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Was Chris Watts limerent?

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townshend
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by townshend »

No.

We conflate too much with limerence because we’re all aware of this lesser addressed experience and wanna pinpoint it in situations all the time.
No good has ever come from feeling guilty neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties. -Paul Goodman
JupiterTaco
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by JupiterTaco »

townshend wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2020 1:44 am No.

We conflate too much with limerence because we’re all aware of this lesser addressed experience and wanna pinpoint it in situations all the time.
Yeah but the man actually thinks his ex-girlfriend is writing to him in prison from random different names. Unless she actually is...
"You know for a big black guy Cleveland's got a cute little white ass!" Peter, Family Guy
"Um...that wasn't Cleveland," Brian
townshend
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by townshend »

So he’s crazy doesn’t mean it’s this specific diagnosis we can assign him from afar. There’s a checklist that you can’t just make vague connections to to fit LE.
No good has ever come from feeling guilty neither intelligence, policy, nor compassion. The guilty do not pay attention to the object but only to themselves and not even to their own interests, which might make sense, but to their anxieties. -Paul Goodman
Idiotic
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by Idiotic »

JupiterTaco wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2020 8:04 am . Unless she actually is...
That made me lol
I keep dancing on my own - Robyn
JupiterTaco
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by JupiterTaco »

townshend wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2020 1:42 pm So he’s crazy doesn’t mean it’s this specific diagnosis we can assign him from afar. There’s a checklist that you can’t just make vague connections to to fit LE.
A woman wrote a whole book about this. He's talked endlessly about how enamored he was with the woman Nichol, and worked hard to get in shape while seeing her. There's obviously a chance that it's all a ploy to garner sympathy from people, but for whatever reason, he had to have her. It's pretty hard not to see that.
"You know for a big black guy Cleveland's got a cute little white ass!" Peter, Family Guy
"Um...that wasn't Cleveland," Brian
JupiterTaco
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by JupiterTaco »

:ymhug:
Idiotic wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2020 1:52 pm
JupiterTaco wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2020 8:04 am . Unless she actually is...
That made me lol
Well I mean it seems she went away after the fact, but she changed her whole identity so who knows. I just don't think he'd be able to avoid bragging about that.
"You know for a big black guy Cleveland's got a cute little white ass!" Peter, Family Guy
"Um...that wasn't Cleveland," Brian
Idiotic
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by Idiotic »

JupiterTaco wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2020 5:04 pm :ymhug:
Idiotic wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2020 1:52 pm
JupiterTaco wrote: Wed Oct 07, 2020 8:04 am . Unless she actually is...
That made me lol
Well I mean it seems she went away after the fact, but she changed her whole identity so who knows. I just don't think he'd be able to avoid bragging about that.
Yeah makes sense.
I keep dancing on my own - Robyn
SierraM
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by SierraM »

I was going to start a thread basically asking the same question about Diane Downs but figured I would search for antisocial personality disorder first and came across this question.

I didn't really want to fall into another rabbit hole so didn't read a whole lot about Chris Watts and can't give a proper opinion about his limerence but it did anchor the idea that it seems possible for people with antisocial personality disorder to be limerent, which is fascinating to me, as it tends to suggest at least one of the two following things (and could be related to JupiterTaco's comments). 1) Limerence is such a primitive condition that even a person who has serious impairments in the domains of empathy and experience of emotions can feel this extreme (unilateral or not) bond with someone. This hopeful interpretation is that limerence reveals some humanity in the person with ASPD. 2) Limerence is such a primitive condition that it can't be equated to a form of love and only has to do with the limerent subject's struggles with identity, attachment hunger, fear of scarcity etc, so much so that even psychopaths can experience it.

I don't necessarily recommend looking into Diane Downs's story, since, especially as a mother, it is particularly horrifying, but for those already familiar with the subject, do you think she was limerent? For context, she was diagnosed with three personality disorders: histrionic, narcissistic, and antisocial. To this day, she shows no remorse and keeps inventing stories to explain the shooting, all more outlandish than the others. Some newly released videos are available on Youtube, which are recordings of her police interviews less than two days after the shooting. Her obsession with her ex-lover is flagrant, as well as her lover's hot and cold behavior that a lot of us limerents are familiar with and know to be highly addictive. It honestly made me feel sorry for her despite her actions. It also got me wondering: had she not fallen into limerence, would she have crossed the rubicond just the same way at some point, or would she "just" have remained a neglectful, self-focused and abusive mom, like, unfortunately, so many exist?

PS: Extract from recording. Diane, talking about her lover: "All the happiness we had. Was it just a lie? Or does he really love me?"
JupiterTaco
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by JupiterTaco »

Ha, had to go back and read what I wrote. I'm going to wager that the need for connection always pops up in isolated people, however that happens. Humans are tribal animals and though it's been argued that psychopaths are a different more reptilian-like species emotionally, there was a time when humans literally needed each other to survive. So who knows if the need for connection shows up for that reason or because they know they're actually missing something more emotional is what hits someone when it happens but I'm guessing it always eventually happens.

But of course it's also said that many CEOs are psychopaths too and that can be a lonely place to be, up top, alone where you're feared. But maybe for some people enough money makes everything better and completely erases the need for connection. I am clear that I don't believe that's really possible but I don't know that.

I think with people who lack coping mechanisms, major stresses can start to add onto the already-heavy load of various addictions and increase the need to escape. Possibly for Diane Downs, she may have reached a point where she just hit bottom, lost all emotion and just wanted it all over. Getting rid of her kids was the obvious solution for her and probably made her think she'd finally get her man.

Diane Downs is interesting to me, though I admit I also haven't looked too much into it because in many ways she reminds me of my own mother. And when I first saw the Deadly Women episode about her years ago, I didn't know how to deal with that. It wouldn't shock me if she had many other addictions and escape mechanisms but as a single mother with all of that responsibility, there's only so far away you can go. My mother had my grandparents who mostly kept her on somewhat of an even keel. I don't know what might've happened without that because I've seen how my mother can snap otherwise since they've been gone.

I don't know if Chris Watts was actually angry. I remember watching the videos where he was begging his family to come home and he did a horrible job. You could see the duping delight on his face like he was playing a game of hide-and-seek and he thought his family was just off hiding. It was sickening. But arguably it could've been that he was completely separated from his emotions. A long-time troubled relationship can certainly do that just as certainly as it can cause trauma bonds that make one think they can't live without them.

However I think that we live in a society that doesn't understand that some people do spend their whole lives avoiding their human emotions because they were either harshly conditioned to or because they just couldn't deal with them and weren't taught how. The police treat that suspiciously even though PTSD and even C-PTSD are major causes of that and are already traumatic enough to have.

Our very police departments are trained to deal with people as if they are all there and knowingly behaving badly. Though there's been more emphasis on things like mental illness, mental disability and drug addiction in recent years, the police still largely treat people suffering from these things as if they are knowingly doing bad. I don't think that helps the situation not to mention the relationship between the public and police.

It's also pretty common for parents whose kids have been legitimately abducted to be treated like a suspect. I can't imagine the trauma that adds onto it, but there's a reason the police have to consider these things. There are people who feel justified to take people out of this world just because they don't want them there anymore and many times it starts with an affair. And unfortunately many do reproduce. I just don't think Chris Watts was that way because his getting into shape and trying to impress his affair partner versus just going and kidnapping her or something, says to me that he knew or wanted people to think he knew, that she was her own person who should have the freedom to choose him. I really think Diane Downs just snapped but that's just me.
"You know for a big black guy Cleveland's got a cute little white ass!" Peter, Family Guy
"Um...that wasn't Cleveland," Brian
L-F
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Re: Was Chris Watts limerent?

Post by L-F »

I don't know anything about these cases but Jeffery Dahmer springs to mind for the reason that he wanted to be understood and stopped. He knew he was doing the wrong thing and couldn't fathom why he was obsessed with doing what he did. I read somewhere when someone eats the flesh of humans it's to feel that connection. Who knows. For me, it's a shame he was killed because it appeared that he was open to sharing his thought process so that we could learn more about a serial killer's brain.
"And in the end, we were all just humans…Drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
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