david.perlSo here i am at a point where a woman who i feel a deep connection with and had limerence over now wants a meaningful friendship with me. So where to from here for me?
My dilemma reminds me of the interactions i had with another colleague on my training course a couple of years ago. A woman that i think also had similar energy to LO and that maybe could have been an LO for me.
I got chatting to her on our college retreat, disclosed how i had been drawn to her energy the same evening I met LO and this opened up the conversation as to how she had been a Limerent Object herself. I asked if she consider helping me understand the LO’s perspective and gave her Wakin’s paper to read, which she did. Her reaction was of feeling physically sick when she had the realisation of what she had at an unconscious level played into . I asked her if she’d ever consider talking with her LO, she said no, never, its too difficult for her.
The way i see it i have a few choices
- Be nice around LO and let her think were friends until the course ends in a few months time. Perhaps there’s an element of faking it till i make it and this strategy may help break the fantasy and help me see the “real” her. But i’m not sure this will just rekindle my limerence and to me feels inauthentic.
- Go back to NC with no explanation. This is what i did first time around and i regretted not having the courage to explain why i was going NC. I have more insight, strength and compassion to not do this again.
- Go back to NC and say im still triggered by her, its distracting me and i need my space and i didn’t think its possible to be friends after one has been limerent over that person.
- perhaps the most conscious, authentic response and the most difficult one in achieving with compassion is to have a more honest conversation around how I can’t just sweep aside 3.5 years of intense feelings and move into a friendship that doesn’t respect what I’ve been through. To perhaps use the story of the peer i related above in how I recognise its perhaps really hard for the LO to look at any “contribution” in this drama. That perhaps now may not the time for her to explore this but maybe at some point in the future she may feel the need for her own growth and at that point i’d gladly support her. However, until that time comes i don’t see how we can have a friendship like I have with my other friend. Until that time, its best we remain boundaried around each other. I cant help feeling this has a little bit of manipulative energy of “I wont be your friend unless you do this for me” so perhaps that also needs to be articulated within the discussion?
At the moment, option 4 sits with me best.
What other options am i missing? what would you do?
Why am i investing so much energy into my LO still?
Living a life more consciously just seems to get more and more challenging.
