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Love, Infatuation, Obsession, Limerance

la_sirena
Posts: 150
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(@la_sirena)
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Joined: 7 years ago

I just found out about limerence, a term coined by psychologist, Dorothy Tennov in the late 70's ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Tennov); She wrote a book about it called, "Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love" I plan on reading it ASAP. 

It seems to shed a lot of light on what I put myself through, and I am posting it incase anyone else reading here has to deal with limerence.  Supposedly, her book teaches you how to heal these tendencies or at least transform them.  

Here is a YouTube video explaining what limerence is:

 

Read the Components section:  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence

It eerily describes the torment I have been through in detail and it feels validating to read. I think I read something about it a decade ago but ignored it.  I must have not been ready to hear it.  I'm thrilled to have discovered this.  It is what I have lived to a T. Anyone know about it?  

And, I can't wait to learn how this relates to attachment theory.  

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(@wintermoon)
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Joined: 10 years ago

New name for something old. A strong brew, Venus, Pluto, Neptune, throw in some Mercury, Moonlight and Uranus. 

venusplutoneptunemercurymoonuranus

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la_sirena
Posts: 150
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(@la_sirena)
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Joined: 7 years ago

Yep, Venus, Pluto, Neptune here.  Neptune/Moon. Uranus, Jup, Merc. 

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(@astroworld27)
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Joined: 6 years ago

Very interesting. I have & do experience this but never knew there was a word to explain.

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la_sirena
Posts: 150
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(@la_sirena)
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Joined: 7 years ago

It sucks.  I've struggled with it daily for all of my life.  My limerence originally started out as an intense longing for my father and a fantasy of my parents miraculaously getting back together. My father fed the fantasy... every other weekend I visited him and he would lament over my mom. I rememebr trying to convince her to take him back and her rejecting my pleas. As a result of this, and her absorbtion in a man that she supposedly had an affair with an left my father for, and the resulting emotional isolation I felt, I villainized her as a child. She was emotionally unavailable and cold and I grew up in a prison of sorts, totally isolated in my own fantasies.

I grew up with a huge hole in my heart that never went away.  The limerence for my father was transferred to a man I met and fell in love with at first sight, when I was 19.  The limerence is still there and I don't think it will ever go away.  I have contemplated suicide often in my life because life just feels so unfulfilling most of the time.  It is a constant struggle.  It's not light...not a simple infatuation...it is a way of living, it permeates your every waking thought, it is hell, really.

These days I am trying to put my focus on achievement and staying busy, but at the end of the day, I still fall back into this pathology of mine.  The more I try to focus on the outer, the more cut off I feel from my inner world that nourishes and sustains me (I am Pisces after and all Neptunian and 8th house dominant).  I thrive in the inner world and yet, somehow my inner world is what hurts me the most.  I dont really know whats better..feeling pain or feeling nothing at all. 

Sometimes I can balance it somewhat, but lately I am struggling with it.  I'll be okay though, I just have to snap out of it.

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Tam
Posts: 172
 Tam
(@tam)
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Joined: 15 years ago

I think a lot of people have done this at some point. I did once, it was terrible like being possessed. What helps me the most is saying to myself that if someone is supposed to be in my life then God will make it happen. If not then I'm blocking the blessing of the person that is supposed to be with me by constantly thinking of someone that isn't supposed to be with me.

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