• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Infatuation Limerence Friendship Codependency?

LeiaFlower

Confident
I’m trying to understand what I’m feeling towards my friend. I usually get excited when I’m around her and she’s like a social battery recharge. I fantasize about kissing her and sometimes when I’m with her I want to. Even though sometimes I think about what it’ll be like if we slept together I’m terrified at the idea of it. It’s gross and scary. But I feel like those feelings surround my view of sex in general.

I like her but I don’t know if this is like as in Infatuation, Limerence, Friendship, or Codependency?

I also really wanted to kiss my other friend and I fantasize about sleeping with her.
 
You have a need for intimacy but perhaps due to your past trauma, you are assosciating sexual wholeness with connection. In your mind, in a traumatized state, Love = Sexual involvement maybe?

I could be wrong, this is something I think only you can answer and that is rough.
 
i love learning new words, especially when the words just might apply to me. "limerence," in this case, maybe. the read i got on "limerence" was doctory enough that i'm not sure i'm qualified to use the word, much less diagnose it.

with the intense incest i was raised from, my reflexive boundaries between emotions and sex are virtually non-existent. i liked my fourth grade teacher so much that i offered him a blowjob. that's what everybody does with people they like, isn't it? i wasn't even marginally prepared for his righteous indignation. the family incest was bisexual. good thing i didn't like any of my previous lady teachers, huh? i have since learned a few social skills, but the psychosis persists. if i like you, you are guaranteed to get kissed in my intrusive fantasies. am i using my new word correctly to call this, "limerence?"

anyhoo. . . i consider it progress that i no longer act on those intrusive fantasies, by whatever name and i use detachment tools to place healthy boundaries between the ?limerence? and the real world relationship. some of my most special relationships have grown from the phenom.

as for which moniker best labels your relationship with this person. . . you are the one with all the inside data.
gentle support while you choose your label.
 
3 of these have negative connotations - you haven’t included Attraction. Would you like to be in an intimate relationship with her?
I feel like I owe them seed because they’re so nice to me. I just want them to feel good…I know that sounds disgusting. I don’t know why my trauma responses are so gross.
 
I don’t know why my trauma responses are so gross.
Nature of the beast. It’s actually brilliant that you can articulate it so clearly.
I feel like I owe them seed because they’re so nice to me.
This sounds like a dysfunctional core belief that you can therapy the hell out of.

In the meantime, you now know this is what’s driving it, so whenever those thoughts come up, you can be a little compassionate with yourself. This is trauma driven.

The trick will be behaving in a way that is consistent with where you want to be, rather than where you’ve been in the past.
 
You have a need for intimacy but perhaps due to your past trauma, you are assosciating sexual wholeness with connection. In your mind, in a traumatized state, Love = Sexual involvement maybe?

I could be wrong, this is something I think only you can answer and that is rough.
Yeah, I feel in order to take our friendship to another form of closeness I have to sleep with them.

Nature of the beast. It’s actually brilliant that you can articulate it so clearly.
This sounds like a dysfunctional core belief that you can therapy the hell out of.

In the meantime, you now know this is what’s driving it, so whenever those thoughts come up, you can be a little compassionate with yourself. This is trauma driven.

The trick will be behaving in a way that is consistent with where you want to be, rather than where you’ve been in the past.
My core values doesn’t align with sleeping with my friends. I just don’t know what to do with these feelings. I want to be healthy.
 
I just don’t know what to do with these feelings.
Core beliefs (like “Good friends deserve to be able to have sex with me” - which is a rough version of one of mine) don’t shift easily. They’ve taken years to develop, and they won’t undo overnight. Personally? My core belief work has been more than a 10 year epic, still in progress.

They can (also) give rise to distressing emotions and compulsive behaviours. Some therapies target those quite specifically, and can make it a whole lot easier to coexist with dysfunctional core beliefs in the meantime (DBT, ACT and behavioural activation are ones that probably helped me most).
 
Core beliefs (like “Good friends deserve to be able to have sex with me” - which is a rough version of one of mine) don’t shift easily. They’ve taken years to develop, and they won’t undo overnight. Personally? My core belief work has been more than a 10 year epic, still in progress.

They can (also) give rise to distressing emotions and compulsive behaviours. Some therapies target those quite specifically, and can make it a whole lot easier to coexist with dysfunctional core beliefs in the meantime (DBT, ACT and behavioural activation are ones that probably helped me most).
So working on the distressing emotions and compulsive behaviors was more beneficial? What difference do you see in your core belief?
 
So working on the distressing emotions and compulsive behaviors was more beneficial?
I did (am doing) both. Changing the core beliefs is long term work. Probably starting with processing the trauma.

As well, I did therapies that would make my life easier in the medium-term, so that while I’m working on my core beliefs, I don’t keep doing dysfunctional stuff, and I can cope a lot better with distressing thoughts and emotions when they pop up.
What difference do you see in your core belief?
It’s slowly shifting. But I’m not gonna lie, for me there are some days where it feels like I’ve made very little progress. I’m in a much better place than I was, though. If nothing else, I have much better insight into the beliefs, the way they play out in my life, and ways that I can do things differently (rather than letting the beliefs run the show).
 
I experienced something similar Leia. I'm still figuring it out myself. I think it goes back to my childhood and my relationship with my mom. She was abusive and I didn't know it. I always stuck up for her. Because I saw loving her more than I saw what was wrong. I sacrificed my core beliefs, morals, relationship with God/Jesus to people please people and now I'm finally realizing it goes back further than I thought. I would suggest looking at the spiritual side of this too. Like I said I'm still figuring this out too. I felt similar to my friends in a way. I think it was that I'd never gotten that love and attention before so I freaked out. Also I don't know about you but mine became very obsessive. Right now it hurts because I keep looking back and I know I don't need to dwell on it or the effects of it.
 
Back
Top