135: The Pain of Loving Who You Can’t Have: Overcoming Limerence & Fantasies with Self-Love & Compassion
In this episode, I respond to a listener struggling with limerence and intense infatuation for their best friend—a love that feels impossible and is tangled with self-hate, shame, and depression. We dive into the power of self-love, self-compassion, and curiosity, offering practical guidance for anyone caught in obsessive thoughts or fantasies.
Together, we explore why our minds turn to fantasy and limerence, especially when past trauma and grief remain unresolved. I also share my own experience using fantasy as a coping mechanism and how uncovering the roots of these feelings can lead to genuine healing and a more loving relationship with yourself.
Blog Post
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Timestamps ⏱️
Intro: 05
Listener Question: 2:26
Outro: 36:48
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This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool called Castmagic. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:01]:
Welcome to New View Advice with Amanda Durocher. Hey beautiful soul. Welcome to New View Advice. If you're new here, my name is Amanda derocher and this is a healing centered advice podcast where I offer guidance for the healing journey. I do not believe I have all the answers you seek. I believe you have all the answers. You just may need a new View and a little help along the way. Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode.
Amanda Durocher [00:00:21]:
Today I'm answering a question from a listener who is infatuated with their best friend. They feel like they are in love with their best friend, but they are aware it is limerence and they don't know what to do or how to move forward. This listener feels stuck in fear, shame, self hate and depression and they don't know what to do. They're feeling really stuck. So today we're going to talk about limerence, why we lean into fantasy and infatuations as well as how to begin to embrace self love, why self love is so important when we find ourselves in these obsessive thought patterns and how to bring awareness and healing to these patterns of limerence and feeling in love with somebody who we cannot be with. Because that's at the core of this question, is that this person does not want to lose their best friend. But they also know that there is no real sign of a relationship ever happening. So what do they do from here? My intention for this episode is to help to one alleviate shame.
Amanda Durocher [00:01:15]:
I think so often when we experience limerence or even unrequited love or these feelings of obsession and infatuation with somebody who does not return the feelings, so often we feel shame for that and it is almost like a secret we hold onto. I think anytime we struggle with obsessive thoughts it can feel shameful because there's something that we're battling in our own minds and that people aren't really aware of. So shame can be there. So my intention is to help to alleviate shame, help you to see a light at the end of the tunnel, help you to find some steps to move forward, and also to help you to embrace self compassion and self love. Before I jump into today's question, I always like to mention that if you haven't already, I invite you to check out my website. On my website you'll find more resources for the healing journey. I have journal prompts, meditations. I have other podcast episodes, blog posts and poems.
Amanda Durocher [00:02:01]:
So you can check that out after this episode at newviewadvice. Com and today's episode show notes will be@newviewadvice.com 135 and if you're interested in a deeper dive into limerence, I also covered this topic in episode 64, so you can also check that out after this episode. So with that, let's jump on in Dear Amanda, I recently listened to your podcast on unrequited love and Limerence. I've listened to, read, and watched pretty much everything on the topic in the last few months since discovering the word limerence is exactly what I'm going through for years now and your advice is the only thing that really rings true for me, especially the part about what I am truly looking for is love for myself and thinking if this person loved me back, I would find that love for myself. Truth is, I deal with self hate and shame on a daily basis. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I am in love with my best friend. An impossible love for sure. I know your advice is strictly for straight people, so this may be out of your wheelhouse, but I am queer and I have only dealt with unrequited love all of my life for both men and women.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:06]:
I feel constant guilt and shame for being in love or rather infatuated with my straight friend. I understand. I love her because it is safe, because it is an absolute impossibility. I have this thought in the back of my head and that there is a 5% chance that she secretly loves me back and I cling to it. She has never been in a relationship with a man, anyone, and has never showed interest in men. She is married to her career. I know it's a false narrative, but I can't let it go. The only advice I have heard is to distance myself from the person.
Amanda Durocher [00:03:35]:
I guess my question to you is what if you can't distance yourself? I am entrenched in her family and her life. If I lose her, I lose a family that has taken me in as their own and the thought of it crushes me. I have been very depressed for the past year and nothing has helped me to move away from her or helped me to take her off this high pedestal. I am in talk therapy two days a week right now doing EMDR to deal with the death slash killing of my brother who is my closest friend and ally. Because of his death, I have an intense fear of abandonment and I am deathly afraid of losing her and her family. Telling her my feelings is not an option. I will surely lose her as a friend. Distancing myself is not an option because I am very close with her family.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:15]:
We hang out consistently. I am lost and obsessed and I don't see a way out. I wish I could find a therapist that deals with limerence but have yet to find one. Even living in NYC a therapist haven, I cannot find anyone that can help me. This isn't going to end well and I am scared. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I just can't seem to find the answers anywhere else and I have been searching for so long now. Thank you so much for this question.
Amanda Durocher [00:04:40]:
First, I want to say that you are not alone in what you're navigating. I know that when we experience unrequited love and limerence, many times we feel shame. You mentioned feeling shame in your question. You feel shame on a daily basis and I don't think that should be the case for anyone. I think it's very common. But one of the reasons I do this podcast is because I also used to struggle with shame and self hatred on a daily basis and it is such a debilitating way to live because it is so heavy to live with self hate and shame. And truly we deserve to love ourselves. But so many of us did not learn how to love ourselves when we were children and we grew into adults who did not know about self love.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:16]:
I didn't even know the term self love until my 20s. I didn't understand the concept that I could love myself. It was like a mind bending topic for me and obviously I became obsessed with it because I do this podcast and I've dedicated my life to loving myself and helping others to lean into self love as well. Because I truly believe that we all deserve to love ourselves. And I mentioned that up here up front because I am so sorry for all you've been navigating. I'm sorry for the pain you've experienced. I'm sorry for the devastating trauma of losing your brother. My guess is there's more pain that goes farther back than that death.
Amanda Durocher [00:05:49]:
Because you mentioned that you have only experienced unrequited love throughout your life and that also breaks my heart because you deserve to be in a relationship. You deserve to be loved by other humans. And I believe that. It sounds like you have people in your life who do love you and it sounds like your best friend loves you, just not in the way that your mind hopes and that this infatuation you're living with desires, if that makes sense. And I just wanted to mention too up front that I think one of the hardest parts with limerence that I'm not sure I mentioned in episode 64 is that limerence and unrequited love are so lonely. It is incredibly lonely to be battling. That's how I view it, battling these thoughts on your own. It's like you're going through a painful cycle because limerence leads to highs and lows, and you're going through that on your own.
Amanda Durocher [00:06:38]:
And it sounds like you can't even talk to your best friend about it or talk to her family about it. So it's something you're navigating by yourself, and that's incredibly difficult when we feel like we can't reach out to somebody for help. I'm grateful to hear you have a therapist and we can talk a bit more about that and other things you could do in therapy throughout the episode. But I just want to say that I think one of the hardest parts is navigating this on our own. So I just wanted to thank you for asking this question because I think many people struggle with this as well. For anyone new to the word limerence, I did quickly want to define it here up front. I go into depth about limerence and unrequited love in episode 64. So if you're interested in checking out a more in depth breakdown of what unrequited love is and what limerence is, I recommend that episode.
Amanda Durocher [00:07:22]:
I'm not gonna spend too much time on definitions in this episode, but I do spend a good 20 minutes in that episode defining these terms, so I wanted to mention that here. But for anybody new to the word limerence, this is the chatgpt definition of limerence. I'm gonna be honest, that's where I got this definition. So limerence is a psychological state of intense romantic attraction and obsession with another person. It goes beyond simple infatuation or liking someone. It involves intrusive, persistent thoughts about the person, a strong desire for reciprocation of feelings, and emotional dependency on how the other person responds. Some key features of limerence include constant preoccupation with the person, so thinking about them all the time, intense longing for emotional reciprocation or validation, mood swings based on perceived signs of interest or rejection, idealization of the person and often imagining a future together, and physical symptoms like heart racing, butterflies or anxiety. And unlike healthy love, limerence can feel obsessive and overwhelming and sometimes leading to distress if feelings are unreciprocated.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:24]:
So I wanted to give that definition up front. My simple definition of limerence is that I really think it is when we are infatuated and obsessively thinking about another person and playing out fantasies. So this definition talked about constantly thinking about the person. But to me, so often with limerence, it's that we're living in fantasy. We create a fantasy in our head and we're playing it out. And the truth is, there's nothing really wrong with fantasy in general. Fantasy can be a healthy way of coping and fantasy can have so many benefits in our life. Fantasy is connected to our imagination.
Amanda Durocher [00:08:57]:
But this fantasy, this limerence and this infatuation becomes a problem when it becomes obsessive, intrusive, and isn't just benefiting us. So you're feeling really high one moment with the idea of, for example, being with your best friend and then you're feeling lows when you feel rejected or you know that it's hopeless and you'll never be together. That is when we want to really become aware of why we are playing out this fantasy and how we can begin to move forward and heal from limerence. And so I think so many times when we lean into these obsessive thoughts, unrequited love, limerence, these fantasies, it's because it feels safer to us than embracing a real relationship. And you mentioned in your question that that rings true for you, that it's a safety thing. And I think that so many times our hearts have been hurt in the past and it's created real, deep within rooted pain. And so yes, we create patterns of limerence, infatuation, fantasy, in order to keep ourselves safe. Now it sounds like in your life this is no longer benefiting you.
Amanda Durocher [00:09:56]:
This isn't keeping you safe. You are in a cycle that is painful and honestly to me sounds like a cycle of punishment. You are constantly punishing yourselves with this guilt, with this shame, with all the hard thoughts you have around this. So it's no longer creating this safety that I think at one time the fantasy might have created for you. And so I think that's why this is feeling so difficult for you, is because it's filled with the highs and lows that they talked about with limerence. But I'm really seeing a pain cycle here and I think you're ready to break it. You have so much self awareness. I did want to mention that you have a lot of self awareness here.
Amanda Durocher [00:10:29]:
You're really articulate about what you're feeling and what you're navigating, and that's huge. That's the first step so often of healing is bringing awareness to what, what we are truly struggling with. So often we can't even identify what we're struggling with and so you are able to identify your feelings, what you're navigating, and even this past trauma that I do think is connected to this limerence, which I will talk about a little bit later. So my first piece of advice here is that I think it's important for you to lean into self love. I know that sometimes it sounds super cheesy, but through reading your question, I think it's a non negotiable. I think it's the most important thing for you to do right now is to prioritize yourself and, and to find ways to love yourself. It sounds like you are battling a very harsh mind, you are battling a deep inner critic and there is a part of you begging for your attention. And I think that when that happens, it's so important for us to slow down because so often we run so fast, we do a million things a day and we don't prioritize ourselves.
Amanda Durocher [00:11:35]:
After reading your question, I think it's imperative that you prioritize yourself because at the end of the day, you are with you from the second you are born to the second you die. That is the truth you spend most of your life with. You and your mind are going to be together for your whole life. So finding ways to make your mind a hospitable place, to make your mind a friendly place, I have found that to be some of the most important work I've done in my life. I grew up in a place that made you think that all external things were more important. No, no, no, no, no. Making your body, heart and mind things that you love.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:15]:
Most important work you'll ever do. You don't have to believe me or do it, but I swear to God it is worth it. To make your mind a place that you want to inhabit, to make your body a place that feels good and to listen to your heart. Because though your heart is often gonna tell you the scary truths, it's telling you your truths, it's telling you what's true for you. And our heart is often pointing us towards past pain that wants to be resolved. And I think that it's great that you're in therapy. I think that's amazing that you're going twice a week. I think that's really important for you right now.
Amanda Durocher [00:12:46]:
And I hope that though this therapist may not entirely understand limerence, I hope you're finding the EMJ are helpful. If not, I do think that there are Other therapists out there who can help you with limerence if they're not familiar with the word limerence. Maybe you could find somebody who's familiar with unrequited love or obsessive thoughts, because oftentimes that's what limerence is. It's a version of obsessive thinking. And so I don't want you to feel hopeless. I do think there's somebody out there who can help you with this. I know that I've used fantasy as a coping strategy throughout my life. And I've found therapists who are able to help me to navigate that and to figure out why I am leaning into fantasy at those moments in my life.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:23]:
And I think when we experience fantasy, it's oftentimes a coping strategy to keep us safe. As you mentioned throughout your question, it's also a way to bring lightness to our lives when things are really dark. You mentioned navigating depression. I find that I tend to check out in fantasy when I'm depressed. I think there's a connection there. And I think that oftentimes fantasy is tied to trauma. It's often a way that we learned when we were younger to navigate traumatic situations. I would be interested to know when you first leaned into fantasy slash limerence, slash unrequited love, as you mentioned.
Amanda Durocher [00:13:56]:
As you mentioned, you've only experienced unrequited love. Because in my own life, I actually started leaning on fantasy as a coping strategy. When my best friend's little sister died. I was about 10 or 11. I can't exactly tell you, I'd have to do the math. But she died and the death was devastating. It was the first trauma I experienced that I couldn't look away from. It wasn't buried under the rug.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:17]:
It was very much in my face. I spent a lot of time with my friend and her family after this devastating loss. And what happened with this trauma, as with so many traumas, is that, yes, this death was devastating, but there was also an aftermath that was devastating. The ripples were devastating. The way I was made to feel wrong for my grief was devastating and traumatic. And I mentioned that because this incident for me led to my first feelings of self hatred. I never hated myself before this experience, but this death was like a catalyst for all these other horrible things that happened. And it led me to hating myself and it led to me being bullied and all these things, all these impacts on my life.
Amanda Durocher [00:14:59]:
And I mentioned that because you mentioned you had the death of your brother. And I just wonder if you always used fantasy and limerence and kind of checking out in your mind as a way to cope or when this may have originated. Because I think that when we can identify the origin story for when we began to cope like this, lean into limerence and these type of obsessive thinking patterns, we can meet that part of ourselves. What do I mean by that? So for me, there were many different ages that I would check out. And I've had to sit with each and every one in different ways. This is something you can do in therapy. You can ask your therapist if they can help you to meet these different ages of yourself. But I dialogue with my inner child through journaling or meditation.
Amanda Durocher [00:15:43]:
Meditation is my main form of healing, truthfully. But I visualize this age, this inner child within me, and that begins the healing process. Because I see the pain that she was masking with this coping strategy. I hope this makes sense. And I mentioned that. Cause that's a form of self love is loving those parts of myself, loving those parts of myself that did not receive love when they needed them. That is self love. Learning to love all of you.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:10]:
Not just the parts that you are pretty, not just the parts you want to show the world. Everything is self love. Loving all of you. Loving the dark, loving the shameful, loving the ugly. Loving the big parts of you, the small parts of you, the scared parts of you, the bright parts of you. Learning to love all of you in every moment. And it is a humbling path. It is a beautiful path.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:36]:
It is a hard path. Because I believe we live in a world that wants us to hate ourselves. I'm sorry, but I turn on the television and I watch commercials and I watch TV and movies and we are fed lies all fucking day. So to me, the world wants us to hate ourselves. And so that's why it is so often an inner journey to love yourself. 1. It is always gonna be an inner journey. But so often, so much of the path, we walk alone.
Amanda Durocher [00:16:59]:
Right now, I hope that's not always the case. But right now we live in a pretty crazy world with a lot of mixed messages and a lot of unhealthy messages. And so that's why I talked about connecting back to your heart, your body, and your own mind, because that's where your truth lives. We all have our own truth. We all have our own origin story. We all have our own feelings to process our own views of the world. And that's what's so fun about the human journey. We all have our own hero's journey.
Amanda Durocher [00:17:24]:
But it's an individual journey. And I mention all that because self love is learning to love all the parts of you. And I think that when we are beginning our self love journey, which it sounds like you're at the beginning of, because you have an incredible amount of self awareness. But if you're still struggling with self hate and shame daily, then to me there's still room, there's still room for you to learn to love yourself and to be kind to yourself. Because for you right now, I think your self love is gonna look like balancing bringing more joy and fun and moments for yourself into your life. So that could be yoga classes, that could be meditation classes, but finding moments without your best friend and her family, but moments for you, whatever that may be, but you're going to find moments for you and enjoying them and feeling safe in your body and coming back to yourself and making your mind a safe place and balancing that with looking at the dark, looking at the emotions that maybe you've bottled up, looking at the pain and the fear that you are still battling on a daily basis. You mentioned fear multiple times throughout your question. So to me you are navigating fear and you don't know what to do with it.
Amanda Durocher [00:18:32]:
And oftentimes it's looking fear in the face, it's acknowledging our fears. And that's not easy work. That's why we balance it with the fun with the good. But I mention that because for you right now, with you battling this much self hatred, I really, really want you to prioritize that self love and that's self care. Part of the self care I want you to embrace is finding ways to enjoy your own company. Because that leads me to my second piece of advice, which is to be kind to yourself. I know that this sounds very similar to self love, but I put self kindness and self compassion as its own section. Because if you are battling self hate, the antidote in my opinion, is self compassion.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:15]:
And this is so important because it's a daily practice. It's a daily practice to be kind to yourself and to begin to call out that inner critic and those thoughts that are mean to yourself and those thoughts that are telling you horrible stories, you don't deserve to tell yourself horrible things. You are a beautiful person. You are a good person. Have you made mistakes through your life? Probably. Do you have regrets? Likely. I think we all do. But you are a good person.
Amanda Durocher [00:19:43]:
I can tell from your question, people who want to change to me inherently are good. You inherently want to make your life better. You love your best friend, you love her family. You are a good person again, doesn't mean you didn't make mistakes. Doesn't mean you're perfect. No one is perfect. You're probably telling yourself your best friend is perfect. She's not perfect either.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:04]:
And I don't think it's helpful to view her as perfect. She's human. She's human. Sounds like she has her own things going on. She's never been in a relationship and she's married to her career. That to me isn't a perfect person. That's somebody who is doing the best they can and going down one road. And she likely desires love in a relationship as well, but doesn't have the time for it.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:23]:
We all desire love. If anybody tells you otherwise, I don't believe it. And so self compassion is so important for you at this point in your journey. And you do this by becoming aware of your thoughts. You can write them down, you can talk about them in therapy, you can just in the moment catch it. So say you have a thought like, I hate myself. I sometimes still think that you catch it and you say, that's not true, I don't hate you, I love you. Why am I thinking this right now? And you begin to ask it questions.
Amanda Durocher [00:20:55]:
That is what I find is helpful with these negative thoughts is you become the witness. And what does that mean? You begin to witness the thoughts and you become curious about the thoughts. Not judgmental with yourself. It sounds like you're judgmental enough. Lay down the weapons. You are hurting yourself inside your mind. Lay down the weapons. And begin to become curious, why am I saying this to myself? And so often with our inner dialogue, it is somebody else's voice and we can even see that face appear in our head or it is a version of ourselves.
Amanda Durocher [00:21:24]:
And we have created this negative dialogue as a self protective mechanism. And oftentimes it's the mindset of if I knock myself down first, if I criticize myself first, then somebody else can't, or then it won't hurt so much if somebody else does. That is so often also a protective mechanism. But as you know, if you are feeling depressed, it's not helping you anymore. And so, so often when we catch these negative thoughts, we want to see them. If it's a protective part of us, we want to thank it and then we want to let it go. We want to say, hey, I don't need to tell myself that story anymore, it's not helping me. And then you want to think of a new thought.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:01]:
What do you want to think instead? And again, this doesn't happen overnight. This isn't some cookie cutter fix. Like every time you have a negative thought you're just gonna replace it with a good one. But it's a practice over time. And I promise you that if you begin to practice self compassion, it will alleviate your pain. It just doesn't happen overnight. We live in a society that's always looking for an overnight fix. Learning to love yourself does not happen overnight.
Amanda Durocher [00:22:25]:
It is worth it and it is a journey and it creates deep love. When we dedicate time and effort and energy to loving ourselves. Things that happen overnight don't leave that lasting impact. That's not where we grow and learn. It's through hard work, it's through dedication, it's through showing up again and again for ourselves that we learn that we're trustworthy people. You are redeveloping that trust with yourself. Because that's what I found throughout my journey was that there were parts of me that wanted to know if I was trustworthy because I was being the cruelest person to myself. I didn't realize that when I was healing that there were parts of me like girlfriend, are you trustworthy? And myself was challenging me to be like yo, you got to show improve you are trustworthy because you have been beating me up.
Amanda Durocher [00:23:12]:
When you are criticizing yourself, you are likely criticizing a younger version of yourself who does not deserve to be talked to like that. Which is why that inner child work I mentioned or meeting the different parts of yourself in therapy, it's called Inner family systems ifs you can google that. I'll link a link in the show notes at newview advice/135 because I'm not an expert in inter family systems. But if you're looking for a way to begin to speak to these different parts of yourself, you can see if your therapist or a different therapist does inter family systems. But there are many different ways to talk to versions of yourself. So I have found ifs to be something that people are talking about a lot right now. But this is an old practice that people have been doing for a very long time and there are multiple ways to speak to these different versions of yourself. So my next piece of advice is that every time the fantasy infatuation and your limerent feelings arise, I invite you to ask yourself why am I living here? Why am I back here? Why am I having these thoughts? More times than not, these thoughts arise as a way to protect ourselves.
Amanda Durocher [00:24:13]:
So for example, instead of feeling fear or admitting you are feeling fear in a moment, or if you Find yourself feeling shame, you might check out into these thoughts of the romantic relationship with your best friend. Instead of feeling the feelings of shame or fear or feeling something difficult. I find very often that's when fantasy arises, is trying to protect us from feeling something more difficult. But as you mentioned throughout your question, it's really not protecting you in the way that it once may have been, because it's causing actual pain, distress, and guilt in your life right now. So one thing I wanted to mention that I think you could focus on when asking these questions is that I think from your question, and maybe you already know this, that these deep feelings of infatuation are tied to beliefs around family. So though you mentioned that you feel like if she loved you back, you would be able to love yourself, I also think there's a belief you may have around family. Like if she loved you, you would have the family you desire, or if she loved you, you would feel accepted. And so I think there's some ties with family and some grief that you're likely covering up.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:21]:
I think that your unresolved grief is contributing to this situation. So I think it's great that you're in therapy because I think grief can sneak up on us and create havoc in our lives if it remains unresolved. I'm somebody who is familiar with this as well. When I was 23, one of my closest friends died and I literally almost lost my mind. Not only was my heart in pain, but my mind broke in so many ways, and that happened all at once. I really struggled for about six months before I found a therapist after he died. And it took me years to feel at peace with his death. It really triggered a lot within me.
Amanda Durocher [00:25:55]:
I mentioned that because this unresolved grief lives in our body, it lives in us, and it is asking to be acknowledged. And when we ignore it again, sometimes it starts to come out in weird ways. And there's many different ways that grief plays out. It's different for everybody. And I think that your heart deserves to go through the grieving process and incredibly painful, which is why we find ways to cope with grief and find ways to ignore and numb and repress our grief. But truly, when you allow yourself to fully move through the grief, it will change your life and it will help you to embrace that love of self. Because so often we create beliefs when people die and we hold onto pain. And there are stories that need to be resolved.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:36]:
Like, for example, with your brother. My guess is that he was holding a lot for you. Like you mentioned, he was your closest friend and ally. So you probably felt at home with him. So he's holding that feeling of home. Or he might have been holding that feeling of acceptance or belonging. And without him, you don't have anybody to hold that for you. And so grief invites us to begin holding that for ourselves.
Amanda Durocher [00:26:56]:
Right? You deserve to feel like home within yourself. You deserve to feel like you belong wherever you are because you accept yourself and that is a journey. And you will find people who accept you. And you will feel like you belong in every room when you feel like you belong within. And if there are ones who won't, you will walk out of that room and know you have your own back in your own center. Because truly we have everything we need within us. But it is a journey home to heart. Because many people are born into families who don't teach us to love ourselves.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:20]:
They don't teach us to be with our feelings. We're shamed for our feelings. We're shamed for our truth, for our experience, and for who we are. And when we're children, we go into survival mode and survival mechanisms which include limerence and fantasy and obsession and obsessive thoughts. Because we don't have the tools or the resources or safe people to help us navigate tough situations. So we just figure out how to survive. But when those survival mechanisms are still impacting us in adulthood, that's when it's time for us to begin looking and bringing that self love within. Because when we're adults, oftentimes it's much safer for us to look at the pain from our past.
Amanda Durocher [00:27:55]:
Because as I mentioned, when we're children, we're in survival mode. We often can't change the situation we're in. But when we're adults, we're often in new living environments, new situations, and we can begin to bring the awareness and and healing to ourselves that we have always deserved. So when bringing more awareness to the beliefs you may have created around this infatuation and this limerence way of being, some questions you could begin to reflect on to maybe help you to create a broader view of yourself would be one. How can you cultivate that feeling of acceptance for yourself? How can you begin to truly love yourself? What does true love look like and feel like to you? What does family mean to you? What do you desire most? And what would it feel like to be free of this infatuation? That last question can be incredibly important because I think when we're healing, it can be so helpful to set an intention for ourselves. Everybody's healing intention is Going to be different. I find when I post little clips on the Internet of this podcast, everybody has something to say about the healing journey. So I just want to say here that to me, I believe everybody's healing journey is different, and it does with your own intention.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:01]:
So somebody may desire peace, somebody may desire freedom, somebody may desire love, Somebody may desire to just be able to walk in a room and no longer suffer from social anxiety. We all have different intentions for our healing, and for me, it's always been about inner freedom. I just want to feel as free as I can in this lifetime, and that does with freeing my mind and my body of trauma from the past. That's not everybody's intention. So I just want to throw that out here, that we all have different intentions for healing. So your intention is not gonna be the same as mine, necessarily. And so I think it's important for you to really think about what would it feel like if you were no longer suffering from limerence? What would your life look like? How would you feel inside? Because that will help be your guiding post for your healing, and it will show you what you desire most. And that leads me to my next thing I wanted to mention was that I think that when we create fantasies in our head, they are often pointing us towards our deepest desires.
Amanda Durocher [00:29:59]:
I think this limerence is secretly pointing to you towards what you desire. And you can have that desire when you're free of this limerence, if that makes sense. So for me, after my friend Dolan died. That was his name, Dolan, by the way. After he died, I had all these fantasies of living in la. Kind of like the song Pink Pony Club, Santa Monica, you're calling me, but I have these fantasies about being a famous actress living in la. Whatever Oscar speech, I gave it over and over again in my head. I gave an Oscar speech literally over and over again in my head.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:29]:
And it was always different. It was funny, sometimes it was dramatic. It was heartfelt. I gave that Oscar speech like, 800 fricking times in my head. That's funny. It's probably more than 800 times. It was multiple times a day. That was my obsessive thought.
Amanda Durocher [00:30:41]:
And then one day, after I went to the Super Bowl. It's a whole long story, but the whole point is that one day I realized that that fantasy I was playing out was a desire and that I could move to LA and be an actress. It was like, whoa, I desire to be an actress. And I hadn't realized the whole time that this fantasy was pointing me towards something I actually desired. And so for you, in your case, I think that this limerence you have been experiencing throughout your whole life, you mentioned experiencing unrequited love multiple times, is pointing you towards a deep desire. My guess is the deep desire does with a true vulnerable romantic relationship. But I don't know. And so I think that when reflecting and when setting an intention for your own healing, allow yourself to admit to yourself what you truly desire.
Amanda Durocher [00:31:27]:
Because sometimes we play out fantasy over and over again until we can admit what we really want to ourselves. And then something softens within us when we're finally able to admit, oh my God, I desire that. It's like our mind sometimes can only speak to us with what we're allowing in. And sometimes these desires we have are so deep because we're so afraid of what we truly want. We're afraid of losing things, but we're also really afraid of what we truly want. Because if we admit what we want to ourselves, then it's kind of our responsibility to do something about it. And so I think when it comes to limerence and obsessive thinking, something you can ask yourself is, what is the deep desire here? And I'm not sure. It could be about acceptance, it could be about love, it could be about a deep, loving relationship, it could be about family.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:11]:
But be honest with yourself. What do you deeply desire? Because you deserve that, and you wouldn't have that desire if it wasn't possible. But you deserve to embrace the journey of life. And that's something that limerence can take from us, is that it keeps us in our mind, it keeps us in fantasy. When truly life is about living, it's about reality, it's about being here. And we can balance that with our desires, which often live in our imaginations. But life is about being here and embracing the life you have here. Because life is short, every moment is precious.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:39]:
And you deserve to feel alive in your lifetime. And I think when we live in our heads, it takes away from that feeling of truly living. I know that was true in my case. I used to live in my head. I used to struggle from immense ptsd. Like I used to relive what I survived in my teen years. I don't know if you're new here or what, but I was dream to my teen years. It was really traumatic.
Amanda Durocher [00:32:59]:
It was violent. Don't want to go into details today, but I lived in that flashback for years. Years. I would cycle what I would live through, just be flashbacks. It was horrible. It was horrible. It was horrible. And I Stopped struggling with that a couple years ago.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:14]:
Thank God. I thank God for that every day. It was a surprise blessing in my life. I really thought I would struggle with that forever, but I believe healing is possible. And afterwards, I began living in fantasy. It felt safer than living because I went from this place of immense fear to freedom. But my life wasn't what I wanted it to be at that time. It was small.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:33]:
It wasn't. It wasn't aligned with me. But I couldn't have embraced the life I wanted when I was struggling with such bad ptsd. And so then I lived in fantasy. And then those fantasies, I had to be honest with myself. Why am I living in fantasy? It's because I have desires. It's because my life isn't what I want it to be. What do I really want? And those fantasies were showing me what I truly desired.
Amanda Durocher [00:33:55]:
And so then it was day by day action to begin to create the life I desire. And I'm always creating the life I desire. It's not an end game. It's about building. And the life I truly desire is a life that I feel alive. And I think when we experience trauma, it can take that from us for a time. Because feeling alive can feel really scary. But we all deserve to feel free.
Amanda Durocher [00:34:17]:
Joy, compassion, love. Whatever it is you desire, you deserve it. And so often we can feel those through healing. So that was a little tangent, but the last thing I wanted to mention, which I saved towards the end, is that I know you said you can't distance yourself, but I do think you should set some boundaries with your best friend and her family. Maybe you don't reach out to her daily. Maybe you try for a weekend by yourself. I don't know how often you see her family, but I invite you to start setting small boundaries again. Maybe it's just not responding to a text immediately, but begin to disengage a teeny tiny bit.
Amanda Durocher [00:34:53]:
Whatever feels possible. Set a small goal for yourself. But you're very entangled right now. And I think by disengaging just slowly, it will help you to bring more clarity to all these things we talked about throughout this episode. So how you can love yourself, how you can be kind to yourself, what you need, what parts of you are speaking. You just have to begin making space for yourself because it sounds like you just may be very intertwined. And the more space you can create for yourself, the more you can hear your own thoughts, your own desires. I think sometimes when we get really mixed up with other people, it keeps us from seeing Ourselves, truly.
Amanda Durocher [00:35:26]:
And so I invite you to just start stepping away slowly. It doesn't mean you have to ever step away completely, but just begin to create a little bit more distance between you and your best friend. Because distance will help you to see something clearly, I think. I think it'll help you with that clarity that you're seeking and then with that, with taking space for yourself. I think that you're very intertwined with this family and that maybe introducing new relationships in your life could be helpful just to create perspective for you. You said you're deathly afraid of losing these people, and I want you to feel safe. And so maybe you could find a grief support group, other people who have experienced immense loss. Because I think that if you meet other people who have been through similar experiences with you, that could be helpful.
Amanda Durocher [00:36:09]:
I found that incredibly helpful for me because it just helped me to get out of my own head and see that many of the things I struggled with were not me. They were just part of the trauma. It was a trauma response. And I think that that's true for you, too, that so much of what you're struggling with right now is a trauma response. So I hope something in here was helpful. As always, I don't think everything is for everybody, but I hope that I was able to offer you a new view and a different perspective on your situation. I do hope that you at least feel like there's a new step for you to take moving forward. Because so often when we feel stuck, if we can give ourselves a new view, we can find a new step forward.
Amanda Durocher [00:36:41]:
Because the healing journey is really one step at a time. So I just want you to know that I know you're going through a tough time right now, but you will not be here forever. I can promise you that. So thank you so much for this question. I'm sending you all my love. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode and for this discussion on limerence, fantasy and obsession. As always, I am so grateful for this space and to have these conversations each week. I invite you to write in a question@newviewadvice.com question.
Amanda Durocher [00:37:10]:
I would love to continue talking about this topic. I think limerence, unrequited love, and fantasy are really present in today's society. So I think that this is a great topic to continue to explore. So if you have a question, please write in. And thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I hope I was able to offer you a new view on whatever you're going through. Sending you all my love. See you next time.
