@carried away.

Thank you for your very kind words. Were you being harsh? I didn’t detect harshness in anything you said. But, then again, I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy ruminating on other interesting (possibly other-worldly?) matters, as limerents are wont to do… 😉

I never take negative feedback personally. I also never take positive feedback personally. I have no idea who I am, and therefore find it impossible to comment intelligently on the validity of any praise/criticism that comes my way. 😇

If people praise me, they’re probably just projecting their own strengths and virtues onto me, and in good faith I can’t take credit for other people’s strengths and virtues. Other people must pat themselves on the back for their own strengths and virtues. 😉

If people criticise me, they’re likely projecting their own flaws and weaknesses onto me, or identifying something deep within themselves they’d like to work on. That’s, like, super-cute and all. But I can’t take credit for other people’s fascinating self-analysis or valiant attempts at self-improvement. Other people must congratulate themselves for their own admirable shadow work. 🙂

I don’t hold grudges because … cough, cough, cough … I don’t have spare mental space in my brain … you know? Limerence kind of takes up a lot of room. Limerence kind of takes up … ALL the room. There’s no space for feuds/resentments/endless rounds of he-says-she-says. I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast most days. 🤣

(In this sense, does limerence radically improve one’s character by endowing one with an abnormally sweet temperament? One is simply too engrossed in one’s own thoughts to engage in gossip or other forms of pettiness. One is gloriously oblivious to being disdained/found ridiculous by a jury of one’s peers).

So I guess .,. from my point of view … we’re all good!! 😁

“My motivation in writing what I wrote, however, wasn’t an exercise in empathy. I think I’m trying to set my LO free, if anything. I’m acknowledging that someone can be a fantastic human being, with all sorts of quirky traits, and yet have a right not to reciprocate my affections. I’m trying to renounce my former possessiveness. Does that make sense? I’m saying someone can be loveable and amazing and whatnot and yet not belong to me. I’m trying to express love, but in a non-possessive way.”

@Sammy

Yes it does make sense.

Thank you for your clarity in everything you wrote. It all makes sense to me especially being blinded by the desire of limerence and not being able to have what you want. And I too have “ spent such a large proportion of my adult life wallowing in sadness” though I prefer to call it depression.

I hope I didn’t come across to harshly, if I did I apologize. I was only writing from my own experience of losing close family and friends because I couldn’t see beyond my own feelings.

When I said step outside yourself and put yourself in their position I was referring more to family rather than LOs. I think it is a given that most who comment here are going to want to trash some of their LOs, and that’s fine with me. It certainly helps to get over them faster.

Family is different, and some of us have been abused and neglected by family myself included. That is probably why I am limerent in the first place. I just know in order to heal I need to forgive, and perhaps by having a little empathy I can.

I’m no longer limerent. I don’t know if reality set in, I needed to grow up, or I am in a place where I feel comfortable enough in my own skin that I don’t want anybody else in that way. It is probably a little of all of those things. In any case I like this blog and this community. You certainly keep me on the right track.😊

A hoplitesse?

“It’s easy to put a label on a person, and call it good, but isn’t that in itself objectifying. Your LO is a human being after all maybe they have emotional issues they are dealing with. Maybe you need to step outside yourself, and put yourself in their place to have a better understanding of why they are the way they are.”

@carried away.

Thank you for your insights here. Your commentary makes a lot of sense. I’ll admit I’m always not the most empathic person on the planet. (Well, according to other people, anyway). I often need the help of other people to point my empathy antenna in the right direction. I need a bit of guidance! Emotion isn’t my strong suit; logic is. So the fact I’m attempting to explore emotional terrain at all is highly out-of-character for me. In other words, I’m out of my depth, and it probably shows. 😛

I struggle to understand other humans as nuanced emotional beings. I just want people, including LOs, to “snap out of” seemingly irrational emotional states and start behaving logically. Wanting people to act logically and not emotionally is a real weakness and blind spot of mine. It’s not a lack of empathy per se. More a difficulty in understanding how IMPORTANT emotions are to other people’s experience of reality whereas my reality is shaped by logic first and emotion second.

Bear in mind I do clown around a fair bit in my writing. I guess that isn’t always appropriate or appreciated. Or – let’s put it another way – it might be mildly off-putting to people who want to take a strictly serious approach to the complexities of limerence. But I’ve spent such a large proportion of my adult life wallowing in sadness that I sometimes like to focus on the more humorous/absurd side of human relationships.

I actually endured long periods of depression as a young man. So these days I avoid getting bogged down in emotion, because when I get bogged down I can’t get un-bogged again in a hurry. I’m not trying to be insensitive. But I do understand where you’re coming from, and I think your approach is the correct one, and the one most likely to lead to a positive outcome in terms of preserving a relationship that’s been exposed to stress. I don’t have knee-jerk, on-the-spot, reflexive empathy. My lack of knee-jerk empathy in real life makes people assume I’m uncaring. But I do care about people very much when they can clearly explain to me what’s bothering them and what possible solutions they have in mind.

You’re absolutely right – my LO did have emotional problems of his own. He once asked me to help him with one of his issues and I honestly wasn’t able to help him. My mind drew a complete blank. I didn’t have the necessary maturity at that stage in my life. (I think he just wanted sympathy, in hindsight. Lots and lots of sympathy). It didn’t help that he looked up to me, and thought I was some kind of saint. My worst limerence experiences happened in my early 20s, but the pain of those events was so vivid that it’s kind of coloured everything else that’s happened in my life.

My motivation in writing what I wrote, however, wasn’t an exercise in empathy. I think I’m trying to set my LO free, if anything. I’m acknowledging that someone can be a fantastic human being, with all sorts of quirky traits, and yet have a right not to reciprocate my affections. I’m trying to renounce my former possessiveness. Does that make sense? I’m saying someone can be loveable and amazing and whatnot and yet not belong to me. I’m trying to express love, but in a non-possessive way.

Myer-Briggs types aren’t some reductive label for me, although I know they get on some people’s nerves. Instead, they’re an important and timely reminder that other people are coming at life from a different angle, a different flight-path if you will. Whatever planes other people are travelling in might be different from my plane of choice and/or inclination.

Essentially, I’m trying to make peace with the fact my LO archetype will never love me back. I can never get what I want. The door of heaven is forever bolted, and that’s okay. I’m trying to advance toward a (relatively) desire-less state of being because I realise my strong desire so often embarrasses people. I’m trying to alter my own behaviour so other people can genuinely always feel safe and comfortable in my presence.

I’m happy to sacrifice my own pleasure and happiness in the process, if need be. I’ve always been a tremendously independent person. I don’t really need a lot from other people. (If I ever secured the love of an LO, I’d have no idea what to do with him. I’d probably tell him to go date someone else). To me, there’s the chase, and that’s pretty much it. But I do want others to be happy. And I want to be free of unhappiness myself.

“And I mean this in a constructive way. It often helps me understand a person better, and not get carried away when I look at the situation from their perspective.”

I appreciate you expressing your views in a constructive way. I’m an INTJ, and apparently we handle constructive criticism really well. Probably a little too well. Rumour has it we have the thick skins of rhinoceroses, and the elegant table manners to match. 😛

Honestly, I regret the fact I just wasn’t able to love this person as a friend and only as a friend. I regret the fact I wasn’t able to help him with his problems. I regret the fact I probably put him on a pedestal, where he didn’t belong. I regret the fact I encouraged him to put me on a pedestal, where I didn’t belong. Tragically, I wasn’t able to enjoy his company after developing strong feelings for him. He thought I was his friend-friend and not his secret admirer, but I was his secret admirer from day one. And I regret I couldn’t be the sort of person (kind, understanding, sympathetic, patient, longsuffering, forgiving) that he needed or wanted me to be.

I think there’s something really important – some vital nugget of emotional truth – in what you’re saying. And I hear you. What you’re saying here – you know, it’s just right on so many levels. You’re hitting the right nerve – I can feel it in my bones, but I can’t put it into words. My brain is super-logical. I want things and people to fit in neat little categories, like postage stamps, and they usually don’t. Maybe I’m a bit biased in my own offbeat way?

I struggle in my interactions with other men typically not because other men are robots, but because of the reverse – heterosexual men, in my experience, are alarmingly emotional creatures (compared to me) and I really wasn’t expecting so much emotion from them. Yet I realise this emotion is the very key to connecting with straight men in a non-sexual way. In other words, emotion is the lifeblood of friendship for both sexes.

Contrary to received wisdom, there really are no giant psychological differences between men and women, gay men and straight men. Though desire does tend to throw a spanner in the works, and make things a bit tricky at times. I’m happy about this discovery. I’m ready for my first true “bromance” now I understand the difference between Eros and Philia. 😛

Stepping outside of myself has always been a huge challenge for me. You’re not wrong. You’re not wrong at all.

I couldn’t handle my LO’s strange, fragile emotionality, and that’s why I lost him. And yet he was emotional without being intense (i.e. mutually limerent). Ah, the poignant and oh-so-bittersweet lessons of youth! 😛

“I would agree Carried Away. But as somebody with a pattern of being drawn to unavailable (practically or emotionally LOs) I think sometimes overriding the kinder empathetic impulse and steering clear is going to be my strategy in future.

Trying to understand/accept LOs point of view is sailing dangerously close to rumination and magical thinking…

‘Once I UNDERSTAND I’ll be able to OVERCOME…’”

@Thomas.

I hear what you’re saying here, and it definitely makes sense to me. I’ve definitely been guilty of magical thinking while experiencing limerence. (Isn’t that what limerence is all about? Magical thinking? Mr/Ms Wonderful is gonna come along and make my life idyllic forever). E.g. If I hang on long enough, eventually he’d/she’d come round, etc. Not true. Good way to remain stuck.

Empathy-wise, having a smidgen of empathy for ourselves is not a bad idea. Also, developing a really good understanding of the problems faced by addictive personalities maybe? We need to develop a better understanding of our own problems and issues. Forget what’s driving LOs. Focus more on one’s own motivations.

Sometimes digging a hole is just digging a hole. All you end up with is a deeper hole. Unless you can dig a hole big enough to suck the entire landscape in and start rebuilding civilisation from scratch. (Re-inventing the wheel is fun. Trust me – I’ve tried it many times, with zero success). Putting strict limits on amount of rumination done = sounds like a good strategy if one can manage it.

I realise I can’t change an LO. I can only change myself. And, when it comes to limerence, I can only change myself by finding a way of dialling down my desire for LO to nothing aka emotional neutrality. The problem is desire – a super-intense desire that won’t be reciprocated and in my case wouldn’t be sated even if an LO reciprocated. My hyper-stimulus seems to be … conventional masculinity and masculine men aren’t exactly famed for passion. (Well, not in relation to me, leastways). 😛

Without wishing to sound too disrespectful or overtly cynical. I appear to suffer from the grave misfortune of only being romantically attracted to mooncalves, for want of a better word. (“Mooncalf” is an archaic English word for “fool’. I think it’s a lot less confronting than “fool” and it has a nice poetic ring to it. It makes me sound much more genteel than I actually am, too). 😛

Basically, the type of man I’m attracted to may be a good sort in the eyes of the crowd, but he will never ever requite my feelings. Mutual limerence just isn’t an option for me – it’s not even on the table. I am destined to lose every single round of cards I play. I only hold losing cards in my hot little hand. I’m attracted to nice men who are incapable of returning the intensity of my feelings by virtue of the fact they’re lifelong non-limerents irrespective of sexual orientation. If they are fellow limerents, I lose attraction fast…

If I keep pining after a lifelong non-limerent after realising he’s a lifelong non-limerent, then clearly the blame belongs to me alone.

I am very curious, though, about non-romantic relationships with men, which is all the future seems to hold for me. I wonder if I can find such interactions pleasant, or whether I’ll be bored out of my mind and only hang out with flamboyant members of the fairer sex? You know, I like to be entertained and mooncalves aren’t all that entertaining, once one takes limerence out of the equation. 😛

Empathy isn’t great if one is secretly using it to preserve some kind of sentimental attachment to LO, and keep the flame of hope burning bright. All us sensitive introverts – we mustn’t use our heightened emotional intelligence to further our own interests. No, no, that would be most improper. Let us steer clear of the dark arts of manipulation – which are bound to fail anyway if one has a non-limerent LO, who is completely oblivious to mind-games.

I think an ethically-minded LO with fully-functioning empathy would avoid the limerent once the limerence is out in the open and can’t be denied or retracted. I think maybe a lot of LOs perhaps don’t have staggering powers of empathy, and so can’t understand why a bit of space might be helpful. My LO was avoidant only in relation to all things emotional (his own feelings and other people’s). Otherwise he was ever-present and needy. Couldn’t get rid of him even with the whiff of a saucepan full of rotting fish.

Basically, he wanted to be in my life and more or less be my best friend, while totally ignoring and invalidating my emotions for him. Nothing I ever said sunk in. Not that I was as direct as I should have been. See what I mean? Mooncalf material! Poor thing. Didn’t have a clue. I had to respect his boundaries and show him exaggerated deference, but he wouldn’t respect my boundaries in turn. 😛

Speaking of digging holes, in order to get out of limerence, I basically had to demolish the personality which I had inherited from parents/peers/Western culture/Christian school and construct a new one from scratch. I had to become a whole new person. I had to reject the person other people invented for me and invent myself.

Only this new person wouldn’t be attracted to the kind of LO I was attracted to. Only this new person wouldn’t be subconsciously looking for a saviour on every street corner. Only this new person is comfortable in his own skin, and doesn’t need a burly protector.

I had to grow up I guess…

The greatest irony of all: the kind of “jocks” who bullied me in high school now look up to me as some kind of role model and expect me to pat them on the head when they serve in me in cafes and supermarkets. I think I’ll made it, baby. I always wanted to be “respected” and I guess my wildest dreams came true by accident.

All I needed to do was develop a deep voice, dress really badly, and stop hiding my nascent wrinkles and prematurely grey hair. Yes, patriarchy is really working out for me these days… The older a man gets, the more respect he gets. It’s fabulous! In a few shorts years, I’ve gone from being “invisible” to being “distinguished”!! 😛

“I’m not really interested in fixing anybody but myself”
The right answer 🙂

Thank you for your insightful argument against empathy. Understood. I’m not really interested in fixing anybody but myself, and I do receive some wonderful feedback from this community. Happy Holidays!

It gets better: Paul Bloom – “Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si1YSUAEH4w

You have to extend it a bit to see the application to LOs but if you’re a rescuer, empathy can kill you.

“There is nothing so alluring as a damaged soul you’re sure you can fix.” – DrL, https://livingwithlimerence.com/the-glimmer-givers/

If you understand them, you think can fix them. The better you think you know them, the worse it is. The better your ability to read people, the more confident you are in thinking you can drive the outcome.

Some people will let you tinker with them, some people won’t. Some people will let you think you’ve changed them and snap back like a rubber band.

Why that’s so alluring? That’s it’s own line of inquiry. It’s fascinating how all this stuff relates.

LE,

I agree, but in having a little empathy for her I realize it was probably her mother.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ6Y3hoKI8U

This is a great video. Pay particular attention around the 1:45 & 2:55 marks.

It’s always the mother…

http://candorville.com/comics/2010-07-04-mother.jpg