Shedding Limerence

sweet habits die hard

I’ve been that friend who introduces people to limerence like it’s a new podcast they need to know about.

Leaning into it, I’m writing yet another piece on this fantastically exquisite, incredibly destabilizing experience of being intensely infatuated with someone whose reciprocation is uncertain or…nonexistent.

Many sources identify limerence as a sad side effect of an empty life. For me, it’s something older and more intelligent than that; rooted in migration, imagination, and mucho grief.

Deep roots

I’ve read many times the idea that limerence happens when your life isn’t interesting enough. That people with flat lives resort to limerent fantasy. Perhaps that’s true for some.

It isn’t true for me. My days are made up of meaningful work, spacious creative playtime, learning, community and unprecedented freedom. Yet still, limerence has built many other worlds in me. Its roots go deeper.

Francis Weller writes in The Wild Edge of Sorrow about the grief that comes from generations who migrated and left beloveds and land behind. Ancestors who found it difficult to sustain traditions that had nourished their people for hundreds or thousands of years.

“They lived betwixt and between the Old and the New worlds, attempting to create something that would enable them to endure. Without the protective shelter of the village, they often coped in ways that created a secondary layer of suffering: alcoholism, isolation, rage, and a restrictive silence that cut them off from the living support of others.”

When the village dissolves, the human psyche improvises.
Some of us drink, or go silent, or rage.
Some of us fantasize. And I’ve built a bakery from breadcrumbs.

When my parents crossed oceans to the U.S., sight unseen, with two small kids, they were crafting a life from scratch. Love and effort were present, but capacity was sorely limited. Mom applied for a Green Card to escape a prison of being the first daughter-in-law in a patriarchal, paternalist home. Before that, my ancestors moved through Apartheid South Africa after migrating from India, living inside systems that severed belonging and put us against each other. Loneliness and fragmentation flow through our bloodline. Do you relate to this, dear reader?

My nervous system learned early that love comes in pieces. I got incredibly creative and resourceful with intermittent attention and affection; I baked up the crumbs into dozens of ooey gooey chocolate croissants, even if they were holographic.

In my therapeutic work with clients, we actively refuse to reduce systemic or ancestral wounds to personal character flaws. Migration, patriarchy, racialized isolation, displacement; these are not individual failures. They are environments that shape our nervous systems. Coping through fantasy, collapse, overachievement, addiction, emotional distance is…adaptation, and resilience.

Adaptive intelligence

Limerence is both an imaginative adaptation and a protective habit. It’s the ability to take bits of relational information and construct a fully safe habitat. Its social intelligence turned inward. Entire conversations, emotional arcs, visionary futures…without negotiating anyone else’s traumas.

Today, children who have invisible friends are called creative. But for decades, psychologists considered imaginary companions a red flag and a sign of loneliness or pathology. More recent research connects having imaginary friends to advanced social skills, verbal fluency, and creativity. Limerence is not so different; adult imaginary friends…but with spicier chemistry.

There have been moments when fantasy was the only place I felt fully chosen, desired and prioritized. The external world didn’t always offer that in ways I felt capable of receiving, so I gave it to myself in the comfort of my jersey sheets.

After my divorce five years ago, limerence became my chocolate fudge every night after dinner. Sweetness and excitement when real life felt too vulnerable. A pleasure that’s indulgently protected me from rejection, but has also kept me from the discipline of intimacy.

True costs

This Year of the Snake has been…confronting. Showing me the grave restrictions of this sweet, sweet habit.

Limerence has isolated me. It’s kept me inside the echo chambers of my projections. It turns real people into characters in a private screenplay. No one can live up to a fantasy version of themselves. And I remain disconnected because I was never relating to them as they are.

Three and a half years into recovery, I keep seeing the layers of my addiction beyond substance. I see the trappings of dopamine. The high of anticipation. The self-administered intensity…like binging Heated Rivalry or The Handmaid’s Tale.

While limerence was an intelligent adaptation at one point, the current truth is, I’m not the little girl needing to turn crumbs into fake feasts anymore. I have a village of real and available love in my life. And a nervous system that can tolerate reality.

As long as I am energetically entangled with fantasy, I am not fully available for the beautiful, messy people and opportunities beaming right in front of me.

Shedding layers

I’ve been peeling off the safe skins of limerence. Not in a straight line or one-and-done kind of way, but in steady spiral upward. These are the practices I return to daily as I expand the capacity of my attachment system.

I make the choice to let it go

I could keep living inside limerence and enjoy the safety of my fantasies. I could just consult with Chad the chatbot and let it validate me forever. I could meet people on the apps who scratch the itch and never ask anything deeper of me. “Intimacy” without vulnerability is rampant.

But I want the gritty, magical work of slowly building and tending real, multi-dimensional connections. Co-regulating with other nervous systems, navigating conflict and allowing it to deepen the spirit of our relations. In a time of fast hook-ups and hyper-simulation, this feels quietly countercultural.

I notice the hooks

Limerence still works its way in easily, sometimes vividly, sometimes subtly. Anyone else hooked on visions of a private show from Bad Bunny where he is wearing his Calvin Kleins and hablando en español de su pasión por Puerto Rico?!

I don’t demonize the fantasies. Sometimes I’ll give myself five minutes in the shower to let it play out. When it arises, I see it, I enjoy it.

But I’m refusing to let it run my attachment system. I tenderly recognize the younger part of me that turned to this strategy for excitement and care. This often softens the hook.

I grieve the highs

Shedding is progressive. And grief is part of it.

Fantasy gives me control, safety, fast intensity without relational risk or negotiation. I’m warm in my soft bedsheets while ecstatic-dancing in Bali with a tall, dark, and handsome man who mirrors my hips perfectly. And then I’m introducing him to my parents and we’re taking a family vacay to Puerto Escondido.

Reality gives me ambiguity, unpredictability, even actual mutuality. We have fun dancing, but his breath smells like garlic and I keep awkwardly stepping on his toes. Then we plan to meet for dinner 3 weeks later due to our busy schedules and work travel.

Limerence is operatic and protects me from being ordinary in love. But real love is woven together by ordinary moments. I’ve had to grieve the version of myself who needs to get flooded with a cinematic overwhelm in relationships. I’ve had to grieve the high, and the safety.

In early recovery from weed, my taste buds dulled. I remember eating the most colorful, saucy avocado toast and eggs, and it all tasted…bleh. Over time, subtlety returned and thankfully, flavors grew nuanced again.

Shedding limerence has been similar. Without fantasy spikes, the mundane can feel theatrically…bleh. Choosing to let go is trusting that in the boredom, something steadier is growing.

I give it up to God

When the fantasy loops keep playing or it feels too scary to let it go, I enlist the support of my higher powers. When my human will falls short, which is often does, I let the divine hold it with me.

I give my imagination to prayer instead of projection. I write down what I need to let go of and then burn it ceremonially. I speak out to a Redwood what I need to release and leave it for compost.

I value the actual data

Do I feel safe with them or just activated? Have we exchanged more than ten meaningful words? Are they clearly in love with someone else? Have weeks passed without any real effort from them to connect?

Limerence thrives on ambiguity, and clarity pops that bubble real quick.

I engage with reality

This is the hardest part because at the least, it requires my non-judgmental observation, and at most, my bold authenticity.

So, I’ve invited them out to tea or a walk; and realized that they’re not capable of transparent communication about what they’re even available for.
Pop!

I’ve asked them direct questions; and scared them away after inquiring about their stances on feminism and Palestine.
Pop!

I’ve let conversations unfold in daylight; and learned that they too love their limerent escapades, but are choosing to stay there.
Pop!

Testing reality only works when I am more committed to truth than to the high. And sometimes, I backslide. I retreat to bed and feast on the safe, controlled crumbs of my fantasies. Hence the spiral, and the progressive practice of choosing to let it go, giving it up to God, and grieving…again and again.

So what’s here after some shedding?

Peace and quiet. A vast imaginal realm that’s occasionally filled with dramatic monologues about dying alone. Also, a fire to be bold in my real life.

I’m acclimating my nervous system to desire that moves at the pace of trust, not obsession. I’m clarifying reality with my observation and micro-courageous actions. I’m letting my longing occupy its rightful place not as a key ingredient for holographic baking, but a portal back to myself and to God.

And you, lovely reader, what’s your relationship to limerence?

Upcoming Offerings

These are some spaces where I’m metabolizing the feels, and practicing compassion, creativity, and care alongside our marches and mutual aid and other forms of activism.

Sliding scale is available, a couple spaces are open for energy exchange.

I’ll be at Bioneers this year holding a session on Coloring for Compassion and Inter-Being, with the Compassion in Times of Fascism Coloring Book.

I still have openings for a couple new clients in 1:1 Creative Alchemy sessions. To help our alchemical bodies access its inherent, illogical and creative intelligence needed right now. Let’s chat.