Messed up Marriage

[AMA210]

Why I am letting LO fuck up my marriage? He is not doing anything actively here. I am the one who continues to pine and cry over this man, and in this process, it's clouded my judgment and continues to take me farther away from my DH and my daughter. This is about me. Always has been. What is behind this?

33 years with DH
19 months with LO, give or take, actual relationship time, about 7 months

No comparison and yet there it is

[mamasita]

I do it too. Makes me angry that the LE has the "right" to take me over like this and rob me of truly enjoying those that deserve it. And even KNOWING this, I still wake up and LO pops into my head...

[french girl]

Well, I think my limerence problem put an end to 15 years of relationship with my previous boyfriend (I think he could feel I was hiding something from him, specially when I was crying for no apparent reason...).
I'm lucky to have another partner these days, but I'm afraid he may be able to feel the problem as well (despite the crying over LO happens to me less and less...)
It seems like my new boyfriend picked up an invisibly rotten apple, with a LO-worm inside...

I had nothing to blame my previous SO for, I "loved" him as much as when I met him...
I "love" my new boyfriend as well.
I put love in quotation marks, because I'm not sure it's the appropriate term and I'm not sure what this word means...
But I'm sure that my limerence for LO is not love (it's just wasting my time over an abstract idea of that guy, which relates probably more to me than to him....)
I wouldn't even want to live with LO : I suspect him to be a really boring guy to live with (I told him he was boring last week, he seemed slightly hurt and somewhat disappointed that I could think such a thing about him...)

[marko]

So many factors, but if I have only LE kind of love, I never felt correct love for wife and think it has to be like LE and since that's young relationship infatuated love, it fails to capture what I think it should be.

Or you realized the current SO didn't quite fill the void, so your brain figured out an escape (an escape affair for some) but since we find that a bad idea, we just do a mental one.

Or I lied to myself why I should be with this person, lied about myself, tried to plug all the yuck with acceptance, figured I'm not who I thought I was and have to escape all that that is.

I too am driving myself crazy trying to figure out what and why did the LE experience shut off so much in my brain. Last spring it was in my face, now it's just a strange not wanting anything. I see LO as a ball of yes, and SO as a ball of no. It escapes form and function, just a pall over me and her. I don't even compare, I don't wish she was like the LO, I can't see her doing anything that would endear me. It just feels dead like a passerby that I never knew--so I miss nothing or long for nothing. It matters not that I see some things in me that are wrong for relationships. They feel natural even though entirely unwanted.

It's described here as selfish, and outwardly it appears so, but I think it's deeper than that. I see wounding and the lack of trust stemming from that as a pulling to self for protection. My problem is that I wounded myself, so non healing wounded me only sees the protection as good--protection from self.

Are some of us addicted to this as some are "more" addicted to their addictions? I feel that more to LE than the specific LO.

Maybe the brain is trying to kill the people that it thinks is keeping it from the LE drug.

[Chuck]

Marriages aren't perfect things. Spouses have flaws. They have expectations and make demands. They get old. We get old.

LE is is a perfect world of rainbows and unicorns where the sun shines everyday and this special special person (or at least the falsely idealized image we create of them) will love us just the way we are. Once we are together, all of life's other problems will go away. It's a place to hide from reality.
Even when my rational brain was telling me that I was delusional, my limerbrain was quite insistent that THIS was the solution to everything. I know LO has flaws, but they don't matter. In fact, some of them become endearing qualities unique to her character.

I would have followed her anywhere if she had only asked. Thankfully, she didn't.

[AMA210]

Marriages aren't perfect things. Spouses have flaws. They have expectations and make demands. They get old. We get old.

LE is is a perfect world of rainbows and unicorns where the sun shines everyday and this special special person (or at least the falsely idealized image we create of them) will love us just the way we are. Once we are together, all of life's other problems will go away. It's a place to hide from reality.
Even when my rational brain was telling me that I was delusional, my limerbrain was quite insistent that THIS was the solution to everything. I know LO has flaws, but they don't matter. In fact, some of them become endearing qualities unique to her character.

I would have followed her anywhere if she had only asked. Thankfully, she didn't.

Absolutely agree!!

[L-F]

.

[David]

If you were not being distracted by your LO what would you be working on?

[AMA210]

If you were not being distracted by your LO what would you be working on?

Hmmm, if there was no LO, I would be at the same place as before -- which is no realization that anything needs fixing.

[David]

If you were not being distracted by your LO what would you be working on?

Hmmm, if there was no LO, I would be at the same place as before -- which is no realization that anything needs fixing.

What i meant was if you were not getting distracted by thoughts of your LO, what challenges in your life would you be thinking about?