I relate so much of what you are saying. I do feel I am also crying over past generations traumas and old old things that don’t even belong to him. I always had this deep sorrow and heaviness inside..as kid… I feel my LO came to trigger something that goes way deeper than he and I. That being said, does not make the pain go away. But I am relieved and happy to see that I am not the only one to feel that

What Is True No Contact: How To Kill the Hope (4:37)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4JC4yokwwU

I’ve never watched this man’s channel before. The first video came up in my youtube suggestions. But he right. Especially the second video. Not calling or contacting her is only one part of no contact. If I can’t cut her off emotionally than I am only making superficial progress. Not contacting her for the sake of her relationship. Not contacting her for the sake of my relationship. But if I can’t kill the hope and sever the emotional place in my heart she resides in than what kind of actual meaningful progress am I making?

Last night I fell asleep on the recliner watching TV. Early in the morning around 2am I felt something crawling on my skin and jumped out the chair. I couldn’t find what it was so I threw the cover in the dryer to kill whatever it was. I sat back on the edge of the recliner, head hanging and hands clutched together. My wife looks over at me and do you know what she asked me? “What’s wrong? Intrusive thoughts again?” I told her no, that there was something in the chair crawling on me. I guess she can tell I am still struggling.

I just want to add to my post that I did not flirt or make suggestive comments or any other inappropriate behaviour. I did act a little high spirited to hide my anxiety so maybe that was the problem? Maybe it looked like flirting?

For me the anger is definitely about humiliation and I’m a woman. And humiliation’s close buddy shame – that life force killing sense of unworthiness. So we get angry because getting angry is a better state to be in than shame. It has some power. I recently had an LE with a doctor I had to see for a time. I mean good grief! I clocked that he was attractive first meeting and then I got so scared that I’d get limerent and be therefore humiliated, as I have with past LEs, that it sort of became a self fulfilling prophesy. Weird thing is I think he was limerent on me too. Could be wrong there. But of course with professional boundaries he has to set limits and my last consult with him with another person present was extremely humiliating and now I am angry and having fantasies about confronting this guy bla bla! You have to see the funny side though. It’s just so absurd. BUT I will NEVER go back even though I’m supposed to go for a check up in a year. The experience was just so aversive. Which I suppose at the end of the day compromises my health care to an extent because he did my surgery but there are other doctors out there if anything goes wrong. So that ain’t funny! What a curse is limerence!

“Antireward is the aversive drive when you fear losing a source of reward …
Antireward is partly neuronal (from the amygdala, principally) but also hormonal (cortisol, principally). You don’t just passively lose the high, you have an active low, urging you to get motivated and recover the reward you’ve lost. Antireward drives negative reinforcement. Securing relief from the negative feelings becomes yet another drive that entrains the LO-seeking habit.”

I think this idea of “antireward” and “active low” bears more exploration in this journey to get over person addiction. I would say anti is 95% of most people’s limerence experience. The high was in the initial part; the rest of it is this state of active low, where we fight the urge to self-soothe. Best ideas to calm down the amygdala and disperse the cortisol?

Realize that they are a normal human being. LO is an angel. Literally come down from the heavens to bless us all. LO isn’t perfection. No wait she is. No she isn’t. Seeing LO as an imperfect human is the best pathway to getting out of limerence. No one wants to admit it. LO is human? It’s been a damn year since LO left my life and I am still struggling. And there other posters here that have struggled letting go of a LO for much longer. Person addiction. The perfect explanation for limerence. I crave LO as much as I crave the bottle of vodka I am attempting to empty right now.

My good friend, Speedwagon said this in another post.
“Remember, limerence is happening in your head and your perception is altered. Try hard to view things as they really are and not let the limerence distort the reality.”

Hope this helps you out.

“Do only emotionally-repressed people struggle with humiliation? Do women feel humiliated too, or is it more of a male response to things?”
Interesting question! I think humiliation is universal… men vs women, open vs repressed, rich vs poor. Humiliation is by far my biggest fear! And past humiliations have a nasty habit of repeating uninvited in your mind, thus reinforcing the fear.
I am guessing humiliation, and shame in general, gave prehistoric humans a survival advantage by encouraging individuals to adhere to social conventions and to work to stay in others’ good graces, thus promoting a group’s social cohesion and well-being.
The solution to humiliation of course is to invite it in, take every opportunity to be rejected, play the clown, have people laugh at you and laugh along with them. It never feels quite as bad in reality than the anticipatory fear of it does.

“Run that process for too long, however, and a shift happens. Prolonged arousal is unsustainable. Being in a constant state of nervous tension is wearying. An ambiguous connection that never culminates into an honest relationship is frustrating and demoralising. After a while the inability to secure reward becomes stressful.”

“Antireward is partly neuronal (from the amygdala, principally) but also hormonal (cortisol, principally). You don’t just passively lose the high, you have an active low, urging you to get motivated and recover the reward you’ve lost.”

“When loss of a reward feels disastrous, we desperately try everything we can to avoid it. And limerence is one of the most exhilarating experiences that anyone can go through. The antireward of losing the promise of so much bliss is a real kick in the guts.”

I think at least one of my former LOs did give me a clear “no thanks”. The problem was I was in denial about having feelings for him in the first place, which means I couldn’t emotionally process his rejection. (What was he rejecting? I hadn’t made any overtures. How can one reject some overture that hasn’t even been made?)

I think this guy just sensed my “weird energy” and felt repelled by it. Fair enough. Makes sense now…

Also, irritatingly, this guy STILL wanted to be very close friends with me, after pre-emptively rejecting me. Now that’s what I call immaturity (on his part). Realistically, I needed a bit of time away from him at that point. We needed to put any genuine friendship we had on ice.

Ah, the benefits of hindsight and the joys of wisdom gained long after the fact. Still, I’m relieved to learn I’m (apparently) not crazy. 😛