A story of the mountain, limerence, love and shame

Part 3 of 4

Part 3: Breakup and limerence

I want to go on to describe that relationship, but you have been in love so you know how it is when you recognize someone. And perhaps you know too how you can miss someone disappearing in front of your eyes. Me too, I missed the moment when he began to slowly get replaced by a doppelgänger who talked and walked and even fucked like him. By the time I noticed, I had become so weakened by staying open for him for so long that I didn’t have any way to scramble myself back together, fortify against what was inevitable. 

What’s wrong? 

I don’t know, he would say and add something about how he should probably see a therapist and that sounded just like something people say to get you to leave them alone. 

My love for him moved from its safe place to somewhere murky, treacherous. I told myself that it was just a phase, a little dip in our non-stop elevation. Early love is two people teetering on the line of comfort and breakneck.  Is this safe? Is this hot? Can I touch you here? Will you bite my head off? It’s the uncertainty that is addictive¹ and I’m an addict through and through.  

After I sensed him pulling away, my heart was in my throat the whole time and I wanted to claw my eyes out – both cliche expressions felt acutely apt when I was in that state.  This is just a phase, I told myself. I will get him back, get us back. But our conversations became tightropes, the only reprieve was when he’d still insist on taking naps with me where he’d hold onto me like a man drowning. 

There’s nothing like not knowing if you are still loved, if you are wanted; yet uncertainty can be the greatest aphrodisiac. If you like your adrenaline to run at an all-time high, that is.  The easy jokes become risky. Iloveyous sound like pleas. The balance is off. But I stayed despite discomfort because I told myself lies and because it was exciting, even though I hated every second of it.  I didn’t find love with Gabriel – I found a replacement for my other addiction and it was limerence.  

I have always been fascinated by limerence. Limerence is not recognized as a formal mental health disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) or any other widely accepted diagnostic classification system. While limerence has been extensively studied and discussed in the field of psychology, it is considered more of a concept or a state of mind rather than a diagnosable disorder. Limerence describes an intense and often obsessive form of romantic attraction or infatuation towards another person. Coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov, this state is characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of those feelings and an idealized perception of the object of one's affection that might include fantasies about the person, a heightened focus on their actions and behaviours, and, most significantly, a longing. There’s an overlap of limerence with unrequited love – in both situations the object of one’s affection is either clueless about their own significance in the Obsessive’s life or deeply disinterested. 

I’ve experienced limerence a few times in my life, I have thought about a person non-stop, breathed, ate, slept, thought and shat them out, I have stared at phone screen willing it to produce texts that weren’t coming, I have even gone to a psychic once and had my Tarot cards done – despite not believing in either – and I have written and published stories when I tapped in to those feelings, trying to exorcize them through fiction, pour them into made-up men and women who suffer my pain so that I didn’t have to. Considering my history, it might not seem that way, but I prefer to be in control and yet, I keep losing it, and losing it over a person scares me more than any other kind. Maybe because the person you lose it over, is the same person who causes you to lose it, like a built-in witness to a potential humiliation and shame – someone who used to love you is now someone who will see your ugliness and worminess. 

In the final week of our acquaintance he handed me a heart-shaped box of chocolates, the 50-percent off sticker stuck to it. Valentines Day is for idiots. We both agreed or I agreed because I would’ve agreed with anything, at that point. The next morning, I left him a note written inside the heart-shaped cover of the box, a cartoon drawing of myself with huge pleading eyes, and thought bubbles with some inside jokes, reassurances that I loved him and whatever was going on with him, we would get through it. He never commented on the note. When I said, I love you, he said, I don’t deserve you. 

As much as unpredictability might appeal to someone with addictive tendencies,  unpredictability is also linked to stress². Stress, particularly stress related to unpredictability and uncontrollability may cause someone – like yours truly especially – to turn to addictive substances or behaviours as a way to cope with the uncertainty and to alleviate said stress. The temporary relief or distraction provided by addictive behaviours can reinforce their use as a maladaptive coping mechanism. 

Or: booze is a great fix. (A toxic balm for a beat-up heart, the shortest distance to relief at an arm’s length.) 

The slo-mo shock of the end of my relationship with Gabriel was stressful enough that I did reach for the only solution I knew. After a year of sobriety, I got drunk. I showed up at his place bleary and emboldened by booze. Earlier I did a sexy photoshoot for some stupid story I wrote about stupid people who were not me – this was the mindset I was in that night. I was wearing a black PVC dress, so tight and shiny it was as if someone poured fresh tar over me, my hair was piled up high, my eyes were smoldering black, my high heels like deadly weapons as I sauntered in to Gabriel’s house, thinking that maybe now he will snap out of it – whatever it was – when he sees what he’s about to lose. I was every heartbroken girl getting a makeover, I was you-go-girl Adeles and Taylor Swifts, or more accurately, I was my, older generation’s PJ Harvey with her spit-on-your-grave A, F and G, Rid of Me³. 

I took off the heels when our eyes met, mine like the girl’s from the chocolate box, his in their cruel opaqueness staring at me without flinching, pinning me down but also telling me it’ll be fine if I leave, no difference. 

How do you even wear those? he said picking up and holding one of the shoes, one eyebrow raised theatrically. 

“Are we playing?” I thought to myself because I couldn’t tell. I said something self-deprecating, tested to see if this was a joke we could both be in on. My bravado left me. 

At some point, I left too to go and drink more. At a red-lit dive called No Name Bar, with three young men from Winnipeg, I consumed two double-vodka-cranberries and came back ready to show Gabriel the monster he has helped to unleash. My drunkenness finally woke him up, shocked him. Finally then, we fought like two people new to it, fighting, trying on insults and dropping them instantly like burning coals. He kept pacing and saying, I don’t want to lose you, and I kept sobbing, You don’t have to lose me, but I was not really sobbing; we were both performing this fight, maybe so that we both would have a story to tell our friends who’d ask why it didn’t work out. “She got trashed and went out drinking some more with men from Winnipeg.” 

  I didn’t understand why he needed to lose me, I didn’t understand anything that was happening and why. The one vivid memory I have of the evening is him finally looking at me but this time looking in disbelief as if I did indeed turn into some terrifying creature with wings and fangs, a creature that he eventually managed to coax to lie next to him, the sheets and blankets between us like icebergs. When I woke up – the morning light dusty and grey, washing over everything, the ruins of our relationship smoldering, steaming – I thought how I couldn’t wait to leave now, I wanted to smoke all the cigarettes in the world. 

I said, How do you feel? 

I feel hollow, he said and when I looked into his eyes the blinds were down. 

PART 4

1. There have been studies measuring the correlation between unpredictability and addiction demonstrating how uncertainty triggers the release of dopamine in the brain (think gambling or taking a weird pill at a club). Dopamine, addiction’s best friend, is a neurotransmitter of pleasure and reward. The anticipation associated with uncertainty activates the brain's reward pathways – dopamine on fire – leading to a pleasurable sensation (later, relief) that people prone to addiction seek to experience repeatedly. The uncertain nature of the outcome creates a strong association between the behavior and the anticipation of rewards. Other, related research on addictive behaviour and gambling shows that intermittent unpredictable rewards (such as occasional wins) can reinforce the behavior and increase the likelihood of continuation. Uncertainty also engages our cognitive processes. It requires problem-solving, adaptability, and critical thinking, which can be intellectually stimulating and rewarding in its own way. The process of navigating uncertainty gives a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I used to be a person who was almost perpetually bored unless I was in – good – men – or bad – men – trouble, or had an impossible deadline. It might’ve not been conscious but trying to solve Gabriel and the mystery of his disappearing-in-plain-sight act was thrilling to me on some level. The so-called emotional rollercoaster creates a sense of rabid excitement keeping me emotionally, rabidly invested. 

2. One study in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, ‘Chronic stress, drug use, and vulnerability to addiction,’ Sinha, R. (2008) et al. examined how chronic stress can dysregulate the brain's reward system, increase drug cravings, and impair executive functions involved in decision-making and self-control. It highlighted the role of stress-induced alterations in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and the release of stress hormones, such as cortisol, in influencing addictive behaviors. The study suggested that people may turn to addictive substances or behaviors as a way to cope with the negative emotional states associated with stress, including unpredictability and uncontrollability. But I never blame anyone on my relapses, I am always the one who makes the decision. The circumstances help it or don’t; I’ve drank over nothing much in the past.

3. Tie yourself to me/ No one else, no /You're not rid of me, /You're not rid of me /Night and day I breathe / You're not rid of me /Yeah, you're not rid of me / Yeah, you're not rid of me /Yeah, you're not rid of me

I beg you, my darling /Don't leave me, I'm hurting…and so on. But the joke’s on me, he rids of me.