😂

My wife rarely wants it. Presently it has been over a year. My issue with my wife is that when she doesn’t want sex, she doesn’t want much of ANY kind of intimacy short of hand holding. She doesn’t want to be touched unless she initiates.

I met LO in spring of 2020 but never developed limerence for her until spring of 2021 when I had to work on a project with her for four months. And I have a very confident feeling that my limerence for another woman developed because of the issues of intimacy in my marriage. Here’s a young attractive woman giving me the time and attention I’m not getting at home. And while I never really desired physical intimacy from her who knows if LO were still around if it would have developed. She left for a new job in June of last year.

This is my first time being limerent. But I am concerned that if the lack of intimacy continues that I may become limerent for someone else, provided I get over LO now. And that multiple LE might lead to a EA or PA.

I have had numerous discussions with my wife in regards to intimacy and every time I hit a brick wall with her. Currently due to my wife already having accused me of having a PA with LO (a former co-worker) I disclosed about limerence about a month back when I found this blog. Now she’s using that as the reason she’s not interested in intimacy because I at least had a EA with LO.

I get stone walled with every attempt I make to change anything about our intimacy issues. She is getting what she wants out of the marriage (taken care of in every other way) and seems content with the lack of a sex life.

In every other way we get along fine and function as parents. But I know it will blow up eventually and I don’t really want it to just sit on the back burner until it does. And I really feel like the only reason these continued rejections and dismissing of my emotional needs via physical intimacy haven’t pushed me to contact LO is because I know she is happy with the man she is with now and has made a commitment to him and it would be incredibly selfish for me to disrupt that. But I would very much like to turn to her for what I am not getting at home. She is a very attentive, kind and caring. TKO for me.

I am on my third marriage (16 years) and am with an avoidant who I adore as a partner and friend but..that damn Limerence thing is threatening to blow up my world.

I was doing much better with a very purposeful life and my crushes seemed to have taken a back seat in my world. (Member of a 12 step program…really helped). I’d have periods of deep regret and longing in my marriage, but ride the waves without sabotaging my stable home life. Which I love.

However, I entered into a musical duo with another married limerent…who knew?!!? About 2 years ago and we both fell HARD. I went from nothing to magnetic glimmering magic in 8 months of weekly practice and growing success.

I asked my hubby for a poly marriage last January. I actually thought he might be relieved. He wasn’t.

Our SO are putting up with this continuing because the music is so good and it makes us both (and many others) happy.

I SOOOO want to keep our music going with boundaries in place. We both do. But… ack. It’s hard.

My close friends want to blame my partner for being unable to deliver the goods (just not interested in flirtyness, needs to be approached very carefully for intimacy, etc. ). But I now know – it’s Limerence for both of my musical partner and I.

Every song has these layered meanings. The magic of harmonies are intoxicating.

So here I am!
Grateful to join this community.

If you read my post in the Friendzone blog, the gist was LO #2 offered friendship. I wanted more than that and told her so. I appreciated her candor. It made my life easier. She was entitled to what she wanted and I was entitled to what I wanted. We were on different pages. No hard feelings.

Then, she flipped and changed her mind. The dance was on and lasted a total of 5 years. I don’t know why she flipped but she did.

The first two years were two of the best years of my life and the last two were two of the worst. They say that you can’t put a square peg into a round hole. That’s not true. It happens all the time. You can put a square peg into a round hole but it’s always going to be a lousy fit.

Based on how that relationship started, it should have come as no surprise as to how it ended. But, I am a slow learner.

When I met my wife, it was an entirely different experience. Things fell into place like dominos. One thing just effortlessly rolled into the next.

Agree totally. If it smells a little off then it usually is!
If someone is really into you, they want to be with you as much as possible. Regardless of what they thought they were looking for at the start. I would expect this phase to kick off within 2 months of a first date under normal conditions.
If someone stays casual for too long then they are just not that into you and there is no point flogging a dead horse.
Conversely, as Mia says, if they are too into you too quickly, then it is not about you at all, it is about them.

I take that back that the person is an avoidant. Maybe they just don’t want to get serious with you (universal you). Maybe they have an LO they’re dreaming of, too, 🙂
and they’re hoping that person becomes available or interested and you are the “substitute attachment.”
There’s nothing wrong with casually dating, as long as everybody’s on the same page.
I had a friend who was dating this guy for 6 months but he was still only contacting her once a week and going on a date once a week SIX MONTHS into it, and when I asked her why he wasn’t at least contacting her more often, she got mad. “We’re busy adults.” And she kept calling him her boyfriend, but he wasn’t, really. They were just dating. They had never discussed being serious. But he was spacing out those calls /dates intentionally. And then he broke it off and went back to the serious GF he had been on a break from.

I agree with this.

However, you have to have some experience under your belt to recognize and understand it.

If you never encounter encounter the situation, you have absolutely no need to learn that lesson. It’s worse when you encounter it on your first adult relationship and have nothing to compare it to. It’s harder, albeit not impossible, to recognize a bad relationship if you’ve never seen a good one.