Limerence [This post is under heavy construction at the moment]

I have been planning over the past two weeks to do a couple of post about my movie memories: The Time Machine (1960) and I believe, The Angry Red Planet (1959) and it’s double feature The Circus of Horrors (1960) but have been too busy. Then I ran into the subject of this post and had to write about that first.

At roughly a quarter to eleven this evening, I learned a new word: limerence.  I word I did not know until now, but whose concept, critique, rationale, reasoning, criticism, diagnosis, accusation, argument, charge, I have struggled, yea, wrestled with over fifty seven years. 

Here is Google’s A.I. overview:

Limerence is 

an involuntary state of intense romantic infatuation, obsession, and longing for reciprocation from a "limerent object" (LO), often characterized by intrusive thoughts, emotional dependency, and idealization. It differs from love by being more addictive, anxious, and, frequently, one-sided. Treatment involves therapy and breaking the addiction cycle. 

Symptoms of Limerence

• Intrusive Thinking: Constant, involuntary thoughts about the person.
• Emotional Dependency: Intense highs (euphoria) when10 interacting or anticipating contact, and deep lows (despair) when rejected or ignored.
• Idealization:
   Placing the person on a pedestal and ignoring red flags or incompatibility.
Fear of Rejection: Extreme anxiety regarding the person's feelings.
Physical Symptoms: Trembling, palpitations, or butterflies in the stomach. 

Causes of Limerence
Limerence is often driven by a need for validation or a desire to escape personal insecurities. It is considered a form of "love addiction" or a "lovesickness" that often manifests when the target is unavailable, feeding the anxiety-driven, obsessive, "got-to-have-it" nature of the attachment.

My one-sided “love”, my intense infatuation, my obsession, my addiction, I say I love Ruth, but is it love? Was it ever. Without reciprocity? Without her input?

An artist, I was very emotionally motivated, underpinned, driven. I felt everything intensely. A constant undercurrent of emotion buoyed my actions. Oddly enough, not necessary my surface reactions, I could seem emotionally unresponsive or even aloof incapable of emotional contact or immediate interpersonal expression. Part of me was broken, through lack of any physical interfamilial touch. Moody as opposed to immediate I was then but always suffuse with simmering emotions through and through deep within.I no social skills, lacking the social graces, socially clueless. Neurodivergent, awkward.

Clearly, as far as the psychological features are concerned I check every box. Exhibit all the classic symptoms 

If it waddles, and quacks like a duck…

But the is the opposite danger of pigeonholing 

Placing things into convenient categories. Writing off complex 

oversimplifications 

I think love can be a complex, incorporating a concophony of many emotions mixed intentions, conflicting life elements

I believe love can be one-sided among many other things as long it purposely works to consider the other side. As longs it sets their interests, their considerations, their life agency and independence as paramount over itself. 

Agape.

One-sided, perfectly healthy examples, of love do exist, that require no reciprocal return.

Yes my love, has the anxiousness, the exhilarations, but it also has the love at its core. A love making an concerted, life-long, deliberate effort, to learn and be all love, love can really be in practice each and every day. I want to love Ruth right. I want to love her truly. To do and love right by her in the purest sense I can.  To learn love, act and be love. Because I really do want to love Ruth. I love her. I honestly do.

I weighed my life, over and over. I fight for the only item that is the truest sense of me, it has never altered or diminished, my genuine feeling for Ruth. The sole me that is me. Always.