Sammy,

I’ve often said that to be a limerent, you have to have an LO. If life doesn’t hand you one, theoretically you don’t go down that rabbit hole. Your predispositions may lead you down other rabbit holes but limerence won’t be one of them. My analogy is you can be deathly allergic to bee stings but if you never get stung, you’ll never know how close to death you really were.

There are similarities between limerence and codependence. Therapists know a lot about codependence but few know anything about limerence. After all the research I’ve done, I think codependence and limerence have their origins in the same place and your early environment dictates which one you become.

Neither of my parents was codependent. When it became obvious that things were beyond correcting, they left. Collectively, my parents had a dismal 0-5 record in marriages. So, while my upbringing and disposition tilted me toward being a damsel-in-distress recusing limerent, codependence was never modeled for me.

Now, being raised by my two grandparents, that modeled a whole different set of dynamics and I learned a whole new skill set, Passive-Aggressiveness being the most notable. I didn’t know the term for it but I knew it when I saw it. That skill served me well in later life.

My grandmother laid a filter over my rescuing tendencies. I only tried to rescue women who were worthy of rescuing, women who were victims of bad luck rather than victims of bad judgment. It reduced the candidate pool but it was a setup of sorts. It led me to reverse the concepts of cause and effect. When you dig deeper into a lot of things, the women I thought were victims of bad luck were victims of bad judgment. They ignored red flags and made the same mistakes repeatedly.

People aren’t who they are because of the relationships they have. People have the relationships they have because of who they are. Once you get the concepts of cause and effect straight, a whole lot of things make sense, like why people have relationships with the same type of people who they had failed relationships with or why no matter what you do or say, nothing seems to change for the better in the long haul.

LO #2 was pretty easy to calibrate but she would never stay in calibration. It was like she had volatile memory. We could have a serious discussion one day, she’d wake up the next day, and it was like the previous day had never happened. POOF! It was gone.

Another avalanche of details…

@Limerent Emeritus.

When I read your comment here, I get a man who is unquestionably capable of very deep emotion. However, your emotion does seem to get buried sometimes under an avalanche of detail. Sometimes, it seems like you can’t name your emotions with ease (alexithymia) or that you can’t link each emotion with the presumable relevant cue.

Your father’s death is very sad. I think that event would inspire deep grief in a lot of people, even if they didn’t get on with their dad. From the sound of things, you had a lot of respect for your father. Please accept my sincere sympathy for your very great loss.

“I probably did love her. But I was never in love with her.”

Honestly, this sounds back-the-front to me. I associate limerence with that “in-love” feeling (largely because of the brain chemicals we know to be involved) and not with loving. Unless you’re suggesting you loved the idea of LO#4 in the sense of maybe she was your mother-in-disguise and you wanted to help her. Or con her. Or maybe make up for all the times you did con her by helping her. 😆

I don’t think it’s necessarily to kill off one’s inner child. All children have needs and the needs of children are legitimate. By, as adults, I think we need to admit that it’s a bit late for some of those needs to be met. Again, assuming limerence is some kind of personal redemption story – wanting to make up for something in the past.

I don’t really understand the concept of rescuing at all. It seems like a terribly masculine mode of existence. While I’m quite masculine in many respects, my fantasies never seem to veer toward rescuing.

My older sister falls in love (i.e. limerence) with other women. Sometimes, whatever romantic script she’s playing out seems like a masculine script, and it’s confusing to see a woman play out a masculine romantic script i.e. rescuing a damsel in distress.

My sister told me she actually feels superior to all her LOs, and never inferior. She doesn’t “worship” the women she saves. This is odd to me – because if she feels superior to her female LO, how come her female LO still has the power to dictate her moods and self-esteem?

My sister seems to have a deep emotional dependency on female love interests that contradicts previous claims of superiority. But I wonder if all masculine-configured souls have this cognitive dissonance going on inside them regarding romantic relationships?

I.e. males often feel smugly morally superior to females but are also utterly dependent on females for validation of that moral superiority? If the “master” needs validation from the “slave”, then who is the real “slave” in the dynamic? 🤔

Because my sister is a female who’s quite emotionally intelligent, (I admire her greatly and borrow many of her ideas and sayings), I’m shocked she can’t just pull herself out of obsession. I wrongly assumed that her being a female would automatically give her the insight to be able to see through all the self-deception she tends to engage in. Also, the insight to see through another woman’s games.

“Who you are determines internal factors. Fate, destiny, karma, the Hand of God, whatever, provide external factors that determine how things play out.”

I do like your grand view of life. The problem with grand views of life is it’s hard to find other people to validate one’s grand view of life! Another reason men need women – someone to validate (or at least listen to) one’s grand masculine conception of reality. Perhaps, at the end of the day, we’re all just children playing dress-up? 🙂

@Adam,

“diesel engines”, what a dreadful image! Think of a Millenneum Falcon — MF!

While maintained well, just with a phantom of LO on board, MF could take off in seconds and shoot down countless Death Stars in one leisure, lavish flight…

Snow,

I agree that Glimmer is inherently neutral and it’s how we respond that matters.

To the 5yr old con man, the 5’10” redhead INTJ LO #4 was positively delightful. I think we could have had a lot of fun together.

To the married adult being driven by a 5yr old trying to pull off with LO #4 what he couldn’t do for his mother, the woman was kryptonite.

@LE,

Glimmer itself is not evil, without it, how single (non)limerent could ever click with anyone amorously? How artists/musicians/writers… of all sorts get their muse/inspiration?

It matters on how our executive mind, with keen LE awareness, responds to a rare glimmer.

Sammy,
“Post-limerence, one can still board all the solo flights one wishes.”
Oh, I busted out laughing at this. I needed a good laugh. 🙂 Everyone who started this conversation has left the building. There’s nothing like taking off all your clothes while everyone else says they’re going to and then leaves the room, fully dressed. 🙂

“In terms of attraction, post-limerence, one can still appreciate good looks and even pick up on “sexy energy” emanating from potential mates. However, one finds oneself living much more in the present. One doesn’t experience ecstasy and one doesn’t experience despair.

One may still feel shy around attractive others, but not as shy as one felt during limerence. I guess, post-limerence, attraction isn’t experienced as all-consuming. There’s no obsessive quest to win the affection of a specific person.”
I agree with everything you wrote here.

” Sexual jealousy becomes non-existent.”
I wouldn’t say it’s non-existent but it’s not possessive like it is with an LO.

Adam,

“Jeff Foxworthy said in one of his specials something that will forever stick with me. He said ” women are like diesel engines. They make take a long time to warm up, but once they do they can go on and on and on and on. ”
Not necessarily. 🙂 Not if you’re around an LO. You’re revved up pretty quickly … and the bell can be rung pretty quickly. You remember that song . I know you do. 🙂

Snow,

The “best 5yr old con man” me was a fun kid to be around. He still is. He represents the best aspects of my mother’s side of the family.

The other kid was potentially dangerous as he represented a vulnerability and posed risk. He responded to glimmer.

https://i.discogs.com/Yrwvu3MYhhAt10Hj-Au0JDAI-MyEnd3bNBLowcemb_o/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:609/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI1MTE3/NzgtMTQ1NjkxNDQ5/Ny05MTYzLmpwZWc.jpeg

The kid is me.

Nope, I never met Lo #4. The closest I ever got to her was about 40 miles when I had a layover in Seattle. Incidentally, that put me within 10 miles of LO #2.

When LO #4 moved out of LA, she moved to within 15 miles of where I moved from. I gave her directions to stores. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be there for her. I knew it wasn’t my place. The EAP counselor told me that being across the country from LO #4 was the biggest break I caught.

She wasn’t the first woman who told me something like this, LO #4 was the third. I knew I how responded to those.

I know what it’s like to have a woman knock on my door at 11PM, tell me her BF is cheating on her, what a great guy I was, and ask to spend the night. I know what it’s like to have that woman bury her face in my shoulder and cry so hard that I could wring her tears out of my shirt. I know what it’s like to straddle that woman and hold her hair out of the toilet while she’s on her hands and knees barfing up 3/4 of a bottle of Johnny Walker. Booze barf is kind of like weed, it has its own unique aroma.

LO #4 told me that once that she’d drunk port and listened to Martha Wainright until she passed out. It drove me nuts. I don’t know that anyone ever held her as she cried. Someone should have. I almost asked her if anyone ever did but I knew that nothing good could come from that question.

It just couldn’t be me.

For a lot of limerents, limerence seems to be fairly abstract. For me, limerence was anything but abstract.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand’ring bark
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

******

Try thy might to make it “ an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken” 🏹

@LE,

While both trying to soothe pains of damsel in distress, why your 1st 5yr old is more dangerous than the 2nd one? “5ys old con man in the city of Joliet” is safer❓

What’s “serious stuff” you did after your #4 told you her horrible plight? From my understanding, you’ve never met her in person, in limerence just with LO’s words? 🧐

Oboe jokes perhaps are right tools to massage one’s sore heart…

Jeff Foxworthy said in one of his specials something that will forever stick with me. He said ” women are like diesel engines. They make take a long time to warm up, but once they do they can go on and on and on and on. Men are like bottle rockets *imitates explosion after 5 seconds*” You keep going on and on and on and I will keep filming. Momma told me the first time “if I do this you have to keep both hands on the camera.” And I thought raising children took patience and self control.