Does anyone know much about limerence or ever experienced it?

[OneOutOneIn]

It's something I've been reading about recently as I suspect I'm experiencing it with a particular evasive ex but I wonder if the truth is just to get a grip?

Maybe if you had your eye on someone for a while and then snogged them at a party and thought, "Yay this is it!" and then they blanked you the next day; that was what I was meaning really.

A cause could be something like a FB thing when one person starts to have more feelings than the other, a connection that whilst making for incredible sex does become too strong for that type of relationship. Then trying to control those feelings in the hopes you don't lose what you share.

I think of limerance almost as being in love with being in love. It is really something that is governed by and addiction to the intensity of feeling that's involved

I identify with this. I have an insecure attachment style and, like a PP, was brought up in a weirdly intense emotional environment. I learned that love is overwhelming, sacrificial and sacred, and that it is painful. It totally set up to be limerent in all my relationships, and I was. My long-term relationships have been with dishonest, self-interested manipulators because, of course, their manipulations secured endless narcissistic supply from limerent me.

If I'm honest, I would like to feel that intensely again - but I understand it now, so I will avoid it. This might mean avoiding intimate relationships for the rest of my natural (!) but, should the opportunity arise to be 'in love' like emotionally balanced people are, I'll give it a good go

I wonder if no contact is the best way to recover. Perhaps sometimes or at other times the mind then feeds on itself and the object of desire appears even more desirable.

Electra, your experience is almost identical to mine...first love, I ended it and then spent the next 2-3 years trying to win him back but I'd hurt him badly so he wanted a clean break.

Fast forward 20 years, I've been with current DP for a long time and we've hitba bad patch after he had an EA which I discovered. We had counselling and decided to try to move on from it but i was obviously very hurt and damaged by it all. Enter Mr First Love who, within 20 minutes of meeting me again after 20 years of no contact, declares that he's always loved me and that no one else has ever measured
up to me and a whole host of things I desperately needed to hear at that point in time...only I was hearing them from the wrong person. A six week intense affair ensued at which point we both acknowledged that it was out of control so we agreed to distance ourselves from each other again which we've done but then the limerent behaviour kicked in. Obsessing, practically cyber stalking etc, etc. It got a little better over time but we're now at the 1 year anniversary of when our affair was happening and I feel myself backsliding. I have had to really work hard this week not to message him. He 'liked' something I posted on FB today which makes me irrationally (and pathetically) happy. FFS...what am I? 15?

Someone up thread said its like living two lives simultaneously and I can totally identify with that. Real life goes on and even looks pretty good to most observers, including DP. We are getting on well and are making big plans for the future and have apparently recovered from his infidelity. However, it must be an Oscar worthy performance on my part as there's a whole 'nother life going on in my head...a continuous inner monologue about 'him'. He's the first thing I think about in the morning and the last thing at night. Like so many of you, I actually feel like I'm losing my mind at times...like i have no control over my thought processes at all. And it scares the life out of me that those thoughts might never go away.

Whilst I'm sorry that so many of you have suffered similarly, I'm really grateful for this thread and everyone on it for sharing your stories. It actually helps a little to know that it's not just me and other people understand

Have to post this great record.

My DP (of 22 years) is experiencing this at the moment. It's ruined my life and is about to wreck our DCs, as he's finally realised that, yes, he does have to go. All for a fucking fantasy. I can't see the new 'relationship' lasting, but maybe I'm wrong and she really is the love of his life. Hurts like hell.

Not sure if putting a name to it helps, or just justifies it.

So sorry to hear that, Skinny. I know how much it hurts to be on the receiving end too and it's beyond shit

Thank you Queef, I really appreciate that.

I could understand him going off me (though he says he hasn't). It's the way he seemed to stop caring for the kids that I struggle with. It's like living with an addict. Nothing else matters. He's even going to fuck up his job when it comes out.

It's all about attraction, often mutual and the knowing it is never to be...unfinished business....no loose ends to tie off.
It just hangs in the air and makes you question the situation until you go quite mad.
Shame the original post was deleted,

I think no contact is definitely the way forward, ladyfromvenus, preferably with enormous physical distance. My cataclysmic history has also taught me the 'overwrite shag' is the most effective form of distraction. My recipe for a broken, limerent heart is a long-haul ticket, a welter of new experiences, and lots of interesting shags!

As cures go it's quite expensive. But has never failed me.

For example, this guy Im pining for I didnt even like the first time I met him!!
I met him for a second time to give him another chance...I cant believe I was so flippant about him then! He really liked me then too!!

Mine is even worse than this. He asked me out about two years before and I said no because stop laughing world I thought he was punching above his weight. I want that part of me back again.

I started to really like him & shortly after I did...I never knew where I stood. He would go quiet for days, say he'd want to do something and then not do it and go quiet. He would keep feeding me bullshit though...its work ....wait til things are quieter etc.

Was this the same man?!? It's a pattern for narcissist types though. It's all "I'm so busy. I'm so important" etc.
Intense period of contact. Disappear. Then reconnnect with a "hey how are you? sorry been insanely busy at work etc". Then intense contact. Disapper. Lather rinse repeat.

But I saw what he was up to early on and started mirrorring this back to him. I am actually generally v. busy but not turbo-busy. I also do have quite a busy and glamorous social life. But again not turbo-busy. Anyway later on, he said to me "you are one of the busiest people I've ever met." And I thought "well that's a result. I've fooled you with your own cr*p".

This was all very healthy in terms of interaction obviously - but god it was fun. I miss him.

Whoever said above - yes no contact is the only way. It's not a cure but it helps lessen the intensity.

What about if someone was interested in you, but you turned them down and then you became interested in them, but by that time it was too late and they'd moved on?

Could you then pine for what you could have had?

Think " Limerence " is just a new fangled word for crush/attraction.
It affects us is varying degrees depending on the situation.
We have fleeting crushes and we have all absorbing ones and at the top end of the scale are the obsessive ones.
It's sexual attraction. We can't help how we feel and I get pissed of by posters who berate others for feeling this way.. you can't turn off the switch ,,it's a horrible place to find yourself in.
I'm grateful I have only had this happen once in my life.

Think " Limerence " is just a new fangled word for crush/attraction.

No it isn't - just read through this thread. A crush is less intense and a lesser infatuation and of a shorter duration. Limerence is massively interfering with life and prolonged. Someone with a crush can still function; a person with limerence will prioritise the LO and even fantasing about the LO as a primary activity.

A crush, even an intense one, will not mean you can't work properly for a prolonged period.

"Also what I think I need is to actually get him as a BF...the scales would fall from my eyes and I would probably end up dumping him."

Could be some truth to this. I've read on MN about people needing to shag someone to get over them and move on, so you could be right, broken.

I'm not sure if my experience would qualify as my 'LO' was someone I hadn't met and had no chance of having a relationship with in reality, but certainly my feelings were exactly as described by the wiki definition of limerance. LO was single and I was convinced that if we did meet, that would be that - embarrassingly ridiculous with hindsight (so much so that I've name changed ).

It happened when DH and I were going through the 7 year itch a particularly rough patch. He was behaving like an arse and my feelings for LO were a distraction I guess. DH was aware of my becoming more distant and his behaviour got worse, which escalated my feelings for LO and so on in a vicious circle for about 18 months. Our marriage only just survived tbh - at one point I'd taken legal advice and registered with a lettings agent with the intent of moving out and divorcing him. I felt that I would be happier on my own but in the back of my mind I was also thinking I'd be free 'when' I finally met LO.

It was absolutely nothing whatsoever like a crush.