It is very heartening to hear how many people respond to LEs by refocussing on SOs, even as they grapple with the difficult feelings over LO. Kudos to you, Speedwagon, and good luck.

First LE started when I was 15 and lasted through my HS years. It was for a girl that was really the first girl to like me and we dated briefly but somehow I slipped more into the friend zone with her and for 3 years I obsessively pined away trying to gain her undivided affection day after day. She would claim she loved me, but valued our friendship too much to be my girlfriend, so she would then go off and date jerky guys for short periods. She broke my heart for 3 years. After I went off to college out of state and was no longer around her my LE faded quick. But the really interesting part, after college I reconnected with her and we went out on a few dates, actually had sex, and I ended it soon after. The LE never resurfaced and she was not a person I wanted to consider as a long term partner for various reasons one of them being, I had LO#2 at the time.

LO2 was my long term college girlfriend of 3 years. I was in love with this girl, and thought we were heading towards marriage after college. But, she was a year older and went out of state to grad school and after 8 months of long distance dating she ended it. That sent me into LE for the next 8 years or so, even after I met my SO and got married. The first 3 years the LE was intense before I met my SO, as my LO and I stayed in contact, but after I met my SO and went NC with LO the LE was more mild and more of a regret of what might have been with a girl I considered my true love. Eventually the LE faded and now I have no romantic desires or thoughts of her.

That was 20 years ago and LE3 just hit me about 8 months back like a ton of bricks. My new LO is my employee who is 14 years younger and seems to have some level of attraction/affection for me, I can tell by her in person interactions with me and her demeanor and body language. I started to enjoy her attention, and this girl who before seemed uninteresting all of a sudden became the most beautiful and interesting person in the world to me and I wanted nothing more than be with her. The LE crystallized because of the extreme barrier of us both being married and because she is my employee. I flirted around the edges of a EA with her but she seems uninterested in pursuing a relationship with me outside the office. This LE has been intense and difficult and I am now in the process of LC with her and just managing my daily emotions. It has been going OK. I am hoping with practicing LC, in time my LE will fade. I have all reestablished a nice romantic connection with my wife of 22 years through this and have refocused my purpose in her.

Cizzi,
“There are 5000 of us in this group, ”
But you are looking at it through the lens of a group for limerents. I used to post on a dating coach’s blog. There was discussion about flirting and having crushes while in a relationship. And then I would chime in about limerence, not knowing at the time what it was and thinking everyone experienced intense crushes like I did that parked themselves in their psyche for far too long. And I was told, usually by the male posters, that I was ridiculous (the implication was that I had watched too many rom-coms), that of course they would find other women attractive in a long-term relationship, that minor crushes were nothing. We were talking two different languages, and I couldn’t make them understand I WASN’T talking about garden-variety crushes. I was on this site of and on for several years. Many different posters floated in and out and this topic of crushes/flirting came up repeatedly. I don’t think there was one limerent on that site. I also think they thought I was a little bit drama and over the top. I’m not saying limerence doesn’t cause affairs. It does. But so does boredom, the need for validation, the inability to say no if someone else shows interest.
“Would it be weird to ask them to complete a questionnaire on limerence?”
I’ve often wondered that. How can you filter for limerence while dating? Or at least for people who’ve experienced repeated LEs throughout their lives? Of course, then I’d be filtering myself out (:)). I’m just hoping now with a little more knowledge of limerence, I don’t become limerent again.
And in terms of your husband, once the fog clears, is it possible he’ll want to stay? Didn’t Joe Beam remarry his wife?

Marcia I think you may be viewing it through the eyes of someone who may have a tendency for chronic limerence. I am in a FB group for a company called Marriage Helper (Dr L has sited the work of the founder Dr Joe Beam) where it is marriages in crisis because one of the partner has fallen into limerence. I fell into limerence over a decade ago that resulted in an emotional affair. I had the glimmer, the inability to breathe normally around him, the constant obsession and pining, the shame of not being able to stop, and the grief when he moved away and no longer was an escape for me. Now my husband is in limerence which resulted in an emotional turned physical affair. I could literally see the limerence fog around him.
There are 5000 of us in this group, some drop when they reconcile or end their stand for the marriage, while new ones pop up. I think limerence isn’t well known, it isn’t talked about, and most cases of infidelity tends to be fueled by limerence. It is a spouse who has some brokenness or lacks purpose in their life, and the glimmer happens. They think they have found the love of their life and they can take the standing spouse on an emotional roller coaster that can last a few years.
It’s been over a decade since I was in limerence and I will never return to that. I can still feel the shame and embarrassment. I get sick to my stomach thinking about what I risked. I actively focus on my purpose in this life, so I never let the glimmer in. Even with my cheating husband, no one deserves to feel that pain. I will divorce him, and keep working on myself, so if I ever wish to have a relationship again, I know which partner to avoid. Would it be weird to ask them to complete a questionaire on limerence?

But I had something else to add to all this since this post is about limerence at different ages: after learning from this page, and going to read Tennov, I realized that I have had three limerence episodes in my life and the first one was in kindergarten!!! That was also my very first memory, ever. I guess at that point the limerence made life burst forth in my mind. And although I had the usual crushes and relationships growing up, I can tell through the limerence lens that none of those were limerence till my “first love” at age 18 to LO2. After a protracted 9 months of uncertainty, that relationship actually became real and then lasted all of one year, and then I needed to physically leave the country to tear myself away from my LO2. I might add that LO2 inhabited my mind intensely for longer than that, and I dreamt of him every night for years, which I really did not want to as I had embarked on a real, and rather healthy relationship with someone else (a non-limerent relationship) who eventually became my SO. I remember waking up from my dreams so upset and angry – WHY was I still dreaming about LO? Why? Knowing what I know now about limerence would have helped very much with the guilt. The intensity eventually abated, and I maybe dreamed of LO over the years once in a while – nothing serious, so I lived with it. Then very recently (and this was 25 years after I knew LO2!) LO2 and I actually touched base via social media. This was interesting, because I was of course curious, BUT I pretty much realized right away how fortunate I was that I did not end up with LO2. And after that, any trace of limerence for LO2 ceased. It was like reality doused the fantasy portion that sustained the very last dregs of limerence. I was very pleased with the whole situation, to be honest. BUT, and I think this is related, very soon AFTER that, I met LO3. And I think … its like LO2, in leaving a part of my psyche, left a void that like a vacuum sought to be filled. And I was vulnerable to a potential LO (there were other factors, but I think the void left was one) at that point. And you would not believe how inappropriate LO3 is as an object of love. Even if I were not still with SO (yes, the same one mentioned before) and had off spring, we are at totally different stages of life, and I would objectively have doubts about anyone in that situation maintaining a relationship. I am needing to fight tooth and nail to not jeopardize my primary relationships due to this crazy development. I consider it the biggest crisis of my marriage.

So, there you have it. Limerence as a child; limerence as a teenager/young adult; and now limerence as a mid-life adult. I am guessing all that is left for me is to get limerence in my old age.

Now if only they had a sequel, when Jesse and Celine are in the late 70’s/early 80’s……….at which time Celine has her very first experience of Limerence……after all these life phases are seen only in the rear view mirror……this age group isn’t often mentioned, but I’m living proof that it happens, even at this age……….

@Marcia. Whenever I read accounts of, say, famous writers, who “never married” and “lived apparently uneventful lives”, but left us some good literature, I always think those people were probably undiagnosed limerents.

Limerence probably made them too fussy to get married, or maybe their LOs didn’t want them, and rumination/obsession probably fuelled their creativity and took up a lot of their free time. Thoughts?

I wonder the same. At age 92, my grandmother fell into a LE with a neighboring gentleman in her residence. That was after more than 30 years of showing no interest in romantic companionship throughout her widowhood. It persisted until she died at 94, and remained a constant source of great pain and embarrassment. She was a proud and guarded woman so it was particularly unique and distressing to see her so upended.

My mother was decimated by her unwanted divorce from my father, has never dated another man since, and remains in limerence with him after nearly 30 years. The obsession has severely limited her quality of life and has had a profoundly negative impact on her children.

I can’t find a simple toggle, sadly. I suspect the feature would need to be built into the theme, and so I would have to add code to implement it.

I’ll keep investigating, as I agree it would add value.