ESSAY #1 : When Limerence spins endlessly, give it a form.
When I undergo a Limerence episode, the rumination is so intense that I experience a voracious need to externalise it, but I often realised that words alone are too weak to soothe the inner turmoil. That intensity makes the display disorganised and dimorphous.
The visual nature of my limerence rumination is the most rational explanation I have found for that phenomenon. My brain creates intense and strong narratives from very little signal, cues or limited real experience. And “narrative” is just a modest way of hiding the p*rnogr*phic nature of the movie performing inside my head when I think about my LOs.
But since I can’t showcase that intensity or verbalise it without turning myself into a creep or a s*xual off*nder, the stationary state of those thoughts and feelings ( which cannot be externalized ) fuels both the obsession and a terrible sense of shame.
To me, this behavior is wrong and foolish because I am usually a very logical person. But limerence destroys that side of me, which causes me to lack good sense and judgment. During my previous limerent episodes I have skipped school, stopped eating, lost money, lost weight, lost dignity and so on. I usually feel terribly ashamed of the “brain cells” limerence makes me temporarily lose.
Being limerent makes me d*mb.
And the behavior I am containing is absolutely not conforming to accepted social standards of morality. I can’t ( even if some people do it ) go to my LOs and tell them that I feel worthless and distressed because I am dreaming 24/7 about them being nak*d over me. That would be s*xual har*ssment and I disagree with that behavior myself.
Since my main issue was the dumbness related to my limerent state, I tried to channel the obsession into something more structured and “intelligent” (Intelligence is relative, but I think my cognitive strength is strongly associated with proper decision-making and good problem-solving abilities.) I therefore moved my limerence obsessive thoughts into a document, a kind of research material to help myself and maybe others.
As I said before, instead of letting limerence circulate endlessly inside my mind, I moved it outside myself and gave it a concrete form. I created visual pages, organized the faces of my LOs, wrote short narratives and grouped the people involved into structured cases or archetypes. Through that process, the obsession shifted from my brain/heart center to a document.
For my type of cognition, that shift was critical. In fact, my mind usually excels at detecting patterns. I love maths, neuroscience, flow charts, structure, grammar, etc. But when those patterns remain internal, they eventually spiral into rumination.
A good analogy to picture how limerence feels to me is to imagine solving a complicated equation entirely in your head (no paper, no pencil) while listening to lectures about the problem and attempting to hold every step of the reasoning in memory without writing anything in a notebook.
The ideas spin around in your mind and nothing stabilises because you have nowhere to write the equations or follow the logic. You keep running mental simulations of the problem, but you can’t anchor them anywhere. At the same time, frustration builds along with a sense of pressure, because you still want to solve it but you can’t because your brain is not a computer with unlimited memory or perfect processing. As infamous as Maths is, there’s a lot of emotion into it if you like this discipline. If it wasn’t true, why do you think some people spent their entire life trying to solve or prove an equation ? Most of them get paid for it, when a LO is the subject of your obsession you just turn into a mad cat. That’s how limerence feels for me.
So I redirected my attention by placing the material outside my head. My brain moved from an emotional processing mode toward a more analytical one. In effect, I transformed limerence from a private emotional loop….
… into something I could observe, organise and examine almost like a research material.
It reduces the shame because the process itself is more analytical and resembles my normal way of approaching life.
In this document I called “LIMERENCE : A VISUAL UNDERSTANDING OF MY PATTERNS” I grouped all of my LOs into archetypes and identified some patterns in my limerence history such as :
* emotionally unavailable high achiever
* socially charismatic model-looking guys
We all know that limerence tricks the brain into believing a person is “unique.” But the clustering I did showed that they were actually variations of the same template. They were 5 ideas/ archetypes of the “ideal” partner.
Once my brain saw the repetition ( the easy associations ) the mystery weakened, if not disappeared completely : From an intense “OMG He is SO special” to a sharp : “My brain reacts to this type”
That’s the kind of cognitive shift my brain needed to stop limerence. I think that when you find what kind of rational truth your brain is sensitive to, you can use that knowledge to your advantage and engineer a way to switch the limerence off. (For me mental associations and cognitive categorisation works pretty well)
I also wanted to re-inject reality into this research. I have created individual pages for each case (each LO)
* how the attraction started
* what I projected onto the person
* what reality actually looked like
* how the situation ended
Alongside each person, I also recorded what the experience gave me. For example : discovering new music genres ( I adapted my music tastes for my LOs), experiencing social summers (I’m quite isolated), traveling , etc.
That’s the theory, but in practice you might question how efficient is it ?
To MY EXPERIENCE, I recently realized how efficient this method was with CASE NUMBER #10 (they are not arranged in historical order).
One month ago, a limerent episode started with a brand-new stranger :
I could feel it beginning with this ache in my chest, after a week of distress I look at my document and decided to look at him with an analytical eye and I accidentally performed a kind of cognitive reappropriation. Case #10 occurred completely differently. For context : my longest limerence pattern lasted 7–8 years and I have had 11 limerence episodes in my entire life.
When I analysed Case #10, I realized the person was basically a composite of several previous limerence patterns :
* a physical similarity to my boyfriend (who is not a limerent pattern ! He is a healthy partner. )
The moment I recognized the pattern, the limerence stopped instantly. That recognition destroyed the limerence quickly. So the intense attraction lasted about one week, until I used my portfolio to properly reflect it.
That’s why I decided to write that essay, because if it worked for me, it could potentially work for someone else ?
I can share more details for anyone interested in how I did it. My idea is that you should make it personal.I designed it like a small graphic design book/ magazine. This format is still aesthetically pleasing but also creates clear boundaries and helps ground the experience. Instead of letting my mind wander and think about any LO, I just look at the book. Making it concrete removes the mystery.
When the loop stays abstract, it can grow and take up a lot of mental space.
When it is on paper, it becomes something I can see and hold.
Because of that, the feeling usually fades quite quickly. I can literally see and carry the loop in my hands. It also means I don’t spend hours listening to professionals on YouTube anymore to shut my head down, I understand it more than enough, what I just never did was connecting that knowledge to my own experience. And the insight I gain with my research case study feels more valuable, because it is more personal and comes from my own experience.