Walk On Podcast Episode 75 : Unrequited Love
I sat at my computer, stopped recording the song I was working on about the man I was in love with who didn’t love me back and bawled my eyes out. I opened my email and started venting, not knowing who I was going to send it to.
I think I am addicted to love.
I was four years deep. I had held on so tight for so long. Every morning I woke up thinking about him, every song reminded me of him, every daydream, every fantasy, every waking moment. Every poem, every song, every journal entry I wrote held him at the center of it. Every bit of every obstacle in “our” way to each other only made me hold on harder—even his rejections “I’m attracted to you but I can’t” “now isn’t a good time for me” “I am not going to do this” —only made it harder to walk away.
Jim Halpert, Unrequited Lover, The Office
He was my long-term partner’s best friend. It was wrong, it was hopeless, it was breaking my heart.
This wasn’t the first time I experienced limerence, it was just the most devastating, the most complicated, the most unrequited. I once performed a one-person show here in New York where I compiled all the poems and songs I’d written about it into a narrative piece and after the show , a woman came up to me and asked “so whatever happened between you two… did you end up together?” It brought me a sick, cathartic kind of joy to see the disappointment in her face when I said no, we didn’t. We just anticlimactically never spoke again.
I can handle this. Famous last words. I thought it when I fell in love with my college sweetheart, a beautiful, kind, and loving boy who was in a religious cult and wasn’t allowed to date, keeping me a secret from his family. I thought it again when I fell in love with a married man in an open-for-sex-but-not-for-love style relationship (spoiler alert, we fell in love). I felt it every time I developed feelings for someone who I could feel was emotionally unavailable and dove in headfirst anyway.
Ryan and Kelly, Co-occurring Limerence, The Office
I have also experienced the other side of limerence. I have had someone romantically stuck on me. That didn’t feel good either. It was frustrating, it was overwhelming, and it made me uncomfortable. I ended up having to remove myself from those situations (basically ghosting the person) in order to try and get them to move on. It wasn’t easy. So I understand what I may have put the people that I have been limerent on through.
Limerence is fertile ground for the anxious-avoidant attachment style person. It allows one to be as anxious as they want (clingy, obsessive, ruminating) while also having distance from the subject of their affection, all while remaining avoidant to anyone who might reciprocate their feelings (by remaining stuck on someone who won’t).
Julia Robert, Dermot Mulroney, He’s limerent on her until he moves on, and then she becomes limerent on him like a fucking asshole, My Best Friend’s Wedding
These types of relationships are incredibly painful. Usually, they point to some kind of childhood wounding where the limerent person was not attended to, where emotional needs went unmet, where the love may have felt one-sided. The child went on hoping, longing, and waiting for reciprocal love. A pattern was put in motion.
I have seen limerence play out in seemingly infinite different scenarios and circumstances. I have seen people stuck on an ex who’s already moved on, stuck on an abusive partner, stuck on someone who was stuck on someone else, stuck on someone stuck in an addiction, stuck on celebrities they will never meet. Really, the possibilities are endless.
The key to stopping a pattern is to recognize that it’s there in the first place. If you find yourself resonating with these tales of woe, worry not. Limerence is healable. It just requires a little strength, a little commitment to self-love, it’s an addiction and it requires recovery.
It is important to keep in mind that it is normal to want to love and be loved. It is normal and healthy and perfectly acceptable to want your needs met. It is a good thing!! Reciprocal, healthy, stable love is totally possible and available to you—maybe just not from the person you’re stuck on. And that’s ok! If you can cut contact and allow yourself to move on, if you can realize you’ve been finding safety in the avoidance of loving someone unavailable, if you can really embrace being alone without curbing the craving of codependent attachment and just learn to give yourself to love you definitely deserve, you will find the love you seek. I promise you.
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