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I screwed up big time.

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Hopeless

I screwed up big time.

Post by Hopeless »

So I was in happy, pointless unrequited limerence with a guy I knew on social media, for about five years. I knew it was getting destructive so I muted him for 6 months and recovered - but as soon as I unmuted, the limerence came back. First thing every morning, I'd stalk his profile, and last thing at night. If i was awake in the wee hours, I'd chat to him. I'd support him through mental health crises and somehow he always seemed to be there for mine.

It was driving me nuts. He'd make random, heart-breaking love-lorn posts and I'd convince myself they were aimed at me, knowing they weren't. I knew his foibles, his vulnerabilities, his poetry. And eventually thinking about him took over my head. Ever spare minute I had was filled with fantasies of him. I am married, so is he, both apparently happily. So I decided finally to put an end to it by disclosing. I assumed it would be embarrassing, he'd let me down gently and that would be the end of it.

That wasn't quite how it panned out. Oops.

He admitted he was attracted to me as well, and the idea of someone having a crush on him was a rush to his head. We got closer and closer, DMing late into the night on all kinds of topics, until finally, about a year after I first disclosed, we started sexting. It was incredible at first. I felt so alive and attractive! But then, after about 3 months, he started freezing me out. We had been sexting 3 times a week (note I had only met him in the flesh once, and that was while my husband was there!). And this just stopped dead. I noticed him flirt with other women online - which he had always done, which I knew, but I couldn't cope. Suddenly the high plummeted to a crashing, pitiful, suicidal low.

When I queried why he had withdrawn, at first he claimed nothing had changed. But we didn't resume sexting, so I asked again a few days later. This second time he came back with verbal knives drawn: he told me maybe something had changed because he wouldn't have thought I'd have called him a liar before, but now I was. He inferred that I was calling him a liar because I'd dared ask what the story was twice.

It was a stab in the guts. It was a turning point. From then on, I was on tenterhooks. He started digging at me, having a go at me about my age (I am 12 years his senior) or my face blindness. We would sometimes sext, and then I'd be happy again, but within four days I'd be back to suicidal. Thay cycle repeated, wearing me down. Eventually we had an argument in which he said he couldn't understand why in spite of "knowing [him] quite well" and "claiming to be a friend", I was "accusing [him] of being a bigot." In one statement, he'd implied I didn't really know him, only claimed to be a friend and had somehow called him a bigot -- which I did not do. Over the next three days I stewed over it, knowing I couldn't raise the issue without making him angry, until my bitterness got the better of me. I spent a day pouring out angry subtweets, which made him livid. He blocked me on twitter, we exchanged a series of increasingly acrimonious emails, I told him he was a huge mess of aggressive ego defence mechanisms which pushed people away, he told me to go f*** myself and I then blocked him everywhere.

Which would be grand. Except I miss the bastard. I enjoyed his company, still think about him every damned day and periodically still stalk his twitter profile.

He tweeted that he was suicidal. Said if and when he did kill himself, he'd name names - implying that was me. Alluded to the fact that he still had photos. (I do, too. Mutually assured destruction.)

Why the hell do I think this manipulative monster (and he is, everyone who knows him and the story tells me he is) is my friend? How can I get him the heck out of my brain? What on earth happened?

My husband knows I was obsessed, but has no clue how far it progressed. By the way I adore my husband and consider him a soulmate.

All this happened in September. I am feeling better than then, but part of me wants to text an apology and try to get on with being friends. I thought he was such a good friend. Anyway. Any tips for knocking some damned sense into myself?

Thanks in advance.
Hopeless

Re: I screwed up big time.

Post by Hopeless »

Addendum: I have to explain, he put the idea of sexting into my head. I never would have considered it, but it was something he had done before and was familiar with. I mean, I'm not saying I didn't leap at the chance...obviously I did, and I should not have.
NoDayDreaming

Re: I screwed up big time.

Post by NoDayDreaming »

he is a womanizer and manipulative SOB. friendship will never work for you. countless people tried and failed, me including. cut your loses and move on with your life. count your blessings too. sounds like your life is good, you just have to remove him from your system like a drug that's killing you. you can do it and we'll help you here.
Acrobatica
Posts: 701
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2018 6:02 pm
France

Re: I screwed up big time.

Post by Acrobatica »

Hopeless:

Please look up the term trauma bond. This guy sounds like a classic narc/psychopath/manipulative member of the dark triad. The behaviors you detail, intermittent reinforcement mixed in with verbal abuse and accusations cause cognitive dissonance, especially in those of us who do not believe that others could be so evil. This cognitive dissonance leads to obsessive thinking. Think of the mouse experiment where a mouse pulls a lever to get food. If the lever always results in food - the mouse only pulls it when hungry. If the lever never results in food - the mouse ignores the lever. If the lever sometimes results in food - in a random fashion - the mouse will become obsessed with the lever and pull it all of the time.

I believe that even fairly psychologically healthy people can get caught up in a trauma bond. But you may also want to look inward and see what hole this relationship may have been filling in your life and find a way to fill it yourself.

Wishing you peace.
JupiterTaco
Posts: 5665
Joined: Sun Jun 28, 2015 6:12 pm
United States of America

Re: I screwed up big time.

Post by JupiterTaco »

Run. Run and don't look back (except maybe for educational purposes).
"You know for a big black guy Cleveland's got a cute little white ass!" Peter, Family Guy
"Um...that wasn't Cleveland," Brian
Hopeless

Re: I screwed up big time.

Post by Hopeless »

Thanks everyone for your replies. Part of me, the limerent part, thinks that it's not possible that he could be a narcissist. Or that he only has narcissistic adaptations and isn't full fledged. I mean, I know that he has narcissistic adaptations - he was forever complaining about various people who he believed had had success that he felt he deserved, or about people within the comic community who he had done favours for, but who didn't return the favours for him. He said he didn't understand why he needed to feel like everyone loved him - but he did have the grace to feel bad about it. When he was bitching about one woman who had gone on to much greater success in the same field as he is in, he was utterly emotionally wrecked. He knew this was bad, but he also felt bad about having bitched about her. So it's not as though he has no conscience...

So this is probably my delusion speaking, but I feel I have probably glossed over how much of what happened was my own fault, and probably made him sound worse than he is.

What had happened between him and myself, I feel, was a toxic mess between my limerence focusing on the fantasy and his depression and aggressive self-protection mechanisms. In mid-May, he lightly flirted with someone online - and I was completely shattered. I told him I couldn't deal with it, and he accused me of suggesting he was having an affair with her, also. I explained I wasn't, it was just how I felt.

But I kept feeling these emotions of extreme, raging jealousy. He and I have very similar political beliefs but differ in a couple of key aspects. One morning I noticed that he'd been talking to one of his female political friends on Twitter and it just drove me insane. I spent a morning tweeting in opposition to this particular person. He realised that he was really the target and tweeted, effectively, that he didn't want to provide emotional support to someone who thought he was a fascist. (I'm trying not to go into too many details here that might give away any identities, hence the vague descriptions.) We effectively made up after that, but I explained that I was jealous and that was when I asked why we hadn't been corresponding as much as we had earlier. And that's when he accused me of calling him a liar. So there was some build up beforehand, which I was responsible for. And my jealousy did precede a lot of the attacks. That said, even at my most jealous, all I ever said was that I wasn't coping - I never accused him of anything.

Prior to all this however, he was a good friend, I thought. We both had relatively skeptical viewpoints, we have similar senses of humour, for years I was the person he interacted with most on Twitter. I note that since we blocked each other he is on twitter far less than he was, and he's tweeted about how hard losing "a lot of good friends is".

So what I need to convince myself is that it doesn't matter if quite a lot of it was my fault, it was poison and I needed to get away. For years, before any of the rubbish ever happened, we were interacting every day, and I miss that. Even now I'm resisting the urge to text him and try to make it back up.

So if any of you have any tips for battering some sense into me, helping me believe that this man is not my best friend, that would be great because I am still obsessed and thinking of him every day.
NoDayDreaming

Re: I screwed up big time.

Post by NoDayDreaming »

Hopeless wrote: Sun Dec 22, 2019 12:40 pm
So if any of you have any tips for battering some sense into me, helping me believe that this man is not my best friend, that would be great because I am still obsessed and thinking of him every day.
you confirmed what we all suspected that he was a narcissistic and toxic POS. not sure how to convince you. you need to see for yourself how he emotionally abused you and had a toxic influence on your life just to selfishly feed his narcissistic supply. as soon as you gain the insights, you will make a resolve to eliminate him from your life. we, LS, have a great imagination and daydream a lot. you can use it to your advantage, concentrate on his selfishness, how you loved him, but not the opposite, how he was mean to you. you can even imagine he is dead and his funeral to have a closure. on the other hand, don't ruminate about good things in this LE. as soon as you start thinking about him, redirect to negative. it's OK to be angry with him about how he didn't give you back what you deserved.
also, write down all the negative things you can think of him. writing down things helps a lot. then you can recite that like a mantra later.
please learn about mindfulness and living in here and now.
if i remember something else, i will write more.
Acrobatica
Posts: 701
Joined: Tue Apr 10, 2018 6:02 pm
France

Re: I screwed up big time.

Post by Acrobatica »

I agree with NotDayDreaming.

Start reading up on narcissistic abuse. There is lots on the internet about it. Abusers make their victims feel guilty and responsible for the abusive behavior.

Keep writing here. I find it very helpful to document my journey and hear occasional feedback.

A lot of us here understand what it feels like to be obsessed with an abusive person. There is no judgment here. Just confirmation of what you already know - your relationship with him is not healthy and that enforcing NC will help you in the long term.
Useless

Re: I screwed up big time.

Post by Useless »

I think the worst thing is that I have to break up with my own fantasy and my friendship as well as the actual relationship that developed. There are things about his belief systems that just drove me insane, and I don't know whether it's because the reality wasn't the same as the fantasy, or jealousy or what. The fact that he is a published author (a relatively minor one, you won't have heard of him), coupled with my desire to be a published author probably fed that idealisation. On paper we had a lot of things in common.

It was okay fir a while there, but now it's kind of hell again. I'm torn between anger, frustration, grief (because there actually was a relationship there), boredom, feelings of inadequacy (I must have been using it to feed my ego).
Useless

Re: I screwed up big time.

Post by Useless »

Right now, I'm fighting the urge contact a mutual to see if they can find out what he's saying about me behind my back. Why is my brain so obsessed with this person?
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