Your LO made his choice. Did you ever think that if your love and connection was undeniable he would find no obstacles…ie wife and family. You wasted your time on a creepy married man and may have missed out on finding a person who is actually good for and to you.

@Fred,

I get why you’re angry.
Seems to me though she found somebody else in that 6 month stretch. Whatever motivated her to do that might be because you didn’t act more on her cues. Perhaps I’m wrong but how you worded your story is what I take from it.

I am a limerent that failed to act myself and I’m stuck in a LE now as well, so you’re in good company. Your LO seemed to be more interested, whereas mine, was more about confusing signals and indifference.

I can understand anger completely. I had developed a normal relationship with my future LO and thought nothing of her beyond being a casual friend that I saw several times a week. But then her behavior changed. She started giving me full body hugs and touching my arm, my back and holding contact when we talked. But what really flipped the switch of limerence was her telling me that she was going to miss me when I was going to be absent for a week. And when she was absent for a few weeks and returned she asked me if I missed her. Within days it was complete LE. Now, about 6 months later there are no hugs, no touching, no longing looks. Whatever feelings motivated her behavior appear to be gone and I’m left high and dry in LE. Part of me is furious at times. Why did you do this to me?

NinaZee, I find myself in a similar situation to you at this very moment and found this in an attempt to get clarity on the way I’m feeling and have felt periodically throughout my life. I am a heterosexual, Christian woman with no doubts about my orientation. I have been married for 10 years and have two children. Throughout my life, I have had a tendency towards having limerent episodes involving older women, but definitely without any romantic/sexual attraction. It started when I was in 10th grade and became obsessive about one of my teachers who took a special interest in me (not in any weird way). I also felt this way toward an older friend at university, and towards older women two or three times after that. More recently, I have been feeling this way toward my singing lecturer (very intensely). The most recent episode has had me in a bit of a state because I don’t want to have these feelings. They occupy and distract me. Even though they’re not romantic at all and I don’t have any feelings of moral misconduct, my intense desire for a deep friendship with this LO has been a bit debilitating in other words. In my case, I think this very strong desire for a deep friendship with an older woman stems from issues with my relationship with my mother. Although I do not dislike my mother and do not get along with her badly, there has never been an open relationship and transparent relationship and I’ve never been able to connect with her at a deeper level. I’ve never even been able to tell her that I love her, because it would be so awkward, for example. (There’s a bit of history involving unintentional forms of gaslighting that I’m not going to get into.) So I think my occasional obsession with older women is the weird way my psyche reacts to an intense need for a mother figure in my life. I do have a need for an older female figure to whom I can declare my love and talk to about my feelings. I don’t think it means I’m gay at all. I can say with certainty that I’m not even attracted to the outward looks of the current LO. She’s a middle-aged, slightly overweight, normal looking lady with grey hair. Haha. She is also an accomplished opera singer. Through singing together, we’ve developed a relationship. I have to stare into her face for half an hour every week and I love the way we are able to speak metaphorically and intellectually and the atmosphere of beautiful music in which we interact created the right conditions for me to feel this way about her. I already have a form of friendship with her. She has been to my house and we text each other. But I really want to become close friends with her, but am unsure whether she has the same desire. I recently gave her some soap that I made myself and she asked whether I could show her how to make it. Obviously I’m super excited, while also being irritated with my own excitement and distraction. URG… Knowing that you felt similar is very reassuring to me and my conclusion is that it’s probably normal to seek deep and meaningful relationships. It fulfils a human need. I just wish it wouldn’t have to transition into limerence… I’ve been praying that if it’s God’s will for me to have a friendship (at a closer level than currently) with her, she would initiate, and if not, that it would just die quickly, because I can’t function normally in this state.

Emily,

Thank you so much for your kind reply to my post. It gives me so much comfort to know that there are others who have felt this way. I do love my husband very much and while our marriage isn’t perfect, it’s good. That brought so much guilt for me having feelings for someone else. I actually told my husband that I met a woman who I had feelings for because I was also questioning if I am bisexual or what and he was nothing but sweet about it and was never mad. He just asked me not to be with her because he felt like it could be bad for our marriage and for our children and he was right. That really upset my LO because I think she thought we could all be friends and that really wasn’t something my husband wanted. Ugh. What a mess. I never meant to create the drama that it caused with my friend. We really had such a sweet friendship and I miss her so much. But it did become very unhealthy on my end and NC is probably the only way to go at this point. Thank you again for your kind words of support, it really does mean so much to know that there are others out there struggling who understand this particular situation.

Have a good day and be well ❤️

Hello NinaZee,

Your story is heart-rending. I have certainly cried like there is no tomorrow since this all started for me. It really is grief and loss.

I had a friend who fell for a girl as well, and left her boyfriend to be with this person. But she had figured she was bisexual 5 years ago, so it wasn’t quite a shock to her. However, she did tell me that she spent many years of her life thinking she was heterosexual, until she realized she wasn’t. Now she is deeply in love with this girl, but is still grieving her ex-boyfriend, who she loved deeply as well. All this has taught me that affairs of the heart are sometimes more complex than we are brought up to believe.

Good luck to you.

At first, I was sure it was just a crush. Silly crush. But as time went on, I was thinking about this person constantly. She was consuming my every thought. I would wake up thinking about her. Go to bed thinking about her. Every time I got a text, I was hopeful that it was her. Sometimes it was her texting, other times it wasn’t and I was disappointed. I started feeling like I was falling in actual love with this person, even though I kind of knew that there wasn’t an equal love connection, but there was a real friend connection. I was so confused and upset by it all. You see, I am a heterosexual woman, married to a very lovely man and we have a family. How on earth could this be happening?? I am not gay!! OR am I?? I have never in my 50 yrs been attracted to women and yet, this woman was in my every waking thought. It was so confusing. I already felt guilty for having these feelings for another person, but to have feelings for a woman was just next level for me. She happens to be gay and I’ve had many lesbian friends who I have known for years and never had any kinds of feelings like this over any of them. But I had also never had this level of feelings for any man, either. This was all new for me. I have spent a lot of time searching for answers to this mystery that I’ve been experiencing. Not to make a long story so much longer, I’ll just say, our friendship kind of imploded. I told her that I felt more than friend feelings for her. We continued to text and we saw each other for coffee a couple of times and things were okay. Not as easy breezy, but I figured that we would just be friends at a distance. I was happy by that because I really wanted her in my life. But out of the blue, she decided that things were just too awkward to really continue to be friends. I respected her space and I stopped texting her. She has made no contact with me for over a month now. Needless to say, this has been just awful. I have cried so much over the past number of weeks, but also over the past number of months since it all started. I am now not crying as much, but I still feel the loss as if someone I loved so dearly in my life has died. It’s been really hard, but I know zero contact is the only way I will ever get past this. If I see her, I don’t know what I will do. I am so heartbroken over not having her in my life, but I know it’s for the best. I thought I loved her but I assume now know that what I experienced was limerence. I didn’t even know this word until a few days ago when I stumbled on it while searching desperately for answers to my messed up situation. I am starting to understand things a little better by reading other’s stories, although I am still stumped by the “gay” aspect of my situation. I’m wondering if it’s menopause/hormones causing things to be different inside of me. Who knows and I’m not going to label myself in any way at this point. I am just relieved to have found this website to help me better understand these indescribable feelings for someone. So that’s my story. I want and need to move on from this person. I’m very grateful for this site, I think it has really helped me to try to begin the healing process.

Hannah, I’m not sure I can answer that question. It sounds exhausting to me. I hope you both find what you’re looking for.

“Eventually you’ll reach the point where you wonder how this person, apparently so shallowly invested with you, managed to have such a hold over your emotions.”

Sobering words indeed. And from my one personal experience – completely true.

When one’s in the thick of limerence, judgement goes out the window. When limerence ends, one can see one’s LO with clarity at last, and the “shallowly invested” description is extraordinarily apt. My LO was “shallowly invested” in me, and for years I absolutely could not see it.