Insane, time-consuming, mortifying crush. Tips for conquering this.

[TizzyTime]

I'm married. I'm suffering from a crush on a guy I know. It's become quite obsessive and it's scaring the begeezus out of me. I'm just not myself.

I've had crushes before but they mainly involved hoping that I'd bump into whoever I was crushing on, get a look at his bum, or daydream about a dinner and after. I'd want to chat or make contact. I'd want to flirt and hoped they'd find me attractive.

This is different. I feel violently attracted to him but absolutely dread - DREAD - being in his company. I feel sick if he's around and cannot wait for him to leave. We work in the same building and I am beginning to plan my routes so that I avoid him.

Maybe he knows, maybe he doesn't. I haven't done anything stupid yet but I feel so out of control. It's very visceral, very chemical and I am reacting unpredicatably. I'm terrified someone else will notice how I am in his company. I blush and can't speak. It's got to the stage where I'm scared people will notice my reaction if his name were to come up in conversation.

Is there anything I can do? I feel controlled by it. (Please don't suggest chocolate. I am at near maximum chocolate intake as it is )

Just imagine him doing a big poo.

I blame the weather. Spring does some very weird things to my hormones, and I sometimes get ridiculous teenage massive crushes. But this I'm not sure about. I want to say it will blow over but I know how useless that sounds.

Or squeezing a big spot full of puss

Poo & pus are no match for this. It's a very strange phenomenon. I'm losing sleep thinking about it. I watched a good tv programme yesterday and realised it was the first hour I had had 'off' my obsessive thoughts for ages. It's so exhausting.

You might be onto something with the hormone thing though, Liska. I changed pill about two weeks ago and wondered if that was a factor. It doesn't feel mental as much as physical.

I think the pill could well be what it's about. I am having some difficulty with menopausal type hormones at the moment - get very very depressed premenstrually and am stupidly susceptible to anything male goodlooking men at other times. Occasionally nice but usually just embarrassing and feels uncontrollable.

I would go to the GP and get the minipill? Killed my libido absolutely stone dead.

I just want to flick a switch and make it all go away.

Why do these attractive men do behave like this? Hussies.

This sounds like limerence. google it. Intrusive thoughts is a key indicator. As is feeling out of control and sick in his presence.

There are two known cures and one panacea. Two cures:

1. finding a new limerent object.
2. gettting to know the limerent object properly so that the fantasy is overtaken by reality.

panacea:

1. no contact.

I don't think either of the cures will work for you because you are married so you will need to go no contact. That means religious no contact - no googling, no pseudo stalking, no talking about him (including posting about him on the internet which exaccerbates it), no trying to make contact with his friends or subtly (or not so subtly) introducing him into conversations.

Seriously, true limerence is awful (been there) so go no contact now while it's still early stages. It will only get worse.

Tell your husband. Serious answer.

Subconsciously, he reminds you if something very very important. A parent; perhaps, or a past trauma. Something that's linked in your subconscious to your very survival (or emotional survival).

IME, it's usually linked to the unhealthy bits of your psyche, your particular neuroses.

Again IME, the only solution is no contact, and the passage of time. You can't help how you feel, but you can choose what you do. And I recommend that what you do is to stay away, and train yourself to focus on other thoughts when you find yourself daydreaming about him.

Thanks for the replies.

I'm not really sure about limerence. Sounds more like my previous crushes than this one. This is less about daydreaming and more, dunno, triggering of something. My thoughts about him aren't very complete. They're carnal and repetitive but not about taking nice trips to galleries.

I can't tell DH. We aren't friends at the moment and he'd think I was telling him out of spite.

It makes a lot of sense that he is speaking to something in my subconscious. I wish I knew what it was so I could address it.

Maybe you are not happy with DH in whatever way, and your subconscious is latching onto someone to tell you that you want to get out there? Or the thing about him triggering something also makes sense.

If you think about past crushes, you know how you feel afterwards - like oh I can now actually see he's a normal person and not what I would want. You need to try to fast-forward to that POV or at least try to imagine feeling like that.

I had one that lasted years. He was a friend of my DP, I was friends with his wife AND our kids were friends, so saw him all the time and it was exhausting. But it ultimately turned out he was a playboy-reading, serial cheating asshat - NOT attractive. It made sense in retrospect that what was drawing me to him was that he was giving out massive "available" vibes and was a womanizing charmer, and I was responding to that at some level.

God, I had similar once. Bloody nightmare isn't it? I didn't know about limerence back then. We were both in relationships.

Fast forward 5 years, we're both single and got together. Thought all my dreams had come true - I barely knew him before we got together, and my imagination had turned him into a perfect being. Well he wasn't. He was emotionally and physically abusive - but I put up with it for several years because I'd got my prize dickhead.

One day I put on my big girl pants and stood up to him and kicked him out, after calling the police to escort him off my premises.

Now I wonder what I ever saw in him.

It's like a choice between a Bottega Veneta or a bag from New Look. You want what you can't have. Try and go no contact and become friends again with your husband

I'm already no contact in that, well, we have no contact.

I pass him on the stairs sometimes. We use meeting rooms at different times and maybe I see him then, but I have been using meeting rooms that he won't be near or just avoiding moving about the building. He knows people I work with and sometimes chats a bit to them so that's when I just want to get out of his space. He makes me freeze, panic, and just want to run away.

I wonder if he's a womanizing charmer?! Not sure about that, maybe. I'm not sure he has universal appeal. OTOH, I have noticed other women mentioning him a bit. And in my mad state I wondered if he'd 'started it' because it felt like it had come from nowhere. (Pretty sure he didn't )