Miss Lovisa

You’re back!!!!!! I always held on to the hope that you’d come back. I took a break from here myself too. I try to stay out of the trenches now more than I use to, to try and stay stable. Momma still posts here now and again.

I am so happy you are back. Wishing you and your family have been well. And looking forward to an update on you. I missed you. Glad to have you back.

Hi Adam! It’s good to see you. I hope your family is well. We are doing great. I might post an update on the New Years article because that is where my story unfolded.

Best wishes to you and Momma!
-Lovisa

Hi Christina Herren,

It sounds like you are using your LO for mood regulation. I know those quick, easy highs feel amazing. If only we could enjoy the benefits of limerence without the dark side, wouldn’t that be wonderful? I’m so sorry, but I think you are heading towards a dark place.

That euphoric high is nice now, but it can turn into intrusive thoughts. The intrusive thoughts are awful! I came to this website almost two years ago because I was having intrusive thoughts about my LO2. My LO2 is an old friend of more than twenty years. I developed limerence for him and it was amazing at first. But when we went NC, the intrusive thoughts were unbearable. I was so desperate to get LO2 out of my head that I transferred my limerence to my current LO3. We have a lovely friendship now (I have friendships with LO2 and LO3). I can’t get high from thoughts of either man thank goodness. My relationship with both of them feels like friendship again. But it took a lot of work.

I highly recommend that you stop daydreaming about your LO. I highly recommend that you stop looking at his pictures. Distract yourself.

I recommend that you settle in here and get to know some fellow limerents. You can distract yourself from thinking about your LO by posting here or reading the comments. This website and the LwL community helped me get over my limerence. I feel limerence-free now.

I noticed that Adam commented on your post. He is a great resource. His wife comments on LwL, too. They are honest and real. I recommend that you get to know them.

I’ve been absent for a while, but I used to comment regularly. This is a great community. Welcome to the club!

I want to share some resources with you. Please read the article about limerence and mood regulation.

https://livingwithlimerence.com/using-limerence-for-mood-regulation/

Please watch a short YouTube video about intrusive thoughts.

How to Deal with Intrusive Thoughts
by Mark Freeman

https://youtu.be/laeYq51SYA0

Best wishes!
-Lovisa

When it happened to me I have no real understanding of why this particular woman invaded my head the way she did. I’ve had female co-workers in every job I have had since high school and this has never happened before. But apparently there was something about her.

“Everytime I look at one of the photos I snagged of him I get high.”

The best description of limerence I ever saw when first finding this place was “person addiction”. Because limerence is an addiction. So seeing him is, yes, like getting a hit. It’s that drink “I need” when an alcoholic gets home. It’s chasing that first high you got, be it alcohol, pot, gambling, shopping, etc. But nothing will be the same as the first high. And as, for whatever reason, the loss of the limerent object, or the diminished attention from them, the weaker and weaker the limerent highs get. Just like any addiction. You either feed it or starve it out. I was fortunate she made the decision to leave the job when she did. It’s still a struggle but it was the best thing for my marriage and wife.

@Limerent Emeritus.

All that you say is very interesting…

I think my father is a very kind-hearted man, but doesn’t have an obsessive bone in his body. So … non-limerent. Also very gentle and non-confrontational. I know now where he’s coming from, energy-wise. But, honestly, when I was going off the rails in my early twenties, or depressed in my late teens, I needed a stern authority figure to roar at me, sneer, bait, vex, thump chest, pull funny faces, throw metaphorical thunderbolts, argue me into submission.

I needed someone to challenge me, and be willing to see the fight through to the end. But it takes a certain kind of personality to do that. (My own loving-but-mock-grumpy personality maybe?) If I were a father, I think I’d have a lot of fun laying down the lay with my teenage children, both my sons and my daughters. I’d enjoy having debates with them. Perhaps it is just as well I am not a father? 😁

Ironically, despite being non-limerent, my father has odd views on romance. I think my father believes that if you love someone, you go all in. You don’t set conditions or boundaries. You just be a doormat. I’m like: “No, Dad. You don’t go all in for love unless the other person is actually a good person.” My father is artless. He fell in love with my mother. But he never did any assessments of my mother’s character. I think he thought that if you’re truly love someone, then assessment of that person’s character is irrelevant. You just accept the person you love warts and all, hope for the best.

My mother can be very, very intense and not very grounded. I’ve pressed her for intimacy (i.e. emotional intimacy) and she says she doesn’t want intimacy. It seems that all her relationships are just a big game. I don’t know if she’s borderline. But I think she seeks “attention” where other people seek “intimacy”. And she doesn’t get it when I try to explain to her that attention and intimacy aren’t the same thing. And I’d love to know my mother’s “real personality” – assuming she has one. I mean, what exactly is the big mystery? 😆

I think if game-playing and never-ending triangulation has been an intrinsic part of family dynamics, that sort of thing can spill over into adult romantic relationships. I suppose I have been guilty of game-playing, without even realising that that was what I was doing… 🤔

@LE

I just figured out (a moment ago) why on earth I romanticize unrequited love!? — because of my biggest literary Hero (he still is)— Hunchback of Notre Dame, to be more precise, his Unrequited LOVE for Esmeralda.

When first read the story at 10 (no “carvel” concept), I cried and cried for his heart and death, and dreamt to have my own “Hunchback”s love” one day — it’s also an ideal parental love.

But later I found my heart still felt somewhat empty, when those smitten LOs demonstrated their affections with actions, gifts, or whatever. I didn’t understand why I was not gratified, even seemingly “having it all” in romance.

Until my passion for a LO sprung out within, I began to feel true joys of having/giving “love”, instead of just taking it from without. The passion generated by the glimmer is quite gratifying, if LE does not kick it.

Guy de Maupassant taught me some lessons in my early years of life. In The piece of string, how not to be miserable; in The Necklace, how not to be vain.
These lessons have stayed till today, sooooo
many years later!

@Snowphoenix,

I’m glad that you liked the story! Short stories are my favorite literary genre and de Maupassant is my favorite author. Vonnegut and Twain are close.

As for the dogs, maybe? Animals can be very perceptive. If a dog can sniff out cancer, what else can they sniff out?

I also liked your poem!

@Sammy,

“Actually, when I was about 20, I thought I was born in the wrong period of history.”

I’ve thought the same things about my mother. I think a lot of her happiness stemmed from unfulfillment. Also, she may have been the kind of person who needed her partner close and, as a travelling salesman, my father often wasn’t. He worked hard, was good at his job, and treated my mother lavishly. But, I’ve come to think that if she’d been born a few decades later, she might have had more opportunities available to her. I’m leaning more and more to the idea that they simply might not have been a good match. She’ll be dead 50 years next May so pure speculation on my part. My father will have been dead 45 years.

“I wonder if some naturally diffident and socially isolated young men make an idol out of some attractive, charismatic, possibly-interested-and-yet-heartbreakingly-elusive female they encounter? And then this woman, or this type of woman, haunts the dreams/imagination of this second type of young man forever after?”

Shari Schreiber had an opinion on that in a slightly different context. He contention was borderline women frequently do something like this because it provides them the illusion that they’re capable of a passionate, long-term, fulfilling relationship without ever putting themselves at risk by allowing themselves to be vulnerable in an actual relationship. She tends to write her articles from the perspective of borderline females and narcissistic male but she says that the roles can be reversed but they’re less common.

In “Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can Help You Find–and Keep–Love” by Amir Levine, Rachel Heller, the authors discuss the idea of the “Phantom Ex.” A PE is someone from the past that becomes the standard by which all subsequent candidates are compared to and fail against. If your a limerent, an LO could take the place of an actual Ex.

You probably don’t have to have a personality disorder to have this kind of behavior. You simply have to be risk averse. If the perceived pain is greater or more certain than the perceived reward, you avoid it.

Limerence can really screw up your ability to perform risk assessments.

@Limerent Emeritus.

Have just clicked on the link and read the story. Ah! Very nice! Now I can say I have actually read one little jewel by M. de Maupassant! No more fibbing to impress people at dinner parties I also haven’t attended. (Wasn’t invited. Maybe my feet smell bad?) 😉

I do like the melancholy mood of the story. However, at the age of 40, I can’t stay “immersed” in melancholy, no matter how beautifully it’s conjured up. I could stay immersed in melancholia in my teens and then I fell into actual depression. Now, when things get too heavy, some part of my brain always rebels and wants to crack jokes.

But, yes, beautiful story beautifully written. The boy character is self-pitiful, but not off-puttingly so. Thank you for sharing.

Actually, while we’re on the topic of alienated youth, Camille Paglia seems to think same-sex attraction develops in males when you’ve got a naturally timid fellow born into a family of jocks. At some point in his development, this timid fellow probably notices the (genuine) beauty of one or more of his bumptious male peers and idolatry sets in. But this idolatry, for want of a better term, is obviously stronger and longer-lasting than the idolatry that usually constitutes hero-worship. (Hero-worship seems to be quite a normal male thing).

It’s very hard for me to accept that the infatuations I’ve felt for male peers throughout my life isn’t actual love. But the evidence speaks for itself. I mean, love isn’t euphoria. Real love doesn’t give one a drug-like rush. It’s very hard to forget euphoria one you’ve tasted that sweet, sweet wine. It’s very hard to let go of objects believed to produce euphoria even if it’s just one’s own brain playing tricks. 😆

And yet I also recognise, as a lapsed Christian, as an intelligent man, as somebody who knows what real love is, real love would actually mean “letting go” or renouncing male crushes (usually bumptious jock types, strangely enough) so they can go off and have relationships with wives, which is what they inevitably do anyway. 😉

I wonder if some naturally diffident and socially isolated young men make an idol out of some attractive, charismatic, possibly-interested-and-yet-heartbreakingly-elusive female they encounter? And then this woman, or this type of woman, haunts the dreams/imagination of this second type of young man forever after? 🤔