Limerence Sucks.

+ What Even Is It?

Have you ever been in love? No, scratch that. Have you ever been in unrequited love for years and years, putting a person on a pedestal so high that they ended up an idealized symbol living inside your imagination and no longer an actual person? Then boy, do I have a word for you.

Limerence is a state of deep infatuation with another person, often also associated with being one-sided or based on mere fantasies. This state can run so deep that if affects you ability to lead life normally or think about anything else.

At first, that kind of just sounds like love, right? Wrong. It’s unhealthy to use romantic feelings as a form of escapism, allowing daydreams to substitute a life actually lived. It’s unhealthy to idealize any person in that way, as it not only gives them a lot of room to hurt you and overstep boundaries but it sets you up for disappointment 100 percent of the time. No one person is ideal. Viewing them like that fogs up your vision for red flags in their behavior, leaving yourself completely vulnerable and prone to enduring relationship dynamics that should be below anybody’s standards.

I experienced limerence a few years back. He was fascinating, dark, mysterious… and I was 18. I fell for him in a way that made me want to read poetry, because no one in my century seemed to get what I felt. The very first moment that I ever laid my eyes on him, something just clicked. I knew I was never going to forget him. He looked like a Disney prince and he was just so cocky, so utterly confident that my insecure teenage self was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. When we started dating, I experienced my first ever game of hot-and-cold. Know that game? Where one day, you are the center of the universe and the next, he seems to have forgotten you exist? The rush is insane. The highs feel even higher coming from the lows and you cherish every good moment because you know that it is rare and special. It’s the type of relationship that has you saying things like “But when it’s good, it’s so good.” If I ever hear this sentence from my daughter, I will call for an intervention.

After we broke things off, I couldn’t forget him like I usually would because he never properly broke up with me. He told me he wanted me to wait for him to figure out his attachment issues: I knew I couldn’t do that. I didn’t have it in me anymore. We then went no contact, but he was still present in the back of my mind, especially after he had reached out to me again, telling me he had in fact changed. It started out by comparing my feelings for other people to my feelings for him and it led to an irrationally extreme idealization of our past relationship. I was convinced that he was it. I led myself to believe that I would never forget him, never feel this way again, because he was my soulmate- and I would never get to be with him if I didn’t take the leap one day, in the far future. I believed that some day, this would all figure itself out.

In truth, I was living in daydreams and romance novels. Yes, there are soulmates out there, but I now know that my soulmate would want to actually date me. He would live with me in the light, not force me into the darkness, hiding me from the world. My soulmate would be consistent.

I don’t hold any grudges towards him. Yes, he fed me an inconsistent relationship dynamic that, compared to a healthy dynamic is like a relationship on crack. Yes, that surely has left a mark on me and how I feel things. I wasted so much time fantasizing about him, even after we broke off all contact. But I don’t blame him: I feel for him. Clearly, he is a deeply troubled being. After seeing what it is like to experience his proximity, I can’t begin to fathom what it must be like to actually be him. If it feels so cold to be near him, how cold must he be? Yet again, I have no clear direction with sharing this, but I hope it makes someone else feel less alone in their experience. If you have ever felt something similar, I hope you are doing the work of healing, even though it is hard. For me, the first step was forgiving the person who hurt me.

Lots of love
annika and the moon