Intrusive thoughts

[gargantua65]

Hi everyone,

Throughout all my LE, I have found the intrusive obsessive thoughts with my LO out of control, creating much anxiety. Have you also experienced and felt them like that? 

Or did the thoughts fit coherently with your other thoughts and values?

[selkie354]

Intruisive: check
Obsessive: check

I'd like to think these thoughts don't fit into my values But yes at the worst of it I literally could not think of anything else maybe like 90-95% of my mindshare. On better days like today its down to under 25% (probably more like 10 - don't wnat to jinx it). But in the worst of it I really could not stop the thoughts. Now I will still get a thought, but I don't hold onto it the way I used to, I recognize it and let it go. Sometimes it is the dumbest things, I'll be unlocking my door and I'll think about if I was showing LO my place, I recognize and just let it go: in the past I might dive deeper into a fantasy etc. Not that I don't still do that but I find I do it less often.

[Aysheal]

Hello gargantua,

Sometimes I indulge myself and choose to fantasize about LO. But many times I feel like I have no control at all!
I spend most of my days thinking about him and it does create anxiety, yes.

[gargantua65]

Same here.... with my last LO I could hardly manage to do anything else. Although I "sort" of realized how obsessive and intrusive the thoughts were, how disrupting they were to my life ... but I kind of dismissed that so I could "enjoy" and fantsize with my crazy rumination.... and I did not fully understand the extend and impact of those obsessive thoughts in my daily life. And the anxiety episodes that preceeded the thoughts usually when he was noty able to meet or someting...Did you realize how disruptive they were while having them? It feels great sharing with people feeling the same. It is a great help for me. One month NC

[selkie354]

Hi Gargantua,

For sure I realized how disruptive they were, I couldn't focus at all on my job for one thing. For another I couldn't focus on my SO, I needed to finish the rumination and if SO started talking to me I would snap - I just needed him to shut up so I could finish my thought. I felt horribly guilty about both of these situations, but I was powerless to change them at the time. I certainly did not set out to think about this guy literally my entire day to the extent that I couldn't do my job. Although I did kind of set myself up: During the initial stress of the lockdown trying to WFH doing a job I hated while being crowded into a tiny apartment listening to SO on the phone all day (I'm very sensitive to noise) led me to the one escape I had: going for walks and thinking about LO. During that phase I would consciously think of LO to make myself feel better. Then I pursued LO further, sort of snagged his attention, and started to get more intermittent reciprocation. Once I was in deeper and getting more signs and triggers from LO, the thoughts became totally intrusive, I could not stop them. They also became my only source of joy, so I would continue to indulge them when I was feeling really low.

This is a very real thing, and its not just you. Unfortunately still a lot of unanswered questions about it, and it isn't really properly recognized, but as you can read here: lots of us suffering.

[DreamingBlue]

Yes, they are intrusive and unwanted, because I am married. For the most part quite happily. I've built a life, a home, a family. The amount of thoughts I've had about this woman who I've known primarily through her beautiful Instagram posts and DMs, when I have a wife and two kids, is unwarranted and disruptive.

Yes, they would fold more easily into my thoughts if I was single. I'd be singing out loud while cooking, thinking about her, I'd be asking her out for dinner. I'd be deep into the chase. Here, the chase can't even start, so I'm left with these images that are just pure fantasy.

I recommend Eckhart Tolle. We are not our thoughts. We can live in this moment, away from them. Try to step away when they get too much.

[Illusion]

Or did the thoughts fit coherently with your other thoughts and values?

Not at all coherently. The thoughts were either replaying in my mind conversations, actions messages, looks, gestures etc. from the past or either rehearsing new scenarios for the future or wondering what my LO was doing right now. The thinking (rumination) is very intrusive and consumes a huge amount of time, hours and hours out of each day. Productivity at work is a mess. The limerent thinking is not productive and nothing like other thoughts and values.

I'm currently in a LE. I'm trying to retrain my thinking. First I have accepted I'm addicted to my LO so I need to create some distance from her. Second, I have accepted and am resigned that a future together is a complete fantasy and will never happen. Third, I completely extinguish the faintest hope of any future together. It's not and never going to happen. Fourth, when I start ruminating, like others I recognize it and stop it right away. Fifth, I have accepted my LO is a whole, independent person. No one belongs to anyone else nor is dependent on anyone else. Sixth, my LO is free and capable of making her own decisions in which I dont' have a voice or opinion. So killing the fantasy and recognizing she's a whole, independent person and doesn't need me to survive has helped dull my pain. I still think about her often but it's for much shorter periods. I don't fret anymore about what she's doing and who she is with, that's her business. However I still feel a deep loss and heartbreak. This stuff isn't easy at all and sometimes I have a hard time keeping everything together. With my LO, we're the best of friends and we talk or message daily. So no contact isn't an option.

So try to dig down and see if you can figure out what makes your LO so attractive to you? What positive signals did they give you that maybe you interpreted as interest on their part?

[Spadge100]

Intrusive and obsessive thoughts are a constant in my case. I can now just about work but dread the weekends.

Take today for example. I had to to do a ten hour drive with my daughter to collect her belongings from University. In that ten hours I probably had ten minutes where I didn’t think about LO in some shape or form. That’s ten months of very LC and now six month complete NC. I learn to live with it but wish I didn’t have to.

Limerence robs you of everything. That’s another day that I now associate with thoughts of LO. Freedom sometimes feels a long way away.

But I know and accept we can never have contact again, will never be together and rationally that’s not what I want anyway. I know that breaking NC would be selfish and so it has to stay.

But that doesn’t stop the brain craving it’s fix unfortunately.

Tomorrow is another day, stay strong all

[mamasita]

I've had many years of intermittent thoughts regarding LO and in 2016 they became intrusive and obsessive thoughts. It was fun and exciting for awhile when I thought we (LO and myself) might get together.
As time passed and I began to lose hope, the anxiety crept in. I worried about how I appeared to LO and if he dislikes me. He would pop up now and then which kept hope alive...in my mind anyway.
Sometimes I allow myself to fantasize a bit but then the anxiety comes quickly as I know I am obsessing over LO again and I don't want to. I've been battling this for almost 5 years now.
I like to think about him, but my thoughts are now quickly interrupted by reality. Limerence isn't fun anymore and moving forward without constant thoughts of LO is a very slow and frustrating process.

[gargantua65]

I am now fighting the urge not to be angry at my LO for being so ambiguous. He kept my hopes high for 8 months of talking DAILY, him being nice , meet and kiss, sex once, him saying we will meet shortly and will be intimate. Then me losing it when it was not happening and him rethinking about it but always staying around despite my emotional rollrcoaster. Am I right to feel angry at my LO? Its been 6 weeks of NC. I tried adding him last week onto IG but he deleted his account cause of my erratic behaviour towards the end, faking a profile even to see if he was flirting with everyone around on silly tinder...I am not sure, I feel angry at him now for having ben such a player, although he says he didnt do it on purpose (I noticed he loved my compliments and always asked twice like really, do you think I am cute...etc) the sort of men us limerents go for are flawed I think, I have had LE that have not fully devloped cause right away, the men said I cant take you emotionally and stopped my limerence.
What do you think
Stay strong everyone, we can do this