u/BeeBig5184

At the same time that I felt seen after discovering what limerence is, realizing that it might be more common than I thought is giving me a different kind of anxiety. My LO works with a lot of people and has an active social life… so I find myself imagining who else might be limerent for him, not just attracted. I know it doesn’t really make sense to feel jealous about that, since I’d personally hate the idea of anyone other than my LO being limerent for me. Do you ever feel like your LO might be someone else’s LO too?

I distanced myself from my LO hoping I’d heal, but I just ended up feeling even more alone. All it did was make me realize he doesn’t care about me at all, and it feels like I’ve been left to die. It’s like my life has no value, no meaning. I do have other people in my life, but you know what limerence does to a person. No matter how surrounded I am, my chest feels like this huge empty hole ever since he’s been gone.

The only thing stopping me from reaching out is knowing it would just be another way to get hurt. Knowing that my fantasy exists only in my head, that it could never be real, because everything would have to be different. For example, I can’t stand his friends, his coworkers, the people in his life… I wish I could exist in a world where they didn’t, where I could actually matter. I’ve realized that what I feel for him isn’t sexual anymore, not even really romantic... it’s this intense need to be seen, to matter to him.

I know that’s selfish, and that’s why I keep my distance. I hate all of this. It feels like there’s no way out. Like I’m going to have to fight this for the rest of my life.

I think one of the main reasons I also blame my LO for my suffering is that I’ve realized I was used throughout our entire friendship. He was very intense at the beginning... always taking me out, snapping photos wherever we went, and I felt special and loved. But when he started talking to his ex again and completely changed, I finally connected the dots. The outings, the pictures, the forced intimacy... it was all to make that other person jealous. When they got back together, he deleted every trace of us from his social media. It was like I had died. That’s where my deep resentment comes from. And of course, I also blame myself for being naive.

He brought a kind of pain that didn’t exist before, and it’s been shaping my life for over five years now. The mental exhaustion I feel is getting harder and harder to handle. I’ve tried everything you can possibly imagine, every piece of advice people share here… but I guess I’m just too weak, because nothing worked.

I feel like I’m living my life around someone else’s life, someone who doesn’t even remember me. He’s out there building real, lasting connections with people who are beautiful and interesting, and he’s clearly emotionally dependent on them. It feels like I was replaced. There’s this sense of guilt for not being 'better' like maybe it could have worked out in some other version of reality

Time doesn’t heal me, it actually deceives me. It pulls me away from the real reasons why I chose to walk away, while at the same time bringing me closer to the fantasy from the beginning. I cried like a baby today. I feel like a child who was left alone in the middle of a forest.

For a while, he was everything I had never received from anyone. He was my best friend, the one who truly saw me… and then it was over. I honestly wish I had never felt what I felt in the beginning. I would give anything to go back in time and never have met him.