I think the part about projecting what a prince you thought they were is accurate. When I had a really limerant relationship with a guy at Uni, I thought he was a prince amongst men and it was obvious he missed me and still thought about me because he kept coming back.
And to my eternal shame, I let him. He only missed what he could get from me and kept me insanely dangling with on/ off situations so that when ‘on’ suited him, there I was. 🙈 I thought one day he’d miss me so much he’d realise he really did love me like he said he did. 🙄
Did he think about me? Only when he wanted something from me.
Did he miss me? He missed the sex probably.
If he’d really missed me, really regretted anything, really wanted me and not his long term girlfriend back at home, he’d have been with me, in a proper relationship.
The last straw for me (of many last straws because I was an idiot, telling myself all sorts of crap to explain my situation and letting myself believe it) was when he’d contacted me after I’d been working abroad that Summer break and his course term started early. He invited me to come and visit him and said his relationship with his girlfriend was ‘pretty much over’ and I was overjoyed and like a twat I went.
He only had to snap his fingers and stupid Wookie showed up,
thinking he must mean it this time…. this time he’d really missed me and this is it!!! Slept with him all weekend (no, really? What could he have possibly wanted? 🙄) and then heard him down the hall on the phone all lovey-dovey to his girlfriend, very much still going on, not over at all.
I packed my bag and left, spent the evening sobbing with a bottle of Martini and a very sad movie. Mid-sob, I realised I was utterly exhausted with it all and felt so shit that I had gone completely numb inside. I heard myself say I couldn’t do this any more. Wrote him a letter telling him exactly what I thought of him and that was that for me.
When I went back to Uni he was totally baffled that his little plaything had dead shark eyes and even after the letter, thought I was bluffing. It was agony to see him around all the time but I never went back to him.
Grey rock and no more contact is the only way, know you’re worth and remember actions speak louder than words. Men who keep you on a string are worthless, uncaring twats who are far more concerned with how good your continued attention makes them feel than with you personally.
He had the gall to contact me a few years later from his bloody honeymoon (I know, bastard or what??) actually wanting to see me when he got back. By then it was jaw-droppingly easy to see what a manipulative narcissist he was and how I’d let him love-bomb me then play me like a violin. I was in my twenties then, so luckily I learned when I was young to avoid ever being an OW and avoid mooning after unavailable men who are more than happy to serve you the occasional crumb from their life if you let them.
Don’t be somebody’s ego crutch and boredom cure. You are all worth way more than that, whatever they say or said.
The article is right, they don’t think about you or miss you because you meant anything, they miss whatever your attention provided them with. Some ex-affair partners often don’t miss the OW, because some of them regret the whole thing and even thinking about any of it reminds them not of a torrid love affair, doesn’t fill them with longing, it just reminds them of the time they were lying shits who became the worst version of themselves and they don’t sigh, they shudder.
Sadly I now know of two men who had affairs who ended their lives, not through missing their OW, it was through being unable to
live with the guilt of what they had done to their wife and children and their inability to be able to turn the clock back and not have done it at all.
Just don’t be anybody’s plaything or life-crutch, or OW. All of those three things give away your worth and your love to no avail whatsoever, for most women they end in utter misery.
You’re all worth so much more.
I read something the other day that resonated with me, wish I could remember who wrote it:
”Take the sticker off your forehead that says “Please love me!” and put it on the mirror, where it belongs.”
Now go and have a fabulous weekend spoiling yourselves, ladies. X