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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
01:26:05
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- [00:00]
A
Limerence. I didn't even know that it was a word that existed until recently. And after doing a little bit of research, it seems to be maybe one of the hottest topics on the Internet, especially something that doesn't even exist in the DSM yet. What is it? Can you give an introduction to those people like me who have no idea that this is even a word?
- [00:24]
B
Limerence is this handy word for this thing that most people have experienced a little bit of. And some people unfortunately have completely like lost their, lost their happiness over. And it was the, the phrase that the word limerence was coined. In the 70s. There was a, a psychologist named Dorothy Tenov and she was sort of referring to that Twitter painted falling in love feeling. But it's evolved to mean something much more than that. It's that feeling. But then all of a sudden it sort of goes into hyperdrive and becomes this addiction level obsession with another person who you can't be with generally, either because they're not into you, they're not available, or they don't even exist. Like there are people who feel limerent about fictional characters.
- [01:08]
A
Right, okay, so the rabbit hole goes quite deep. You mentioned there that everybody has it in small doses. Does everyone who falls for someone go through limerence?
- [01:20]
B
Well, technically speaking, yes. But then it sort of morphs into, especially if that person is in your life and maybe reciprocates your feelings, it'll turn into a more ordinary kind of love where, you know, because of the toothpaste cap and the toilet seat and just regular stuff of life, the magic spell starts to dissipate and real love can start to form. So technically you can call that early love limerence, but these days I think we're talking about it as something else and it's very, very common as a trauma symptom.
- [01:50]
A
How is limerence different to an infatuation or a crush?
- [01:54]
B
I think infatuation is the right word. It's just that infatuation ends before it turns sick. And so you know, limerence, when it just gallops forward, it's really like up on a level of heroin addiction, I would say. I've known heroin addicts, I've known limerence, I've experienced limerence and I've had people limerent on me. And it's like that. People don't get over it unless they like really go, take, take strong steps to get over it. Limerence doesn't go away. Infatuation does.
- [02:23]
A
Right, okay. How is limerence different from unrequited love or codependency?
- [02:31]
B
Well, Unrequited love is kind of a condition of limerence. And there's. It's like this addiction to hope. Hope. Hope has a lot of chemicals in it. I've heard some researchers say there may be a. A genetic predisposition to it. It's. It's. It's something that springs up. Well, I want to tell you about the relationship to neglect in childhood. I'm in this unique position. I'm not a therapist, But I'm a YouTuber who gets hundreds and hundreds of letters, you know, every week from people. And there's a letter that I kept getting over and over again about the same phenomenon where somebody said, I grew up in a house with an alcoholic parent, and now I'm in love with this guy and I can't really tell him. I know he wouldn't be into me. And anyway, he's married and I can't stop thinking about him. And now my whole life is falling apart and I. I should leave my job, but I can't. And so somebody's really just like, going down. And like, when you're. When you're in love with somebody who's good for you, you'll see signs that your. Your life is kind of coming up. That's a sign. Like, I, I heard on one of your recent, recent interviews that you're in a relationship, and when you feel good and happy and you notice that, you know what, I'm. I'm like getting better as a person. That's love. That's a good partnership. When you're starting to check out, when you're starting to go down. I've sort of defined this whole. This downward ladder of stuff that happens to you when it's taking over your brain and your life. You start avoiding people. You're not emotionally available, you can't love. So it's really a different thing. And it feels like it's about the other person, but it's clearly not right.
- [04:10]
A
What do you mean when you say it's not about the other person?
- [04:13]
B
I think it starts like, oh, what a wonderful person, and I like them. But after a while with all the secrecy, like, you can never tell somebody you're limerent over how you feel. And the reason is, I think some people do. It's one way that you can break the spell, because almost certainly the reason it's secret and unrequited is because they don't. They're not into you. That's what it is. And so if you avoid telling them how you feel so that you never get that disappointment. You're holding on to this escape mechanism. And people need a way to relieve, to get out of here, sometimes to get out of dodge emotionally. But this is a really malfunctioning way to do it because it almost guarantees you're not going to have anybody real in your life.
- [04:58]
A
Okay, you mentioned a couple of times the sort of unrequited nature, the fact that that's almost a prerequisite for this. Does that mean then that a anxious, avoidant relationship where you are, maybe you even live together or maybe you haven't yet got together, does that mean that an anxious avoidant relationship that's committed and monogamous and sort of moving through the usual stages could still have this limerence in it?
- [05:32]
B
I think so. That's my opinion. I think there's a little bit of a continuum between what we call like trauma bonding, which is intermittent reinforcement that you would have in an anxious avoidant relationship. One person's like, come on, give me attention. And the other person's like, I'm not speaking to you now, you're overwhelming me. And it activates something. And people get anxious for a reason. The anxious attachment style, it's common. It springs up after a childhood of neglect, emotional neglect. And neglect isn't just psychological. You know, there are things that happen neurologically because of that that are pretty hard to control. So it's tricky to manage. So that, activating that chasing instinct now I noticed when I, you know, got over my trauma driven dating patterns, which is a formidable thing. I met my husband when I was 42 and I did, I played things very differently. And what worked for me for the first time was I just let him kind of come after me. I was, you know, mentally I was just like, you know, I wanted so bad to like go, are we going to see each other? Are you going to call me? Do you like me? How do you feel? Where, where's all this going? But I just allowed him to sort of like do the work of that. And it, it, it was so powerful and, and I figured that out very quickly early in the relationship. It, it pushed him off when I was chasing and he could come towards me when I stopped chasing. And I think, you know, we've all heard this, but for women today and men, men have their own version of it, we want to believe, oh, that's not true. That's just some sort of old fashioned thing. But there's something in our brains that we do need to chase a little bit. It does activate something good. But like every good thing in a human being. There can be this sort of disordered side of it where there's a dark side to it, where it goes too far.
- [07:17]
A
Yeah.
- [07:18]
B
And that. And the chasing becomes stalking.
- [07:21]
A
Yeah. Okay, so how do people feel that are having. What's it? Is someone suffering with limerence? A limerent. What is it? How do we refer to them?
- [07:31]
B
Yeah, a limerent.
- [07:33]
A
So how does a limerent feel?
- [07:37]
B
Occasionally elated and thrilled. They got a text or they caught a glimpse or they got a kind word and. And then there's just a lot of depression in between. It's like getting a hit. It's getting a hit of heroin. It's like that where it lifts you up and there's hope and you think, this is it. I think they're reciprocating and then they don't follow up and you can't really hold onto hope anymore. So there's this pursuit, you know, I just want to get that little high, that little high of. I think maybe I'm going to get them to reveal that they feel the same way about me, but I'm going to do it without tipping my hand. I don't want to tell them because if I tell them and they don't feel that way, they won't be in my life. They'll be creeped out. It's cringy, right? When somebody obsesses on you, it's not a pleasant thing when you're not into it. So they don't disclose. But they're always trying to think of, like, what's the perfect thing I could say that would sort of go, you know, make a little space where you could say something and give me that clue. And that's what flirting is when it's reciprocal. People are flirting. So you sort of say, I just don't have anything to do this Saturday. And then you say, oh, that's funny, I don't either. Well, you know, it's like this very subtle exchange, but the exchange isn't happening the way you want, so your imagination takes over. Because I think there was something code, a secret code in what they were saying. Next thing you know, you're looking at all their social media and they're like, oh, they like that song. And the lyrics are, you know, about really loving somebody that you can't tell. So your mind is just starts to find love where there is no love, which is what you learned to do as a kid when you weren't getting loved.
- [09:12]
A
What are the main emotions? It sounds to me like anxiety and despair.
- [09:18]
B
Anxiety and despair and then just like la la, overjoyed. You know, you've got that little, that little bit of like maybe from them.
- [09:29]
A
There was a. The previous business that I was a part of for a long time. We had an office in Newcastle, the northeast of the uk and next door to us was a Thai massage parlor. Now a lot of the workers of the Thai massage parlor didn't speak fantastic English. They weren't there for their sort of like secretarial skills. They were there because they could give good massages.
- [09:53]
B
It was legit.
- [09:54]
A
It was legit. I mean, look, we always made jokes about exactly what was going on. They seemed to be open quite late, but the women were always really nice. They were planting flower beds outside and stuff. Anyway, one of the women that worked there, I don't think that she was limerent around me, but there was certainly some odd reading into the crypticness of my. What were then Facebook statuses or would now be like, I don't know, Instagram captions or something. I think I'd posted something about the fact that I think all cats are bastards. I just, I'm not a cat person, right? And someone had been talking about how much they loved their cat and I remember thinking this is a, this is a clever, worthy Facebook status that I should take up Mind share with cat. All cats are bastards. Something like that. And she really loved her cat and she messaged my business partner saying, I know that Chris has been talking about my cat. I know that he's got an issue with it. And then she apologized. She got me a USB drive that was shaped as a tiny anime version of me and it had Chris written across the front of it. So it was really cute in some ways. But. But yeah, she would read into a lot of what it was that I was doing. So maybe that wasn't quite limerence, but was, I don't know, some cryptic strangeness it.
- [11:08]
B
It might have been. How did you feel? I mean, what was your gut check?
- [11:11]
A
Uh, that's a. I mean, she's Thai. She was Thai and 49 or like 50s, something like late 40s 50s. And I was a 25 year old club promoter wearing skinny jeans and going out and sniffing unpronounceable drugs. Most nights I'm like, what is, what is going on here? It was just interesting. The guys in the office, we used to have like a little giggle about it. I don't think anyone was too mean. It wasn't as if we, we were laughing at her, but it was like, huh, like this is a Just a slightly unusual Thai lady that thinks about it.
- [11:46]
B
But that's what I mean. It wasn't about you. It wasn't really something you did. She was like, reacting to something that was completely in her mind or her heart about it. Some memory or some projection, you know. You didn't do that.
- [11:58]
A
True. I wasn't leaving little clues around. Okay, so anxiety and despair with elation.
- [12:04]
B
Yeah, yeah. Chasing the good feeling. And everybody wants that good feeling. Love is. We need love. We need to feel connected to people and. But people can get limerent even when. Even when they're married. Obviously they can be limerent when they're surrounded by options, just obsessed on one person. And it's not just because of modern times either, because there's a lot of examples in literature like Dante and Beatrice and Heathcliff and Cathy maybe mutually limerent at different times, but not the same time. From Wuthering Heights. So it's been around. Yeah, Yeah, I know. See, we love that book because it's like. See, that's what it's like. It's like that. So. So it's. It's been around. It's. It's something that people have in their nature. But it. It's come. I. And I. I don't think it's always because of trauma. I. I think kids show signs of it early. They. And I can't speak for everybody, but I just have an amazing sample of people who write me letters and I. They tell me about their life. And I've always. It's like a. A little. Like. It's like a little wheel of possibility. Personality types of things that happen to you and how you come out. And I don't like to believe, like every cause equals the same effect, but there's a really common denominator with people who are stuck on somebody and can't get over it. With they. With a lack of enough attention when they were kids, they didn't get seen as a person. They didn't get their personality kind of appreciated and validated, like, oh, yeah, you love karate. Or. And that didn't happen. And that. That may have affected things to do with neurological development. That's one of the most important discoveries about what. What's the problem with trauma in childhood is neurological development. There's. There can be some holes there. And so there's just this weird thing. And sometimes. Did you ever hear about this? It was a research experiment a long time ago, and I learned about it in school. You're younger than me, but there was a wire monkey and they tested whether a baby monkey separated from its mother would prefer to go to the fake fur covered wire monkey mother or just the wire frame that had a bottle in it and the baby would starve to death to hold onto the furry wire model. I don't even know if that's true. Like nowadays we found out all that.
- [14:31]
A
Kind of stuff is adaptation crisis. What would be the implication of that study? What would you infer as the mechanism there?
- [14:38]
B
Just the need for love is so great that we will. We will die for it. And I think that's what happens is. Or we're. That that natural instinct to fall in love and have a mate is just sitting there going along like an engine without the right person in front of it.
- [14:54]
A
Yeah, well, look, you have sort of proximate reward and you have ultimate reward for behavior. And so this is from evolutionary psychology. The proximate reward for having sex is it feels good. The ultimate reward for having sex is it makes babies. The proximate reward for eating food is it tastes nice and makes me feel happy. The ultimate reward from food is I don't starve and my body keeps on functioning. And the interesting thing is that conditioned responses, I. E. You could, I think, replace that. For proximate rewards are much more powerful than the ultimate ones. So when you look at. Okay, let's say that this baby monkey thing is true. I actually think it very much could be. Let's say the baby monkey thing is true. And that a wire monkey that would give you suss, sustenance is less attractive than a soft cuddly monkey that gives you nothing other than a sense of companionship and sort of mothering. The soft cuddliness is a predictor for the sustenance. Right. That's what you've done there. What that experiment has done is essentially separated out the ultimate and the proximate reasons for behavior. Now, the proximate reason that you like your mother to be soft and cuddly is that you know that there's probably milk and safety and security and care and attention there. But when you're faced with just the raw, rational, you know, stripped back, sterile version of, well, you'll stay alive or you'll be around the things that typically predict that you'll stay alive. It's like, I'll go for the prediction as opposed to the rationality.
- [16:20]
B
Yeah, I don't think it's even conscious mostly. Right. Not at all. Yeah, we're just driven. We're driven to do it, but there's this little thing missing where and where what's interesting is if you're madly in love with somebody who doesn't know you exist or care about you, it may match very closely. We're designed to have that primary relationship with our moms, to sort of imprint us with how to fall in love. And let's say that she was high all the time or gone or just troubled, had to work all the time, crying, depressed, mentally ill, running off with a boyfriend, whatever it was, then the abandoning relationship can feel, you know, it's just. It's just the thing that activates you and you can't help it. And I made up a word for that. It's the eroticization of abandonment. Like, it only turns you on if you're getting kind of left.
- [17:14]
A
I. Yeah, that's certainly something even in previous relationships that I've been able to recognize in friends that get into relationships with girls where almost mistreatment is a kind of arousal response. You know, I think it's very much seen in why or partly you could lay at the feet of the bad boy. Why is it that the guy with the cutoff denim jacket and the biker boots and the motorcycle and the tattoos, like, really, I mean, in. Maybe it works in a dark romance novel, but in reality, I think if you're looking at predictors of marital satisfaction long term, which is presumably what most people are looking for, most women are looking for. I mean, you're selecting for a very particular avatar there. And, you know, look, I'm not victim blaming. Everybody falls for the wrong person every so often.
- [18:08]
B
But I've done it more than I've done it. I've done my share of it. And it's just. And I'm an intelligent person, and it makes no sense.
- [18:18]
A
Emotions are a hell of a drug.
- [18:19]
B
It's caused me no end of suffering and just sort of some attachment wound kind of just pushing me along. And that's a lot of what my career is, is I teach people a more structured way to date so that you can override that problem. You can't necessarily undo the problem because it's sort of, you know, imprinted on you, but you can override it by dating in a structured way where you don't let that happen. You stay with your reason without bonding with somebody so that it's even possible to see the red flags.
- [18:48]
A
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- [19:44]
B
Doing when we're going into down the rabbit hole of the Red Flag man, the bad boy, is we stop talking to people. We don't want to tell anybody about it. We know they'll disapprove and we want to keep the little fantasy intact. The thing that's giving us dopamine.
- [19:58]
A
You know what? You know, it was great. I had this conversation recently with someone who you might not think of as a dating expert, but he gave a really wonderful explanation of how you can tell if someone's in relationship with somebody that isn't right for them. And he said, well, when you ask them what it is that they love about them, they start to reel off a cv. As opposed to a bunch of values and virtues. You say, well, you know, they got really great education and they drive an awesome car and they're just, they're cool. The way that they dress is really great. And you know, they've got this like funky, funky, like I love the way that they smell and it's like none of that is actually about them and all of it is sort of about what it's not who they are, it's what they do. And you really want to try and fall in love with who somebody is and not what somebody does.
- [20:46]
B
Yeah, yeah. But I can think of times when the, I don't know, the problem person was so inappropriate that I didn't want to tell them the CV was pathetic. You couldn't take them anywhere. This one guy, he didn't even have a pair of pants that weren't just like cut off and frayed around the calves somewhere and covered with, you know, stains. And I, I was like working for some nonprofit. I'd be like, I want you to have a pair of pants so you can come with me. And he was like, I don't want to come with you. But I held on tenaciously. I could change him, you know, I just could make.
- [21:17]
A
I can the I can fix him meme.
- [21:19]
B
Yeah, once, once you bond, once you bond, which, what I mean is through sex, it's very hard to turn back. Especially if you have attachment wounds. It's very hard to turn back. And so you find yourself, you know, you wake up next to someone and you're like, what have I done? I can't stand this person. But if you were actually abandoned as a kid, it's that there's this therapist named Pete Walker. He calls it abandonment melange. And it's this like toxic cocktail for people who literally were abandoned as kids. It, there's this like nervous system. It's a flashback. It's an emotional flashback. You may not even remember the memory of it. Like a combat veteran would kind of remember what this is about. Just this feeling of like, I'm going to die. I'm so frantic. You know, the grief is unbearable. I can't go on even thinking about ending a relationship with someone you don't like. So you can't leave. And this is how people lose years and years of their life. They leap into a relationship and then they can't leave. So that day when you wake up and you're just like, oh, what have I done? This guy doesn't even have a full length pair of trousers. You know, what have I done? And, and you can't go. So then comes the retrofitting. It's like, I'll try to retrofit him into the person I hoped he was when I leapt into this. And I'll do it with criticism and repetition and force and misery and passive aggression and resentment. And that's where codependence comes in. It's just, you know, it's a, it's a very unhappy life.
- [22:47]
A
Is there a sense of imbalance in value in the mind of the limerent, a sort of pedestalizing of this other person.
- [22:57]
B
I never thought of that. But of course, yes, you're right. Yeah, this person is what makes this person is who brings meaning to my life. And I have, I've. With all the letters I get, I do see that a lot. And the commenters will say, oh yeah, she's trying to marry up or she's, I don't know. There's a word for it in the manosphere of when a woman thinks she, she, you know, she can have a guy will have sex with her but he's not really going to have a relationship with her. But she doesn't know that. She doesn't actually have the like neurological framework to read the room.
- [23:27]
A
This is interesting. Okay, so I've spent a lot of time orbiting content that would be manosphere adjacent. Many people accuse me of being a part of it even though they hate me and I, I'm not a massive fan of them. But you're right, there is a number of different ideas that come out of the manosphere. Hypergamy. So women dating up and across, that's it. But the, the idea of what's referred to as alpha widows. So an alpha widow is a woman who has managed to either get into a casual relationship or maybe even a short or long term relationship with a very high value man, but hasn't been able to hold onto him. So in her mind she was able to use her youth and her beauty and her body and her personality and all how lovely she is to be able to sort of capture this man. But his intentions. It was kind of doomed to fail from the start because maybe there was a little bit of an imbalance in mate value or he just wasn't. He was the guy with the cropped pants or the motorcycle or whatever. That's not to say that all people drive motorcycles can't be good partners. He wasn't invested in the way that she intended. And the alpha widow thing, which is a really interesting idea, talks about how that skews the self referential perspective of mate value moving forward. Well, I got this guy before, therefore this is my value moving forward. Again, I should be looking for. What you realize is that this guy was prepared to maybe sleep with you or sort of have a situationship but not really prepared to commit. And then you're setting into this sort of longing. And I wonder whether that, whether what we're looking at with limerence is some of the other sides of this story. That this is kind of what some women can be left with or some men as well, I imagine.
- [25:12]
B
Yeah, it is men too. I had one, I had a guy do it to me. I had to call the cops. And you know, he just, here's a little secret. If somebody's limerent on you, you say look, I don't feel that way about you. We can just be friends and they go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be friends.
- [25:28]
A
And no one wants to be friends with someone they fancy. Shut up.
- [25:32]
B
No, they don't. Not only do they. Well, it's, it's sad, but they'll do anything because they're close. They're. They'll do anything and the hope is there and they just think you'll come around. But the thing is, I think it's really unethical to promise to be friends with somebody just because you said you've made it. I made it clear I don't want a relationship because they're not. If they're limerant, they're actually not capable of giving consent to that. And that's what I realized about this man. He ended up very up and he's not even alive anymore. I, I recently heard he, he was, you know, he just got obsessed. He thought that he, he thought, he thought he was like, I think we're the same soul. And I was just like, oh, God, no, stop. You know, and later I found out that's a whole thing. Like there's a whole industry that feeds people with limerence, with magical thinking that even though this person doesn't like you and is like, hey, get back. Stop. Stop calling me. Actually, they love you. And in a past life or astrologically or actually you're the same soul. But one soul is always, you know, one half of the soul is always going to run and one day you'll be back together and you can, you know, people are just like draining so much money out of giving hope to people. It's a huge thing. And, you know, I have a YouTube channel like you, so you probably are aware of that stat where you find out, where are my people coming from and what were they searching, you know, when they came? And especially when I first started out, most of the search terms were tarot related and astrology. And I'm like, why? I never talk about that stuff. I talk about like childhood trauma symptoms, how to get your life together, you know, how to date in a way that it doesn't go crazy. Like, why are they doing that? But that's why, because they've got limerence and there's. I think that those are all things that people can engage with, you know, kind of psychics and all that. That, that could be fun and healthy and fine and not a big deal. But I think there's a large component of it, you know, that unethical people can really prey on limerent people who will pay you any amount of money to hear what they want to hear and they know what you want to hear. It's that, yeah, he really loves you.
- [27:35]
A
Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so there's this sense of imbalance perhaps in the mind of the limerent pedestalite. This person's better than me. That's sort of godly. I mean, getting toward the sort of even more crazy ends of this. They're divine. So it seems like rejection or unavailability increases limerent feelings. The more distant or aloof that someone is, does that make the limerent brain want to double down more?
- [28:04]
B
Well, I wonder sometimes. You know, we don't really have research to prove this. I contributed to a study that's going on right now at University of Sussex. I think they're doing some two year longitudinal study and they asked for my input on the questions. So I'll be really interested to see. But this is, you know, it's a matter of just observation and opinion. There's not a ton of research about this, but yeah, it does make it act, it makes it activate more. When you have a real person who likes you back, you will. You're going to smell their farts. You know, you're going to get so annoyed at how they drive all that stuff. That breaks the spell. And sometimes you can break the spell of limerence just by being honest with another person. Just saying, gosh, I just have these huge feelings for you. And they go, well, I don't feel that for you. And then it' right down. But a persistent limit limerent person, they'll go, oh, I'm so sad. It's not going to work out. And life feels empty. There's no source of dopamine anymore. And so there's this period of depression and then I call it the limerent flip. Whoop. They figure they find a way again. They saw something in your Instagram today. They, they got a sign, you know, out in the garden with, from a snail or, you know, just. I don't mean to make fun of it. I, I think that when I say that I'm just like making fun of people. They can't help it. Like their mind just needs to find it and it's coming from a very natural and good instinct.
- [29:26]
A
So they're pattern detecting things that are not associated with. What's it called? What's lo stand for?
- [29:32]
B
Lo is limerent object.
- [29:34]
A
Right. So that's the other side of this equation.
- [29:37]
B
The person you're limerent on. It's kind of a silly word, but yeah.
- [29:41]
A
So yeah, people are retrofitting Pattern matching incorrectly almost all of the time. Little signs and signals, whether it's a tarot card reader or the trail of a snail on the garden path or the Instagram caption or whatever it might be. And this is all evidence of the fact that the ello is actually secretly ready for this.
- [30:10]
B
Yeah, And I think the, the limerate object is actually a figment of your imagination. The person is a person, a whole human being, and they're not necessarily very well matched at all. And so it can be very intrusive when the real person says what they have to say. It doesn't match at all where you've been going in the story in your mind for so long. So it can be hard to bear and you want to avoid it.
- [30:31]
A
What causes limerence? Like, what predicts it?
- [30:36]
B
Well, my opinion is neglect from a parent. And I think there's something about alcoholism. I've always, I had a severely alcoholic mom, like hardcore, and another drugs, and I had a lot of alcoholism in my family. So that's always been something I've been around, I've been around other people who grew up like that. I feel like we're a tribe. I, I feel affinity with people who grew up like that. We just kind of understand each other. And, and so I noticed that that's highly correlated with people who end up limerent but also neglected, not seen. I think there are other pathologies, other weird. And when I say pathology, I just want to be careful. Like, look, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a therapist, but I, I, I've worked, I've, I've done a lot of work on this. And, and so there's this sick aspect around it where people, what causes it? I mean, really, there are life conditions that cause it. There may be a genetic component. Severe neglect teaches you to find love where there is no love. It's like, you know, Daddy and me, we have, you know, he's so special, he can't be here right now, and he's violent. But I know he loves me and I'm the best girl to him. You know, I, you know, I'm the light of his life. And, and we have this very special thing. So you, you have this idealization of a parent, which you should, you must. Right. What does that do to a kid? Who to believe your parents don't care about you and wish you were never born. Like, that is not something a kid can handle. So it's a survival mechanism. And I always just say, like, thank God for the survival mechanisms. Whatever allowed Your little spirit to convince itself it could carry on. You know, now you're here, but now you're an adult. And that's got to come off. Like, now we have to get real. Now we have to get honest about what's, what's really happening here, which is a total dedication to something that doesn't exist and a total absence of real life. And people will abandon their goals, their friendships, and to, to continue to just keep thinking about this person that's giving them that uplift they need. People are lonely, people are depressed. So some people, their pattern, they get out of depression by being angry all the time. And some people get out of it by thinking of a beautiful relationship that is just any day now, obsession, it's going to begin. Yeah. Or some people fantasize about great business success. I'm sure you've met people like that where they're just being totally unrealistic. And every time the going gets tough, they're like, yeah, but when I've got my billion dollar, you know, whatever, and you're just like, yeah, but you don't even have a website. So. So it's the same thing. And, and again, I don't mean to make fun of it. It's like this natural drive for us to try to express the best in ourselves. But there's this little piece missing, so we have to take bold action to, to overcome it. Now, some wounds that happen in life are like a scrape, and they're going to heal naturally. Time is going to do it. You don't even have to know how to heal it. But some are like an amputation. And if you lose a leg, you know, some people have, it's not gonna grow back. You can't get it back. You're not gonna get your childhood back. You're not gonna get that love from your mom back. You can't get it back. But there's a way to carry on. You know, in the case of a leg, literally, you can have a prosthesis. They're pretty good now. Some people even run marathons. You know, there's. There's much you can do despite this injury. And in a way, it's a healing. When you find your workaround, it's a healing and it will work. And it's enough. It's enough for you to become fully expressed as a person and reach your potential. So with limerence, it's the same thing. Something's not coming back. And personally, you know, when I used to go to therapy, some of the stuff they said, it just Wasn't helpful. Validating my feelings about it wasn't helpful. And nowadays I think when they. If there's a lot of like just talking about it, why, what happened? How did you end up feeling this way? That goes on too long. I think at a certain point it's just like, okay, now you have to get honest with yourself. You must stop talking about this. You have to break contact with this person. Even if you have to change jobs, you know, there's no, there's just no other way.
- [34:43]
A
So, I mean, I'm interested in the sort of life situation of somebody who would start to feel limerence. I get the sense that boredom, sort of a lack of purpose, a lack of distraction and fulfillment, because you would basically you would. Limerence would be an attempt to escape yourself through those feelings.
- [35:08]
B
Yeah, yeah. And. And maybe even in real life, maybe you dated somebody briefly and it was. You really felt like your life came into Technicolor with them. You could really just like feel like, ah, this is what it's like to be in the presence of something divine. You know, I really. Or you, you feel yourself sort of coming up and shining a bright light into the world. It feels really good in a. In a very important way. And then they take it away from you and you feel like there's no other way to get it back. And on a certain level, whatever we have with somebody else, we can't get back. You can get something like it with somebody else, but let's be honest, you know, people are not completely interchangeable.
- [35:44]
A
So are you suggesting that this could be a transference, so you might have actually been in a relationship with somebody that was really great, that didn't work out, and now you port that over to other people in future?
- [35:58]
B
Well, I guess I think that would be handy if you could, but you just stay fixated on that person. Like, I cannot fully exist. I can't really hop into my full dimension as a person unless I'm with this other person. The world feels bleak. And that's. A lot of people will say that it feels like it went to black and white. It's like when Dorothy walks out of the house after the. The tornado, you know, just like, oh, yeah. It's like this. This is what life is meant to be like. It's kind of like what drugs are like, you know, really, really pleasant drugs. Right. It just feels like the meaning becomes clear. So there's this. There's this lack of meaning that makes that feel like the only solution. Like. Like it's everything there's a lack of meaning, there's a lack of connection and there's it's no fun. Like it's not, it's not fun being alone and it's not fun feeling stuck in yourself and having no real people to love.
- [36:49]
A
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- [38:08]
B
I probably have a skewed perspective because my audience is not totally representative. But young women and especially lately have it and it's the, because a lot of people have long distance relationships by chatting with somebody online. If you're a young woman and you're chatting online with somebody for a long time, there's a lot of opportunity for this to turn into, you know, tip over into pretty toxic obsession.
- [38:36]
A
The aloofness, the, the intermittent contact, the lack of ability to be reassured, the lack of physical touch.
- [38:44]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I, I notice it with a lot of, a lot of young women who are very pressured by their families to achieve things, go to school, do things that they actually weren't really craving to do themselves. It was just some expectation they haven't really. They haven't really become themselves. They're living up to some parental expect. And so there's this emptiness. And, you know, sex is amazing. It really changes. Changes everything, doesn't it? And it can feel like that is. That is the thing that was missing, the only thing that was missing. But in women especially, it lights up this whole other belief, like if it. If the way that sex feels is what love is. And so if I have this experience with somebody, it's absolutely the full dimension of love, and it's what I must have. And it's this particular person. And you know that it's very sad because it's very sad. But I don't think that's the only reason it happens. I think it's. I think there's a. There's a need for love that's totally unmet. And there's a practice, like. Like there's a. It's almost like a developmental delay is how I see it. It's like a developmental delay that you don't know how to, like, pay attention to. How I really like this about this person I'm having dinner with. But this is a little weird, and that's kind of a red flag. I should ask a question about that. It just becomes a total. I'm all in. Men have it, too, and they have their forms of idealizing. And some guys, it's like a woman is way up on a pedestal. The most beautiful, you know, the most amazing. Everything she touches, there's a light coming out of her. But there's this other kind that I see where they want to save a woman. They just become. They'll, like, ruin a perfectly good marriage because of some. Some woman. Yeah. I had a letter from a guy. He saw a woman, like, unconscious on the sidewalk, and he called 911 and he stayed with her. And then he went to the hospital, and the next thing you know, his whole life became about her and what was possible there. So you can see, like, it's. It's not real. And. And in that case, with, like, people who are fragile like that, it's the same thing. We have an ethical responsibility not to mess with their emotions. You know, if they're. In her case, she was a drug addict. She was unconscious because she needed Narcan or something.
- [41:04]
A
I listened to that episode. It was great. It was really. Well, I mean, was it great? It was harrowing and fascinating.
- [41:08]
B
Oh, about that guy. Yeah.
- [41:10]
A
Really, really good. You know, this. This dude who. I mean, it was a pattern because he then did it again, the woman ended up dying because of a drug overdose. And then there's some other woman who's in a, a drug like toiletry store and she couldn't get some stuff and then he bought them for her. And it's this sort of savior complex.
- [41:28]
B
Yeah, he could get that.
- [41:29]
A
I guess this, this desire to be sort of seen as, as the hero. You mentioned sex there. I get the sense would really great sex cause this to happen, that you just sort of break through some boundary that you had previously. You have really great sexual chemistry with another person and that is the beginning. Well, how am I ever going to be able to find, you know, this was so transcendent, it was so divine, it was so whatever.
- [41:56]
B
I mean, obviously it can, but I don't think that's necessary because people get this way over people they've never had sex with, you know, they can only imagine. And so that, that's not a necessary component. But I do think, you know, I'm sort of in the camp of for, for women even more than men. You have to guard that thing that happens, you know, with your whole neurobiology around sex and oxytocin and orgasm, because it will bond you with somebody whether they're right for you or not, whether you like them or not. It just will, you know, throw you over a cliff. You're under a spell and now you must deal with it. And if you're not good at getting out of relationships, you just, you just kind of cost yourself years of happiness.
- [42:37]
A
Right. Because if you fall easily but leave slowly and you're not sufficiently discerning before falling. Yeah. You kind of need to treat yourself in love like a drug addict or like an unreliable crazy person.
- [42:56]
B
Yes.
- [42:57]
A
And you say, look, at some point they're going to put rose colored glasses on. But the problem is when you're wearing rose colored glasses, red flags don't look that red.
- [43:05]
B
Right. Well, the best advice anybody ever gave me was to that the definition of dating is to get, is to find out who somebody is and whether you would like to get close to them. But dating kind of in our culture today, it means having sex with. Oh, I'm dating this person means having sex with. Could be casual, could be. Well, if it were more than that, you might use different words. But dating properly, it's spending time with somebody in a fairly structured way so that you can find out, you know, what's the deal and you can get your cards on the table. It's like, listen, I really am aiming for marriage. I already have A child. How do you feel about that? Are you open to that? Are you into monogamy? I am. You know those conversations when. When I work with people who are damaged around their ability to bond like that and who have gotten into, like, one unavailable obsession after another or actual relationship with somebody unavailable, or they've been talked into polyamory again, even though that's not what they want. But, you know, the mind, hope springs eternal. Right? I can. I'll change this somehow. And so when I coach them, I always start everybody out and say, you know, could you just describe, like, what's your heart's desire? What do you most want? And I would say most people, men and women, what they want is to be married. And. But there's this huge social taboo. You're not supposed to want that. You're not supposed to say it. Like, it would be shameful to say it on a date. You're trying to label things. I'm just like, oh, gosh, this whole thing. This whole thing has really messed people up. And. And it's okay. And that was a huge part of my personal development to learn that I could be open about. I want to get married, I want to have kids. And if you're not into that, goodbye.
- [44:47]
A
And, yeah, I suppose subjugating your own needs for fear of them putting somebody off. But you'd be like, I'm not right? You think, well, is your goal to be in a relationship with this person or with a person who's right for you? Because the more that you try and cover over what it is that you want, what it is that you need, the sort of life goals that you've got for yourself, the kind of way that you want to spend your weekends, all of that stuff, you're pushing yourself further and further into a potential relationship with somebody who isn't, like, the person you want to be with.
- [45:23]
B
That's right. And it's not only costing you time. That may be precious if you want to have children. It's precious under all circumstances, really. It's everybody's precious time. But it's costing you time. But it's also grinding you down. That experience of, I call it being cool girl. You know, cool girl. I'm like, oh, that's cool, you know, oh, you're seeing somebody else tonight. Never mind. It was my birthday. I was, well, anyway, you know, that's cool girl. Like, no, that's cool. Sorry. And I always say, if I had a nickel for everybody who came to me because they had been trying to, like, lie about who they were and how they felt to be okay in the eyes of somebody else, I would have a lot of nickels, you know, at least A$50. I don't know, but maybe a little more. But it's really, really common. We've all been programmed. You're not allowed to like that. So one of the things I do with people is I just give them permission to want what they want, just want what you want and just be open about it. Doesn't mean you're going to get it. Lifeisnot Amazon.com youm don't always get what you ordered, but you're definitely not going to get it if you're just all wobbly about it and you keep bonding with the wrong person.
- [46:28]
A
Yes, yes, very good point. Why do some people get limerent and others don't?
- [46:35]
B
Yeah, it's weird, huh? I think, I think there's a kind of privilege that nobody talks about, you know, And I'm a kid who grew up like with a heroin addict mom, very poor, on welfare. And when people are like, talk about my privilege, I'm like, you know, not necessarily in every way there, but I think there's this incredible privilege of people who are loved properly all their lives. And so they have an innate sense of, like, when somebody talks to them in an abusive manner, they're out of there. They're just like, I don't, I don't tolerate this. They feel it, they see it, they leave and they know they can. Like, they have people to return to so that they're not all alone. But if you're all alone in the world, and a lot of people really are, and there's been times I, I just didn't have people to go to. You know, there's a lot of incentive to just trying to make. I have words for everything. I call it crap fitting. You fit yourself to crap. You just need, you need somebody to hang out with so bad that you will tolerate unacceptable people and just intolerable conditions. And then you get so good at it, you don't want to be good at crap fitting. And it'll keep a roof over your head sometimes, you know, and you stay in something, but sometimes you have to take the bold step and get out. And that's like when we see like somebody who's an abused partner and they're just, they just don't leave and they keep going back. It's very hard to make that break because staying grinds down your confidence. It grinds down your realistic vision that, yes, I might have to you know, couch surf or live in a shelter or have some crappy little apartment for a little bit, and I'll have to find a job and I don't know how I'm going to do it, but there's no other way. And I will find a way. That's what freedom is like. Like actual healing and freedom. It's not like controlling other people and stopping them from triggering you or anything. The freedom is just knowing, whatever happens, I'll figure it out. I'll figure out what to do. Like, that's confidence.
- [48:27]
A
That's such a lovely definition of freedom. Rick Hanson and Forrest Hansen have this idea where they talk about, imagine yourself as a sort of person who can handle change well. And I think that sense of maybe if I had a bit of a chaotic childhood, maybe if I didn't feel like anybody really had my back ever, I was sort of chronically uncertain and a little bit mistreat, treated and, you know, varying degrees or maybe a lot mistreated. I. I just fear change. I'm not convinced that I'm going to be able to deal with it particularly well.
- [49:02]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And if you've been through some hard times, you know, and many people have, I think that's something that we don't always realize about everybody. And part of my work is getting hundreds of letters from people who are going through a really hard time is. It's really like, opened my heart. I'm a lot less scornful of people who are screwing up. Like, I get it, I get it. And I've been there. And, you know, it was a miracle that I got through a lot of the stuff I got through.
- [49:32]
A
So it seems to me like there's this deep sense of sort of wanting to be rescued or validated by this other person in limerence. Is that right?
- [49:43]
B
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, a real loving relationship is a bit of a validation. It's a healing. You know, there's that fundamental loneliness of being human. It doesn't. Marriage doesn't fix everything. But, you know, a good marriage is a healing of sorts, and so it's natural to want that. One of my analogies is it's like plastic fruit. My nana, she was from Brooklyn and she, you know, she was an immigrant. Her family was from Norway, and. And she liked to have this baroque living room, and there was, you know, like, fake chandeliers and there was a bowl, this crystal bowl of plastic fruit. And as a kid, me and my cousins, we couldn't resist it. We were always just like, oh, Those grapes, they just look so good. And we would bite into them and they were like, that's what it's like. That's what limerence is like, is you're just like, oh, that person is the most beautiful thing. You know, it's weird. I'm sure you get this when once you're, like, on YouTube, it's a little bit like being a television star or something in our small way. And then people get it for me and they think my videos were about them. That would be an extreme case. Or they just think, you know, they just think I understand them as nobody else can. And they're surprised when they meet me in person, that I'm sort of, you know, I'm very friendly and I look people in the eye and I'll give them a hug and listen and stuff, but I actually don't know them. I don't know their name or anything. And that comes as a surprise.
- [51:12]
A
Yeah, I've had a few encounters, not many. I think maybe it's the way that I present. Maybe it's that I'm sufficiently uninteresting outside of what I do on the show. I don't seem to attract many crazies at all. But there's been a couple of situations that were a bit disturbing to me, and a few of them that sort of went on for a really long time. Never anything that actually ended up manifesting in the real world, but just stuff where I could tell somebody's really kind of got some mental distress going on. And for some reason I've become the object of that. And that made me, to be honest, the main reason that I tried to get that dealt with wasn't for them, it was for me. Because every time that it would pop up, I was like, fuck, like this person's really suffering. And I felt very uncomfortable with that. So, yeah, I mean, but just going back to that. This sort of deep wanting, being rescued, being validated by another person. If we assume that there's a pedestalization, this kind of imbalance, comparison to the thief of joy with regards to that. And then if you also assume that the aloofness, the distance, the more that somebody pushes away, the more that it causes this limerence to occur. Happiness is what happens when you stop feeling like there's something missing in your life. So between the fact that comparison is sealing your joy and that happiness is really, really difficult to achieve, if you feel like there's this big hole that's inside of it. The despair and the anxiety that we talked about, so anxiety I want this to be fixed. Despair. I feel bad. Anxiety. If I can get this thing fixed, then the despair will go away. It's a vicious loop. It seems like a. I don't know, like a perfectly designed mental pathology for people to have. That's self reinforcing.
- [53:09]
B
And you'd almost have to wonder if there was some payoff in it. Right. And I've got a book coming out in October about that. I call it covert avoidance. That if you are continuously getting. Getting obsessed with or into a relationship with somebody who can't love you back, you're avoidant. You're avoidant. And it's. You know, no one who's doing that perceives themselves as avoidant. They're hungry, they're chasing, they're trying, they're begging and hoping. But it's avoidance.
- [53:38]
A
You know what it reminds me of? Have you heard of death by cop? You know what that is? Mm, yeah. It's the relational equivalent of death by cop for avoidance.
- [53:48]
B
Oh, that's so good.
- [53:49]
A
You know what I mean?
- [53:50]
B
Yeah, I do.
- [53:51]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. I am going to. So for the people that don't know, sometimes people that want to take their own lives, instead of jumping off a bridge or overdosing on drugs or whatever, they'll do something that causes a cop to pull their gun out and then they'll push to the limit of where they end up being killed by the police officer. And this. Yeah, the purposefully dating somebody that you know is unavailable in order to not have to face the potential for attachment. Genuine attachment is you're outsourcing your own sense of avoidance to somebody else.
- [54:29]
B
That's exactly right. You've outsourced it and now you can perceive yourself as the good one and. And put the power, the locus of control in the other person.
- [54:39]
A
Well, you've assured your failure privately by avoiding your failure publicly. Right?
- [54:43]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I don't think anybody does it consciously, but I think a lot of avoidance is like that. There's so many forms that we are avoiding. We're avoiding our lives, we're avoiding true connection with other people. And I just finished my manuscript and I. Congratulations. Thank you. I've been thinking a lot about it. This is, you know, my last book was re regulated about Nervous system and I talk about the disconnection there. But now I've gone for the deep dive to the disconnection, which is basically where the devil gets in. That's just the. Without genuine connection, we get weirder and weirder and people get they feel offended when I say that. So I'll speak for myself. When I'm isolated, I get weird, and not in a good way. I get. I get cranky.
- [55:24]
A
Let's dig into. Dig into that disconnection weirdness thing for me a little bit.
- [55:28]
B
Well, we're, you know, when we're hanging out with other people in real life, we get socialized. And we all saw during lockdown, for example, like, what did. What were we, like when we didn't get to hang out with people very much? And I remember, like, sitting in a cafe for the first time where other people were in the cafe and we weren't acknowledging each other or anything, but they were there. And I was just like, this is great. But when I started spending time with people again, I was very salty. I was. I was often stumbling over my words. I was having trouble, like, reading their emotions. I got rusty very quickly, and I wasn't sure I liked them. And then I wanted to sort of crawl back in my hole. And so it's a vicious cycle. Yeah. Like, we're meant to be around each other. And I don't think it's all, like, on the surface either. I think our nervous systems talk to each other. I'm sort of of the school that some people are putting out there that our nervous. There's one big nervous system, and we're, We're. We're nodes in it. And so we feel each other. So you can. And this shows up in the most practical ways. Like, let's say somebody says, gosh, it feels like you're kind of crushing on me, and I'm uncomfortable. And they go, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm not. I just want to be friends. No, that's not what I want. No, I have a girlfriend. I just. But you feel it. Your nervous system feels their nervous system. And you know what you feel. So if you're doing drugs or you're depressed or you're. Or you've just, you know, this happens to kids who are. Who have parents who are not good parents is. You get, like, your perception gets completely switched off. This is a big part of it. They're like, no, I'm not drunk. No, it is safe to get in the car, get in. Stop complaining.
- [57:04]
A
Oh, right. Your capacity to make judgments, I have to assume as well, your ability to advocate for your own needs. You know, if. If you were the sort of child who never really told Mum and Dad no. That never sort of pushed back in a way. It's, you know, it's. They're adults, they know better than you. And you have this sense that, well, the problem is always going to be with me. The problem isn't out there in the world. The problem isn't with the partner that's mistreating me. The problem is with my interpretation of their treatment of me. That's not mistreatment. It's poor reception. Oh, it's not. My boss isn't being that much of a dick. It's because I'm too sensitive.
- [57:48]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [57:48]
A
This is this. This house that I'm living in and the rent that I'm paying and the way that I'm dealing with my problems in my life. No, no, no. The problems that I'm facing in my life are totally normal. The issue is with my weakness. It's with my fragility and this sort of. It's this odd kind of agency.
- [58:07]
B
Why do you think agency. I was going to say, what do you think that is? It's control. If it's my fault, I can change it.
- [58:13]
A
Well, the other thing is, I had this conversation. Do you know who Jocko Willink is? I imagine he's not.
- [58:18]
B
I know the name, but no.
- [58:19]
A
Very big head, Navy SEAL man, very scary. Gets up at 4am a lot. He was on the show, great episode, three years ago now. And I asked him this question. His whole thing is about taking responsibility, that taking responsibility is a salve to pretty much everything. And he says, sometimes it might not be your fault, but it is still your responsibility. And I thought, I understand who this is aimed at. And it might even be most people, right? The sort of victimhood mentality, myth of martyrdom, woe is me, that kind of avatar. And again, that might be most people, but there's a very particular cohort of people that I would place myself in. And I imagine lots of them actually listen to podcasts like this one, for whom they actually need to take less responsibility for some of the things that happen to them, that they overburden themselves with responsibility so much that they start to see things that aren't their fault and aren't their responsibility as their problem to solve. And that's this sort of. What do you call it? Like, pathological agency. This is my problem. This is my problem. It's like, how about it's actually them? What if they're the problem? What if they're mistreating you? What if they need to be put in. Put in their place? What if you need to leave that job or relationship or house or community or friend group? What if it's Them, not you.
- [59:40]
B
Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. They swing too far in that direction. And it is a way that you can hold onto a relationship where you're not wanted, you know? Well, they have. I hear this all the time. You know, my boyfriend is abusive, but, you know, he had trauma as a kid, so I know I can't leave him. And I'm like, how do you figure? You know, how do you figure? And that's. But that's what happens. Our minds are. We're programmed to look for ways we can make it work. And I think it's hijacking our parenting instinct. And, you know, some of our highest motives are hijacked and being used for.
- [60:12]
A
Ill. Did you know that your annual physical only screens for around 20 biomarkers, which leaves a lot of gaps when it comes to your understanding of your health, which is why I partnered with Function. They run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one. They've got a team of expert physicians that then takes that data, puts it into a simple dashboard and gives you actionable recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health and hormone levels to your thyroid function. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this usually costs thousands, but with function, it is only $500. And right now you can get the exact same blood panels that I get and bypass their waitlist by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com modernwisdom that's functionhealth.com modernwisdom have you thought about whether or not limerence serves an evolutionary purpose? Is it like nature's way of forcing you to pursue a mate with blind obsession because there's not many around? Like, have you thought about why this might be adaptive?
- [61:16]
B
I feel like everything is like that. I mean, my experience as a person is that everybody has like good and bad. Everybody's kind of like capable of the same bad as the worst people. But we countervail it with efforts to do better things and to be virtuous. And so I kind of think, I'm not of the school that everybody's a narcissist. That word is like so overused. There is such a thing. And for the stuff I teach, it's more like the problem with narcissism is our own traits that are kind of narcissistic, where we get too self centered. But I think even I think everything is serving a purpose and it may not be a good purpose anymore. But like, I think people who actually are narcissists may be necessary for society. That's my theory. Somebody has to be Teflon, you know, somebody, somebody has to just like, not care that everybody hates them or that they're going to get killed in the battle. They just have to be like, but I'm the greatest and we need those people. And so maybe, maybe we're misunderstanding. I think the idea. As a kid who grew up really poor, and I grew up in a family that was very educated but neglectful. And so my friends were sort of all on the wrong side of the tracks and it took me a long time to sort of find my place. And I ended up getting, you know, well educated and I do have friends of all types. I, I, that's a happy thing about my life. But it was very stigmatizing and there were a lot of things I had no idea how to do. And that's one of, that's one of the topics that I'm also developing. I do content now, but just like there needs to be an etiquette book for people who were raised feral. We don't know, we don't know what it's like.
- [62:52]
A
How to be a human, Doc.
- [62:54]
B
How to be a human. Yeah, yeah. So I have a, I have a whole thing called Charm School for Feral Girls. Nobody, you know, everybody just assumes you know and you know how to do this. And so a lot of information is like, like, in terms of, like, how should women handle their sex lives? And they, the, I remember when I was like, I don't know, 19 or something, and in Cosmo magazine they were like, when you've just had a one night stand with a guy, get up, don't dwell on him, get up, brush your teeth, do some sit ups and then go. And I was like, okay, got it. You know, act like this. It was just like it was bullshit and it was like bad advice or another thing I had, you know, I had to learn from stuff like tv. There was this commercial for the perfume Anjoli and this woman came on and she goes, the most irresistible thing to a man is a woman who is helplessly in love with him. I was like, got it. You know, thanks.
- [63:49]
A
Shameless Marketing company.
- [63:50]
B
Yes, thank you.
- [63:51]
A
I take that as my life strategy.
- [63:52]
B
Turns out it's totally resistible and weird and for them and uncomfortable. Right? Yeah.
- [63:58]
A
Odd. Okay. Is, would you class limerence as some kind of an addiction? Because neurologically it seems to sort of mirror those dopamine patterns of addiction. So are they addicted to a person or the feeling. How do you unpack this?
- [64:13]
B
I think it. You could call it a person addiction, but really, I think it's an addiction to. Because it's an addiction to hope. That's. Hope is the dope. It's hope they don't really like. In theory, they want to be with the person, but the thing that gives the high is. Is cresting over from devastation to hope.
- [64:32]
A
Again, that little moment uncertainty to positive reinforcement. So it's like slot machine. It's just a variable schedule reward. Right.
- [64:39]
B
Or it's like people who want to suffocate, you know, when they're having sex or something. You know, like you want to get that close to death. And then it's like that. It's a. It's a. It's a really unhealthy and toxic high. And it leads to bad things. It makes people alone. And. And so very few people are actually willing to do what it takes to stop it. A lot of people ask me, few follow through. But you. You gotta stop talking about it. You gotta stop contact, the talking about it and thinking about it. Like, a lot of therapists will totally, like, spend all the time talking about that.
- [65:10]
A
Right. Just indulging in whatever this person's issue is.
- [65:13]
B
Yeah. And how do you feel about that? And, oh, you had a dream. Tell me about that. And. And all of it's so interesting. And that's like, when you're addicted to hope, like, that's just fueling the addiction. Like, how does heroin feel? What do you like best about it? You know, what does it smell like? And you know, you wouldn't do that, would you? You have to, like, sort of clean up your environment and you have to get in, you know, be with different people. And you have to stop cold turkey. And some people may have an easier, softer way out of it. They'll have to figure that out for themselves. But there comes a time when you realize you're only going down, and so you cut it off. I think it's very spiritual too. I'm a spiritual person. And I think that if you're craving the divine in another person, you actually need a spiritual life so that you're not misapprehending that spiritual inclination that's natural for you as being from one person. But you need fun. You need to start, like, going on bike rides and getting together with girlfriends and having people you can go to so you're not alone all the time with your feelings and people you are honest with. And they have 12 step programs for this, but I think for, yeah, for obsession and sex and love. Addicts Anonymous is one place. But I think it's important for people to maybe go to gender segregated meetings because, you know, there's nothing like a room. Yeah, A room full of people who are, you know, who have bad boundaries around this stuff and haven't figured it out yet. So that can, that can go south. So, you know, in my own healing, shouldn't laugh. I only ever healed when I asked for help from the most formidable, scary person who I knew could see my shit and would tell me the truth about stuff. And how I can ask you who that was. It was a man friend who I knew and he. I knew him in a 12 step environment and we had known each other for 20 years and there was never any attraction. And he was married and, and it was, it was, it's kind of an odd choice in 12 steps. But I had watched him help dozens of men change their lives. And the men, the problems they were having were a little different than mine. But they were like the equivalent of like living in your mom's basement, you know, in their 30s. And you know, they would drive some shitty car and feel very sorry for themselves all the time that girls didn't like them. And he would teach them to like suit up, you know, dress nicely, go take out a loan and get a proper car that would be appropriate for dating. Start to set some standards and then get to work really hard on the 12 steps. And so when I met my now husband, I just kind of knew he was the one, but half thinking, but I would think that, right? That's what I do. But he was like a really good guy and, and I could see that. And at the minute I. And I was, I was like around him all the time. I was in this class that he was in and whenever I was around him, I would want to dress nicer. I'd want to stop gossiping. Like this really good part of myself was trying to come out.
- [68:08]
A
It made you want to be a better person.
- [68:10]
B
It made me want to be a better person. And that's before we'd ever even spoken. So for two months I kind of felt like he was the one. But I finally chose my moment to just like chat him up about something and he, he just like didn't get the clue for the longest time. So we were, you know, we were just hanging out for a while and then I put my cards on the table. So we had some dates. And after a couple months, he broke up with Me, because I was coming on too strong. At one point, he said, I want to go really slow. And I was like, I do too, and I'm not worried about it. I said, because I already know. I already know where this is. No, it was. I had made a decision, you know, I. I was in my 40s. I had had plenty of experience. And someday we'll talk about, like, the, The. The heinous experiences I've had. Like, they're terrible. They're. They're. They're a little bit funny now, but not even totally. And I took some time off and I did deep work on myself to do something differently and to be real about what I wanted. I had kids. By this time, I was divorced with two boys. You can't bring some jerk into your life with kids. And so I was really careful and I said, I'm going to go really slow. It's going to be a long time. I'm not going to have sex anytime soon. Forget about it. But if you want to get to know me, I'm here. And then he said, that's what I want. And then I was like, I would get him. That's all I needed to be like, oh, I got to get him. So I was coming on too strong. And then he broke up with me. So that's when I asked this man I knew. I said, can you help me? I just think this is the best guy I've ever met. And I blew it. And I just. Somehow I've got to get him back. And so he helped me. And it took about six months. And he taught me, sit on my hands, let information come to me, don't initiate anything. Because I would see him every week in this class, and it took a little while. First he would sort of come up and be like, oh, do you want one of the cookies? And I'd be like, mm, yeah, okay. And then go back to what I was doing instead of like leaping at everything. Cause it's. Being a single mom is very lonely.
- [70:04]
A
Isn't it a shame that. Yeah, we have that dynamic in us for the push and pull.
- [70:10]
B
Yeah. But it's. I think it's important. It's activating some part of us and it gets disordered. Like, I was so worried about being a single mom that I thought I had better work double time to get em. But it just doesn't work on a. On a healthy man, you know, who. Anything. You know what? If you don't fix your way of dating, who it will work for is like, you know, the relationship before that turned out to be a heroin addict. I didn't even realize it. But that's who has fine with your foibles.
- [70:36]
A
You know, I think there's an extent of being inauthentic, untruthful. It's kind of not too far away from deception if this is how I feel. But I'm going to put up some variant of the cool girl or cool guy facade in an attempt to tolerate or temper how much of this. Because if I come on too strong, then you pull away and I just. It would be so much nicer if both people could just say exactly how I feel about this thing.
- [71:08]
B
I know.
- [71:09]
A
Not, you know, passionate love. The passionate love system is fucking insane. And you have no serotonin, so your ability to be rational completely goes out of the window and you just totally driven forward by goal seeking. But if both people are feeling that, but both people have to pretend to not be feeling that because if either of them say that they are, the other one pulls away and it kills the track. It's like, like this is just. I'd be very. I need to speak to an evolutionary psychologist about this. But I don't understand apart from this, the kind of classic playground mentality that we all have, which is I only want something that I can't get. That in the aloofness is allurement. Other than that, I'm like, I don't get what the fucking mechanism is. I don't understand what it is that's going on.
- [71:56]
B
A scarcity, I guess. I don't know. It just works. It works psychologically, but. And, and it was in my case, I was playing a game. Here's. Here's when everything turned around with my husband. Like it happened one day. He called me up and I had been coached to date like a proper lady, you know, and don't accept dates after Wednesday. And I was like, you're kidding. Oh, I can't. Who will I ever date? And I always hear that from people. Now they're like, no one will ever date me if I have standards, you know. But I was like. So he calls me on Saturday evening. What was I really doing? I was just sitting there all by myself. My kids were at their dad's. I was really sad. I felt crying. Another year, nobody to be with, you know. And I was really sad and wishing he would call. And then he called, it was him. And he's like, hey, do you want to hang out? I was wondering if you want to hang out. And I was like, no, sorry, I got Plans. And he was like, oh, he was really surprised. And I told him later, you know, I didn't have to do that for long. I didn't do it to mess with him. I did it to overcome my own problem with latching on and bonding too fast as a result of being totally neglected as a kid. I had to just like, act like a normal person so that the relationship could begin later. When I got to know him, I told him, I said, well, I did this thing. He had no idea. And he was like, that's so weird because when you did that, I was just like, it really, like made me fall back into you. And he had, you know, he had broken up with me at that point before, and then he was gradually coming back. It really worked. But I had to act like a person who valued herself, even though I wasn't really totally there yet. And that's how it works. Like, everybody imagines, oh, I'm going to heal, I'm going to get to the island of healed people and then I'm going to have this great relationship. But it doesn't work like that. We heal by having relationships, but we try not to have too much crazy ones that grind you down and ruin your life.
- [73:40]
A
Does this mean then that some people are repeat limerence sufferers? That you've got this sort of common thread, it just happens and then you learn about it and then it goes, it's this repetition.
- [73:50]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's serial limerence. And it's, it's a sad fate if they can't stop it. And I had that happen. This guy who stalked me one day, 15 years later. I, I, I used to have a video production company and I, I had to hire some people to fill a big crew and I hired this woman out of a hundred people on Craigslist and we were cleaning up afterwards and the video we made was about stalkers for some client. And I said, I had a stalker once. And she goes, oh, that's so weird. Me too. Anyway, it turned out it was the same guy, but like 15 years apart.
- [74:22]
A
Holy shit.
- [74:23]
B
It's this weird karmic thing. And he had, I remember when he was stalking me, he was talking about her and then I realized her name was very similar. I was getting these weird emails from somebody whose name was one letter off from hers going, you don't remember me, but I met you at a party and I had this dream about you. And I'm very concerned, I think you might want to know this. And I would just be like, what the fuck is this. It was him. It was him like impersonating a woman and using her name. And there's these weird connections and we were terrified of each other. It was just like, are you, are you working for him? Are you? And we went and had a drink and we, you know, told our stories to each other, but it was very sad. And that's all this guy ever did. He just obsessed on people and. And she actually loved him and wanted a relationship with him in her day. And he couldn't do it. He could only do this. And so that's extreme. Some people have that. It's called erotomania. Some people like they'll have it for a movie star or something. And they're so into. They're so committed to their limerent dream. They talk about it and talk about it and they really believe it's happening and nobody can really reason with them.
- [75:31]
A
How do you think modern media depictions of sort of functional and dysfunctional relationships contribute to this? The myth of the one? Stuff like that.
- [75:40]
B
Yeah. I feel like it's getting better. I happen to really love TV a lot. I think we're in this incredible age where it's the highest art form there is, streaming television and oh, these. I think it's getting better and more realistic. I mean, for me, I'll just say I've always loved TV and movies, but until about 15 years ago, women were not very three dimensional. And now that women are more involved in the writing and the directing and producing, we're sort of, you know, we're all in it now. Now everybody's in it and we're hearing the perspectives and I just see much more realistic things. But if you look at any movie from more than 20 years ago, it's always about some guy who's a little dweeby and some beautiful girl and against all odds he wins her heart, you know, and that's the, that's like the old story. But you don't get that about girls until much more recently where she's kind of, you know, chunky and not very pretty and this beautiful guy. There are the shows like that now and I love them. I love them. You know, it's like, that's my story. But you would be, you know, that they're, they're out of your league. But then they see how wonderful you are. And I think that's everybody's fantasy really about to, to do that. We're not all practical.
- [76:49]
A
The best. David Buss says this. The best relationships are ones in which both people feel mutually fortunate to Be with the other.
- [76:59]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [76:59]
A
And like what a lovely. But again, in that this sort of push and pull dynamic, that this more juvenile, more immature, more un transcended or included part of you. I guess one thing we haven't spoken about. Is there a sexed difference? I'm gonna guess that it's more women just because of how the attachment system works, especially if it's been after sex. But I don't know, is it more common in men than women or women than men?
- [77:29]
B
I wish I could answer that. I know my sample is skewed. My audience is like 75, 80% women, so. But when men get it now this might be my perception. I feel like it's more menacing when men get it. Like they, they're bigger than you. When it's happened to me from men, it's been like scary and, and, or creepy. I remember there was this guy, he. I invited him. I had this big birthday party at a rental house, got in big trouble with the agency that rented it. I wasn't supposed to bring 30 people, but we had a great time. And he had this present for me that was beautifully wrapped and I was really scared to open it. And I wouldn't open it at the party. And later I ended up talking to somebody who knew him because I said I was just really scared. It was like diamond earrings. I don't like him. I don't want to date him, but I know he's obsessed with me. I shouldn't have invited him. I know now, but. And he's. The friend said, that's so funny. He did buy you diamond earrings, but I made him return them. And he got. He got me a travel mug. So I was like, oh, travel mug, we're cool. But my nervous system did feel it. I knew he was like that. So I would have loved to have diamond earrings at that stage of my life. But not from him, just not from that guy.
- [78:42]
A
What about. Does limerence have any. Does it always have a correlation with sexuality? Or could someone of the same sex be limerent even if they're heterosexual?
- [78:52]
B
Yes. So. Well, two things. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with horses. And some people say that's sexual. I don't think it was.
- [78:59]
A
Oh, wow. So you could even. You're even saying forget the sex of the person, like the species. You might be limerent with a horse.
- [79:07]
B
I was really obsessed with horses. And then Laura Ingalls Wilder, which is really, you know, who she is. The Little House books. Well, there was Little House on the Prairie, which was Kind of a doofy TV show. But there's these books that are some great literature that sustained me as a kid about going westward in a wagon and trying to survive, you know, out there in a homestead. And I loved these books. They really spoke to me. And I wanted to go back in time and be in her family, not mine. And I would think about her all the time. And then I would buy clothes at thrift stores and I didn't know how to sew. I was like 10, you know, so I would staple together fabric and I bought these used ice skates and I unscrewed the blades and I would walk around and ice skates, they have no flexibility in the soles. And I would go to school in these staple dresses and ice skate shoes and a bonnet. And everybody just tolerated me as some weird kid. But I was like, I was in her world and I was just, I was just really committed. I'm going to. I don't want dinner. I'm going to go make a fire outside and heat my food up on the fire in the backyard. And my parents let me do it. You know, they were pretty. They were hippies, so they let me do it. So I was sort of already like in these other worlds. And I had an imaginary horse. And horses for me were like, you can go where you want to go. You can just like get on your horse and ride where you want to go. And you're not like, stuck. My family moved from a commune in Berkeley to this like, dumpy little thing in Tucson, Arizona during the Vietnam War. And it was 110 degrees. And I needed a horse, damn it. I needed to get out of there. I was so stuck. And so these were my ways of escaping. And so I talked to a lot of people. And limerence seems to begin in childhood with these fantasies and this ability to transport yourself. But I've also heard now from people, and this is not something that I've had myself, but they get limerent like over teacher figures. Like there's women who are not gay, but they, they, they become completely obsessed with a woman a generation older. And they're telling me this and I'm always like, you know, I hope you don't mean me. But they, that's what they do. They have. I've. I've received letters that are really deep and complex and puzzling about it. And the way the, the mother figure seems to. Seems to be getting something out of it too. And the, the whole relationship usually explodes. There's something really unstable about it. But they come together like, yeah, there's a fit there with it. And it's really common. I've seen that.
- [81:32]
A
How do people get over limerence?
- [81:36]
B
So I say, treat it as heroin. You can't just be friends. If you can be friends, be friends. If you can just get over it, get over it. But if you could do that, you would have done it by now. And so if you're suffering still, it's time to cut ties. So I get a lot of pushback on my channel from people who go, well, that's not fair. You know, she's obsessed with this guy, but he flirted with her. He gave her reason to hope he should leave the job. It's like, he's not writing me a letter. He's fine. She's the one who's, like, losing her happiness over this, so. So I recommend leave the job. Stop being in contact with the person around whom you can't be yourself. You can't think about anything else, and you can't progress as a person to where you're having a happy relationship and, you know, a happy life and fulfilled and what you want to do. And so first you cut contact. Then you have to cut off the talking about it and thinking about it. And people are like, I can't stop thinking about it. I'm like, you can. Just like a person who does heroin needs to stop thinking about it. And the intrusive thoughts will come, but you have to remind yourself. And you're going to need friends who will support you. You're going to say, sorry, I'm just, like, thinking about how great it would be if that boat trip we're taking if he would come. And they can say, okay, hold on, this is going to be really good. I'm going to be with you. This is going to be fun. And, hey, what are you going to wear? And let's go get some. Something really nice to eat on the boat. And friends who help you come back to present time. You need help. It's very hard to fix yourself all by yourself. And you can do a certain amount, and then you have to sometimes. One thing I had to do is get all the sad songs off my. It was an ipod at the time, but I had all these songs about unrequited love. Like, half of all songs are about that. So I just took them all off. And I only had songs about other things, about happy things or neutral things or, you know, but not just. Yeah, there's, like, certain artists who, like, that's their specialty is how sad that you did that to me and you know, it was true love. So I just was like, I'm not going to entertain this energy anymore. I'm going to stop and. Have you ever had a friend who was limerent and they just yammer on and on and they, you feel sometimes you can, you feel like you're like they're, they're conversational equivalent of a sex doll or something where they just want to talk about this other person. And, and they're like. And then he did this thing and it was so funny. And then you know, we went over to the, to the snack bar and we got potato chips and it was so cute the way he ate them. And, and, and then he said, and then I said and it's like you're using somebody else. You're co op, you're trying to co opt their attention so that you can feed yourself the dope. And so your friends should not put up with it. They should say, I don't want to hear about it. I know this is, you told me this is an unhealthy thing. I don't want to hear about it. This is like somebody just telling you how great drugs are, you know, or how great running in front of cars is. It's not great. I don't want to hear about it. It's disturbing actually. And so we can be kind to people but the, we need to stop. And I just think a lot of the solutions out there and the reason I always had to find my own way to heal from my own trauma wounds, including this one, it didn't help me, it didn't help me to do conventional things. I had to be a real stoic about it. And a woman came along, the woman who showed me the techniques that I teach and re regulated that are like the thing that I've done for 30 years to keep moving. You can move your difficult thoughts and feelings out of your mind, get them on paper and release them twice a day, faithfully or more. Follow with a restful meditation and allow your mind to recompose. And if you're steady with this, you come back to present time, you come back to reality. And reality is great. Reality is the only place you ever get loved. It's the only place. So it's a beautiful place to come and you got to get out of the dream.
- [85:22]
A
Anna, I really appreciate you. I think this insight into a world that I literally didn't know existed until about a month and a half ago, super fascinating. I was listening to re regulated earlier on today, a couple of interviews you did about that and your stuff's awesome so people are going to want to check it out. Why should they go?
- [85:38]
B
They can come to crappychildhoodfairy.com, the website or the YouTube channel by the name of Crappy Childhood Fairy. And the book is called Re Regulated.
- [85:47]
A
Heck yeah. Anna, I appreciate you.
- [85:49]
B
Thank you.
- [85:52]
A
If you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out. And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom Reading List, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful and entertaining that I've ever found, fiction and non fiction, real life stories and there's a description about why I like it and there's links to go and buy it and it's completely free. You can get it right now by going to ChrisWillX.com books that's ChrisWillX.com books.