Is this limerence?

[lisa@truitthome.com]

I’m not sure that what I’m going through is limerence and would like opinions. I’m a 54 year old woman. In 2020 as Covid lockdowns were starting I began taking music lessons from a guy 13 years my junior. At first it was online because of lockdowns. That lasted maybe a couple of months. I took fiddle, which I already had some experience with and then guitar and mandolin. We ended up with 2 hour lessons once a week. I picked up on a vibe from the very beginning that the guy was attracted to me which was flattering but I didn’t feel the same. About a year and a half in I started realizing I was really fond of him which alarmed me. It was an in love kind of feeling that was not sexual in nature. Nevertheless it concerned me so I psyched myself out of it. It was relatively easy. I just talked myself through the facts the he was married as am I and that he was too young outside that and that we had little in common and that my feelings were certainly because he was doing with me something I love and always wanted to do and am gifted at even as a kid but was denied because of my family situation. Pretty easily I turned down the intensity to a very normal level. I liked my lessons and him as my teacher but I didn’t feel the crush anymore. Then a couple of months later he texted me a sexually charged song to presumably play on the mandolin. It was about a man who asks a married woman to put her arms around him because he wants to make love to her and for her to be his lover. It really aroused me and I couldn’t stop fantasizing about him. He had never selected a song like this before. I struggled with it awhile. Theee was no music I could find anywhere for it so I played it by ear and I went to lesson and played it only I changed the pronouns so it was gender correct for me to sing. He seemed tickled by it. I then picked a song that was a blues song that had a lot of enuendo in it. He loved it and told me it was hot. I continued to struggle with the fantasizing and felt torn and guilty. Finally I realized I had to get off that track and tempted as I was and as good as it felt or things were probably going to go too far. So I went to my lesson and told him I couldn’t do music like that anymore and why because of how it made me feel. Instead of immediately apologizing he asked me to tell what I was feeling and thinking to which I replied it was none of his business I didn’t want to talk about it. Then after I had said no more songs like that tried to give me another one about illicit sex about a guy having sex with his best friends wife but he won’t tell even though his being with her would have been an alibi to a crime but he won’t tell and instead is executed rather than telling. It started to dawn on me that it seemed like he was saying things to me with these songs. I threw it away and picked something else and a few weeks went by but I was struggling emotionally still with the feelings that all these events had stirred in me. I decided then that if he was indeed messaging me with songs that two could play at that and I would do it and see what happened. So I picked a song called out of this world by the Cure. Robert Smith sings about how wonderful the time spent with an unspecified female is but that the time they have is short and then they have have to go back to their real lives where they belong. I tested it to him. Next lesson he came in looking forlorn. About five minutes to the end of class he said one more before you go? It didn’t dawn on me immediately that he was repeating the last lines of the song that are one last time before we go one more time before the end one more time before we go again. He was letting on that he listened to the song. Next time he was dejected looking again and told me he was broken hearted. Then the next week I got a different reminder text for lesson. It was from an automated system the music school uses. It was then I realized that this was how students in general were sent lesson reminders and that he had all this time almost two years been personally texting me but apparently took the song I sent him as a no I won’t have sex with you (I’m assuming because I think he just wanted to fool around not have more of a relationship as he was very sparing with texting or communicating outside lessons) and so he switched me to automated texts like everyone else.
Throughout all this I struggled more and more emotionally. Before he texted me the sex song I could go to my lessons and have a good time and then go home and not think about him or barely anyway until the next weeks lesson. After he did that and the events that followed began I couldn’t get him, or sex and fantasies out of my head. I wanted to be with him and the lesson wasn’t enough. It just made me feel bad and I’d cry for a long time after. Finally I just couldn’t take it anymore so I wrote a letter explaining and went and put it under the door of his studio. I confronted him about things and he was evasive clearly because he wasn’t going to create written evidence of his behavior. We kind of went back and forth for about a week and a half. I told him that I was going to be broken hearted to lose him as my teacher but that as things had gone awry I didn’t see how I was going to be able to continue though I so wished I could. I went back and forth about it but ultimately said I realized I couldn’t come back. He said no hard feelings and that it probably was for the best and that he wished me the best.
I was really devastated. I know a big part of that is from childhood trauma. I am very musical but grew up in an abusive environment and was denied development of that and not for lack of money. My moms side is very musical and many play multiple instruments and they played together which I missed out on because I wouldn’t play since they were better as my only outlet was playing by ear on my grand parents piano when I was there occasionally. I’d play for hours at their house and they always told me I had the most natural ability. Finally after my kids were grown because I prioritized them before because I determined they weren’t going without like I did, I decided to pursue what I’d missed out on and went to this teacher because I was told by the luthier he was the best for fiddle. I didn’t even think about more than fiddle but he teaches guitar and mandolin and so I got into those to and I realized I didn’t want to play just one and wanted to play several like him and I never experienced anything like that how he’d accompany me on guitar when played fiddle and then we’d switch and we’d play different parts and he introduced me to so many kinds of music and praised me a lot. I loved it all so much. And then he did what he did and messed with my feelings and made me have to leave and it’s been six months since I left. I slowly began to get better but even at six months I still have my ups and downs. I think about him every day. I try not to but can’t help it. And I try to go on with my music but it makes me think of him. I quit playing most of what we played together. It helps but anything makes me think of him. I don’t know if I’ll ever pick up an instrument again without thinking of him. I wish I could go back to how things were and who I was before I met him. I didn’t even mention that shortly before he started everything, last Christmas I had Covid and was hospitalized for 10 days. I was barely recovered from Covid when he started in on me. And around the same time my husband and I found a good friend dead in his house and other friends moved away. 2022 has been a devastatingly hard year for me. It started with Covid then this teacher messing with me and then my friend died and others moved. All on the same weekend I put the letter under the door of this teacher, was dealing with the death of a friend and was packing friends and watched them drive off to another state far away. I was so devastated mostly by the teacher but was feeling the other things to that I cried all the time and couldn’t sleep. I’ve thought about all this and my lost teacher since March of 2022 when he texted me that song. That’s when the obsession with him started and it’s still going. I do have short stretches where so much is going on that I forget for a bit now. I don’t know exactly how long. 30 minutes or an hour maybe sometimes? I’m not sure.The teacher works in the same building my husband and I had our office in and I had to be up there. That made things hard. And I’d be tempted to walk where I could bump into him. Once he walked to my side to the mail box when I was out there and then when he saw me he chose to walk the way I was going and came right up behind me. Once I was outside in the outdoor seating area and he drove up and started to drive on by. He had gone to far to park in the spot near me by the time he had seen me so he turned around and circled back and came back to park near me though there were spots further down by where he had driven down to he could have parked in. It was clear that he was saying I’m here. You could come back. But I don’t as determined not to. I knew it would end badly. Or go badly and end badly. What I really want and would have if I could wave a wand and make things however I want is I would make things go back to before they went bad and stay there forever.
My obsessive thinking about this guy isn’t in love feelings now or sexual feelings. It’s missing friendship and companionship in music. I have a new teacher for fiddle a female teacher who is very good but she’s not a multi instrumentalist. They aren’t very easy to come by. It’s not the same. I’ve just had to go it alone on other instruments for now as I don’t have money for 3 different ones.
Does anyone think limerence is what my obsessive thoughts of this teacher are? It seems kind of like limerence in some ways and in other ways maybe not.I think I might have multiple things going on. I think the guy was enticing me which seems an abuse and I’m experiencing trauma and grief because of that and the resulting loss of something I loved and this person being different than I’d thought. My husband called him a scumbag. To me he was and still is a teacher a came to be so fond of but in reality maybe is a scumbag. I miss a scumbag.

[David]

I often see Limerence catalysed by loss, and you write about a number of losses of friends, your own health and also mid life passing by. Limerence is preceded by significant loss in about half of cases.

I dont think it really matters about the label of Limerence. It’s more about a wake up call as to how you are living your life. Are you living your life true to yourself? How fulfilled are you?

It sounds like there is unresolved childhood trauma that you write about, there would like to be other traumatic events if you were denied such access to your musical talents. You may decide you want to explore this more in psychotherapy.

[L-F]

Your situation sounds similar to mine in that strong signals were sent, whether innocent or not, and it left me struggling with mixed emotions.

Sorry to hear of your loss, its sounds like it was an extremely unsettling year.

Now is the time to start healing. If I could give myself some advice at the beginning of healing, it would be to stop analyzing LOs behavior and to focus on myself.

Welcome to the forum!

[Zsababy]

I don't know if I'd say that aggressive flirting is always abuse if both parties are adults, but he did trample a boundary you set up, so that's kind of manipulative, so maybe you could say that. (Abuse to me is a strong word. In my book, it's just really sleazy to be aggressively flirty to a married student. But this is just semantics...)

If you miss him as a friend, perhaps keep in mind a couple things:
-Is someone who ignores your boundaries really a good friend to have? I have found them to be terrible friends to have. In my mind, it means either they care more about their needs than yours, and/or they think you owe them something of yourself that you have told them is off-limits. Boundaries are one of the most important things in any kind of relationship, platonic or not. Something to consider in therapy if that's a pattern in your life. I know it's been one on mine & I think it's very common.

-There must be qualities or aspects of that interaction that can be gotten another way or elsewhere. Maybe avoid thinking of him as your only chance to have a need met, or to find inspiration and encouragement. Perhaps he was the first to affirm your aspirations as a musician, but surely he can't be the last. All is not lost.

But I know how painful the beginnings of limerance are.