I've really outdone myself this time

[Struck613]

I'm a serial limerent, and even in the course of my time here on this forum (I joined in 2017) have gone through a few different LOs. The last 18 months or so, I've actually been in a pretty good place and aside from a few minor slip ups here or there have basically been limerence free in that time. Well, I'm starting to fall back into it now, and I really think I've outdone myself with this one.

I'm a serial limerent, but I'm also serially single (those two definitely go hand in hand for me. I am limerent to help fill the void/as an excuse for being single). I know many on the forums are in relationships, so I'm not sure how relatable it will be to others but I've been active on dating apps lately and matched with someone recently. After we matched, I looked over her profile and thought to myself we didn't have much in common and actually it looked like we wouldn't be a great match. The next day, I thought I might as well message her because I thought she's one of the prettiest matches I ever got on the app so I'd at least say something even though I continued to believe we wouldn't be a good match.

We ended up messaging back and forth a couple times and at that point I committed my cardinal sin of being limerent, which is looking someone up online. Her name and job are both uncommon enough that I was very easily able to find her and spiral from there. We exchanged a few more messages (but very surface level), I asked her out, she never answered and the conversation died there. On the surface, that's not really out of the ordinary for dating apps, but I haven't been able to let this one go even though my literal first thought about this person was "we don't seem compatible."

I say I've outdone myself this time because I've never been limerent for a complete stranger before. It's also tricky because I already asked her out and that was what killed the conversation, so it's hard to rationally have any hope that anything will happen but I'm still thinking about her 24/7. I also don't like that I found her social media so easily because that will just make it harder to move on.

I don't know, you'd think it would be easy to let go of someone you've only seen pictures of, only exchanged a few very high level messages with, who you don't think is compatible with you to begin with, and who cut off communication because I expressed the slightest bit of interest. But I've been down this road before and I know how I feel when I start getting limerent for someone new and this is showing all those signs.

[L-F]

Limerence can inhibit our ability to think clearly and logically that's fo sho!

What have you done in the past to overcome LEs (since you've said you've had several)? If it's a case of letting them fade away with time and you have been okay with that strategy, I guess you don't need to stress given that this too will fade away. What has been your biggest obstacle while limerent?