Limerence and asking for our needs to be met

 Its taken me five years of hard hard work in therapy to get to the place where i now appreciate (and more importantly feel) how much my limerence stems from early life issues.

A recent learning has been how I still find hard to ask for my emotional needs to be met. Yesterday we learned our 5 year old dog may have to be put down and my SO is consumed by grief. Once again, just like when her dad died (when my limerence kicked off) , I get lost in her grief. He was my pet as well and im hurting, he was my father-in-law and i was fond of him. Because i didn’t know how to show vulnerability and ask for help I sought refuge in the fantasy of limerence, hoping LO would give me the love that i just never got from my own mother.

Ive dealt with some truly horrific stuff as a doctor, in my trauma business i’ve supported families through real shit, Ive carried my father’s holocaust trauma all my life and yet all through this, i’ve just got on with it. More latterly i have got help in therapy and at college. Yesterday in group work a simple question asked by our facilitator of “and what do you need now David?” brought me to the appreciation how hard I still find it to ask for my emotional needs to be met, how to let others in to sooth and comfort me. I exclude LO within that soothing and comforting as I know the answers are not within her, they are within me.The desire to reach out to her has quelled although i continue to remain hyper-boundaried around her as Im feeling vulnerable at the moment and i dont need her unconsciousness acting out with me.

Sorry to bring it back to me but thats all I can go by based on my own journey, and many many discussions in therapy, group therapy and with people far more experienced in matters of relationship. For us to grown we have to turn inwards and to do that work you will need a sage/guru/mentor/therapist who has travelled further down that path to help you. The work cant be done by reading books or contributing here, although can help. The answers are not within our LO’s they are within us.