one or both parties already has an SO (uncertainty/limbo)
4. Limerent discloses and there is any one of non reciprocation, uncertain reciprocation or SO(s) involved (messy to move forward whichever way)
5. Limerent changes behaviour to combat limerence without explanation, eg goes NC or ghosts LO (confusion or feeling of having been misled eg treated as a friend on false premise)

So the LO can ‘win’ like you say, but can also often be a loser. While there are narcissists and other forms of bad LO out there, a lot of them are just normal, good people who never asked for the ‘label’ and status of LO we give them. (See the post in the archive called “good LOs” on this perspective)

I don’t mean to seem knock your point for the sake of it, but for me it is more complicated than the LO always winning.

@Gallant

“It is so easy to be the LO. You get the attention, all the benefits, and knowing someone is really into you while not having to do anything. It’s a win/lose situation. A win for the LO and a loss for the limerent.”

I’ve been on both sides (being an LO + being a limerent). Being an LO sure sounds good on paper. But being the LO can take its toll. No real (love) feelings and being suffocated with love that you can’t reciprocate. The good side is security, most likely the limerent will never give you up. You say the limerent is losing, but they get all the warm feelings while the LO doesn’t.

As soon as there is limerence in a relationship, I think that relationship will never truly be a happy one. One party will always feel a lack. It’s just too lopsided.

Adam I believe you are 100% correct. The entire thing is a recipe for disaster. It is so easy to be the LO. You get the attention, all the benefits, and knowing someone is really into you while not having to do anything. It’s a win/lose situation. A win for the LO and a loss for the limerent.

Thanks, Sammy!

After a lot of time and effort, the pieces eventually came together.

I ran out of questions. It’s like standing in the middle of nowhere and asking “OK, now what?”

It’s a nice feeling.

@Limerent Emeritus.

You’ve written us a whole essay. Well done you! 🙂

Your thoughts on various things must be getting clearer in your own mind, and that’s reflected in your ability to do writing that’s sustained. 🙂

@Jaideux.

“A true friend would distance themselves from you if they know there is no longer a chance of romance. A selfish person with lack of character would want to be your “bestie” for their own ego reinforcement and, also, you are indeed a wonderful person and a fabulous friend. But everything has changed because you are in love and they know it so the platonic friendship thing is impossible and soul destroying. It’s not healthy for them either because it’s enabling this selfishness.”

I agree with your observations here. However, I think limerents can’t always control the actions of an LO. So what might a limerent do to help themselves?

I think limerents often focus all their empathy and emotional intelligence on LO, trying to please LO/figure out how LO feels. Perhaps it would be better at times if limerents focused some of that empathy and emotional intelligence on themselves, trying to answer the question: “What do I really want from LO? Do I want passionate love? Could I realistically settle for platonic friendship?”

If a limerent has looked deep into their own heart and decided that “anything less than mutual passionate love with this person will make me unhappy”, then, yes, I agree – distance is in order. I think distance is the kindest thing for both parties, rather than some kind of insincere friendship where one party still pines for more and the other party can use latent desire – however innocently – as leverage.

I do think limerents and LOs in theory can be friends, but only after the limerent has stopped limerencing over LO. And if the limerent habitually struggles to understand their own emotions, they’re not really going to know when they’ve stopped limerencing. They’re going to think they’re ready for friendship way too early. So, again, learning to empathise with oneself is the key to freedom.

Perhaps the greatest gift a limerent can give self is simply to learn the symptoms of “being in love”, so one doesn’t confuse that state with other attachments. I think it’s not unreasonable to say that “being in love” does come with its own special set of rules i.e. the potential for causing hurt or being on the receiving end of hurt is greatly magnified when in love versus, say, platonic friendship. 🙂

Sorry, meant Rosie, not Maria! But Maria has great insight too.