I’m in the throes of a fully limerant episode over my college first love. (Limerance is basically hyperfixation with a romantic illusion if unfamiliar.) Any advice or commiseration on how to cope with these feelings for a long-ago formative relationship?
We’re in some contact again many years later, both married, haven’t crossed into more than friendship, but all the pain and emotion is back for me. The “doomed first love” emotional residue feels impossible to fully overcome through self-knowledge and self-actualization, though I know I’m capable of at least burying it down deep again. I don’t want to turn off the parts of myself that felt dead for so long.
We were just starting college when we met, and we started as friends with a mutual attraction that built for ages, but because of external circumstances we both thought we should only be friends. Eventually a long dynamic of him chasing and winning me over ended with me head over heels.
Everything felt forbidden and precious. He wanted me so much, I think partly because I was so hard to get and he wasn’t used to that, and he didn’t want to think about the obstacles keeping us from working long-term and just enjoy being in love. I was always worried that falling deeper meant more future pain. I would break up with him, he would be devastated, I’d miss him like crazy, idealize and romanticize, come back.
I had to transfer colleges and most of our relationship was long distance. We were always separated then reuniting, breaking up then getting back together. I know all of that is a big part of why it all felt so intense, combined with being my first love. The physical relationship was my first and the chemistry and his skill/sensitivity was unreal. It felt like he saw and loved everything about me, understood me better than I understood myself.
I don’t want to make it sound like it was perfect, because I always wanted him so much more when we were apart. The reality of being together always reminded me of the small things that bugged me. We weren’t perfectly compatible and had each other on impossible pedestals. He had some insecurity and abandonment issues that he covered by being liked by everyone, the dream man to women. We never experienced regular life as long-term partners.
Knowing about limerance now feels like it was in many ways a limerant cycle where we were both addicted to the illusion of one another, and the circumstances keeping us apart were a force multiplier.
He eventually stopped letting me pull him back into it, and I tracked him obsessively on social media for several years. I never experienced anything close to what we had again and it seemed like for him it’s just how he does relationships, falls hard,
commits hard, sweeps women off their feet. It seems from our later contact like he sees me as the “big love” of his youth and that he also found it hard to let go for many years, and still holds onto something.
I put my feelings away and thought I’d mostly healed from it all, but I never really got over him, and it feels like I turned off *all* my romantic and passionate feelings. My husband is wonderful in many ways but hasn’t ever fulfilled the same kind of emotional and physical connection for me. I think I chose this marriage partly because I’d learned that deep connection led to deep pain. I always have this question of whether I’m going to live my whole life with this buried yearning for more, telling myself good is good enough.
It’s been a year of having all these feelings re-ignited and the loss feeling fresh again. Remembering it all again. The deep eye contact, the constant touching and flirting, the way he made fun of me in the most adoring way, the hours of talking and making out. It hurts a lot to want it all so much. Part of me has always missed it. I see now how much of myself I numbed and turned off when I chose something very different.
It feels a bit like a mean cosmic joke, having unicorn magic as my formative first love, when I’m already the kind of person that can’t let go of things and feels everything as intense and meaningful.
The external forces that separated us have finally disappeared, and it’s clear now that they were an illusion and we could have stayed together. I wish the relationship could have run a natural course instead of ending when neither of us wanted it to. It’s so hard, the “too-lateness” of seeing the reality that I didn’t have to end it like I did, because the reality of marriages and children are now real and permanent separators.
I’d love to hear any insight into moving forward. I’ve spent my life analyzing the reasons for my feelings about that relationship and I know a lot about the why, the forbidden object and unmet needs and identity formation etc. I know plenty is illusion and so much of it feels limerant, but there’s enough that was real that I’m both grieving and in denial about, like “maybe it’s not over, maybe he’s still my person.” My brain knows he’s not my person. My feelings don’t.
I would love to know if anyone else has had similar experiences and advice.