It has been a little while since I have written, but I am in a place right now where I need to look inwards toward myself. I have been feeling very much not myself in recent weeks, while I’ve been getting used to Maddie being away in London for what it likely to be at least two years.
I am missing her terribly, and while we are still keeping in touch, a message from the other side of the world, and even a FaceTime call just isn’t the same as being able to call each other and book in a short notice lunch date with each other.
It hurts that I can’t just hug her.
I have however been taking time to think about my feelings for her. She appears to be more than happy with her man, and I’m still just her best friend. That’s not a complaint, but right at the moment it does make me sit up and ask questions of myself.
I’ve have gone through many different trains of thought about “what this is” between Maddie and I, and as varied as those strands of emotional processing have been, I keep finding myself asking the same question of my heart.
Is what I feel for Maddie nothing more than limerence?
If you understand the ‘textbook’ definition of what limerence is, and you read my entire site, limerence seems like quite an accurate description of my headspace around Maddie over the years.
It makes sense. I cannot deny and will not deny that most of how I see Maddie could and would be adequately described as a case of limerence.
And that is hard to accept – because it makes me wonder if the 40 years of emotion I have felt for Maddie have all been for nought – because they have never been reciprocated in any truly meaningful way.
It physically hurts to recognise that correlation inside of me. While I have lived and loved other women in my life, and love them with all of my heart – (for what it has been worth) – it makes me feel like a silly little child not being able to let go of his first silly crush.
On the contrary, the psychological descriptions of limerence you can find online talk about the feelings for another person being unrequited. That when one is in a state of limerence over someone that you do not concern yourself with the well-being of the other person.
That limerence isn’t real love – more that it is an obsession or infatuation with the other person, and that it only exists in the mind of the person who is feeling limerent towards the other person.
That it is the fantasising of being with the other person, without it necessarily being a physical or even a sexual need. The pleasure comes from the obsession or infatuation.
Which is where I find myself doubting that my feelings for Maddie are purely limerent.
I do feel the need to be physically close to Maddie, and although the thought scares the shit out of me, the thought of being sexually intimate with her is very much a part of me – yet I would be so scared of disappointing her in a sexual encounter.
I do care how she is feeling, and we have always been close. Just read this site and you should be able to understand that.
Although we’ve never found ourselves romantically linked, there have been any number of times over the years where that was close to happening. I’ve never felt that she didn’t love me, even if the romantic feelings we have both had for each other haven’t turned into anything substantive.
There are many aspects to the long relationship between Maddie and myself, and I cannot explain away all of the “features” of limerence from how I feel.
Like I said, that hurts. I can’t rationalise 40 years into a simple explanation like that – and I am currently trying to keep an open mind about it
I love Maddie, and Maddie loves me – we care deeply about each other, and are always looking out for each other.
I think and hope that that’s the difference.
However, the thing is – whether it be limerence or not – that doesn’t mean we will ever end up together, that the romantic feelings will ever be reciprocated.
It’s the classic “we could, but should we?” question.
That’s a question I’ve spent 40 years trying to answer.