Limerence for a former date

[GreatExpectationalized]

I met up with someone from an online dating website a few years ago, when this person appeared at the station where we had agreed to meet up, it was as though I was dumbstruck. Almost a ringing in my ears, feeling as though my limbs had become part jelly, and a wild inexplicable parade sensations coursing through my veins - a feeling of euphoria. Strangely though, coupled with tremendous self-consciousness.

I'm not normally like that on a first date, far from it. For some reason, I couldn't stop myself saying how attractive this person was (the photos had given no indication of this, they were quite “normal”. Embarrassingly, I remember saying it more than a few times. Cringe.

Despite all this, we agreed to meet up for a second date... the impact on me only worsened, except this time I had to endure those crippling sensations for several hours. I remember sitting almost hunched over, talking barely above a whisper... it was as though every once of self confidence had been sapped out of me.

Obviously, my date didn’t agree to meet me again. Several years later, this person still overwhelms me just to think about. It is as though all of your wishes and fantasies became personified in one person and you almost cannot believe it and are too dazed and over-awed and overwhelmed to function properly.

I still wonder what would have happened if this person had met the real me, if I’d been able to control my reaction better. Lots of what ifs... these memories still have a powerful impact and sadden me and have me lost in beautiful memories in turns.

How do I shake off this mad nonsensical limerence? I never even got to know this person! Has this happened to you? What causes it? How did you deal with it?

@GreatExpectationalized

Thank you. For taking the time to read and reply

Yes, could be that. There are a myriad of explanations, I guess. The recurring theme in my life is that anything that's unexplained tends to come crashing back and become explained – just when I'd filed it away at the back of my brain.

So .... maybe one day it'll all become clear. Matters not: as long as it's not adversely affecting my happy life. And it isn't

Thanks again.

I know the feeling op - I met someone online last summer. I swiped right, he liked me an based just on a couple of photos and one evenings online chat I arranged to go to his house for the night. I've never done anything like that before (always play safe and meet for coffee etc), anyway, he was even more stunning in real life. We chatted for an hour or so, like he was a friend I'd known for years, then had fantastic sex.

The next day I got the obligatory thanks but no thanks text - I was fine with that as I knew I was punching way out of my league and he is 10 years younger than me. I met someone else a short while later but never quite got him out of my head.

By October he had messaged me again saying hi, I explained I was with someone now, and life carried on. Early January I broke up with the guy I was seeing as I knew I'd settled and it wasn't right. Got back in touch with the hot guy and after some more chatting arranged to go round again last week. I was a bit nervous that it wouldn't live up to my inflated memories of the previous time but oh wow, it was honestly the best night of my life. It was like my fantasised version of perfect sex came true, he was the best kisser I've ever had, we spent hours having slow, sensual sex, it was just the most amazing night and amazing connection. We both knew it was just a hookup but both said we wanted to do it again soon, distance being the issue (45 minutes apart), then today I wake up to find he has blocked me. No warning, no explanation, nothing.
I'm incredibly grateful to have experienced it, but now have a feeling of sadness that I may never experience anything like that again.

Yep.... dated a God like man. He was beautiful 😍
But I couldn't be myself in the bedroom at all. I became shy and it was almost like I had forgotten everything I knew 😔
Fucking embarrassing really.
Weirdly he made friends with the next guy I got with and looked after me (platonically) while bf was 'away' and I was pregnant.
We lost touch sadly when he got with a new gf.
I tried to find him two years ago to tell him my dd father had died but all leads led nowhere. Sad.
Fuck he was hot....🔥

There is some link with our level of self esteem at the time of meeting them. I’m sure if it.

Thanks ladyfromthebelleepoque and GreatExpectationalised I feel like the intensity is very gradually fading but not by much. I think part of the problem is I have dated a lot in the past couple of years and they are they only two I have clicked with, a couple of 'hmm...maybes' but absolutely nobody who I have both really got on well enough with and been attracted to which I think would take my mind off the second guy.

In terms of what he did, I did have some CBT last year hoping to address previous sexual assaults and some anxiety and panic issues and low self esteem but just didn't feel that comfortable with the therapist. She was nice but really not someone I would open up to so I kind of used the sessions to talk about work stress. I don't think CBT was really the appropriate format in that I am stoical and do cope, I needed to discuss and unpick really. The experience left me feeling a bit silly for wanting to talk things through and being met with very solutions focussed replies finding coping mechanisms, when to be honest I have my own, so I haven't been in a hurry to try something else.

Sorry that was long, writing is quite cathartic!

@Bluedelphinium talk away xxx

@GreatExpectationalized

So, have you successfully cleared him from your mind or is he still occupying your thoughts?

You know what, Lady? This discussion actually really helped. It’s not entirely gone but it’s not anywhere near as consuming as it was... I’ve tried instead to think about and anticipate my next adventures, that is, if they ever allow us back out again!

Well that’s good! It’s interesting, isn’t it? So much of what we get stuck on depends on how we frame things. I read a reply once that a man wrote to a woman who said she couldn’t get over losing the ‘one’. He bluntly told her that the ‘one’ was the person who she would be in a successful relationship with - that’s what made him the one. If she had broken up with someone, he couldn’t possibly be the ‘one’. It was actually just a matter of semantics but him repositioning things that way shifted her thinking and she realised she had got stuck on a concept that was negatively dictating how she felt about things.

Reframing or looking at things differently is powerful, I think.

I have now developed a full on teen girl crush on someone utterly inappropriate and unobtainable😖😖😖

I had this with my FWB from last year, the most amazing and awful feelings I've ever had for a man. I was totally dumbstruck and obsessed by him whilst we were seeing each other. I would shake, my knees would tremble and his smell would overwhelm me. I was totally possessed by him and my friends thought I was crazy!

He dropped me for someone else and I'm still pining for him now. I don't think I will ever forget him but I don't want to feel like this again! It was painful and torturous to want someone so badly. It had to be limerence, real love couldn't feel that painful.

It’s hard work, isn’t it? I think I’m too laid back for all that🤣🤣🤣

Isn't limerence just a crush though? Ive tried to but I don't understand. I have a crush, think about him sometimes. We all have one from time to time. And if a past relationship has ended, don't you just think it's ended for a reason? I used to be with a man decades ago, that I thought I'd give my life for, I was young and madly in love. But it ended, because he cheated on me, and I don't feel any connection with him now. He has called me recently, about an online uni reunion, and I felt nothing, apart from some familiarity.
I really don't get all this mad waste of emotional energy

In my early 20s I dated someone who was a few years younger than me who had this magnetic effect on me. I can't say I even liked him half the time and he wasn't the best-looking guy, but just the sound of his voice was enough to give me shivers. It sounds utterly ridiculous now but that's the way it was. I was a complete slave to him and overlooked all of his many flaws.

We dated for about a year and although I adored the bones of him, his lack of consideration and emotional callousness eventually wore me down and I broke things off. I never really forgot him though and we ended up getting back together after a while, only to split up again for the same reasons.

He's now married to someone else and so am I, but a previous poster described a kind of 'energy' when she sees her ex and that describes it exactly. I saw him a few times after I got married and I felt hyper-aware of him being there even though we didn't speak. I know on a rational level that those intense feelings wouldn't have been a good basis for a stable long-term relationship, but these things don't operate on a rational plane. He had a huge amount of power over me just by his very existence and I'm so glad I don't have that dynamic with my lovely DH - it's so dangerous and makes you lose all self-respect. But I've never forgotten him and I'm not sure I ever will. It's good to know I'm not the only one who's been viscerally impacted in this way!

I have been in a relationship with someone I was wildly attracted to before I'd even met him and he was the BIGGEST disappointment, if that's any consolation.

@LadyfromtheBelleEpoque

Well that’s good! It’s interesting, isn’t it? So much of what we get stuck on depends on how we frame things. I read a reply once that a man wrote to a woman who said she couldn’t get over losing the ‘one’. He bluntly told her that the ‘one’ was the person who she would be in a successful relationship with - that’s what made him the one. If she had broken up with someone, he couldn’t possibly be the ‘one’. It was actually just a matter of semantics but him repositioning things that way shifted her thinking and she realised she had got stuck on a concept that was negatively dictating how she felt about things.

Reframing or looking at things differently is powerful, I think.

Brilliant way if looking at it, I must remember that, thanks!

As to your current crush, maybe that’s where the thrill and addiction to it lies, the unobtainability, the longing, the discomfort... maybe this is something stemming from the far unexplored reaches of our minds where discomfort and “love” became intertwined at some point.

I’m not certain that is exactly what limerence is, just throwing it out there...

Ginandwineandbaileys, I thought this page below had a brilliant explanation of limerence in comparison to passionate love:

hastyreader.com/limerence-passionate-love/

From a chemical perspective, love is a gentle romantic comedy, while limerence is a full-blown spy thriller that puts you in the middle of a 1 vs 100 hand to hand combat scene.

So, so true.

My crush is just something to pass the time as I am very limited in what I can do, atm, (as we all are). It's harmless enough and I think natures way of keeping one part of ourselves alive until reality can catch up.

I've had this before. I went out with the guy for 3 months til he dumped me.. we were 17/18 he'd told me a couple of times he thought I acted 'more stupid than I was' ..
I never knew how to explain to him it was a feeling he gave me which made me act like a weirdo.
Took a while to get over him and always thought of him as 'the one that got away' and felt the feeling if I thought about him.

We bumped into each other in a pub few years later in our mid 20s.
We met up quite a few times over the next month or so going to each others houses etc things seemed to pick back up, we were close ...the feelings were crazy but I handled it better thinking this was 'my chance..at the one'.

One day he was very snappy with me over txts and I said somthing along the lines of ''If you feel that way then why are you even bothering to talk to me''?

And he wrote back....''because you're easy ''

My fucking heart broke. I was instantly dying of embarrassment for myself..confusion...hurt I wanted to die.
That shut ''the feeling'' right off ! prick

What the actual...? What a cruel and nasty thing to say. Piece of work! Just goes to show “the feeling” should always be questioned rather than trusted. This guy sounds like an abuser in the making.
So sorry this happened to you! So pleased you were cured though!

I have a related story that I've never told before. As a teenager I had a massive crush on one of my teachers - it wasn't physical, he was 20+ years older than me and not particularly attractive, but I was completely obsessed with him. Not in a normal teenage crush way, I mean OBSESSED. I thought about him every minute of the day. When I left school I became profoundly depressed and it took a couple of years for the thoughts to stop dominating my life, then some more after that before they stopped resurfacing daily.

He moved abroad around the same time I left, but we stayed in touch (very) intermittently over the intervening years. I haven't seen him since and moved on completely a long time ago.

About ten years after leaving I started a new job in a secondary school. The first time I met one of my new colleagues, also a teacher, I had almost exactly the same experience as you. He was quite attractive, but not enough to explain my reaction - instant, intense euphoria, combined with an inexplicable sense of danger and a total inability to act like a normal person. Luckily nobody knew me so I passed off my sudden ineptitude as ordinary shyness and no-one was any the wiser.

It turned out he was very like my former teacher. They taught the same subject, with similar personalities and sense of humour. He was the same age as my teacher had been when I was in school, and they grew up about two miles apart in very similar family circumstances (down to some really minor details). Both had similar hobbies and opinions that were unusual given their background. As he was a decade older and a lot more experienced than me the dynamic was also not that different.

We worked closely together, and over time as we got to know each other more the weirdness slowly wore off. I started acting like a functioning human again, and as I got more confident it gradually went from a quasi-teacher/student relationship to an ordinary friendship. Realising I was capable of being an equal to the sort of person I used to idolise did wonders for my self-esteem. We were friends for a couple of years, then he and his wife moved abroad, to a country neighbouring the one that my former teacher lives in. I was sad when he left but in a normal way, and we've stayed in touch intermittently over the intervening years.

I can only assume I subconsciously picked up on something right off the bat that reminded me of my long-forgotten teenage madness, and it triggered this wild cascade of feelings that caught me completely off guard. I'm not a woo person at all, but sometimes I like to think that it was the universe's way of giving me a second chance, so I could redo the experience in a way that wasn't pathological and finally put everything to rest.

Imagine the sex...

@LadyfromtheBelleEpoque

Oh guys there is a pattern!!!

1/ we are not that interested at first
2/ don’t know the guy well or at all
3/ feelings are overwhelming/never experienced before/hit us sideways
4/ the guy is never quite right
5/never seen through to the end/around him long enough to see he is real
6/ accompanied by such strong feelings of anxiety that we have to walk away

Something is going on that we can’t see and it is not understanding it that fuels it/drives us crazy if we let it.

We haven’t missed anything great - just swerved a bullet, I reckon🤪

Some of these guys could be love bombing/on drugs/emotionally out of control/fuelled by lust

Yup 1-5 all correct! Also was mentioned to me he liked a bit of coke on a night out and acted a bit daft🤦 which made me think, fk it, maybe he'll be up for fun and if he's daft/cringey on a night out he won't bat an eyelid if i ask him out because I can just say i was a bit tispy, if i get rejected. (I actually dont really drink, dont smoke, never touched drugs) Maybe it was the alcohol/drug chemicals i was picking up on (idk, any excuse ey)

I very much realise I'm enamoured with the fantasy I've created in my head. I wish i could shake it completely. Don't like rare occasions when i find myself walking the dog at times, that just also happen to be when his train from work might have arrived and he might be walking past the station.
I actually dislike limerence and it's effect on me, i guess, i feel like I'm better than this, but completely overwhelmed by it sometimes.

@ZebraSpotts

I wonder if it is anything to do with control? Like, a desire to be out of control and free emotionally. Limerence kind of gives you that in an indulgent way as its not a real relationship and deep down, we know that. Like a fantasy, almost.

I wonder if it ties in with periods of anxiety/feeling out of control/feeling unsure about decisions in other areas of life and is a response to that or over thinking about those other areas?

It might be tied to a deeper insecurity/unsureness about the direction of one's life and how much we feel actually in control of it.