> I don’t view limerence as particularly sinful.

But if married, indulging on limerence definitely is. I’m postponing marriage until I’ve tamed that limerent beast and integrated that shadow self of mine.

> The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.

Funnily enough, I feel like yielding to LO2 when limerence re-emerged last year has finally freed me from LO1 who has been on my mind for about 10 years. LO2 was „just” one night out, one kiss + texting for a few weeks, disclosing to SO, confessing to LO2, getting a clear rejection, going through emotional turmoil, doing art and therapy.

Right now I’m more the Byronic and tragic hero, but maybe I’ll manage to become noble in the future…

I love „The Picture of Dorian Gray” because it’s full of limerence:

Dorian’s sudden, euphoric feelings towards Sibyl Vane which suddenly fell apart when she no longer behaved according to the image that he projected on her. Basil Hallward who takes his art to a whole new level after getting inspired by the beautiful Dorian.

I feel like the novel was quite a mirror for myself while being in yet another limerent episode.

“Turning 50 was a much bigger thing than I’d expected. I just keep thinking ‘is this it?’…”

Song of the Day: “Is That All There Is?” – Peggy Lee (1969)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNFe4nak-oM

The pitch and cadence of Peggy Lee’s voice in this song reminds me of a PLO of mine. She’s been single for over a decade and I can see her singing this.

Sammy,
“I also think to be a true Byronic hero, one must be quite narcissistic. If a man is forever looking at his own reflections in windows and mirrors, where oh where will he find the time to contemplate the lovely Marcia? 😉”
LOL. Well, I’m sure he was a narcissist. But I’m thinking a nice rendezvous for a night or two. No more. He’s a short-term dude. 🙂 But you’d have the experience … unless his narcissism translated into him expecting you to do everything … while he just lied there. 🙂

That sounds familiar. I was the text book good Christian boy. Always did what was right at home, school, work and church. Didn’t date till I was 20. I rarely indulged in anything I shouldn’t (outside of drinking) and if I did on rare occasions I chastised myself worse than anyone else. I did not allow myself to be human. Even after I left the religion I was raised in, I for the most part stayed on the straight and narrow. Tried to be a good husband, provider and father. Then she came along. And bewitched me with no intentional effort on her part. And I saw her as “is this it?” or “what if?”. And with that I surrendered my integrity for a bit of fun. This mid life $hit is far worse than puberty.

Gosh, that totally resonates with me, LiS. I have always been ‘the good girl’, academic, anxious, people pleaser, rules follower. It confuses the hell out of me that I am so wedded to rules yet I serially break the most important one – faithfulness. I didn’t have a rebellious teenage phase, didn’t drink, didn’t have a boyfriend until I was 21, and I do feel as if I have a shadow side too that just needs to burst out now and again, to crash around and destroy my quiet, safe, a little dull and frustrating home life. Turning 50 was a much bigger thing than I’d expected. I just keep thinking ‘is this it?’…

@Marcia.

“I think Byron’s appeal is summed up in six words spoken by one of his lovers. He was “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” 🙂”

Hahaha! Ah, yes. Lady Caroline Lamb’s phrase, if I’m not mistaken? 😉

“You’re lucky. I have never met anyone who exudes the appeal I imagine Byron had.”

Hm, yes. Maybe I am lucky in a way. Clothes do make the man sometimes, fragrance, the right haircut, a particular carriage, a certain gait, eyes that appear to be permanently dilated, a devilish smirk. However, I think the real Lord Byron’s appeal probably owed as much to legend as to reality.

I also think to be a true Byronic hero, one must be quite narcissistic. If a man is forever looking at his own reflections in windows and mirrors, where oh where will he find the time to contemplate the lovely Marcia? 😉

“And don’t you love “The Picture of Dorian Gray”? I mean the book but also the movie version with Colin Firth playing a deliciously decadent Lord Wotton.”

I’ve read the book, but I haven’t seen the movie. I think I was put off by the (early) scene where they were all sitting around, drinking strawberry-flavoured whatsits. Oscar Wilde’s writing style got on my nerves. The prose was so exquisite I felt it detracted from the story. Plus I was consumed with envy that anyone could write so beautifully. I think I may have been in one of my more puritanical phases at the time! 😁

Most recently, I’ve found it easy to envision myself as the tragic hero. It’s easy to think of myself as a good man, a great man even, with this one tragic flaw … it gets easy to believe my own hype sometimes, to be like “yeah, I really am a good man, I do a lot of really good things… I can just indulge this one bad thing and I’m still pretty good on the balance”. Or worse yet “I work so hard, I help so many people, don’t I just DESERVE this one little thing for myself”.”

@Lost in Space.

I think your backstory might be surprisingly relatable to other people experiencing limerence. E.g. I think a lot of limerents are probably people who have spent their whole lives doing the right thing. A lot of limerents are people who have spent so much time doing the right thing that resentment gradually builds up. And the resentment probably comes down to the concept of fun. When do I get to have fun? Everyone else supposedly gets to have fun. Why not me?

I would certainly never encourage anyone to go out and do the wrong thing. I don’t think people should ever aspire to be wicked or “sinful”. However, on the other hand, a life entirely centred on doing the right thing and pleasing others does seem to lead to … some sort of psychological imbalance after a while. 🤔

There’s this fascinating passage in the Bible (Ecclesiastes 7:16-17 for the curious) where readers are exhorted to be neither too righteous nor too wicked, neither too smart nor too foolish. What’s wrong with being too righteous, you ask? Surely everyone should aspire to be as righteous as possible? Well, I suppose being too righteous leads to burnout of some description…

I don’t view limerence as particularly sinful. The reason I don’t view limerence as sinful is because the cynic in me believes that 98% of the time the feelings are unrequited anyway. Therefore, the limerent is just kidding themselves, because there isn’t any pot of gold waiting at the end of the rainbow. But it’s interesting nonetheless to ponder what sort of set-ups can engender limerent feelings.

Prior to limerence, I was probably a good boy, very compliant, very obedient, never challenged authority, etc. But I wasn’t troubled by desire either … until one day i was. My LO seemed to be someone who knew how to have fun. I don’t know if he was my shadow side. He wasn’t wicked necessarily. But he probably represented something inside myself that I was repressing. He was sociable, cracked jokes, took risks, didn’t mind making a fool of himself, looked nice, etc.

I experienced periods of deep depression as a result of my infatuation with this young man. It was like I could never get close enough to him. In fact, I didn’t even try to get too close to him – I was oversensitive to signs of rejection and didn’t want to hasten (inevitable) rejection by annoying him. If you want to wax lyrical about it, he was the sun to me and I was afraid of being burnt by the sun. 😉

I’m not sure what I wanted from my LO at the end of the day. The way out of limerence, however, at least for me, seemed to be BECOMING more like him rather than pair-bonding with him i.e. adopting some of his better qualities, being willing to engage with the world, identifying considerably less with my good-boy image without relinquishing my good-boy behaviour, giving myself permission to be human, sometimes wandering beyond the borders of my tiny hermit kingdom of introversion.

If I clung to the belief that the only thing that could make me happy in life was/is a relationship with LO, then I would definitely qualify as a tragic hero. But I’m not a tragic hero. I don’t view myself as a Byronic hero either. (Too lazy). I don’t view myself as a noble hero. (Again, I’m too lazy). I view myself as a good sport. (Someone who can admit defeat and congratulate opponent for playing such a great game). 😜

My shadow self, that repressed part of my psyche that seems to be doing it’s darnedest to fight its way out these days, identifies with the Byronic hero. My shadow self spends the day flirting with all the women and has a steady stream of partners joining me in my office for lunchtime lovemaking. My shadow self is a part of me that has never found expression in real life (I married young and never had anything resembling a promiscuous period) but it’s definitely in there and I need to learn to acknowledge it and integrate it somehow without letting it actually make the decisions in my life.

The better version of me, the version of me that I want to be, is the noble hero. I want to be a one-woman man, a faithful partner who loves my wife throughout this life and can look at her with my last breath knowing that I loved her faithfully and never strayed. That requires resisting a lot of temptation and being morally strong, but I do see it as a highly worthy life goal – probably no other ideal could be higher.

Most recently, I’ve found it easy to envision myself as the tragic hero. It’s easy to think of myself as a good man, a great man even, with this one tragic flaw. I spend my days working in my free clinic, taking care of immigrants and refugees, homeless people and sex workers, ex cons and heroin addicts, basically all the people most of society prefers to keep at arm’s length. And I do it with skill, dedication and compassion. And then I go home and am a loving and devoted husband and father, always prioritize time with my wife and kids, never miss a kids event, pretty much always kind and funny and supportive. From the outside looking in, I’m a pretty good guy! (although y’all know better…). People tell me that a lot in real life, I hear a lot what a great person I am, how much I mean to my community, how much people respect and appreciate me, stuff like that. And so it gets easy to believe my own hype sometimes, to be like “yeah, I really am a good man, I do a lot of really good things… I can just indulge this one bad thing and I’m still pretty good on the balance”. Or worse yet “I work so hard, I help so many people, don’t I just DESERVE this one little thing for myself”. That’s the tragic hero story, and it’s brought down plenty of good people and left plenty of good lives in ruins. It’s an immutable truth that a lifetime of good work can be undone by one bad choice – or more often, a series of bad choices that leads to the one bad choice that gets discovered.

I like this blog post a lot because it ends with the reminder that we get to be the casting agents for our own lives, that for the most part we do get to choose our own paths and aren’t just hopeless victims of fate and destiny. That’s something I need to keep reminding myself of, to keep the noble version of my self in the driver’s seat even when those other parts of me are doing their best to knock me off the noble path.

“We are often forced to reasses who we really are.”

For some help, see:

“ The diary of a CEO. Com, Russell Brand finally opens up: escaping a lifetime of anxiety, addiction and finally finding love. E260

Identity crisis…?