#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?

27:18That that could be fun and healthy and fine and not a big deal. but I think there's a large component of it, you know, that unethical people can really pray on, limmerant people, who will pay you any amount of money to hear what they want to hear. And they know what you want to hear. It's that, yeah, he really loves you. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay, so does this sense of imbalance, perhaps, in the mind of the limmerant, but that's like this person's better than me, that sort of, godly, I mean, getting toward the sort of even more crazy ends of this, they're divine. So it seems like rejection or unavailability increases limmerant feelings.

27:58The more distant or eloof that someone is, does that make the limmerant brain want to double down more? Well, I wonder sometimes, you know, we don't really have research to prove this. I was, I contributed to a study that's going on right now at University of Sussex. I think they're doing some two -year longitudinal study and they asked for my input on the questions. So I'll be really interested to see. But this is, you know, it's a matter of just observation and opinion. There's not a ton of research about this. But yeah, it, it, it, it does make, it does make it act, it makes it activate more.

28:32When you have a real person who likes you back, you will, you're going to smell their farts, you know, you're going to get so annoyed at how they drive all that stuff that's that breaks the spell. And sometimes you can break the spell of just by being honest with another person, just saying, gosh, I just have these huge feelings for you. And they go, well, I don't feel that for you. And then it'll come right down. But a persistent limit, lumerant person, they'll go, oh, I'm so sad, it's not going to work out. And life feels empty. There's no source of dopamine anymore. And so there's this period of depression.

29:03And then I call it the lumerant slip. Whoa, they figure, they find a way again. They saw something in your Instagram today. They got a sign out in the garden from a snail. or you know, just, that don't mean to make fun of it. I think that when I say that, I'm just like making fun of people. They can't help it. Like their mind just needs to find it. And it's coming from a very natural and good instinct. So that pattern detecting things that are not associated with what's it called and what's L .O. stun for? L .O. is a limmerant object. So that's the other side of this equation. The person you're limmerant on.

29:38It's kind of a silly word, but yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, people are retrofitting, pattern matching incorrectly, almost all of the time, little signs and signals, whether it's a tarot card reader or the trail of a snail on the garden path or the Instagram caption or whatever it might be. And this is all evidence of the fact that the LO is actually secretly ready for this. Yeah, and I think the the lumerant object is actually a figment of your imagination the person is a person whole human being And they're not necessarily very well matched at all and so it can be very intrusive when the real person Says what they have to say it doesn't match at all where you've been going in the story in your mind for so long So it can be hard to bear and you want to avoid it what causes Limerence like what predicts it Well, my opinion is neglect from a parent.

30:39And I think there's something about alcoholism. I've always, I had a severely alcoholic mom, like hardcore and another drugs. And I had a lot of alcoholism in my family. So that's always been something I've been around. I've been around other people who grew up like that. I feel like we're a tribe. I feel affinity with people who grew up like that. We just kind of understand each other. And so I noticed that that's highly correlated with people who end up limmerant, but also neglected, not seen. I think there are other pathologies, other weird. When I say pathology, I just want to be careful. Like, look, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a therapist, but I've worked, I've done a lot of work on this.

31:20And so there's this sick aspect around it where people, what causes it? I mean, really, there are life conditions that cause it. There may be a genetic component. Severe neglect teaches you to find love where there is no love. It's like, you know, daddy and me, we have, you know, he's so special. He can't be here right now and he's violent, but I know he loves me and I'm the best girl to him, you know, I, you know, I'm the light of his life and we have this very special thing. So you you have this idealization of a parent, which you should, you must, right? What does that do to a kid who, to believe your parents don't care about you and wish you were never born?

32:03Like, that is not something a kid can handle. So it's a survival mechanism. And I always just say like, thank God for the survival mechanisms, whatever allowed your little spirit to convince itself, it could carry on, you know, now you're here, but now you're an adult. And that's gotta come off. Like, like now we have to get real. Now we have to get honest about what's really happening here, which is a total dedication to something that doesn't exist and a total absence of real life. And people will abandon their goals, their friendships, and to continue to just keep thinking about this person that's giving them that uplift they need.

32:41People are lonely, people are depressed. So some people, their pattern, they get out of depression by being angry all the time. And some people get out of it by thinking of a beautiful relationship that is just any day now. It's going to begin. Yeah. Or some people fantasize about great business success. I'm sure you've met people like that where they're just being totally unrealistic. And every time the going gets tough, they're like, yeah, but when I've got my billion dollar, you know, whatever. And you're just like, yeah, but you don't even have a website. So, So it's the same thing. And again, I don't mean to make fun of it.

33:18It's like this natural drive for us to try to express the best in ourselves, but there's this little piece missing. So we have to take bold action to overcome it. Now some wounds that happen in life are like a scrape and they're going to heal naturally. Time is going to do it. You don't even have to know how to heal it. But some are like an amputation. And if you lose a leg, you know, some people have, it's not going to grow back. You can't get it back. You're not going to get your childhood back. You're not going to get that love from your mom back. You can't get it back, but there's a way to carry on, you know.

33:52In the case of a leg, literally, you can have a prosthesis. They're pretty good now. Some people even run marathons. You know, there's much you can do despite this injury. And in a way, it's a healing. When you find your work around, it's a healing and it will work and it's enough. It's enough for you to become fully expressed as a person and reach your potential. So with Limerence, it's the same thing. Something's not coming back. And personally, you know, when I used to go to therapy, some of the stuff they said, it just wasn't helpful. Validating my feelings about it wasn't helpful. And nowadays, I think when they, if there's a lot of like just talking about it, why, what happened, how did you end up feeling this way?

34:30That goes on too long, I think, at a certain point. It's just like, okay, now you have to get honest with yourself. You must stop talking about this. you have to break contact with this person even if you have to change jobs. There's just no other way. So, I mean, I'm interested in the sort of life situation of somebody who would start to feel limerence. I get the sense that boredom, sort of a lack of purpose, a lack of distraction and fulfillment because you would basically, you would, limmerance would be an attempt to escape yourself through those feelings. Yeah, yeah. And maybe even in real life, maybe you dated somebody briefly, and it was, you really felt like your life came into technicolour with them.

35:17You could really just like feel like, this is what it's like to be in the presence of something divine, you know? I really, or you, you feel yourself sort of coming up and shining a bright light into the world. It feels really good in a very important way and then they take it away from you And you feel like there's another way to get it back and on a certain level Whatever we have with somebody else we can't get You can get something like it with somebody else, but let's be honest You know people are not completely interchangeable. Oh, so you're suggesting that this could be a transferance So you might have actually been in a relationship with somebody that was really great that didn't work out and now you to port that over to other people in future?

35:58Well, I guess, I think that would be handy if you could, but you just stay fixated on that person. Like, I cannot fully exist. I can't really hop into my full dimension as a person unless I'm with this other person. The world feels bleak. And a lot of people will say that. It feels like it went to black and white. It's like when Dorothy walks out of the house after the tornado, you know, she's just like, oh, yeah, it's like this. This is what life is meant to be like. It's kind of like what drugs are like, you know, really, really pleasant drugs, right? It just feels like the meaning becomes clear.

36:31So there's this lack of meaning that makes that feel like the only solution, like it's everything. There's a lack of meaning, there's a lack of connection, and there's no fun. Like it's not, it's not fun being alone, and it's not fun feeling stuck in yourself and having no real people to love. In other news, creatine is one of the most researched and effective supplements for improving strength, muscle recovery, and it even improves cognitive performance and mood, but not all creatines are created equal. Purity, consistency, and the absence of impurities like heavy metal can make or break its effectiveness.

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37:41A checkout that's LIVEMOM, ENTOS .com, such modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. What's the typical avatar for a limerent person and an LO? Like if you were to just say I'm aware that there's everybody can get it, but just middle of the bull's eye for the center of the distribution of what you see. What sort of age, life, background to each of these people have. I probably have a skewed perspective because my audience is not totally representative, but young women and especially lately have it. Because a lot of people have long -distance relationships by chatting with somebody online, if you're a young woman and you're chatting online with somebody for a long time, there's lot of opportunity for this to turn into, you know, tip over into pretty toxic obsession.

38:35Right. Because the aloofness, the intermittent contact, the lack of ability to be reassured, the lack of physical touch. Yeah. Yeah. And I noticed it with a lot of young women who are very pressured by their families to achieve things, go to school, do things that they actually weren't really craving to do themselves. It was just some expectation. They haven't really, they haven't really become themselves. They're living up to some parental expectation. And so there's this emptiness. And you know, sex is amazing. It really changes, changes everything, doesn't it? And it can feel like that is, that is the thing that was missing, the only thing that was missing.

39:16But in women, especially it lights up this whole other belief, like if it, if the way that sex feels is what love is. And so if I have this experience with somebody, it's absolutely the full dimension of love and it's what I must have and it's this particular person. And you know, that it's very sad because it's very sad, but I don't think that's the only reason it happens. I think there's a need for love that's totally unmet and there's a practice. Like, Like, there's a, it's almost like a developmental delay is how I see it. It's like a developmental delay that you don't know how to like pay attention to how I really like this about this person I'm having dinner with.

40:00But this is a little weird and that's kind of a red flag. I should ask a question about that. It just becomes a total I'm all in. Men have it too and they have their forms of idealizing and some guys it's like they A woman is way up on a pedestal. The most beautiful, the most amazing, everything she touches. There's a light coming out of her. But there's this other kind that I see where they want to save a woman. They just be cut down like ruin a perfectly good marriage because of some woman. Yeah, I had a letter from a guy. He saw a woman unconscious on the sidewalk and he called 911 and he stayed with her and and then he went to the hospital and the next thing, his whole life became about her and what was possible there.

40:46So you can see it's not real. And in that case, with people who are fragile like that, it's the same thing. We have an ethical responsibility not to mess with their emotions. You know, in her case, she was a drug addict. She was unconscious because she needed Narcan or something. I listened to that episode. It was great. It was really, what, I mean, was it great? It was harrowing and fascinating. Oh, about that guy, yeah. Yeah, it was really, really good. You know, this dude who, I mean, it was a pattern because he then did it again. That woman ended up dying because of a drug overdose and then there's some other woman who's in a drug, like a toiletry store and she couldn't get some stuff and then he bought them for her and it's this sort of savior complex.

41:28Yeah, he could have done. I guess this desire to be sort of seen as the hero. He mentioned sex there. I get the sense. would really great sex cause this to happen that you just sort of break through some boundary that you had previously. You have really great sexual chemistry with another person. And that is the beginning. Well, how am I ever going to be able to find? You know, this was so transcendent. It was so divine. It was so whatever. I mean, obviously it can, but I don't think that's necessary because people get this way over people they've never had sex with. You know, they can only imagine.

42:06And so that's not a necessary component. But I do think, you know, I'm sort of in the camp of for women, even more than men, you have to guard that thing that happens, you know, with your whole neurobiology around sex and oxytocin and orgasm because it will bond you with somebody whether they're right for you or not, whether you like them or not. It just will, you know, throw you over a cliff, you're under a spell, and now you must deal with it. And if you're not good at getting out of relationships, you just, you just kind of cost yourself years of happiness. Right. Because if you fall easily, but leave slowly, and you're not sufficiently discerning before falling, you, yeah, you kind of need to treat yourself in love like a drug addict or like an unreliable, crazy person.

42:56Yes. You say, look, at some point they're going to put rose -cutted glasses on, but the problem is when you're wearing Rose -Colored glasses, red flags don't look that red. Right. Well, the best advice anybody ever gave me was to the definition of dating is to get, just to find out who somebody is and whether you would like to get close to them. But dating kind of in our culture today, it means having sex with. Oh, I'm dating this person. It means having sex with. Could be casual. Well, if it were more than that, you might use different words. But dating properly, it's spending time with somebody in a fairly structured way so that you can find out what's the deal and you can get your cards on the table.

43:37It's like, listen, I really am aiming for marriage. I already have a child. How do you feel about that? Are you open to that? Are you into monogamy? I am. Those conversations, when I work with people who are damaged around their ability to bond like that and who have gotten into one unavailable obsession after another or actual relationship with somebody unavailable or they've been talked into polyamory, even though that's not what they want. But the mind hopes brings eternal, right? I can, I'll change this somehow. And so when I coach them, I always start everybody out and say, could you just describe like, what's your heart's desire?

44:15What do you most want? And I would say most people, men and women, what they want is to be married. And but there's this huge social taboo. You're not supposed to want that. You're not supposed to say it. Like it would be shameful to say it on a date. You're trying to label things. I'm just like, oh gosh this whole thing this whole thing is really messed people up and And it's okay and that was a huge part of my personal development to learn that I could be open about I want to get married I want to have kids and if you're not into that goodbye and yeah, I suppose subjugating your own needs for fear of them putting somebody off.

44:55Like I'm right. You think, well, is your goal to be in a relationship with this person or with a person who's right for you? Because the more that you try and cover over what it is that you want, what it is that you need, the sort of life goals that you've got for yourself, the kind of way that you want to spend your weekends, all of that stuff, you're pushing yourself further and further into a potential relationship with somebody who isn't like the person you want to be with. That's right. It's not only costing you time that may be precious if you want to have children. It's precious under all circumstances.

45:30Really, it's everybody's precious time, but it's costing you time. But it's also grinding you down. That experience of, I call it being cool girl. Cool girl. I'm like, oh, that's cool. Oh, you're seeing somebody else tonight? Never mind. It was my birthday. I was well, anyway. That's cool girl. That's cool. Sorry. And I always say if I had a nickel for everybody who came to me because they had been trying to lie about who they were and how they felt to be okay in the eyes of somebody else. I would have a lot of nickels, you know, at least $1 .50, I don't know. Maybe a little more, but it's really, really common.

46:08We've all been programmed. You're not allowed to like that. So one of the things I do with people is I just give them permission to want what they want. just want what you want and just be open about it. It doesn't mean you're gonna get it. Life is not Amazon .com. You don't always get what you ordered, but you're definitely not gonna get it if you're just all wobbly about it and you keep bonding with the wrong person. Yes, yes, very good point. Why do some people get lemurrants and others don't? Yeah, it's weird, huh? I think, I think there's a kind of privilege that nobody talks about, you know?

46:42And I'm a kid who grew up with a heroin addict mom, very poor on welfare. And when people are like, talk about my privilege, I'm like, you know, not necessarily in every way there. But I think there's this incredible privilege of people who are loved properly all their lives. And so they have an innate sense of like, when somebody talks to them in an abusive manner, they're out of there. They're just like, I don't tolerate this. They feel it. They see it. They leave. and they know they can like, they have people to return to so that they're not all alone. But if you're all alone in the world and a lot of people really are and there's been times, I just didn't have people to go to, you know, there's a lot of incentive to just trying to have words for everything.

47:23I call it crap fitting. You fit yourself to crap. You just need, you need somebody to hang out with so bad that you will tolerate unacceptable people and just intolerable conditions. And then you get so good at it. You don't want to be good at crap fitting. And it'll keep a roof over your head sometimes, you know, and you stay in something, but sometimes you have to take the bold step and get out. And that's like when we see like somebody who's an abused partner and they're just, they just don't leave and they keep going back. It's very hard to make that break because staying grinds down your confidence.

47:57It grinds down your realistic vision that yes, I might have to, you know, couch serve or live in a shelter or have some crappy little apartment for a little bit. and I'll have to find a job and I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but there's no other way and I will find a way. That's what freedom is, like, actually healing and freedom. It's not like controlling other people and stopping them from triggering you or anything. The freedom is just knowing, whatever happens, I'll figure it out. I'll figure out what to do. Like, that's confidence in freedom. That's such a lovely definition of freedom.

48:29Rick Hansen and Forest Hansen have this idea where they talk about, Imagine yourself as a sort of person who can handle change well. And I think that sense of maybe if I had a bit of a chaotic childhood, maybe if I didn't feel like anybody really had my back ever, I was sort of chronically uncertain and a little bit mistreated and varying degrees or maybe a lot mistreated. I just fear change. I'm not convinced that I'm going to be able to deal with it particularly well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and if you've been through some hard times, you know, and many people have, I think that's something that we don't always realize about everybody.

49:11And part of my work is getting hundreds of letters from people who are going through a really hard time is it's really like, open my heart. I'm a lot less scornful of people who are screwing up like I get it. I get it and I've been there. and it was a miracle that I got through a lot of stuff I got through. So it seems to me like there's this deep sense of wanting to be rescued or validated by this other person in the limerence. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. But a real loving relationship is a bit of a validation. It's a healing. There's that fundamental loneliness of being human. And marriage doesn't fix everything, but a good marriage is a healing of sorts.

49:58And so it's natural to want that. One of my analogies is it's like plastic fruit. I had my Nana. She was from Brooklyn and she, you know, she was an immigrant. Her family was from Norway. And she liked to have this baroque living room and there was fake chandeliers. There was a bowl, this crystal bowl of plastic fruit. And as a kid, me and my cousins, we couldn't resist it. we were always just like, oh, there's grapes. They just look so good. And we would bite into them and they were like, ah, ah, ah, that's what it's like. That's what, that's what limerence is like. It's just like, oh, that person is the most beautiful thing.

50:37You know, it's weird. I'm sure you get this. When, once you're like on YouTube, it's a little bit like being a television star or something in our small way. And, and then people get it for me. And they think they're, my videos were about them. that would be an extreme case. Or they just think, I understand them as nobody else can. And they're surprised when they meet me in person that I'm very friendly. And I look people in the eye and I'll give them a hug and listen and stuff. But I actually don't know them. I don't know their name or anything. And that comes as a surprise. Yeah, I've had a few encounters.

51:15Not many, I think. Maybe it's the way that I present. maybe it's that I'm sufficiently uninteresting outside of what I do on the show. I don't seem to attract many crazies at all, but there's been a couple of situations that were a bit disturbing to me and a few of them that sort of went on for a really long time. Never anything that actually ended up manifesting in the real world, but just stuff where I could tell somebody's really kind of got some mental distress going on, and for some reason I've become the object of that. And they made me, to be honest, the main reason that I tried to get that dealt with wasn't for them, it was for me.

51:53Because every time that it would pop up, I was like, fuck like this person's really suffering. And I felt very uncomfortable with that. So yeah, I mean, fuck, but just going back to that, this sort of deep wanting, being rescued, being validated by another person, And if we assume that there's a pedestalization, this kind of imbalance, comparisons the thief of joy with regards to that. And then if you also assume that the aloofness, the distance, the more that somebody pushes away, the more that it causes this limerence to occur. Happiness is what happens when you stop feeling like there's something missing in your life.

52:38So between the fact that comparison is sealing your joy, and that happiness is really, really difficult to achieve if you feel like there's this big hole that's inside of it. The despair and the anxiety that we talked about. So, anxiety, I want this to be fixed, despair, I feel bad, anxiety. If I can get this thing fixed, then the despair will go away. It's a vicious loop. It seems like a perfectly designed mental pathology for people to have that self -reinforcing. And you'd almost have to wonder if there was some payoff in it, right? And I've got a book coming out in October about that. And I call it covert avoidance.

53:20That if you are continuously getting obsessed with or into a relationship with somebody who can't love you back, you're avoidant. You're avoidant. And it's, you know, no one who's doing that perceives themselves as avoidant. They're hungry. They're chasing. They're trying. They're begging and hoping. But it's avoidance. You know what it reminds me of? Have you heard of death by cop? You know what that is? Yeah, it's the relational equivalent of death by cop for avoidance. Oh, that's so good. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's I am going to suffer the people that don't know sometimes people that want to take their own lives Instead of jumping off a bridge or overdosing on drugs or whatever They'll do something that causes a cop to pull their gun out and then they'll push to the limit of where they end up being killed by the police officer.

54:09And this, yeah, they purposefully dating somebody that you know is unavailable in order to not have to face the potential for attachment, genuine attachment is your outsourcing your own sense of avoidance to somebody else. That's exactly right. You've outsourced it. And now you can perceive yourself as the good one and put the power, the locus of control in the other person. Well, you've assured your failure privately by avoiding your failure publicly. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't think anybody does it consciously, but I think a lot of avoidance is like that. There's so many forms that we are avoiding.

54:50We're avoiding our lives. We're avoiding true connection with other people. And I put, I just finished my manuscript. And I've been, thank you. I've been thinking a lot about it. This is, you know, my last book was re -regulated about nervous system. And I talk about the disconnection there, but now I've gone for the deep dive to the disconnection, which is basically where the devil gets in. That's just the without genuine connection, we get weirder and weirder. And people get, they feel offended when I say that, so I'll speak for myself. When I'm isolated, I get weird, and not in a good way. I get cranked.

55:24Dig into that disconnection, weirdness thing for me a little bit. Well, when we're hanging out with other people in real life, we get socialized. And we all saw during lockdown, for example, what were we like when we didn't get to hang out with people very much? And I remember sitting in a cafe for the first time where other people were in the cafe and we weren't acknowledging each other or anything, but they were there. And I was just like, this is great. But when I started spending time with people again, I was very salty. I was, I was often stumbling over my words. I was having trouble like reading their emotions.

56:00I got, I got rusty very quickly and I wasn't sure I liked them and then I wanted to sort of crawl back in my hole and, and yeah. So, it's a vicious cycle. It's, yeah, like we're meant to be around it each other and I don't think it's all like on the surface either. I think our nervous systems talk to each other. I'm sort of of the school that some people are putting out there that our nervous, there's one big nervous system and we're we're we're nodes in it and so we feel each other so you can and this shows up in the most practical ways like let's say somebody says, gosh it feels like you're kind of crushing on me and I'm uncomfortable and they go, oh no no no no I'm not I just want to be friends no that's not what I want no I have a girlfriend I just will but you feel it your nervous system feels their nervous system and you know what you feel so if you're doing drugs or you're depressed or you're or you've just um you know this happens to The kids who have parents who are not good parents, you get like, your perception gets completely switched off.

56:58This is a big part of it. They're like, no, I'm not drunk. No, it is safe to get in the car. Get in. Stop complaining. Right. Your capacity to make judgments, I have to assume as well. Your ability to advocate for your own needs. If you were the sort of child who never really told mom and dad, know that never sort of pushed back in a way. It's, you know, their adults, they know better than you. And you have this sense that, well, the problem is always going to be with me. The problem isn't out there in the world. The problem isn't with the partner that's mistreating me. The problem is with my interpretation of their treatment of me.

57:40That's not mistreatment, it's poor reception. Oh, it's not, my boss isn't being that much of a dick. It's because I'm too sensitive. Oh yeah. This is this this a house that I'm living in and the rent that I'm paying and the way that I'm dealing with my problems in my life. No, no, no. The problems that I'm facing in my life are totally normal. The issue is with my weakness. It's with my fragility. Yeah. This sort of it's this odd kind of agency. Why do you agency? I was going to say what do you think that is? It's control. It's my fault. I can change it. Well the other thing is I had this conversation.

58:15Do you know Jocco Willink is? I imagine he's not. I know the name, but no. Very big head Navy's seal man. Very scary. Gets up at 4 AM a lot. He was on the show. A great episode three years ago now. I asked him this question. His whole thing is about taking responsibility. The taking responsibility is a salve to pretty much everything. And he says sometimes it might not be your fault but it is still your responsibility. Now, I thought I understand who this is aimed at. And it might even be most people, right? The sort of victimhood mentality, myth of martyrdom, woe is me, that kind of avatar. And again, that might be most people.

58:56But there's a very particular cohort of people that I would place myself in. And I imagine lots of them actually listen to podcasts like this one for whom they actually need to take less responsibility for some of the things that happen to them that they overburden themselves with responsibility that they start to see things that aren't their fault and aren't their responsibility as their problem to solve. And that's this sort of, what are you called? Pathological agency, this is my problem, this is my problem. It's like, how about it's actually them? What if they're the problem? What if they're mistreating you?

59:31What if they need to be put in their place? What if you need to leave that job or relationship or house or community or friend group? What if it's them, not you? Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. They swing too far in that direction. And it is a way that you can hold on to a relationship where you're not wanted. Well, they have, I hear this all the time. My boyfriend is abusive, but he had trauma as a kid. So I know I can't leave him and I'm like, how do you figure? How do you figure? But that's what happens. Our minds are programmed to look for ways we can make it work. And I think it's hijacking our parenting instinct.

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1:00:47And right now you can get the exact same blood panels that I get and bypass their weight list by going to the link in the description below or heading to function health .com slash modern wisdom. That's function health .com slash modern wisdom. Have you thought about whether or not Limeron serves an evolutionary purpose. Is it like nature's way of forcing you to pursue a mate with blind obsession because there's not many around? Like have you thought about why this might be adaptive? I feel like everything is like that. I mean my experience as a person is that everybody has like good and bad. Everybody's kind of like capable of the same bad as the worst people.

1:01:26But we we we countervail it with efforts to to do better things and to be virtuous. And so I kind of think I'm not I'm not of the school that everybody's a narcissist. I've that word is like so overused. There is such a thing and the from for the stuff I teach it's more like the problem with narcissism is our own traits that are kind of narcissistic where we get too self -centered. But I think even I think everything is serving a purpose and it may not be a good purpose anymore. But like I think people who actually are narcissists maybe necessary for society. That's my theory. somebody has to be Teflon.

1:02:02You know, somebody has to just like not care that everybody hates them or that they're gonna get killed in the battle. They just have to be like, oh, but I'm the greatest. And we need those people. And so maybe we're misunderstanding. I think the idea as a kid who grew up really poor. And I grew up in a family that was very educated, but neglectful. And so my friends were sort of all on the wrong side of the tracks. And it took me a long time to sort of find my place. and I ended up getting well -educated and I do have friends of all types. I that's a happy thing about my life. But it was very stigmatizing and there were a lot of things I had no idea how to do and that's one of the topics that I'm also developing.

1:02:44I do content now, but just like there needs to be an etiquette book for people who were raised feral. We don't know. We don't know what it's like. How to be a human dot -dock. How to be a human? Yeah. Yeah, so I have a I have a whole thing called charm school for feral girls Nobody you know you everybody just assumes you know and you know how to do this And so a lot of information is like like in terms of like how should women handle their sex lives? And they the I remember when I was like I don't know 19 or something and in Cosmo magazine They were like when you've just had a one -night stand with a guy get up don't dwell on him Get up brush your teeth do some sit -ups and then go and I was like okay got it It was just like, it was bullshit.

1:03:27And it was like bad advice or another thing. I had to learn from stuff like TV. There was this commercial for the perfume angioli and this woman came on and she goes, the most irresistible thing to a man who is a woman who is helplessly in love with him. I was like, got it. Thanks, shameless marketing companies. Yes, thank you. I'll take it as my life strategy. It turns out it's totally resistible and weird and for them and uncomfortable. Yeah. Okay. Is, would you class of limerence is some kind of an addiction? Because neurologically, it seems to sort of mirror those dopamine patterns of addiction.

1:04:06So are they addicted to a person or the feeling? How do you unpack this? I think you could call it a person addiction, but really I think it's an addiction too. because it's an addiction to hope. That's hope is the dope, it's hope. They don't really, like in theory, they want to be with the person, but the thing that gives the high is is cresting over from devastation to hope again. That little moment. Oh, it's uncertainty to positive reinforcement. So it's like slot machine. It's just, it's very evil, it's like a variable schedule reward, right? Or it's like people who want to suffocate, you know, when they're having sex or something, you know, like you want to get that close to death and then, eh.

1:04:44Uh -huh. It's like that. It's a it's a it's a really unhealthy and toxic high and it leads to bad things it makes people alone and And so very few people are actually willing to do what it takes to stop it a lot of people ask me if you follow through But you you got to stop talking about it. You got to stop Contact the talking about it and thinking about it like a lot of therapists will totally like spend all the time talking about that Right just a bit of nudging in whatever the person's issue is yeah, and how do you feel about that? and oh, you had a dream, tell me about that. And all of it's so interesting.

1:05:19And that's like when you're addicted to hope, like that's just fueling the addiction. Like how does heroin feel? What do you like best about it? What does it smell like? And you wouldn't do that, would you? You have to like sort of clean up your environment and you have to get it, be with different people and you have to stop cold turkey. And some people may have an easier softer way out of it. They'll have to figure that out for themselves, but there comes a time when you realize you're only going down and so you cut it off. I think it's very spiritual too. I'm a spiritual person and I think that if you're craving the divine in another person, you actually need a spiritual life so that you're not apprehending that spiritual inclination that's natural for you as being from one person.

1:06:04But you need fun. You need to start going on bike rides and getting together with girlfriends and having people you can go to so you're not alone all the time with your feelings and people you are honest with. And they have 12 -step programs for this. But I think for yeah, for obsession. And sex and love addicts anonymous is one place. But I think it's important for people to maybe go to gender segregated meetings because you know there's nothing like a room. Yeah, room full of people who are you know bad boundaries around this stuff and haven't figured it out yet. So that can go south. So, you know, in my own healing, I only ever healed when I asked for help from the most formidable scary person who I knew could see my shit and would tell me the truth about stuff and how I changed it.

1:06:53Did I ask you who that was? It was a man, a friend who I knew. And he, I knew him in a 12 -step environment. And we had known each other for 20 years and there was never any attraction. and he was married and it was kind of an odd choice in 12 -step. But I had watched him help dozens of men change their lives. And the problems they were having were a little different than mine, but they were like, they equivalent of living in your mom's basement. You know, in their 30s, and they would drive some shitty car and feel very sorry for themselves all the time that girls didn't like them. and he would teach them to like, suit up, dress nicely, go take out a loan and get a proper car that would be appropriate for dating, start to set some standards and then get to work really hard on the 12 steps.

1:07:43And so when I met my now husband, I just kind of knew he was the one, but half thinking, but I would think that, right? That's what I do. But he was like a really good guy. And I could see that. And at the minute, I was like around him all the time, I was in this class that he was in and whenever I was around him I would want to dress nicer I'd want to stop gossiping like this really good part of myself was trying to come out I made you want to be a better person. I made me want to be a better person And that's before he we'd ever even spoken so for two months I kind of felt like he was the one but I finally chose my moment to just like chat him up about something And he he just like didn't get the clue for the longest time So we were you know, we were just hanging out for a while And then I put my cards on the table So we had some dates and after a couple of months he broke up with me because I was coming on too strong At one point he said I want to go really slow and I was like I do too and I'm not worried about it I said because I already know I already know where this is no it was I had made a decision, you know I had I was in my forties.

1:08:43I had had plenty of experience and some day we'll talk about like the the the heinous experiences I've had They're terrible. They're they're they're they're a little bit funny now, but not even totally and And I took some time off and I did deep work on myself to do something differently and to be real about what I wanted I had kids by this time I was divorced with two boys. You can't bring some jerk into your life with kids and And so I was really careful and I said I'm gonna go really slow like it's gonna be a long time I'm not gonna have sex anytime soon like forget about it But if you want to get to know me I'm here and then he said that's what I want and then I was like I will get him That's all I needed to be like, oh, I got to get him.

1:09:27So I was coming on too strong and then he broke up with me. So that's when I asked this man, I knew I said, can you help me? I just think this is the best guy I've ever met and I blew it and I just somehow I've got to get him back. And so he helped me and it took about six months and he taught me, sit on my hands, let information come to me, don't initiate anything because I would see him every week in this class. And it took a little while. First, he would sort of come up and be like, oh, do you want one of the cookies? And I'd be like, yeah, okay. And then go back to what I was doing instead of like leaping at everything.

1:10:01Because it's not being a single mom is very lonely. Isn't it ashamed that we have that dynamic in us for the push and pull? Yeah, but it's, I think it's important. It's activating some part of us. And it gets disordered. Like, I was so worried about being a single mom that I thought I'd better work double time to get them, but it just doesn't work on a healthy man. You know who, anything, you know what, if you don't fix your way of dating, who it will work for, is like, you know, the relationship before that turned out to be a heroin addict. I didn't even realize it. But that's who has fine with your foibles, you know?

1:10:36There's an extent of being inauthentic, untruthful. It's kind of not too far away from deception. If this is how I feel, but I'm going to put up some variant of the cool girl or cool guy, the sword, in an attempt to tolerate or temper how much of this, because if I come on too strong, then you pull away. And it would be so much nicer if both people could just say exactly how I feel about this thing. I know. I know. And you know, passionate love, the passionate love system is fucking insane and you have no serotonin, so your ability to be rational completely goes out of the window and you just totally driven forward by goal seeking.

1:11:20But if both people are feeling that, but both people have to pretend to not be feeling that because if either of them say that they are, the other one pulls away and it kills a track. It's like, like, this is just, I'd be very, I need to speak to a evolutionary psychologist about this, but I don't understand, apart from the kind of classic playground mentality that we all have, which is, I only want something that I can't get, that in the aloofness is a lurement. Other than that, I'm like, I don't get what the fucking mechanism is. I don't understand what it is that's going on.

1:11:55A scarcity, I guess. I don't know. It just works psychologically. And it was, in my case, I was playing a game. Here's here's when everything turned around with my husband like that it happened one day He called me up and I had been coached to date like a proper lady, you know, and don't accept dates after Wednesday And I was like you're kidding. Oh, I can't who will I ever date and I was here that from people now They're like no one will ever date me if I have standards, you know, but I was like So he calls me on Saturday evening. What was I really doing? I was just sitting there all by myself my kids were at their dads I was really sad.

1:12:26I felt like crying another year. Nobody to be with you know And I was really sad and I'm wishing he would call and then he called. It was him and he's like, hey, do you want to hang out? I was wondering if you want to hang out and I was like, no, sorry. I got plans and he was like, oh, he was really surprised. And I told him later, you know, I didn't have to do that for long. I didn't do it to mess with him. I did it to overcome my own problem with latching on and bonding too fast as a result of being totally neglected as a kid. I had to just like act like a normal person so that the relationship could begin.

1:13:00Later when I got to know him, I told him, I said, well, I did this thing. He had no idea. And he was like, that's so weird, because when you did that, I was just like, it really like made me fall back into you. And he had, you know, he had broken up with me at that point before. And then he was gradually coming back. It really worked. But I had to act like a person who valued herself, even though I wasn't really totally there yet. And that's how it works. Like, everybody imagines, oh, I'm going to heal. I'm going to like get to the island of healed people. and then I'm gonna have this great relationship, but it doesn't work like that.

1:13:31We heal by having relationships, but we try not to have too much crazy ones that grind you down and ruin your life. Does this mean that some people repeat limmerance sufferers? That you've got this sort of common thread. It's not, it just happens, and then you learn about it, and then it goes. It's this repetition. Yeah, yeah, serial limmerance. And it's a sad fate if they can't stop it. And I had that happen. This guy who stalked me one day, 15 years later, I used to have a video production company and I had to hire some people to fill a big crew and I hired this woman out of a hundred people on Craig's list and we were cleaning up afterwards.

1:14:12And the video we made was about stalkers for some client and I said, I had a stalker one since she goes, oh, that's so weird me too. Anyway, it turned out it was the same guy but like 15 years apart. It's this weird, karmic thing. And he had, I remember when he was stalking me, he was talking about her. And then I realized her name was very similar. I was getting these weird emails from somebody whose name was one letter off from hers, going, you don't remember me, but I met you at a party and I had this dream about you. And I'm very concerned. I think you might want to know this. And I would just be like, what the fuck is this?

1:14:45It was him. It was him like impersonating a woman and using her name and there's these weird connections And we were terrified of each other. It was just like are you are you working for him? Are you and we went and had a drink and we you know told our stories to each other But it was very sad and and that's all this guy ever did He just obsessed on people and and she actually loved him and wanted a relationship with him in her day and he couldn't do it He could only do this and so that's extreme Some people have that. It's called erotomania. Some people like they'll have it for a movie star or something.

1:15:23And they're so into, they're so committed to their lumerant dream, they talk about it and talk about it. And they really believe it's happening and nobody can really reason with them. How do you think modern media depictions of sort of functional and dysfunctional relationships contribute to this, the myth of the one and stuff like that? Yeah. I feel like it's getting better. I happen to really love TV a lot. I think we're in this incredible age where it's the highest art form there is. It's a streaming television. And all these... I think it's getting better and more realistic. I mean, for me, I'll just say I've always loved TV in movies.

1:15:59But until about 15 years ago, women were not very three -dimensional. And now that women are more involved in the writing and the directing and producing, we're sort of, you know, we're all in it now. Now everybody's in it and we're hearing the perspectives and I just see much more realistic things. But if you look at any movie from more than 20 years ago, it's always about some guy who's a little dewy bee and some beautiful girl. And against all odds, he wins her heart. And that's the old story. But you don't get that about girls until much more recently where she's kind of chunky and not very pretty and this beautiful guy.

1:16:31There aren't the shows like that now and I love them. I love them. You know, it's like, that's my story. But you would be, you know, they're out of your league, but then they see how wonderful you are. And I think that's everybody's fantasy, really, about to do that. We're not all practical. The best, David Bus says this, the best relationships are ones in which both people feel mutually fortunate to be with you. Yeah. Yeah. And I got a lovely, but again, in that, this sort of push and pull dynamic that this more juvenile, more immature, more untranscended or included part of you, I guess one thing we haven't spoken about is there a sex difference?

1:17:18I'm going to guess that it's more women just because of how the attachment system works, especially if it's been after sex, but I don't know, is it more common when men than women or women than men? I wish I could answer that. I know my sample is skewed. My audience is like 75, 80 % women. So, but when men get it, now this might be my perception. I feel like it's more menacing. When men get it, like they're bigger than you. When it's happened to me from men, it's been like scary and, and, or creepy. I remember there was this guy, he invited, I had this big birthday party at a rental house, got in big trouble with the agency that rented it.

1:18:00I wasn't supposed to bring 30 people, but we had a great time. And he had this present for me that was beautifully wrapped and I was really scared to open it and I wouldn't open it at the party. And later I ended up talking to somebody who knew him. And because I said, I was just really scared. It was like diamond earrings. I don't like him. I don't want to date him, but I know he's obsessed with me. I shouldn't have invited him. I know now. But, and he said, the friend said, that's so funny. he did buy you diamond earrings, but I made him return them and he got he got me a travel mug. So I was like, oh, travel mug, we're cool, but my nervous system did feel it.

1:18:34I knew he was like that. So I would love to have diamond earrings at that stage. It stays in my life, but not from him. Just not from that guy. No, no. What about, um, does the Limerons have any, does it always have a correlation with sexuality or could someone of the same sex be Limeron even if they're heterosexual? Yes, so all two things. When I was a kid I was obsessed with horses and some people say that's sexual I don't think it was. Oh wow, so you could even you're even saying forget the sex of the person like the species You might be limmerant with a horse. I had I had it. I was really obsessed with horses and then Laura Ingalls Wilder Which is really you know who she is the little house books?

1:19:13Well, there was little house in the prairie which was kind of a doofy TV show But there's these books that are some great literature that sustained me as a kid about going westward in a wagon and trying to survive, you know, out there in a homestead and I love these books. They really spoke to me and I wanted to go back in time and be in her family, not mine. And I would think about her all the time and then I would buy clothes at thrift stores and I didn't know how to sew. I was like 10, you know, so I would staple together fabric and I bought these used ice skates and I unscrewed the blades and I would walk around and ice skates.

1:19:46They have no flexibility in the souls and I would go to school in these staple dresses and ice skate shoes and a bonnet. Everybody just tolerated me as some weird kid. But I was like, I was in her world and I was just really committed. I don't want dinner. I'm going to go make a fire outside and heat my food up on the fire in the backyard. My parents let me do it. They were pretty hippies. So they let me do it. So I was sort of already in these other worlds. And I had an imaginary horse. And horses for me were like, you can go where you want to go. You can just like get on your horse and ride where you want to go.

1:20:24And you're not like stuck. My family moved from a commune in Berkeley to this like dumpy little thing in Tucson, Arizona during the Vietnam War. And it was 110 degrees. And I needed a horse. Damn it. I needed to get out of there. I was so stuck. And so these were my ways of escaping. And so I talked to a lot of people and Limerence seems to begin in childhood with these fantasies and this ability to transport yourself But I've also heard now from people and this is not something that I've had myself but they get Limerent like Over teacher figures Like there's women who are not gay but they They become completely obsessed with a woman a generation older and they're telling me this and I'm always like Mm -hmm.

1:21:07You know, I hope you don't mean me But that's what they do. I've received letters that are really deep and complex and puzzling about it. And the way the mother figure seems to be getting something out of it too, and the whole relationship usually explodes. There's something really unstable about it. But they come together like, yeah, there's a fit there with it. And it's really common. I've seen that. How do people get over limmerance? So I say treated as heroin. This is you can't just be friends. If you can be friends, be friends. If you can just get over it, get over it. But if you could do that, you would have done it by now.

1:21:48And so if you're suffering still, it's time to cut ties. So I get a lot of pushback on my channel from people who go, well, that's not fair. You know, she's obsessed with this guy, but he flirted with her. He gave her reason to hope. He should leave the job. It's like he's not writing me a letter. He's fine. She's the one who's like losing her happiness over this. So I recommend leave the job. stop being in contact with the person around whom you can't be yourself. You can't think about anything else and you can't progress as a person to where you're having a happy relationship and you know a happy life and fulfilled and what you want to do.

1:22:21And so first you cut contact then you have to cut off the talking about it and thinking about it. People are like, I can't stop thinking about it. I'm like, you can. Just like a person who does heroin needs to stop thinking about it. And the intrusive thoughts will come but you have to remind yourself and you're going to need friends who will support you. You're going to say, sorry, I'm just like thinking about how great it would be if that boat trip were taking it, you would come. And they can say, okay, hold on, this is going to be really good. I'm going to be with you. This is going to be fun.

1:22:50And hey, what are you going to wear? And let's go get something really nice to eat on the boat. And friends who help you come back to present time, you need help. It's very hard to fix yourself all by yourself. And you can do a certain amount. And then you have to sometimes, like one thing I I had to do is get all the sad songs off my, it was an iPod at the time. But I had all these songs about unrequited love, like half of all songs are about that. So I just took them all off and I only had songs about other things, about happy things or neutral things or, you know, but not just, yeah, there's like certain artists who like that's their specialty is how sad that you did that to me and you know, it was true love.

1:23:32So I just was like, I'm not gonna entertain this energy anymore. I'm going to stop. And have you ever had a friend who was literate and they just yammer on and on and they feel sometimes you can you feel like you're like they're their conversational equivalent of a sex doll or something where they just want to talk about this other person. And they're like and then he did this thing and it was so funny and then you know we went over to the to the snack bar and we got potato chips and it was so cute the way he ate them. and then he said and then I said and it's like you're using somebody else, you're co -op, you're trying to co -op their attention so that you can feed yourself the dope.

1:24:10And so your friends should not put up with it. They should say, I don't want to hear about it. I know this is, you told me this is an unhealthy thing. I don't want to hear about it. This is like somebody just telling you how great drugs are, you know, or how great running in front of cars is. It's not great. I don't want to hear about it. It's disturbing actually. And so we can be kind to people, but we need to stop. And I just think a lot of the solutions out there, and the reason I always had to find my own way to heal from my own trauma wounds, including this one, it didn't help me, it didn't help me to do conventional things.

1:24:43I had to be a real stoic about it. And a woman came along, the woman who showed me the techniques that I teach and re -regulated that are like the thing that I've done for 30 years to keep moving, you can move your difficult thoughts and feelings out of your mind, get them on paper, and release them twice a day faithfully or more, follow with a restful meditation and allow your mind to recompose. And if you're steady with this, you come back to present time, you come back to reality. And reality is great. Reality is the only place you ever get loved. It's the only place. So it's a beautiful place to come.

1:25:19And you've got to get out of the dream. I really appreciate you. I think this insight into a world that I literally didn't know existed until about a month and a half ago, super fascinating. I was listening to a re -regulated earlier on today, a couple of interviews you did about that and you all stopped so awesome. So people are going to want to check it out. Why should they go? They can come to crappychildhoodfairy .com, the website or the YouTube channel by the name of crappychildhoodfairy and the book is called re -regulated. Heck yeah, I know. I appreciate you. Thank you.