Thinking about you, Katie, wondering how you are feeling these days?

anita

Dear Katie:

You are welcome and thank you for replying so soon. Women on this site, in the Relationships Forum, often complain about the men in their lives and I’ve never automatically taken the woman’s side just because she is a woman. I took the man’s side whenever I felt that the woman is in the wrong.

In the course of my communication with you, over time, I learned that in your case, this man is definitely in the wrong and has been in the wrong for a long, long time, being selfish and unrepentant, causing you (and your daughter) pain and suffering. The anger you feel for him today, to some extent- I felt for him long ago and throughout, including today as I read your Valentine update. He is.. not a decent person, Katie. He is not honest, not dependable, not reliable, not trustworthy and not even a seed of a motivation to look within himself and heal from what ails him.

I wish that you do not regress and give him any more of your forever-till-the-end, and instead, that you continue and move forward in your healing process.

anita

Dear Katie:

I never mentioned to you the term limerence, and it occurred to me that it is very relevant to your situation, and it may be helpful. I don’t know if you feel like reading this, but I figure you can choose to read it or not, at any time, at your convenience.

The term limerence was coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in her 1979 book, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. The experience of limerence is that of anxiety, depression, fixation.. all the things you described in these 15 pages.

I think that this man, your boyfriend of six years, was clearly significantly to severely emotionally disturbed since at least high school. He told you himself that he didn’t feel normal when he was in high school. You know that his over 25 years marriage was extremely dysfunctional, and your trustworthy long-term therapist, after meeting this man, told you by February this year: “there is really something very wrong with ex-bf. My psych has been doing therapy for 30 years and has never seen a patient like ex-bf”.

And yet, it seems like you did not notice his significant to severe emotional disturbance (“very wrong” the words your therapist used) for the first 4-5 years of the relationship. This makes sense in the context of limerence, because a major feature of limerence is that the limerent object (LO), the boyfriend, is placed on a pedestal: positive characteristics  are exaggerated and unattractive characteristics are given little to no attention.

You wrote last year: “I simply can’t believe that for 5 years he hid his true self”- his disturbed true self was there all along, it’s just that you didn’t see what you didn’t want to see, having placed him on a pedestal for five years.

It is only when he started intensely interrogating and verbally abusing you, in the 5th or 6th year, that you noticed that something about him was wrong. But still, at the end of the sixth year, during the break in Nov 2020, the tendency was still there, to put him on a pedestal: “I tend to forget the ‘bad’ incidences and words, and focus on what I miss”.

For 4 or 5 years, you perceived the relationship to be a Fairytale, a  Fantasy Perfection: “Our connection so deep; we felt we were soulmates, best friends, and should have been together way back in high school… We even have cemetery plots together”- a 4 or 5 year relationship extended retroactively to high school and projected past death, into “my forever till the end”.

It was a dream: “mourning the dream of the future… I cry for the sweet dream of a future that now can be lost”.

You were hopeful for the dream to come true after all, Nov 2 2020: “I love him and am so hopeful”, Nov 4: “I hope his therapist is qualified to help him. If not, the relationship will not survive”, Nov 6: “here I am….forever hopeful”, Nov 8: “I still hope his therapy is helping”, Nov 10: “I’m still hopeful that his therapy is helping”, Nov 10: “hoping he would get better to be the better that I deserve”,  Nov 14: “I’m still cautious and, as always hopeful.  I know he has to continue on with his therapy..  I am hopeful that his therapy is working”… December 4: “As you know, I am always hopeful”.

He then joined you to couple therapy with your therapist in January 2021, dropped out of the therapy  angrily in the middle of  a session in early February, you blocked him from your phone, he then emailed in February 14, 2021 (“on Valentine’s Day I had about 8 emails from him professing his love for me, saying he can’t live without me, how sorry he is…etc.”), and then started attending therapy again, not with the female therapist he had before, and not with your male therapist, but with “a new (improved) therapist”, and by April 2, you are clearly hopeful again.

You wrote last year: “I felt like he was home to me”. You are hopeful to be home again, even though this man only felt like home, but was not, and is not home, not really.

From Love and Limerence: “Love is a human religion in which another person is believed in”- you believe in him still. Please be careful, Katie. At the age of 58 or 59,  a woman is not too old to believe in false religion. A belief in and hope for a false god can hurt you yet again and again.

anita

Dear Katie:

You are welcome and thank you for being the gracious person that you are, welcoming my thoughts even when you disagree with them and thanking me for them- this is my evidence, that indeed, there is something “very wrong” (your therapist’s words) with this man for messing up a relationship with you!

When I posted you last, I thought of your first 4-5 years with this man having features of limerence, particularly placing him on a pedestal, and therefore, not noticing the serious faults you now know that he possesses, and presenting the relationship in such glowing, happily-ever-after terms, regarding  those first 4-5 years. I was afraid, that it will be too easy for you to fall back there (an appropriate way to put it, fall.. in love).

Good to read that the “forever hopeful” Katie (Nov 6, 2020), is  “not holding onto hope” (April 8, 2021).

Connecting the topic of hope, what your therapist/ psychologist told you (“keep your eyes wide open and feet on the ground),and the title of a famous poem (“Hope is the Thing with Feathers”)-

– Hope, displaced,  is like a bird that lifts you up, off the ground, flap its wings in your eyes, so you close them, and then, not seeing, without the ground underneath your feet.. well, you can picture the rest.

anita