I learned a new word yesterday. The word is limerence. Defined on Wikipedia as “a state of mind which results from romantic or non-romantic feelings for another person and typically includes obsessive thoughts and fantasies and a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love and have one’s feelings reciprocated. Limerence can also be defined as an involuntary state of intense desire.”
Yay! My crap with Jim has a name! Lol.
Who knew it would take me this long to find it? The good news is – despite how I feel about it, I am definitely NOT alone in this feeling. Also…I really need to give myself a break about being caught up in this, because – BELIEVE ME – the words I have had with myself over the years about this. Knowing that I am an otherwise intelligent human being who understands and appreciates things with a good bit of rationale – this really does have no rationale or logic to it.
The logical side of your brain. The analytical part of it tells you that you know what you are doing is ultimately self-destructive, but the tiny bit of good that comes from it? It’s the thing that propels it forward. The hope. “Long live hope!” The tight clinging onto the things that felt good and made you feel good about yourself. It is ssoooo hard to let go of that!
It’s almost as if the state of limerence ITSELF is the addiction.
To be honest, the number of times I have seen traits of this in other women and have thought, “Oh, bless you! I feel for you. THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN TO ME.” Lol. I still do it.
Those fake Jim Kerr accounts that crop up time and again? Those accounts NEVER contact me. Because I don’t fall for them. I instantly block and report them. They know I won’t fall for it so they don’t even try. It has been quite a while since one of these accounts has started to follow me and tried to make direct contact. These days I usually make a rather sad joke about it – a very limerent joke. “Not even the fake Jims want to know me!” Such mirth! But all the women who “fall for it”? The women who befriend these fakes are all under the limerent spell too. Because they are all praying that one time….just one time it might well be the real Jim.
I have been aware of this thing for a long while now, my own limerence. Too long. And at first I felt I was too “together” to fall under the fate of it. Because while all that stuff is going on – while all the attention from Jim happened, it was so very easy to deflect it because you convince yourself that while you’re in it, if it comes to an end you’ll be fine. Nothing in this world is infinite. Nothing ever lasts forever. And even the things that seem like they do go through changes and alter over time. I really believed I’d be able to “enjoy it while it lasts”. You know?
Then when it ends. When there is, what feels like an abrupt finality to it, that’s when the true limerence kicks in. And before you know it, it consumes you. REALLY consumes you. And you continually question your ability to rationalise everything. Well, I did and still do. And no matter how much rationale or logic you apply to things, it is really, really hard to accept the unrequited. Even if you believe you will be able to handle it. That you know it is inevitable. The need. The desire. The hope. The despair. The longing. It overtakes the rationale. The logical.
I was watching a YouTube video about it last night. A woman was discussing her own case of limerence. Questioning even if she was experiencing limerence – but knowing deep within that she was. She was in a state of limerence with a man. She had been wanting a relationship with this man for several years, and when he FINALLY reaches out to her and makes contact and asks to have a conversation with this woman – she tells him she’s not in the right state of mind at the moment and can he contact her again in a few days? He never calls back.
The psychologist that was looking into it said “if the man had been interested, he’d have called back when you asked him to”. But, really? He could have just as easily been thinking “geez, this woman has been giving me these signals for YEARS, and when I finally get in contact she says ‘call me back’? What the fu…?” Or am I just continuing my own state of limerence there? Because that is how I was feeling when I heard that. I was like…”Wait up. You’d been hankering for this guy for HOW LONG? He calls you and you say “not right now. Call me back.” ARE YOU NUTS?! So…now she’s stuck. Just waiting. Not knowing how to let go. Waiting for this guy to show some interest again and just hoping.
I definitely don’t want to be wasting my life away on something like that. Thankfully, I can feel a way out. I do at least have enough respect and self-worth (just enough) to not be consumed entirely by it. But I know others have been. On the surface they look as if they haven’t been, but from one who knows, they have.
I STILL try to apply logic and rationale to my own state of limerence. “I just wish for friendship from Jim, not romantic love. I just miss ‘conversation’. And I miss the reciprocal’.” As much as I can delude myself about what I want, if he was to turn around suddenly and say “Larelle, I utterly fancy the pants off you. Run away with me?” What would I do, huh? Lol. I would hope I’d say, “Jim, have you been at the sherbet straws or what, pal?” Lol. I’d like to think I have enough rationale and logic in my brain left not to be swayed by my emotions.
The state of limerence is ssooo addictive. As addictive as the person who is the object of the limerent “desire”.
I can see how my own case went. And I think this is what I was talking about the other day when I was thinking about and discussing my handling of the breakdown of past relationships and how I came to terms with their ends quite easily.
Full honesty card laid out on the table here? I worry about what March will bring. I worry about being back in Jim’s presence. I worry about being back at a Simple Minds gig and what it will do to me, in terms of falling back into a really deep state of limerence when right now I am seeing it for what it is and trying to work my way out of it. And most of all, I feel a complete dick for having to admit to ANY of that!
I look at these walls in my room and … are they even the walls of a healthy person?
And it cycles round. “What must he think of me? Geez, I must look like a complete crackpot. No wonder he keeps his distance!” And on and on it goes. A loop. A big old endless, crazy loop.
The notion he’ll even read this post. The notion that he would even visit this blog. It’s the limerence. You don’t want to look “crazy”…but you do. I just want to cry. All of it is ssooo ridiculous.
It even has an alliterative ring to it – Limerent Larelle. Mad woman. Sad woman.
Get a life!
It’s what I am trying to do.