Limerance

[StarryEyedShoeGazer]

Hi all,
Just wondering if anyone else struggles with limerance.
Have studied it briefly and know that it is linked to trauma and childhood neglect.
How have you overcome it and how do you walk in purity towards others?
Thanks!

 

[Maria Billingsley]

Hi all,
Just wondering if anyone else struggles with limerance.
Have studied it briefly and know that it is linked to trauma and childhood neglect.
How have you overcome it and how do you walk in purity towards others?
Thanks!

Can you define ? Did you spell it wrong?
Thanks!

 

[mourningdove~]

Hi all,
Just wondering if anyone else struggles with limerance.
Have studied it briefly and know that it is linked to trauma and childhood neglect.
How have you overcome it and how do you walk in purity towards others?
Thanks!

I am wondering if, in your travels, you have discovered the "Crappy Childhood Fairy" channel on YouTube? The CCF (Anna Runkle) has posted a number of videos on the subject of limerence, and working to overcome it. (If you go to her channel, and search for "Limerence", you will find them.)

I think just learning about limerence is a big 'first step' towards overcoming it.

On a more spiritual level, staying close to the Lord (prayer) ... and His Word (Bible) ... and understanding our identity in Christ ... all help very much in overcoming limerence. We find the love we are looking for in God.

 

[Benam]

For those that are wondering...

"Limerence means having an intense longing for another person even when they don't fully reciprocate. The limerent person struggles to think about anything else but their “crush” and neglects their social life, work, and other responsibilities as a result."

 

[alive2Christ]

I struggled with limerence. It was (for me anyway) the romantic attraction to a person who is unavailable (married) or otherwise inappropriate. For me it was to a friend of my wife’s. It is also the result of a touch or affection deprived childhood. I researched it and realised that satan was using it to enslave me to something that was wasting my time, as well as hurting me mentally. I prayed about it and it went. She also moved shortly after I was delivered of the limerence, to a new house approximately a hundred miles away. It is such a relief when God delivers us from satanic slavery.

 

[alive2Christ]

I am wondering if, in your travels, you have discovered the "Crappy Childhood Fairy" channel on YouTube? The CCF (Anna Runkle) has posted a number of videos on the subject of limerence, and working to overcome it. (If you go to her channel, and search for "Limerence", you will find them.)

I think just learning about limerence is a big 'first step' towards overcoming it.

On a more spiritual level, staying close to the Lord (prayer) ... and His Word (Bible) ... and understanding our identity in Christ ... all help very much in overcoming limerence. We find the love we are looking for in God.

I’m glad you mentioned her. It was from her channel I learned about it.

 

[linux.poet]

I've never heard of the term "limerence", but I've probably suffered from it, rather severely, if that description above is correct. The worst bouts of it were correlated with trauma symptoms and I was almost completely out of control. Frankly, at my worst bout of it I was completely out of control and posting Twitter posts in caps lock and saying delusional things to my mom and pastoral care staff. Another bout: violent poetry and a terrifying hallucination.

Eventually I was able to track the symptoms down to me experiencing joy from a particular thing my "crush" was doing that I wanted to do on bout 3. It was simple: just do the thing. It's kind of like a self-affection type thing - you're trying to love yourself to make up for the lack of love in your environment, but then you project that desire onto your crush. Undoing the projection will get you away from wrongful crushes.

But also, you need a source of affection to break free from this. A friend (or romantic partner) who can hug you or is otherwise willing to engage in physical affection with you is the ticket out of this nightmare desire paralysis.

Teddy bears help too, in the absence of all else.

Related: Hugs leading to swimming vision, my eyes not focusing, feelinglessness
Reading that topic might help some limerance sufferers.

 

[johansen]

Limerance and the twinflame idea are probably closely related in that there is something spiritual going on between people, its just that with limerance it may indeed be one sided. (Although i have my doubts)

A woman i know of and have spoken to privately on a handful of occasions, has a limerance problem and i sensed something spiritually wrong with her for years prior to finding that out.. but now she wont talk to me.

From prior experience if i know something spiritual in nature concerning another person, they also know in their heart (this may be hidden from their conscious mind) that i know it. If they dont want to deal with that problem, that denial then strains any relationship you have with them.

Back in 2019 i spent 6 months trying to rescue a woman R out of the twinflame deception with a guy named chris, and i think she killed herself shortly after i figured out that her childhood trauma was the root of her spiritual deceptions. She didnt want to acknowledge even the possibility it was all deception.

So anyhow 5 years later another woman asks for advice on how to deal with a similar problem (she couldn't get a man out of her head, feeling "his energy" all the time)
Well after everyone calls her crazy, i talk to her a little over 2 months.
And it simply came down to this: all she had to do was acknowledge her adultery with him. But God not being an accuser, did not share that information with me, but rather waited for her eyes to be opened. (With help i suppose with what i did see through the spirit, and shared with her)

I do believe both of those women were spiritually affected by the same person. R never told me chris's last name so i dont know for sure. But yeah.. some people leave a trail of spiritually transmitted diseases.

With regard to my ex, limerance is putting it lightly. My mental problems went away after i cast half a dozen demons out of her, which took 3 years.

So, my advice to a lot of people: instead of praying God shut the door between you and another person, take advantage that its open, and pray for them.


Sometimes you weren't the one who opened the door...

 

[linux.poet]

Limerance and the twinflame idea are probably closely related in that there is something spiritual going on between people, its just that with limerance it may indeed be one sided. (Although i have my doubts)

I'm 95% sure it's all cognitive illusionry. What is happening in a limerance situation is that the brain is trying to fill in an affection/love hole with the love of God. This leads the person trapped in the limerance to believe that there is a spiritual connection between themselves and the other person, which the brain will use any circumstantial evidence available to reinforce. PTSD is a failure to handle reality - your brain cannot handle or interpret reality correctly, and my brain still mixes pieces of my reality up and connects them backwards and I have to untangle them to make them go forwards.

What is confusing is, apparently there is a love for God that allows one to remain a lifelong single, but if you're in limerance mode, you're "burning with passion" aka suffering from extreme lust, and God is not going to support your sin! The solution is to pursue marriage, to a healthy and stable marriage partner. Which is another can of worms, because many CPTSD sufferers do not know how to pursue affection properly, and then they end up in a cycle of abusive relationships. Fortunately, God can teach and model what a healthy relationship is, allowing you to escape the extreme attractions to abusers and break the cycle.

It's not just me that having a healthy relationship has worked for - I still remember the event at my community college where another woman stood up in front of the group and told us that her husband had saved her from her abuse. I was sorry to read the rest of your post and hear that you have not had much success. But the CPTSD sufferer has to want to break the cycle of limerance and be in a healthy relationship for the cycle to be stopped. Then they have to be willing to learn what a healthy relationship is and vet all their potential relationships for abuser signs and say no and bail out if there is any sign of it.

But I have digressed a bit. While I suffered from limerance, I actually was a bit "too smart" for it and would actually vet my limerantic relationships for abuser criteria, but I actually checked to see if there were any spiritual connections between me and the other side of the limerance. I took a "wait and see" approach, wondering what God would do. The answer was not really, all three times. (The reason for "wait and see" is fear of the relationship itself - I think that is what causes the functioning shutdown, because part of your brain sees the crush as a threat.)

For the first, the two of us were both Christians in a non-Christian and hostile environment to the Gospel. The result when I actually talked to the man was that he had massive insecurity issues and was an abuser. He was not the good ministry partner I had hoped. No spiritual connection.

The second was an unbeliever I was attempting to evangelize, which I did the wrong way. None of my poems ended up converting him, though I did end up exposing his own objectively evil girlfriend's behavior to everyone and end up driving her away from the school I attended. No real connection there. You can argue that learning poetry and graduating from college has improved my life, but I don't think so. I did pray for him, and maybe he will eventually accept the Gospel. Who knows?

The third was just wrong. We agreed on a debate moderation policy that a bunch of nervous empathic women disagreed with, in an attempt to spread the Gospel. That was it.

I did not have patience for a 4th one and was traumatized enough by the 3rd one that I concluded that my original goal of lifelong singleness was not going to work and I had a massive lust problem. I went to go find a healthy relationship and by God's grace I am now in one. Ironically, being in a healthy, real relationship has improved my life MORE than all three of these previous limerances combined.

I do think it is possible for a CPTSD sufferer to emerge out of their disease into a life of lifelong singleness; but that was not the path the Lord had laid out for me. Part of me still wants to solve the riddle of how that could occur, but solving the riddle will not change my life much, because even after getting rid of the limerance stuff and the cognitive illusions I still have a lust problem. My current boyfriend enjoys the fact that said lust problem is aimed at him. I'd honestly rather continue enjoying my relationship with him and just get married.

Anyway, this post is probably too long, but I do hope that it helps other limerance sufferers, past and present.

 

[johansen]

I'm 95% sure it's all cognitive illusionry. What is happening in a limerance situation is that the brain is trying to fill in an affection/love hole with the love of God.

that may be the case for you.

for others, the brain is trying to fill in the hole with rocks. not God. chaos happens. God willing, someone helps them out.

 

[linux.poet]

for others, the brain is trying to fill in the hole with rocks. not God. chaos happens. God willing, someone helps them out.

Agreed. I once watched a video where Dr. K was trying to help a CPTSD sufferer from a Hinduist background. It wasn't very concrete in getting results.

All I have is my own personal experience; I was fortunate to have accepted the Gospel before the worst of my symptoms hit. Otherwise I would be stuck in that hole with no way out. I don't know how to help a non-Christian with this disease at all.

 

[johansen]

I don't know how to help a non-Christian with this disease at all.

well that's why i don't think its merely a mental problem, but a spiritual one.