LIMERENCE: Disguising Strong, Secret Feelings Won't Protect You From Pain

when you are secretly thinking about someone all the time it's easy to think that there is a secret meaning in a lot of the little details that point to them thinking just as much about you and the word for this kind of magical thinking is limerence and it's an emotional state or maybe an addictive state when you're infatuated with someone who you're not really with and it takes on a grand scope a magnificent obsession that can take you completely out of any kind of opportunity for real love in your life or real experience and the longer you stay in the fantasy of that relationship the more you lose your grip on real life how the other person really feels what's actually going on in your own life the people the the opportunities facing you the dangers so i got this letter today from a woman i'll call maria and she writes hi anna this is difficult to write as i don't even know what's real anymore i met a guy at work and i'll call him alex he isn't from my country he's an american and let's just say i'm miles from that culture geographically and culturally from the first time i spoke to him i realized that he ignited a little ray of hope in my otherwise extremely painful existence he's my age 30 really nice looking charming and respectful he checks all the boxes as to what i deem dreamy and wholesome in my forever guy partner at the very beginning he spoke of having a girlfriend so i made a mental note of oh okay he's not available however as time progressed i found myself being drawn to him more and more then he became my boss since in the past i had an experience with a narcissist i was cautious in handling this scenario at the time i was suffering from health issues which made my physical appearance at least in my head less than ideal i was at an extremely low point in terms of self-confidence so i would hide behind my work acting aloof and rigid avoiding small talk at all costs and i'd use every excuse to work from home and pray day and night for this feeling of stuckness to vanish much to my dismay my attraction to alex only grew with time until i resigned from that workplace due to massive exploitation being underway at the hands of my then employers while i was in that job i noticed that alex would try very cautiously but purposefully and seemingly casually to be in my space to speak to me but everything was above board i remember going on a retreat alex was there and hovered near me i felt flushed when he was paying attention to me but again he didn't say anything to indicate he had feelings for me when i resigned alex rushed after me and implored me to explain my reasons i told him and we parted ways on the note that he would reach out when the air clears or he has an opening i did my best to move on but i struggled to get another job months passed during this time i found alex's girlfriend's instagram account she had uploaded everything so it didn't leave much room for me to guess it's in fact there that i saw the life he had outside of work for the first time i cried my eyes out as i marveled at the splendor that was their life together my mind was torn between using this information to get over him and hoping to catch a glimpse after six months he contacted me with a job offer with him being the owner and boss of the company it was pretty much your wish is my command where i got to choose the terms of my employment also he made sure that my position would be to work in close conjunction with him and maybe another management head and so a new chapter began with much promise and hope for my career and a carefully laned strategy by me to keep my heart in check it's also important to note that having worked hard on my health i looked much better than before and this showed in our interaction the second time around as i found him to be attracted to me rather obviously nevertheless from the get-go he made sure everything and anything i required was being catered to he travels all the time so we weren't meeting in person as much however the communication remained constant above board and more than cordial he would be so so sweet in a normal communication too so i tried really hard to push him out of my mind and focus purely on the work as i had to prove myself and my worth in this new role sadly my fondness or love or affection or whatever you call it only grew with time his attentiveness the way he steered clear of anything foul happening to my mood his adoring gaze his charming banter his giving me a gift hovering near me as he warded off other male colleagues who showed interest in me all of this fed my limerence and despite my best efforts i grew more and more positive that this is the dream guy he exhibits all traits i find so attractive the only problem despite his seemingly innocent and covert advances his girlfriend remained in the background he never once disclosed or owned up to anything to her it has been so subtle that i am doubting my senses and my narrative with every day that passes the end was as far away from a happily ever after as you could imagine his management started questioning my ability to hold a very prominent role with him panicking as to why our eyebrows and fingers being raised this is the most confusing part for me as all of this was going down he continued to put up with my outrage over such accusations and propensity to lose my cool and get loud and confrontational rather he kept reassuring me how he will get everything sorted out and i need not worry next thing i know he kicks me out of his organization a mere few months later using everything i had told him against me it's been a couple of months since this incident and i continue to remain stumped and believe me when i say that my work ethic was not in question i feel so helpless on one hand there is all this love and fantasizing about him where i feel soulless in the fact that i can can feel love again after the last experience where i felt this is it for me on the other hand i feel a deep-seated rage not to mention self-loathing for falling for a guy who was never available to begin with and never even admitted to leading me on or having even the remotest of interest in me romantically why did i not resist this why didn't his girlfriend factor into my thinking why didn't i friend zone him why continue to be attracted and hold a torch for him logically practically i fed myself this data as much as possible i spent half my energies in disguising my love for him yet here i am waking up to thoughts about him every single day for more context my parents don't get along i have been subjected to their emotional abuse and neglect all my life to the point that even my extremely close friendships dripped of similar patterns of discard and emotional cruelty i feel broken like i'm not meant to exist in this world let alone manage my expectations for love and partnership when guys like me i don't tend to find them interesting i seem to prefer guys who shower me with attention and praise but never want me to be their public girlfriend they just keep carrying on with me in ways that can't be identified for sure as interested or together am i crazy or just hopeless or doomed to cling to ghosts maria okay maria i think i can help you with this this is a harsh story this is painful all right we're gonna go through again let's see if we can give you some practical steps so you had said you don't even know what's real anymore it's difficult to write and i would say yes you are talking about things that don't sound entirely real to me and one clue i have is the florid language that i would associate more with a romance novel than an office so let's go through and i'll show you what i mean so you met a guy at work not from your country from the first time you spoke to him he ignited a little ray of hope in your otherwise extremely painful existence okay whenever those of us with ptsd are going through a period of time when we're in an otherwise extremely painful existence somebody even being nice to us and validating us takes on an enormous proportion to our to our feelings it just becomes huge okay he's your age really nice looking charming and respectful i get it very attractive it checks all the boxes as to what you think of in your forever guide partner what you want at the very beginning he spoke of having a girlfriend so i made a mental note of oh okay not available so i just want to point out maria when you say it checked all the boxes it checked a bunch of boxes except the giant screaming box called he already has a girlfriend he's in a relationship and that's how you know he doesn't check the boxes at all your perfect guy wants to be in a relationship with you so just let's just lay that out there okay but but it's interesting because it wasn't till the end of your letter that you mentioned just ever so lightly oh yeah you have this terrible abuse and neglect in childhood and that'll do it that can develop in us this tremendous imagination for turning somebody's kind though appropriate for an office behavior into signs of romance that's how it happens and however as time progressed i found myself being drawn to him more and more then he became my boss oh oh all right so you're totally in love with a guy and he becomes your boss i'm not surprised though getting more and more drawn to somebody because your your life is otherwise a painful existence there's nothing else going on so of course the thing that gives you a little bit of joy during the day is going to just keep sucking you in that's natural but it's a problem because it's a problem that happens in a vacuum when your life is empty okay since in the past you had an experience with a narcissist and you didn't tell me much about that but i'm just going to assume you had a terrible relationship i was cautious in handling this scenario at the time i was suffering from health issues and when i did a little follow up and ask questions that had something to do with being really overweight and your hair was falling out so something bad was going on it sounds like something very difficult for your hair to fall out and it made your physical appearance at least in your head less than ideal so even if it was subtle you weren't feeling great i was at an extremely low point in terms of self-confidence okay so that's another sort of risk factor for limerence so i would hide behind my work acting aloof and rigid avoiding small talk at all costs and i'd use every excuse to work from home and pray day and night for this feeling of stuckness to vanish so yeah it sounds like yeah you were in a bad place so you had this one bright star and that it just i could see how you were drawn to it this guy who was really nice to you so much to my dismay my attraction to alex only grew with time until i resigned from that workplace because of massive exploitation being underway at the hands of my then employers so you didn't tell me what that was i'm just going to take your word for it terrible ex-employers got out of there while you were in that job you noticed that alex would try very cautiously but purposefully and seemingly casually to be in your space to speak to you but everything was above board okay this is where i do question a little bit so if if you're working with somebody and i think you mentioned in the follow-up questions that this is a startup environment and so startups tend to be kind of small people work very closely together and so that people are going to be in your space and it would be easy to put a lot of importance on that i just like trying to be in your space i could see how somebody were flirting but if it were flirting if somebody was really interested in you there they would say so they would break up with their girlfriend and they would be with you there's just you know it's sort of an unequivocal sign that somebody's interested in you now i believe that i get it like sometimes people have a flirtatious energy did he possibly i can't say there's anything very clear in what you said and it's because of the fancy language you use and that tends to sort of amplify the thing you have a lot of adjectives and things so seemingly casually to be in your space i mean what if he was just casually in your space he would speak to you but everything was above board i remember going on a retreat he was there and hovering near you so you felt flushed when he was paying attention but again he didn't say anything to indicate he had feelings so could this be a situation where you had strong feelings you're feeling flushed and you're limerent you're reading into his behavior that he's near you i mean he knows you so at a retreat he knows you he obviously thought well of your work because he hired you later and that would explain him being near you or talking to you when i resigned alex rushed in and implored me to explain my reasons so implored again that's the fancy language i told him and we parted ways that's fancy language on the note that he would reach out when the air clears or he has an opening so another way that i'm reading that is when you quit the job he reached out to you and said why why are you leaving and you said oh because they're really exploitative and i don't like it i gotta go i'm just really unhappy in this job and he said well i'll reach out when the you know the air clears or i have an opening that sounds like a very ordinary um conversation between co-workers or you know a boss an employee i think he wasn't your boss yet at this point but that sounds like an ordinary conversation that would people would have if he held you in the steam as a worker i did my best to move on but i struggled to get another job months passed during this time i found alex's girlfriend's instagram account she had uploaded everything so didn't leave much room for me to guess it's in fact there that i saw the life he had outside of work for the first time that's really good maria it's good that you saw that in a way you know it's a little stalkerish but that's okay you got to see reality he has a life outside of work and he's with somebody else like totally and there's pictures and there's activities together and and that's where he is i cried my eyes out as i marveled at the splendor okay fancy language again marveled at the splendor i'm just going to try to bring your language back down to earth and say you know i felt envious at how nice it looked their life together my mind was torn between using this information to get over him and hoping to catch a glimpse so there's where the limerence kicks in because this would be information that if you were not in limerence you would be like oh my gosh what have i done he totally has a girlfriend i misread the situation and then hoping to catch a glimpse and so only in limerence would catching a glimpse have any kind of a payoff for you after six months he contacted me with a job offer oh that must have been an exciting phone call with him being the owner and boss of the company it was pretty much your wish is my command okay fancy language again meaning and what you meant was he let you choose the terms of your employment so he valued your work and he kind of let you write your own job and choose your own pay is what i think you're saying but your wish is my command is a romance novel language for something quite more emotional and deep than just like i'd really like to hire you you know what would it take to hire you also he made sure that my position would be to work in close conjunction with him and maybe another management head okay it's a startup that would be normal small staff working closely and so a new chapter began with much promise and hope for my career and carefully lane strategy by me to keep my heart in check i'm not hearing the careful strategy i think you maybe tried to show what you tried to keep in check what you were showing him which is sensible it's also important to note that having worked hard on my health i looked much better than before and this showed in our interaction the second time around i found him to be attracted to me rather obviously so i guess i question what what do you mean rather obviously like what do you actually mean here's how here's how it's obvious a guy is attracted to you he tells you he's attracted to you and he asks you out and he breaks up with his girlfriend before he does that i guess that's a little you know i guess if somebody were attracted they might try to have an affair with you or something but there's just no move on his part there you're talking about a vibe you're getting maybe but from what i'm reading in here i think limerence took over and did what limerence always does it makes you read little signs for what you're looking for i think this really means he likes me i think this really means he's attracted to me right nevertheless from the get-go he made sure everything and anything i required was being catered to okay this is again the fancy language sounds like princess fantasy right he travels all the time so we weren't meeting in person as much however the communication remained constant as it would between boss and employee and a startup and it was above board and more than cordial and i think you mean it was warm he would be so so sweet in normal communication too so he was sweet oh maria someone was kind to you and that meant so much to you so i tried really hard to push him out of my mind and focus purely on the work as i had to prove myself and my worth in this new role okay good focus good to do that sadly my fondness or love or affection or whatever you call it i would call it limerence but yeah i love fondness affection it only grew with time so it got more and more and so if you weren't in limerence you would have been very discouraged by the girlfriend by the lack of him showing any signs you know no romance ensuing and keep in mind when he's your employer right this isn't it's not appropriate it's not unheard of there are ways around it but the first thing that somebody does he had his chance with you right when you quit the other job you didn't have a work relationship and if he were interested in you that was his chance outside of a work context to um express an interest in having a relationship with you but that's not what happened you know the girlfriend pictures were all up there that's not where he was coming from um it's your feelings your feelings were so strong it sounds to me like they just felt like they had to be mutual all right his attentiveness the way he steered clear of anything foul happening to my mood fancy language his adoring gaze like i'm just saying maria nobody says adoring gays that's a that's from it just sounds like you've been um consuming romance literature or tv shows his adoring gays it's um his charming banter it's more of that this sounds a bit like a novel he's giving me a gift so i have employees i give them gifts for their birthday and for christmas and sometimes they have bonuses when they do something great and i guarantee you it's never coming from a romantic place that's just what we do right um hovering near you and warding off other male colleagues who showed interest in you all of this fed your limerence so you know it's limerence but i i don't know i don't know what to think when you say he warded off other male colleagues but you don't really give an example it's hard to say i've known men who were kind of like really enjoyed the flirtatious energy and meant nothing and you say later you talk about the sort of intentional ambiguousness of things i know what you're talking about um and i know that that that can be tricky you said despite your best efforts you grew more and more positive that this is a dream guy he exhibits all traits i find so attractive but only a girl who had been mistreated could possibly grow up to think that a guy who gives all his love and sexuality and time together and i don't know living together and dinners and celebrations gives them all to another woman only a traumatized girl could grow up to think that those were all the traits that she wanted because what that was was none of the traits none of the behaviors and that's where your healing is going to go as you heal your trauma you're going to start to the the behaviors are going to matter to you you won't have to use your imagination to fill in the huge gaps where somebody who appears attractive to you seems like they're everything you want okay so then you said the only problem despite his seemingly innocent and covert advances his girlfriend remained in the background he never once disclosed or owned up to anything it's been so subtle that i'm doubting my senses and my narrative with every day that passes so that's where i will give you the benefit of the doubt he sticks with ambivalence so that he can enjoy that feeling of you adoring him i think the adoring gays was going towards him and people liked that and perhaps he was unbounded or unprincipled about it but i'm still hearing he like never did anything so and then you say the end was terrible it was not happily ever after his management started questioning your ability to hold a very prominent role with him panicking as to why our eyebrows and fingers being raised so something was wrong and you say you were stumped about this this is where i want i want to really reach you maria you were recruited for a job with a great deal of enthusiasm and you were pushed out of a job with a great deal of animosity something happened and it involved you it's a little baffling to me that you're baffled that you seem not to have any sense of what it is your work ethic was good but could it be if you were limerent on him could that not have been an energy that made people uncomfortable and or that made you very checked out of reality and i'll just say having experience limerence myself that's certainly part of it is when your your your attention your mental focus your heart all that stuff is going into a fantasy that's not even there the stuff that is there goes neglected it goes neglected and so we think when we're in limerence that we're so good at hiding it that nobody could possibly notice anything wrong but when you're not limerent when your feet are on the ground and you're in reality and your romantic energy is either contained or going to somebody who reciprocates it which would be the ideal that's what we want for you when you're all contained and grounded like that your work performance just goes wow because when all your attention is going like to this guy to this fantasy to this idea and you're putting so much energy into hiding how you really feel i'm sorry it's going to take a toll on who you are on what you bring to any situation that you're in you can't possibly do a 100 job when you're busily you're so busy hiding who you are and how you feel about things you can't use your intuition you can't just trust your judgment and at the far edge of that something to consider is whether it made everybody uncomfortable i know when i've had people get limeren about me it was very uncomfortable and it made it so i could not have them in my life it was very uncomfortable and i think that i'm thinking back to a couple of times and maybe i didn't realize how serious it was at first but as soon as i got a sign and they would think you know they would always be like no no no that's not what's going on and i'd say it seems like you have romantic feelings for me and they'd always go no no no no i don't it has a feeling to it and i need to end this friendship because i want to um have a good relationship in my life and to be emotionally available i realize i can't really have these kind of odd relationships so i'm sorry but this is the end of our friendship people were shocked when i said that to them but that's it it helped remarkably to move my life forward and to take all my emotional energy back even when it was them being limerent on me definitely when i felt limit on others that was really bad that was really life-draining and depressing and hollow and empty like in your mind you you're just not like creating a life for yourself because you just keep like investing all your creative energy into a fantasy and then what do you have you know your birthday rolls around and there's nobody nobody christmas comes around and there's nobody so limerence is a terrible curse and i'll talk to you about how to get free of it in a second on one hand there's all this love and fantasizing about him where i feel soulless in the fact that i can feel love again and yeah that's something and on the other you feel a deep-seated rage not to mention clothing maria you say this is the most confusing part for me so far as all of this was going down he continued to put up with my outrage over such accusations and propensity to lose my cool and get loud and confrontational rather he kept reassuring me how he will get everything sorted and i need not worry and next thing i know he kicks me out of the organization just a few months later using everything i had told him against me i'm not sure what you told him but maybe the anger stuff so i'm just gonna say like flying into a rage on the job is grounds for dismissal and limerence sometimes can cause us to like there's just parts of us that think we're in a romantic relationship we start to have the expectations or or sort of use up the privileges if you have a boyfriend and there's some sort of big betrayal or hurt you do get to feel angry or cry and people might put up with it but at work it's a totally different context it's not appropriate it's just not appropriate for the boss or anybody to fly into a rage and we all know like if a boss flies into a rage it's considered abuse but maybe we don't always consider that when an employee does it it's also abuse and there's a power imbalance there that mitigates you know what can be done about it but i would say if i had employees who were flying into rages i i wouldn't want them here that's i'd want people who can reflect honestly on what's going on and maybe course correct on the problem but again you know you don't have insight about what this was about so you were angry he said he would fix it and i guess he didn't tell you what it what it really was and i'll tell you my experience when men don't tell you what the problem really is i'm just guessing but it's usually because they don't want to hurt your feelings so his colleagues didn't have faith in your work for whatever reason i would encourage you to reflect on that and why and just to try to face that honestly because obviously you have great skills you are recruited very enthusiastically so you have a lot to bring but something went wrong and people were uncomfortable they didn't want you there so he tried to fix it he couldn't and then abruptly he cut it off and that's what it looks like when somebody who is trying to save the day finally realizes that they have to go along with it um a cold like a not a cold i don't think cold is ideal but a cold turkey a hard stop when you realize you have to end a relationship with somebody professional or otherwise the right thing to do is to have a succinct conversation about it not to let it get drawn out and emotional not to let it be personal but just say you know we have decided this is the end of it and that's hard nobody likes getting fired it's very painful but it's happened to almost everybody and the best thing with that any of us can do when it happens is to look at why like what happened there and as best you can try not to just write it off as they're terrible people or you were betrayed try to look at were there red flags going in that you might have seen was there something you did that possibly uh wasn't working for them was there feedback you got that you weren't able to respond to there's usually information you can learn and that is how we heal from trauma we use the information we stay open to it even though criticism is like it feels like death it feels like you're not going to be able to take it and this is like such a profound criticism but every just try with the support of a therapist with friends try to find out and understand like what might have happened there so that you can go to a new level next time and by the way in your next job if you end up feeling limerent about somebody there i would say it's not a very good job for you and i don't think that i don't i'm uncomfortable saying like you should quit a job because you have feelings for people but given the pattern here that you were in such a terrible relationship in the past and now you've spent this huge amount of time giving all your emotional energy to a relationship that didn't exist i would say it would be so smart to leave a job that sort of set that off again i think with limerence sometimes if you're going to heal it it just helps so much to get away from the stimulus that triggers it so there are usually jobs where you know that sort of attraction doesn't exist and that's a really good place to focus on your work develop your skills get your resume kind of topped off again after that ding that happened from getting fired so you say i feel so helpless on the one hand there's all this love and fantasizing about him where i feel soulless in the fact that i can feel love again after the last experience where i thought it was for me and then it turned into a disaster on the other hand you feel a deep-seated rage not to mention self-loathing for falling for a guy who was never available to begin with and never admitted to leading me on or having even the remotest of interest in me romantically the self-loathing in my experience it comes from confusion and as much as you can to clear this up will help you forgive yourself i'm here to tell you you had and you said this just for context my parents don't get along i've been subjected to their emotional abuse and neglect all my life right there maria is why this is happening it's not your fault it's not your fault you got this way what i'm here is teaching you strategies for a person who got kind of got their mind kind of bent a little bit in that way as a kid how you can begin to live in such a way to protect yourself so that it doesn't consume you so that years of your life don't pass you by with you giving all your love to a fantasy okay and and also your career you know i hear that it's important to you so here's your self-recriminating thoughts why did i not resist this okay because you couldn't you felt powerless why didn't his girlfriend factor into my thinking because because denial because denial that's what we get why didn't i friend zone him because your life was otherwise miserable as you said and you were getting all your joy out of the hope that maybe there was something there why continue to be attracted and hold a torch for him uh because because you haven't yet developed a life that is more attractive than a fantasy of someone who isn't with you that's why so you know what that points to it's time to make your life sweet and happy for him so you say i fed myself this data as much as possible spent half my energies disguising my love for him so that's it that's what i'm just gonna describe limerence as it's kind of like a response to depression and disengagement from life our souls crave love and connection to people so much our hearts will fly out towards something and that's what it is you're a 30 year old woman but here you are with me with all of us here and we're all here to tell you you can heal you can heal you are worth loving you're worth paying attention to your parents didn't instill that to you so you get to instill it in you now and you get to have new kinds of friends and i would start with friends go easy on the guys there's time you had said when guys like me i don't tend to find them interesting i seem to prefer guys who shower me with attention and praise but never want me to be their public girlfriend so you know what that points to it points to you having an unconscious but all the same real um uncomfortableness with actually being close to somebody actually being in a real relationship for whatever reason you're afraid of rejection or you um space out or dissociate when you get close to somebody like all of these things are possibilities but you know in my approach to healing we don't worry too terribly much about why we look at the symptom and the symptom is is that you're feeling like you don't belong in the world and hopeless and helpless and like how did you misjudge this so that's that's the reality of what you're going through right now that's the symptom and there's the solution is and you say well yeah you say guys just keep carrying on with you in ways that can't be identified for sure is you say are you crazy or hopeless or doomed to cling to ghost no you're not doomed to clings to ghost you have hope of letting go of ghosts so one you can learn this in my dating course if you want this is something i teach over and over again in my videos and my courses and in my coaching with people and it's that when you write down in advance what's important to you and so for you i would put number one does not have a girlfriend wife or any other woman in his life for your ideal guy right you write that down because you know that your mind has a tendency to kind of fill in the gaps on that sort of thing and you know kind of oh no i can work with this i can you know i can just kind of mentally go around the cold hard facts of this guy's life you know you do that you will get better at it as life gets better for you it's going to get better but while it's still like this what you do is you write down what it must be and you get support from other people who are healing this part of their lives too so that you can give each other that reality check so that you can check in you can use tools to re-regulate because you'll find that when you do this behavior this limerence you do it at low points in your life when you're particularly sad lonely hurting struggling health problems that's when it comes like look at the pattern when things are going well for you you lighten up i'm just gonna i'm projecting but this is kind of what it's like for everybody it's something that people do when they're in a low point so the goal is to take all that love and attention and bring it back into your life and start crafting your life have friends have situations you go to where you get to talk for real about what's going on with you i always recommend 12-step fellowships they're free you get to talk about what's really going on and you get to learn from other people who are healing you could also do that in my community if you want people watching this if you feel similarly like limerence has come upon you if you feel like trauma in your childhood has affected your ability to have real connections and real relationships right now as an adult you might want to take my relationship quiz it's down in the free tools page of my website that is it's linked in the description section i'm pointing down because below this video is the description section and all my videos there's a link to the free tools page of my website you'll find quizzes you'll find a free course to help calm dysregulation and other symptoms that can really come in handy too to get through those rough moments when your mind wants to leap back into the fantasy you can also find my dating course down below there's all kinds of information and things you can connect with in that description section if you're really interested in this topic of limerence and you want to hear more of what i have to teach about that i've got this video lined up for you right here and i will see you very soon [Music] you

Channel: Crappy Childhood Fairy

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Id: 4PE-Bn_QoHM

Length: 36min 49sec (2209 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 09 2022