:((

[Angel]

Dear WM,

Definitely feeling your pain, and my heart reaches out to you. I have been in the deepest depression of my life over LO, though it has not been as dramatic as your story has been. You’ve been through heavy emotional trauma, for years now. Hurting people hurt others. I cannot determine whether or not your actions are tantamount to ER, but it doesn’t help to be dwelling on that.

But you are owning up to it and taking accountability for your life. Hoping that you are able to dig deep and work out some of that trauma through therapy and prayer.

I’ve been loathing myself too, but I get daily reminders that no matter how horrible I’ve been, that God loves me, period. He’s forgiven me, and it’s been arrogant and prideful of me not to forgive myself. God shows me in small ways - especially through my DDs. Try to be present for her. In your posts, it’s clear she brings some sunshine into your life.

Keeping you in my prayers.

[Pattihopeful]

.

[Ivanhoe]

WM,

To play lawyer:

“Emotional rape can be defined as
1) extreme abuse
2) of emotional intimacy,
brought about by
3) intentional psychological or emotional coercion or manipulation”.

Personally,i dislike the expansion of horrific terms like murder, rape, lynching, etc to include drastically less egregious behavior. Doing so devalues these terms.

Of course Context is critical. I suspect we are all guilty of #3 to some degree. But 1 & 2 take the acts of being an a$&@ole, Very needy person or insensitive jerk, bad as those things are, out of the definition - saving the term for the truly horrific gaslighting and other forms. .

I would suggest that the effects of ER, by definition, cannot be alleviated by Total NC from the perpetrator, but rather require extensive professional intervention and very long-term recovery. Otherwise (I am thinking this in real time so could be wrong) the term ER no longer connotes anything except the neurosis (shame and guilt) of the party using the term

[L-F]

Hi PH, there is a lot of growth in your post. Good to read and really pleased for you.

It sounds like your LO is trying to be boundaried. I remember when I started coming out of the fog, I realised that the notion that LO was playing with my feelings was irrelevant. That's because I placed it on the 'unconscious' level, I mean, I dont think LO consciously toiled with my emotions. I believe it all happens unconsciously from both sides, until that is, one becomes obsessed. Then it becomes scary for LO.

Otherwise (I am thinking this in real time so could be wrong) the term ER no longer connotes anything except the neurosis (shame and guilt) of the party using the term

This is actually a really good topic to unpack. I'm not sure there is a lot known about it. I'd love a psychologist to explain if there are any on this forum. That's why I've been hunting for a better term, one that has solid research supporting it.

“Emotional rape can be defined as
1) extreme abuse
2) of emotional intimacy,
brought about by
3) intentional psychological or emotional coercion or manipulation”.

Okay this is serious sh!t
We should all be charging our parents!

But in terms of LO and limerence, I'm not sure it fits. I'm thinking more along the lines of emotional vampires and mother-in-laws, not sociopaths.

Again, there must be a spectrum.

[JupiterTaco]

I don't think this situation falls under ER, but I may just not understand the meaning of it well enough (the description is quite vague). I also may have to go back and reread WM's story over, but otherwise I would think ER would describe manipulations by more hardcore PD-types who know what they're doing, plan it, do it, know the effect it has, have no remorse and it's a pattern for them.

[Watchmaker]

***PLEASE DON’T COPY OR QUOTE***


(here’s an excerpt from my earlier epic post on another thread - now deleted)

LO and I were friends for 5 years (neighbors). We spent quite an amount of time together, and gave a good amount of attention to each other.

LE exploded for me this year while my marriage with SO was concurrently falling apart in accelerated fashion.

A few months ago, I disclosed to LO. I completely freaked her out by saying I was addicted to her.

Before, during, and after disclosure I had taken to an increasingly excessive walking of laps around the block (passing LO’s house in the process). In large part, I was walking for something constructive and distracting while I was trying to process all the emotional storms coalescing in my life... also I was getting exercise and lost 30 lbs over 2 months, along with the dopamine/depression cycle diet plan... but also the walking was indeed also at times with the hopes that I might have an opportunity to reconnect with LO and attempt to explain things and/or make amends.

In addition to the walking, I also used to descend upon LO or interrupt her while talking with others in the neighborhood. But again, this was not unreasonable or uncommon as we were friends for 5 years that spent a lot of time together. This was often when I had my DD with me, and LO had her DD with her, and my daughter would like to see them. Sure, I was a pushover to play along for a chance to see and/or talk to LO, but it wasn’t as if it was always a pre-meditated thing, or without a valid reason or excuse to approach her.

She’d previously told me I was being overprotective of her... and she said it seemed like every time she turned around, there I was and it was cree ping her out, like I was stal king her.

But I wasn’t following, staring, peeping tom, surveilling, intimidating, threatening, or any such thing. I might concede that some of my behavior was bordering on stal kish… but not genuine stal king.

Ultimately, LO eventually rejected me asking for NC and for me to not walk the standard lap that took me past her house.

Some weeks back, my SO and my LO were texting and calling each other – their friendship seemingly carrying on. SO told me that LO felt bad about having to put up such strong boundaries with me. SO also said she thought the friendship with me and LO would come back around again.

This gave me hope, and so I broke NC after one month by sending LO a short and sweet email. Nothing crazy.

A day or two after, SO and I walked a few laps around the block. (GASP!)

A mutual neighbor friend texted me saying that LO was pissed to have gotten an email from me, and that SO and I walked by her house. LO texted SO with some story that at the time of her Rejection and asking for NC/boundaries, I had promised her I wouldn’t walk anymore, regardless of who it was with. I made no such promise. In fact, LO had said she wouldn’t tell me what I could/could not do walking with my family, but she was strongly preferring/asking me to walk elsewhere. Upon LO’s rejection, I had stopped the walking for the better part of a month.

This other mutual neighbor friend, who was liaising and trying to be a peacemaker on both sides, said LO was so pissed and that she was TERRIFIED of me, and I need to let it go, I won’t get the friendship back, I have to count my losses, etc. TERRIFIED?... Like I’m some cross between Jeffrey Dahmer and Adolph Hitler?!?!? LO and I were friends for 5 years.

I’m so terrifiying… I so cree ped her out… I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to walk by her house anymore.

But here’s the thing: what kills me is that LO kept coming around my place by hanging out at other nearby neighbors. If you don’t want to see me so bad, then why the hell do you keep coming around?!?!? I can’t walk around the block and pass your house, but you can come and show your face over here all the time? LO, is it YOU who can’t stay away now? My family and I would be at mutual neighbor’s house – already hanging out there – and LO would pull up and get out and talk to the neighbor for 10-20 minutes. Insanely awkward, waiting for her to leave, her back to me but also occasional eye contact. She’d pop over at another neighbor’s house… and another neighbor’s house... and another neighbor's house - all in close proximity and in sight from my house! She would also drive by my house to get to one mutual neighbor friends, except taking the route past my house was out of her way and longer than if she came from the other side... Hmm... All of this propinquity is the devil for a limerent! One night she was walking by on foot with a couple of her kids… in seeing that I was already at mutual neighbor’s house with my daughter, LO and her kids ever so slowly, looking at us, proceeded on down the sidewalk and literally stopped in the darkness of the shadows, and just stood there lurking in the shadows until my daughter and I left. Then she came back to hang with mutual neighbor. Who is cree py now? Who is lurking now? Who is exhibiting stal king behavior now??

My anger had been mounting up towards/at LO week by week, day by day with what felt like hurt and offense she passively aggressively hurled at me.

A few Sundays ago, SO and I came home from church, and there was LO and her kids hanging out across the street at mutual neighbor’s house again.

I began to be livid. Ironically, it was now me who was getting sick of what seemed like LO's hypocrisy and double standars... sick and tired of seeing LO by my house all the time… pissed off at this idea that she’s ‘terrified’ of me… telling me where I can’t walk… But she was basically continually rubbing it in my face and flaunting her freedom to do whatever she damn well pleases, while keeping me imprisoned/enslaved. Sorry, but you don’t own the neighborhood!

SO went across the street to talk with LO. They went on down the sidewalk a bit to chat privately. My wife shared that she’d had the 5 affairs, and opened up about this to LO. LO shared that she told her husband everything about me. It sounds like he was/is more angry with her than with me. Interesting. SO tried to find out if LO was going to let me out of purgatory, but LO kept coming back to saying, ‘but you don’t understand… he said he’s ADD ICTED to me!!! Do you know what that’s like?... We can’t just be friends anymore!' (side note: I guess in whatever language you use when disclosing to an LO, don’t EVER use the “A” word, add icted). LO also wanted to entice/influence my SO to play the ‘girls club’ card and commiserate over ‘bad husbands’ concluding that I must be a bad guy, and abusive like LO’s husband. But my SO said, no he’s (I’m) not like that. SO ended their conversation by saying to LO: if I want to save my marriage with Watchmaker, I don’t think you and I can be friends anymore LO. LO said, come on, it doesn’t have to be like that.

SO then came back across the street and we went inside to talk. SO and I were both in a bad way that day, and it was like the devil had us. We were both worked up with anger – not only wrestling and struggling with a whole other range of various marital issues coming to a head this year – but also as relates to LO, we were realizing that, strangely, for both of us it was coming down to either choosing LO, or each other (in a manner of speaking), and being angry that it had come down to this. SO and I messed things up grandly on our own. But now LO was complicating things, and upsetting and offending both of us. We took a walk – a rebellious act – going past LO. We came back, and got in the car to head out on some errands. I must have been at a breaking point, because what I did next was absolutely one of the dumbest, and biggest A-hole moves I ever made.

In a fit of brilliance, as we were pulling out and driving by the neighbor’s where LO was, I turned on the stereo, and BLASTED “Every Breath You Take” by the Pol ice. And of course, this is universally known as… the stal ker song!

So inciting and incendiary was this for LO, that she blew up and exploded in a Chernobyl-worthy meltdown of epic proportions!!! Like Nicole Kidman multiplied to the Nth degree power of Meryl Streep couldn't have captured this level of drama. Not to say that she was acting... it was all to real, that it was surreal. LO began yelling and screaming at the top of her lungs to me, "in a tapestry of obscenity that is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan today." The string of epithets she hurled at me was really something.

This was such an epic meltdown, the likes of which I doubt had ever been seen or heard before, and nor ever will again. A 20 on a scale of 10.

Upon hearing her yelling and screaming, I had pulled over into another driveway, about 100 feet past where she was.

Just some of the things she shouted to me included:
* YOU’RE FUCKING PSYCHOTIC!!!!!
* I FEEL SORRY FOR YOUR FUCKING WIFE!!!!!
* I’LL GET A REST RAINING OR DER ON YOUR ASS!!!!!
* I WILL FUCK YOUR SHIT UP!!!!!
* I’M GONNA TAKE YOU DOWN!!!!!
* I’M GONNA TAKE YOU OUT!!!!
* LOOK AT HIM… KEEP STARING MOTHERFUCKER… I’M GONNA RUN OVER THERE AND HIT HIM!!!!!

Yeah… I’m the psychotic one?…

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!

She threatened my safety and well being!

Her look, posture, tone, demeanor, and words were seriously and unequivocally downright MURDEROUS!

~

Soooooo... was I stal king her?... Was playing the song ER?


***PLEASE DON’T COPY OR QUOTE***

[L-F]

I don't think this situation falls under ER, but I may just not understand the meaning of it well enough (the description is quite vague). I also may have to go back and reread WM's story over, but otherwise I would think ER would describe manipulations by more hardcore PD-types who know what they're doing, plan it, do it, know the effect it has, have no remorse and it's a pattern for them.

That's the thing. I don't think anyone who commits ER actually knows they are doing it thus can't plan it. But again, and not trying to make light of the repercussions/consequences, ER sounds a bit hocus-pocusey. But I think a lot has to do with no solid research. So yes, I agree it can happen but to what extent? I mean, emotional abuse happens all the time by parental figures, yet I wouldn't call them ray pists.

It's an interesting topic which deserves a thread of it's own so as to educate us on what it really is. I don't doubt it happens. Besides, if an unconscious act, then David could explain more? I wonder if this is something that Jung touches on?

My initial understanding was that it went along the lines of someone saying something creepy with a sexualised overtone and eyes that linger a bit too long, to the point you feel ray ped but not physically. Maybe? Or again, the person who drains your energy like a mother-in-law???

I give up. Who knows. Just don't do it, whether you are aware of it or not.

WM, focus on yourself and your family. Stay strong!

[L-F]

Sorry to say this. You are both acting like children.

Forget ER, forget her role, who cares if she visits her neighbors - she has every right to. Forget the past and move forward.

I have to ask WM, are you angry at her? Angry at limerence? Or angry that it got to this point and you can't be friends?

[JupiterTaco]

I don't think this situation falls under ER, but I may just not understand the meaning of it well enough (the description is quite vague). I also may have to go back and reread WM's story over, but otherwise I would think ER would describe manipulations by more hardcore PD-types who know what they're doing, plan it, do it, know the effect it has, have no remorse and it's a pattern for them.

That's the thing. I don't think anyone who commits ER actually knows they are doing it thus can't plan it.

You're serious? Love-bombing is emotional rape. Triangulation is emotional rape. Negging is emotional rape. Devaluing is emotional rape. Grooming is emotional rape!
People know they're doing these things.

[L-F]

Then they'd be sociopaths, not your everyday jo blogs. I'm guessing most LS are everyday jo blogs. But then, I have seen some LS love-bomb their LO.