Olivia, you are describing symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder. I’m not saying that you have a personality disorder, but those symptoms sound like BPD to me. The good news is that it is treatable. DBT is scientifically proven to effectively teach emotional regulation and interpersonal skills. I encourage you to seek dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT). My daughter has symptoms of BPD, too. She actively participates in therapy and she manages her symptoms very well. On the other hand, my sister has symptoms of BPD that she doesn’t treat. My sister thinks that everyone else is the problem. It’s awful to watch my sister ruin her relationships when she doesn’t have to.

I encourage you to seek DBT. You are young. You don’t have to suffer.

Let’s talk about therapy for a moment. Therapy is rarely a quick fix. My daughter has been in therapy off and on since I met her when she was 13 months old. She is 14 years old now. She takes breaks from therapy when she gets to a stable place then she starts back up when she wants to. It’s completely up to her now that she’s older. Of course if she talked about suicidal thoughts, I would put her in therapy regardless if she wanted to do therapy, but that has never been a problem because she welcomes therapy. She wants to improve herself. I admire how self-aware she has become.

Therapy can be like cleaning out a cabinet. It can get worse before it gets better. You know how the room gets messy when you pull everything out of the cabinet and start discarding items that no longer serve you? Therapy can be like that. Olivia, I encourage you to be brave and humble with a qualified, reputable therapist and start your journey towards healthy relationships.

Now let’s talk about suicidal ideation. It sucks doesn’t it? I just hate that mindset and thank goodness that our society (the U.S.A.) has resources to help people who struggle with suicidal ideation. When you’re struggling, remember that those feelings will pass. Here are some ways to get through it.

When you are in your thinking brain, develop safety plan. For my daughter, we keep medications in a safe. For my sister, we took her guns away and her neighbor stores her guns at his house. Your safety plan should be tapered to your needs.

When you have thoughts of hurting yourself, you can

Call 988
Call 911
go to the ER
Talk to a trusted adult
Talk to a stranger

If you live in the US, I encourage you to call 988 and ask them to help you develop a safety plan. I think it would be good for you to familiarize yourself with that resource so that you feel comfortable calling 988 when you have thoughts of hurting yourself. I can’t emphasize enough how wonderful the people at 988 are. They are amazingly helpful!

I’ve probably overwhelmed you with information so I’ll stop.

Best wishes!

Olivia

I am sorry that you are going through this at such a young age. There was a young lady in my younger years that in hindsight, since finding this place, that I think I might have been limerent for. Maybe I was just gushing to be around her because she made me feel so wonderful inside. While we too never formally dated, I was at her heels all the time. Like an ADHD puppy. I’m so old we didn’t have internet then. So I could only call her family’s home to talk to her.

I eventually did “get” to meet her new man, or maybe my replacement, when we went to eat lunch after church one Sunday. Yeah that was fun looking across the table while the woman you love sits next to another man for an hour and half. My solution to that when I got home was lots of gin. We would see each other at Bible class from time to time but it was hard to see her. Eventually I started going to different classes and would only see her on Sunday.

Those feelings are hard to process. Especially at such a young age. (Not that I did much better with limerence latter in life either. But that’s a different story for a different day.) I very much want to implore you not to consider harming yourself. No person is worth you hurting yourself young lady. There are many women here that you can talk to about this that might better serve to help you with this than I can. Miss Lovisa has many hours of therapy that she has given to people of all ages. If you want to talk to her you can reach out to her. There are many other women here that can help as well. Just please Olivia don’t do that to yourself.

I did eventually get over her. Yeah there’s times I still think about her 25 plus years later. Hoping that she found happiness. A marriage and family if you she wanted them. I eventually (being the key word) bared her no ill will and realized that somethings are meant to be. If and when you are ready for a relationship some young man will come along. Here I am married while I drank myself stupid over her for 3 years before I met my wife. We are celebrating 25 years together this year. Happy ending do happen young lady.

Hope to hear from you. And take care of yourself first and foremost.

I think I might have Limerence I met this guy when I was 14 I have loved him ever since I am turning 19 this year.. we never dated but we had a 6 months situation and we stayed in contact until I turned 17, one night I went on insta and went through his following page and saw one of his friends post on there story with him sitting super close to a girl I knew it was him because of his watch so I tried to make him jealous and called him and told him I was dating someone we had texted one time after that call ever since then we have been in no contact two months later I find out he started dating the girl who was sitting close to him so I started getting really depressed I never reached out to him except for my fake account on TikTok and confessed I still loved him but he had recently was recently single so I was in a way comforting him on my secret account and telling him to treat himself to something nice to make him feel better
I’ve loved him for 5 years and nothing is helping it I also almost killed my self due to missing him so much that I had to get the nurse to message him for me because I was so scared to reach out to him in fear of rejection
Every day it just gets worse.. I need help before it’s too late, where can I go to get this help that isn’t therapy as therapy hasn’t helped me previously.

The first step to recovery is understanding what you are going through, and this site gave me the vocabulary I needed to elaborate how I felt. I am not going through all the details here, but 5 years later I am still married, I now have a (wonderful) kid* and I am happy, completely out of limerence (still talk to that friend sometimes, but days go by without me thinking of him).

Funny thing is: this site was so helpful and I completely forgot about it. Remembered about it today when I watched Contrapoint’s video on Twilight (she has a very good characterization of limerence). It is true what they say: you heal from limerence when you can’t even remember it exists.

*The baby came when I was already out of the limerence stage. PLEASE do not have kids to fix things. It doesnt work that way and it is not fair to them.

Hi Nick,

I think the answer to your question is about the intensity level between regrets about ‘regular’ breakup and post-breakup limerence. I have pasted the text below from an old LwL post that i found helpful. (Apologies, I cant remember who wrote it)

“First of all, let’s state the difference between a normal crush and limerence is the level of the obsessive quality and the intrusive thoughts. Also intensity. Limerence is just MORE.

So, having gotten over many crushes and a couple of limerences (mostly), I realized that how I think about them in the past is different. Once a normal crush is over, it is out of mind. I’m just over it, almost like an on-off switch. In contrast, limerence was a long drawn out process of detaching, and it hurt, and it was two steps forward, one step back. Also limerence – even when I have deprogramed, and consider myself over it (as in no more obsession) – I look back at it with a bit of wonder, almost like nostalgia and a touch of regret. The emotional investment was just so much greater. It affected me more. It changed me. And in some way, I never felt MORE ALIVE than when I was in the throes of limerence. I never wanted anything so badly, never longed with what felt was all my being, never cried with such despair. Even now, when I see my ex-LO (without glimmer) on occasion, the memory of all that emotion is still there, so I’m not totally neutral towards LO.

I think … on some level, we are drawn to the technicolor of limerence. It is extra-ordinary. As in, not ordinary. WE are not ordinary while we are experiencing it. It is special. We feel special. Or at least, we see another human being as so special. So, maybe that is what lies behind us not wanting to let go of limerence, or looking back at it with some nostalgia – life is usually so ordinary. Happy, ordinary, unremarkable, lovely for the most part, and we can get through life without too much thought. Limerence is a storm. It wrecks but it is power. It is unforgettable, demands attention. Its intensity is part of its allure.”

If you can relate to these feelings, you may be in its grip. If instead you feel like this sounds a bit ‘florid’ and over the top, then you may be experiencing the regrets at the end of a casual relationship within the more ‘normal’ range of reactions.

All the best to you.

I’m trying to understand, though, some of the nuances between limerence and handling a breakup (i.e. both tend to require NC, some wistful thinking, remembering of old times and what might’ve been).

In particular, recent situation:

A friend I’d met last year turned into a romantic partner — but we never were official. We admitted to each other we both liked the other, but we understood it was never going to “happen” since she was moving across the world in a few months. That decision made sense to both of us, and I was at peace with that.

However, right before she moved, I started feeling jealous, scared of abandonment and my self-esteem was getting tied to our exchanges and whether this “meant something.” There was also a sense of distancing in those last couple weeks — a marked shift compared to the bantering, convivial friendship/romantic encounters. I no longer felt special.

In the month or so since she left, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about our time together, what’ll happen when she visits (she has a lot of friends in the city I currently live in) and things of that nature.

So what I’m trying to get at is: How is this all that much different? I’m trying to untangle how much of this is limerence and how much is just going through painful moments — and the processing / what-if’s / etc. that entails — when something ends.

Thanks <3

Thank you very much for your comment! It speaks to me.

it’s really helpful hearing about your experience with limerence. your situation is in some ways similar to mine, in the way that seemly- while briefly- you had mutually shared feelings for each other. thank you again for writing this comment. hope all is going well with law school!

I am.in a weird phase where I am actively doing nothing (ha) in order to prevent more limerent episodes. By brain’s like *oh, that guy’s cute* and I’m like *stop it! remember the torture!*

But now I am sad and bored, and tempted each day to start conversations with new men. I miss the thrill — to me limerence was thrilling.

But I haven’t. And even though I get bored, I feel a little bit stronger in my resolve to not start a limerent experience.