Ooooh!! I’m a little late to this forum and no idea what your statuses were.

I have my own “alternate universe” fantasies with LO3.

I really relate to your post B. I feel like I have been asleep for the last 12 years and my LE has awoken me. I now want to take a few risks and live life more fully while I still can. On top of that, the idea of living my life out without ever consummating real desire again is a particularly bitter pill to swallow.
“I would rather live with the regret of having made bad decisions in my LE (and picking up the pieces from that) as opposed to the regret of coming to the end of my life and realizing I had just played it safe all those years”
Oh yes…I so agree with this. I just wish I had had the opportunity to make those mistakes!

Thanks for sharing your views on that @Matt.

In an alternate universe where we were both single, I certainly would have just seen where it went. In the real world where we were both married with children (I’ve heard on the grapevine he’s getting divorced, but NC means I don’t know for sure) then I just had to believe he wouldn’t be interested and that my marriage is worth more.
I can’t friend him or message him on Facebook as he’s blocked me – at my own request! That’s the only way I’ve managed over 6months NC! I did get to know him rather well as we’ve worked together in the past, both in the time leading up to and including the LE, and also a secondment 8 years beforehand (in fact I really disliked him then, he had changed a lot in the intervening years – parenthood had a large part to play in that I suspect). I can still easily list of his faults as well as his good points.

And to add Valentine, i have not seen LO in 5 months and since I started processing (and sleeping after 8 months of not sleeping) i have vivid dreams about LO almost every night, leaving me missing him like crazy when I wake up. But i know its part of the process, there is nothing I can do about it execpt, let myself cry and have compassion with myself that i miss him so bad.

HI Valentine, its perfectly normal. unfortunately we can not decide when feelings “should be over”. Thats the thing with grief, it does what it does and on its own time. You can not force yourself to be over LO. Grief takes time and your body will organise that. And feelings are never weird or wrong. They are just feelings.
Please dont be dissapointed with yourself, your body is healing through grief and it means you have a functioning body. 4 months is not that long to greef someone and to get fully out of an addiction. I think I might still feel sadness when finding out LO is taken in 30 years for all I know! And i know I will struggle with my feelings and addiction prabably forever, and thats fine, doest mean that i will not be okay eventually. Give it time, you seems to be really on the good track.

Hi Valentine,
I honestly don’t think it’s weird at all. Especially if you two had something more than a friendship. But even if it was entirely one-sided, I don’t see it as weird. I mean, I consider myself a guy for whom LOs having SOs acts as a pretty good antidote for limerence and I still need a couple of months to fully recover, more so when you can’t cut LO entirely of your life and have to deal with periodic reminders of their relationship from time to time.

Yesterday my best friend had a casual meeting with my LO, because my LO still had some stuff he borrowed from me (we are friends, but I haven’t seen him in more than four months). He bought bottels of wine for both of us, because we both moved to another house. I feel really guilty about that bottle of wine, because I do not want to do anything with him and now I am feeling like I have to recipocrate his gesture. He also mentioned his girlfriend yesterday and I noticed that it still makes me sad to hear that their relationship isn’t over. I thought I was really getting over the limerence, since I can restrain myself from looking for contact and since I am no longer waiting for his texts. So I am really disappointed in myself that this still has an impact on me. Is this normal or should I be over him after four and a half months of low contact?

Kind regards,

Valentine

“Some of what is driving this for me is the idea that I want to return to being who I truly am, not the person my wife wants me to be.”

One of the things I think drew me to LO was that she reminded me of an earlier, younger version of myself. There are just certain things about her that I recognize from my past. It’s like she represents a version of myself that I lost along the way as I grew into a responsible adult. Strangely, I found myself wanting to emulate her and be like her. I think my subconscious confused this with wanting to be WITH her.
As I have slowly begun to emerge from my LE, I am recognizing this more and more. In a way, I am grateful for this LE, as I’m starting to see that it helped me identify something about myself that I am missing and should return to. But in my fog, I somehow mistook that for wanting her as a person, rather than fix things deep inside of me.

I can completely relate, B. I am in midlife myself and for me the midlife crisis is very real. Somehow the thought that I only have a short time left as a relatively young man is driving me to rethink everything. I am also dreading “The Big 5-0,” which seems so ominous. I too am fed up with my job and career, and have been in a career reinvention phase for years. I also really want more fun in my life — true fun, not some reasonable facsimile thereof. My marriage and family life are also boring me to tears, I hardly ever see my friends and there is a ton of fighting going on at home. The pandemic hasn’t helped matters either because I had met some new friends just before COVID-19 hit, and I wasn’t able to see them for months as a result.

Some of what is driving this for me is the idea that I want to return to being who I truly am, not the person my wife wants me to be. This includes activities and interests I want to pursue and a deep desire to make changes in my life relating to my weight, fitness, career, finances and social life. Obviously my interest in my LO told me something as well, but I believe I can keep myself busy with other things to try to distract me from her at least to some extent, at least until I can try to sort out my marriage. In many ways, I would love to buy a fancy sports car (not that I could afford one) and go chasing after my LO as part of a classic midlife crisis reinvention, but I know that would be stupid and irrational. I have to focus on less destructive pursuits to bring me happiness. For me, it is exercise, night life, courses, home improvements, new friends and learning in general. I am even thinking about taking up art, music lessons and developing fluency in a second language. Dr. L’s assertion that purposeful living is one of the best antidotes to limerence is very true. It helps a great deal, even if we still ruminate and fantasize at times and some of our pursuits may be at least partially designed to impress our LOs.