I know a lot of people think that these are the reasons we are prone to limerence in the first place, but they don't seem to work for me and a few others. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas or insight for those of us who don't seem to fit the bill in these areas.
Fulfillment of needs-- I don't think it applies. I get limerence when I'm doing well, when I feel comfortable, when I'm really enjoying life and feeling that sense of purpose and belonging in the world, when I'm excited to be alive. Why should I want to screw that up? What am I lacking? A relationship? I'm a loner by nature and so don't mind being alone. I don't really look for relationships. Independence is great by me. I mean, I wouldn't mind having someone else there, but it's not a necessary priority. Until limerence. It kills me to be so uncharacteristically dependent on someone else. My personality gets all warped.
Childhood attachment patterns...I don't buy into that either. As far as I know, I had a normal childhood. Stay at home mom, dad who worked but came home and spent time with us. No abuse. No drinking. No cheating. No divorce. My parents smoked, that's about as extreme as it gets. :D I don't feel I was neglected in any way.
What about genetics? Can't we just be predisposed to limerence or something? We can be predisposed to anything these days, lol. In that vein--my mom has told me she once had what sounds like a limerent episode. Maybe it's passed down...
Fulfillment of needs-- I don't think it applies. I get limerence when I'm doing well, when I feel comfortable, when I'm really enjoying life and feeling that sense of purpose and belonging in the world, when I'm excited to be alive. Why should I want to screw that up? What am I lacking? A relationship? I'm a loner by nature and so don't mind being alone. I don't really look for relationships. Independence is great by me. I mean, I wouldn't mind having someone else there, but it's not a necessary priority. Until limerence. It kills me to be so uncharacteristically dependent on someone else. My personality gets all warped.
Childhood attachment patterns...I don't buy into that either. As far as I know, I had a normal childhood. Stay at home mom, dad who worked but came home and spent time with us. No abuse. No drinking. No cheating. No divorce. My parents smoked, that's about as extreme as it gets. :D I don't feel I was neglected in any way.
What about genetics? Can't we just be predisposed to limerence or something? We can be predisposed to anything these days, lol. In that vein--my mom has told me she once had what sounds like a limerent episode. Maybe it's passed down...
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Re: Fulfillment of Needs, Childhood Attachment Patterns?
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 10:37 AMYeah, the "parental disapproval" theory doesn't work for me either. I don't think my parents have ever spoken a disapproving word to me; I was always a very sheltered and coddled only child. I know I've often thought that I'm very sensitive to rejection because I never really faced it at home when I was young; I could do no wrong. In some people that breeds confidence, but it did the opposite for me. When I'm criticized or rejected I take it especially hard. But that doesn't explain why I seem to seek out rejection, why I stew over it so much.
I'm a loner too by most people's standards, although there have been times in my life when I've found myself more isolated than I really wanted to be (this is one of them). And while I don't feel like I NEED an SO (and I'm certainly not the kind of person who would rather be in a bad relationship than none at all), my idea of the good life does include a few good friends and a fulfilling relationship.
As for genetics, I seem to have a very similar emotional makeup to my dad in some ways-- he too is very sensitive to slights, hard on himself, prone to feelings of depression and alienation (and he was an adored only son, too). As far as I know he's never been through anything like limerence, although even if he has I don't think it's the kind of thing he would talk to me about. -
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Re: Fulfillment of Needs, Childhood Attachment Patterns?
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 5:03 PMFrank: I'm not sure what this "parental disapproval" theory is - I've never heard of it. The stuff I was talking about in the NC thread was unfulfilled childhood needs.
That hypersensitivity to rejection that you speak of is a perfect example of it. I have that in my personality too, and it turns out to be a huge part of the emotional difficulties I've had in my life. It doesn't come from nowhere! It's not genetic. It's a direct outcome of how our parents raised us. I'm not saying they meant to f*** us up, but in cases like yours and mine, that's the outcome.
I'm not sure how old you are, but I've reached my 40s now. In my 20s, I really had no clue about any of this stuff. I probably would have rejected these ideas out of hand like you have. In my 30s, I started to question why I was so sensitive to criticism and prone to depression. It took until this year to start to see how my relationship with my mother was the real source of many of my major wounds.
It's complicated to explain my own story, and I'm not sure I really want to record it so publicly. Suffice to say, it took a long time before I was ready to face the truth - about who I was in the world, and how I *really* felt about my parents. My mother didn't mean to screw me over - she loved me in a way that was quite apparent to outsiders. But my *experience* of it was completely different. And that's what really matters - not what happened, but how we perceived it as tiny children. Once I had deconstructed my story to that point, the source and mechanism of my limerence became pretty obvious. -
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Re: Fulfillment of Needs, Childhood Attachment Patterns?
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 6:16 PMMeowbie-- I wasn't referring to any particular scholarly theory when I mentioned "parental disapproval." I was just talking about the idea I've heard mentioned here and elsewhere, that some of us spend our lives chasing after unavailable partners because we're reproducing a relationship with stern or disapproving parents for whom nothing we did was ever good enough.
And I'm not dismissing anything out of hand, but it's true that I'm having a bit of a negative reaction to some of the more theoretical posts. Right now I have a very pragmatic, one-minute-at-a-time mindset: I'm trying to stay NC, and I'm trying to ease up on myself and grant myself the same charity and respect I would to any other suffering person, and that's pretty much all I can think about. I'm not that interested in a unifying theory of limerence; I feel like I belong less on a therapist's couch than in a room full of grizzled AA veterans, eating donuts and trading war stories and trying to fight off the demon addiction. I probably ought to stop commenting on the more abstract posts, and I will, and I apologize for any crankiness.
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Re: Fulfillment of Needs, Childhood Attachment Patterns?
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 6:40 PMThat's cool. I can appreciate your frustration, and I daresay there would be many others reading all this stuff who equally have little time for it or resonance with childhood issues. It's really just where I've got to in my own life, and I'm excited because I can see how it all ties together for me.
There is another way to look at recovery, and it comes straight from relationship forums. There are useful strategies that people have used successfully to recover from breakup heartache. The main strategy that works is to "de-throne" the partner (LO) and put ourselves back at the centre of our lives. It can be things like writing a list of her negative attributes, or writing down memories of when she really let you down. And the stuff that puts us back at the centre of our lives is the self-love stuff like exercise, being with friends and so on.
I think this stuff should actually support NC and make it more bearable over time. I'd hate to see someone just go cold turkey and discover that it didn't change anything. That's a common pattern on the relationship forums too, and those people usually just jump into another relationship eventually to make themselves feel better. It's sad to watch.
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Re: Fulfillment of Needs, Childhood Attachment Patterns?
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 5:15 PMThinker: You could be right - I've never liked the idea of speaking for everyone. We all come to this group with unique presentations and different backgrounds.
I would only say this: the clues to my own emotional make-up were in the friction I had in interpersonal relationships. I noticed that my romantic relationships always broke down in the same way, and I had a couple of pretty big blow-ups at work (under extreme provocation). I was never able to just look into my parents' marriage and see how they influenced me until I saw all the other patterns first.
It may be that there is no obvious application for this model in your background. That's fair enough. But I still think that limerence is connected with childhood attachment in some way. It's a replay of our earliest narcissistic attachment - when we aren't a viable entity by ourselves, but only in combination with a nurturing Mother, who makes us feel complete and omnipotent. -
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Re: Fulfillment of Needs, Childhood Attachment Patterns?
Sat, July 19, 2008 - 10:36 PMThanks for your thoughts, guys. It just started to bother me after I thought about all of our theories on here, because some of us give advice based on those theories, and if they don't apply to that person, it's useless. I've definitely tried to examine my limerence for patterns, and I've got some, but...they don't seem to be connected to anything in my childhood or unfulfilled needs. Maybe I'm just in the denial stage about something, lol, and it'll come out later. Who knows.
I like what you said about how everybody's different on here, Meowbie. That's part of the reason limerence is so fascinating for me. It happens to all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. Definitely not a one-size-fits-all type of thing. :)
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Re: Fulfillment of Needs, Childhood Attachment Patterns?
Wed, July 23, 2008 - 8:32 AMHi Thinker, meowbie and frank,
Re childhood fulfillment needs and attachment patterns, I can only speak for myself, but this is my first experience with limerence (I think I may be the only one in this Tribe, not sure?) so I would think limerence would have asserted itself during my adolescence (it didn't). Although this is the first time I've been a mom and the first time I've bonded with a stay-at-home dad so maybe it does bring up some of my issues from my childhood? My father was an international businessman and traveled frequently when I was small (baby until about 3 years-old). I didn't think it phased me since I had a loving mom and two older sisters who doted over me, but maybe it did deep down (thus my enthusiasm for this father of two girls). I also think I have serious chemical factors. I have sustained, higher levels of oxytocin, the bonding or "love" hormone, as a nursing mom (in a perpetual "happy glow" state since oxytocin is the hormone we release during orgasm) and generally feel pretty happy about my life.
Sofia
