Limerence Is Toxic Fix for Lonely, Joyless Life (4-Video Compilation)

if you were emotionally neglected as a kid you may be extra prone to direct your romantic energy toward people who are not with you it's called limerance and it's kind of an obsessive U infatuation with people you cannot have and it's a glitch in the way that we develop neurologically and it can have terrible consequences for you and for the people who actually do love you but our culture has a lot of like fancy words and window dressing to make this addiction to escaping real life responsibilities through fantasy romance into something healthy and okay and

Justified my letter today is from a man I'll call Carter and he writes hi Anna I'm a 35-year-old man and I've been with my wife for about 15 years oh I'm doing the math okay I've got my fairy pencil and I'm going to circle things that I want to come back to on a second reading but let's read through Carter's letter and see what's going on all right he says when my six-year-old son was born I learned about male postpartum depression the hard way in other words I didn't know men could go through such an

experience and I was woefully unprepared for the mental barrage and pressures of becoming a father lots of things came up from my past specifically around my relationship with my alcoholic father while my relationship today with my father is very good we had a very troubled relationship when I was a teenager and through my young adult life and I don't think he'll ever fully understand the impact his alcoholism has had on me during this period shortly after my son was born I had an emotional affair with a woman at work to put it bluntly I was

depressed and in need of intimacy and she told me things I wanted to hear I hated my becoming a father but in the moment of weakness she told me that I was more than that looking back it was all very clear that she abused our friendship and crossed boundaries huh through marriage counseling and therapy I discovered a lot about myself that I work on still today through this experience I became very untrusting as I felt ashamed that I was taken advantage of and acted out of character I haven't had many friends especially female friends for

many years since this in fact I actively avoided making friends and socializing these days things are great my relationship with my wife is great and I'm taking care of myself through healthy habits and therapy I'm making friends both male and female and it's been rewarding in addition I've challenged myself to do better I learned how to get over my fear of water and learned how to swim as an adult it had so many parallels to life itself and opened my eyes to the life I want to live in this vulnerable process I became friends with

my female instructor over the months we've become close and this leads us to today uh-oh I feel very strongly for this woman so much so that I recognize this as limerance I constantly think about her and have intruding thoughts I only wish to be friends but sometimes my mind takes over and I get really frustrated with The Unwanted thoughts when we're together we have wonderfully friendly conversations and connect very deeply in fact I would say that our friendship is growing and is very normal through therapy I've discovered that my need for friendship and connection outside

of my marriage is very important to my mental well-being my wife is also supportive of this but I can't help but be distrusting of myself and others as I develop new close bonds especially with women my questions are how can I put aside limerent thoughts and move forward in having a successful friendship with another woman after what I've gone through it sometimes seems impossible I consider myself sensitive but lately I've found that once I've let someone in my circle they're in I feel empowered to set boundaries and communicate effectively yet my thoughts cause self-doubt I'm

not sure which I trust less myself or other people I fear losing friendships I know this it's painful to find someone new to love in a non-romantic way because the idea of losing them is also painful I fear that one day she'll find a romantic partner and ditch our friendship due to being incompatible I know I can't predict ICT the future and so being present and enjoying what I have will allow me to live my life without fear it's just easier said than done when the fear of what could happen is always there thank you

for your time I'd love to hear your thoughts all right Carter yes you can have my thoughts I'm really worried about you Carter you seem to be kind of dissociated you seem to be talking a really good talk and walking a completely different walk so I don't know if you're going to like what I have to say here it's a bit of tough love but let's go through what you told me all right 35 years old you've been with your wife for 15 years so you were 20 when you got together that is very young

and you had a you have a six-year-old so you would have been 29 when your kid was born you learned about male postpartum depression okay sometimes you use these Concepts or psychology words and maybe that's what it is I don't know uh but you got depressed when your son was born because you were freaked out about being a dad sometimes I think language would be a little bit easier to work with here than dressing it up as male postpartum depression and then the other thing I notice you do is you deflect when you're kind of

doing something that's hurts other people you you deflect all of it onto other people so I also had alcoholism in my parents and I know what a big deal it is and how it affects stuff so I I do get what you're saying you said that you were unprepared for the mental barrage and pressures of becoming a father and this stuff about your own dad came up that makes sense um lots of things came up from the past especially around relationship with alcoholic father while my relationship today with my father is good that's amazing we

had a very troubled relationship when I was a teenager and through my young adult life and I don't think he'll ever fully understand the impact his alcoholism has had on me yeah I I think it's very rare that other people understand the way they hurt us especially parents let us down and especially alcoholics by the way I've just noticed limerance tends to be linked I just you know almost everybody who writes in with limerance as an alcoholic parent not everybody it's not a strict rule but you know you fit the pattern but for you to

get better from this it would be so important for you to like bring the focus into your own behavior and thinking because I I I just keep hearing you being dissociated about it and I'm really wondering about your therapist who I can't help but wonder if that person is enabling you a bit with rhetoric all right so during this period shortly after my son was born I had an emotional affair with a woman at work you said to put it bluntly I was depressed and the need of intimacy and she told me things I wanted

to hear and I'm not sure what you mean by in sometimes when people say intimacy they mean closeness and sometimes they mean sex and I know that you know when a woman has has a new baby uh she may not be able to give you either one for a while cuz it's pretty intense and so you say this other woman at work told you things you wanted to hear and you hated becoming a father woo you hated becoming a father that's an alarming thing to say I just kind of want to like put a big

circle around that you hated becoming a father that that's very intense and um I guess you've talked about this with your wife and you know the therapist whatever but your wife that's so heavy and I think that would be a very hard thing to hear that the father of your child hated becoming a father don't let your kid ever hear that okay so yeah you hated becoming a father but in that moment of weakness she told you that that you were much more than that well everybody is much more than a parent I'm a parent

and I'm more than that too I'm not really I I don't totally understand that maybe you're using euphemisms or something I think you're saying you needed it validated that she helped you see that you were that you were also like an attractive man and not just whatever your negative idea of fathers is that they're boring or not attractive not sexy I don't know looking back you say it was all very clear that she abused our friendship and crossed boundaries it sounds like you had a very mutual thing I can't really tell so she she flirted

with you you were having an emotional affair with her it takes two you know and that's kind of this is kind of what I'm talking about where the dissociation where you feel like other people did this to you but as a person who has a extremely serious commitment of raising a small child together with your partner um you having an emotional affair at all that's you know you cross the boundary like what she did if she were writing to me I'd be like don't even don't you even think of you know flirting with some guy

at work um who's married and if he has a kid like red alert do not do that that's a terrible transgression and it threatens the marriage and it threatens this you know a marriage is kind of like a shaky thing enough and a marriage with children it's it's so important that the parents are able to parent that kid well and you know not pass on the trauma to another generation I realize not all marriages will last um but you don't go in and try to wreck somebody's marriage so if this woman had asked me I

would have totally given her a piece of my mind but you are equally responsible even more so because you're the one who took a vow to your wife so very very important that you take responsibility for that you shouldn't be hanging out with somebody who talks to you like that um and I urge you try not to just displace all the responsibility for this I it's a pattern I'm kind of seeing here and I think that you can turn this around if if you can stop blaming other people for for the places where you're crossing

the line here so through marriage counseling and therapy uh I discovered a lot about myself that I still work on today and through this experience I became very untrusting as a as I felt ashamed that I was taken advantage of and acted out of character so just in the spirit of tough love I'm going to just say were you taken advantage of or you know did you just kind of become attracted to this transgression to feel like you were something more than a whatever negative idea a dad is to you you hated being a dad

you wanted something else you you say you acted out of character and out of character is a funny phrase that we use because everything we do is actually in character our character is complicated right it's complicated and like most of the time we are good PE the good people we like to present ourselves to be but in reality sometimes we're not the good people that we like to present ourselves to be and that's also part of our character and it's kind of the part that most needs your attention is the part of your character that

that crosses lines that makes mistakes that could shatter everything so it's a very important part of your character so you said I haven't had many friends especially female friends for many years since this you say I actively avoided making friends and socializing so that's like you know you felt traumatized by the experience I think you're saying these days though things are great my relationship with your my wife is great I'm going to challenge you on that I don't think it's great I think you're you know you it would it's it's great because she is in

a lie she's being lied to she doesn't know that you actually are in love with another woman so I would say you're marriage is not great now it's in great Jeopardy I'm going to call you on it okay you're telling yourself it's great everything's great I'm taking care of myself through healthy habits and therapy and risking shattering your marriage and I'm making friends both male and female and it's been rewarding um it's in addition I've challenged myself to do better and you learn to swim and overcome your fear of water so yeah um in this

vulnerable process I became friends with my female instructor over the months we've become close and this leads to today all right you became close to your female swim instructor no well here you said later that you think it's a normal friendship I don't at all think it's a normal friendship it's normal for men and women to be friendly especially in groups or couples or something but if you're having one-on-one relationships where you're madly in love with the woman it's not a friendship so you said I feel very strongly for this woman so much that I

recognize it's limerance limerance is this obsessive love for somebody you can't have um and limerance is an extremely dangerous and addictive fantasy state that can suck your soul it can ruin your existing relationships like this is very serious it's not I don't know you seem dissociated from the seriousness of the situation so I constantly think about her and have intruding thoughts I only wish to be friends okay this is where you're dissociated I don't think you only wish to be friends you constantly think about her and have intruding thoughts presumably of Desiring her so I

don't think you wish to be friends that's like this other story you tell maybe to the world he said but sometimes my mind takes over and I get really frustrated with The Unwanted thoughts so your mind doesn't take your mind is you your mind is you you are the person who has those thoughts it's not overtaking the good you it's these are this is all you the part of you who's trying to be faithful who's trying to you know live life in a way that you feel you can present to the world and feel proud

of and then also you is the one who's just totally you know at the edge of a cliff right now so when we're together we have wonderfully friendly conversations and connect very deeply all right for the that very deep connection this is more like the Red Alert is going off and you said I would say that our friendship is growing and is very normal and I'm just like no that's not a friendship it's not normal and if it's growing I think your marriage is in grave Danger okay I you're writing to me about this so

some part of you knows this but you seem to be um dissociated from yourself so through therapy I've this therapy comes up a lot and it whenever you're talking about therapy it this is like the good talk that you do about this stuff so I don't know if your therapist is sort of validating that this is normal and that's possible I think that you know you can find you can find all kinds of therapists and some of them will validate polyamory or you know very very permissive sexual mores so if that's where you and your

wife have agreed it's a good place for the marriage to go then that would be one thing but I from what it sounds like no it's not you went through a lot of depression about what happened before it was it shattered your confidence for years isn't how is this different I don't know maybe because it hasn't broken down yet or your wife hasn't found out yet or you didn't get left yet I don't know you haven't said there's this weird Sunshine thing here that you're that is flitting through a very dark story so through therapy

I've discovered that my need for friendship and connection outside my marriage is very important to my mental well-being sure but probably not being very close to women you can't stop thinking about my wife is also very supportive of this no she's not but I can't help but be distrusting of myself and others as I develop new close bonds especially with women my questions are how can I put aside liant thoughts and move forward in having a successful friendship with another woman I have bad news for you Carter you can't you can't once you're liant this

is a this is a addictive State there's an aspect of delusion to it it's something that you can't have it's not a normal friendship and if it's gone on as long as it has here to the point that you're writing to crappy childhood fairy you already have your answer like it's not a friendship and very few people who who get liant can just sort of snap out of it and have a normal friendship one test that I would give to you is if you were totally honest about your feelings for this woman and that you

can't stop thinking about her you have intrusive thoughts and um you're liant for her and um you know you want to be friends with her does she have a problem with that if you if you can't be honest about what's really going on well there it is you know a a a toxic relationship is one that you have to lie about to the person who trusts you the most to a person who with you is raising a little child and is counting on you pretty heavily right now uh who I assume would be devastated to

find out what your thought process is limerance is an escape let me cut to the chase here limerance is an escape from reality so I think you're still maybe resisting the responsibility of being a dad and the responsibility and commitment of being in your marriage now people do leave marriages and split custody or you know have less than full custody and that could be where you go with this so that you're free to be friends as you say with other women you know very close friends in a way that doesn't threaten your marriage and that

basically leaves you free to have sex with them if that's what you want or fall in love or have a relationship I feel like that's where you kind of want permission to go um but I don't think that's the agreement you have with your wife and I wouldn't recommend it especially like you as a kid of an alcoholic so for those of us who grew up with alcoholics like actually being close to people and making commitments has a strange uncomfortable alien imprisoning feel for it sometimes I know what you're talking about I had kids later

than you so maybe I had more time to adjust and I was single a lot longer than you so I had time to adjust and I had time to like really want it so that may be why by the time I had kids you know I never had any doubt about it but you're you know lots of people do it's not like everybody has to do the Hallmark card version of like it's the best thing that ever happened and not every person feels like that it is a struggle for people so there is a way

out if that's what you really want but if you want to stay in I'm going to talk to you assuming what you actually want is to stay married you got to cut off all contact with liant people for whom you're liant it's an addiction it's sort of like heroin and you if somebody were doing heroin it it just wouldn't be possible for them to keep doing heroin and like could I just come get to where I could use it normally you know just a little bit at a time or could I just hang out with

all the people who use heroin while they're on heroin and not use it myself it's just not like that it's one of those things that once it's got a hold of your mind it can be very very hard to shake loose and if you're serious about shaking it Loose you have to do every single thing possible so first you break off contact then you stop thinking about them you don't write letters about them you know I use the daily practice the daily practice practic is where you can pour every single thought that's the we write

the fearful and resentful thoughts I have fear I'm never going to see this person again fear they were the only person I can ever love fear they're the only person I understand or ever want fear I don't want to do what I'm doing in my life but it's a way you can get free of the thoughts that bother you and get back to your real self if your real self wants to be married and parent and raise your son um you got to just get out get away from this woman uh this is a very

dangerous situation for you so you said I consider myself sensitive but lately I've found that once I've let someone in my circle they're in well that's not true we can break up with people you can to you don't have to make a big speech about it you can just say you know um I've had a great time talking to you but I think this is not going to work for my life so see you later you can learn swimming from somebody else you say I feel empowered to set boundaries and communicate effectively yet my thoughts

cause self-doubt this is like I I feel empowered the word empowered boundaries communicate effectively it all sounds like happy talk to me because actually you're in danger not like danger is the opposite of empowered I think um setting boundaries that you're not if you're in love with somebody who you are not supposed to be in love with and communicating effectively I assume you're not telling the woman how you feel about her and you're not telling your wife so that's what I mean I just think those are that's like this front you're putting up and then

you say but my thoughts cause self-doubt it's not two different people these are your thoughts this is the way you present yourself and the way you actually think and feel and you present yourself in the good way because you don't want people to leave or freak out and I understand that um and you get to that where I I fear losing friendships I know this it's painful to find someone new to love in a non-romantic way so it's a little weird like you I love her but in a non-romantic way I'm not buying it you

love her in a ro antic way or this wouldn't be an issue and when you make friends with people outside your marriage I don't know I have like really good long-standing friends and I love them and some of them are men and none of them are a threat to my marriage and I hang out with them a lot mostly in the com in the companionship you know in like with my husband present sometimes not some of my women friends I see on my own some of my closest friends are the people I work with in

crappy childhood fairy too and I hang out with them and I love each of my friends when a friendship ends sure it's sad but it's totally different than a romantic ending it's not like um yeah it's different and I'm just hearing I don't know I think you're trying to pretend this is a friendship so you say you fear that one day the swim instructor woman will find a romantic partner and ditch our friendship due to being incompatible so my dude that's um that's love and jealousy that's not friendship so my friends I really hope that

they find love I'm so excited for them to find love I'm not threatened when they do that's the that's what a friend is a friend is somebody you know your your friends want the very best for you and they want the best for you so so if she were to find a romantic partner that would be really great so that's how I know you're kind of lying to yourself about about the nature of this you said I know I can't predict the future and so being present and enjoying what I have will allow me to

live my life without fear I don't know that sounds like a bunch of words I don't know about I don't really know what that means I think that the fear you have is is because of romantic attachment it's just easier said than done when the fear of what could happen is always there yeah so you wanted my thoughts and I I you know those were pretty harsh I know but I I think your marriage is in grave danger and if you want to save it I encourage you to take my advice and stop all contact

with this liant person and um the therapy sounds like it could be helpful to you but I'm really questioning why your therapist hasn't called you out on this yet romantic obsession with someone you can't have is a sneaky life wrecking toxin almost a drug that feels great at first and then seems like if you could just have that person your life would go from really really empty to totally amazing but notice I said drug the drug treats pain and the drug wears off and next thing you know the solution that you found has just swept

like a massive mudslide through everything good in your life can it ever be true that this one person you wanted but lost is the missing element in your life that explains why you've been so sad for so long maybe maybe if you know the signs my letter today is from a man I'll call Ed and he writes hello Anna am I stuck in a cptsd trauma Bond mixed with limerance I grew up as an only child my mother was an alcoholic and it was not a healthy environment for obvious reasons all right I've got my

fairy pencil I'm going to circle things that I want to come back to on a second reading but let's go through Ed's letter and see what's going on I was emotionally neglected spent most of my time alone and it was hard to make or keep friends my parents divorced the first time when I was seven and then remarried they divorced again when I was 18 I dropped out of high school my sophomore year due to my home life both parents agreed to let me drop out but later obtained a GED I've never done drugs or

alcohol believe it or not on a positive note at 16 going on 17 I met my first love to whom I lost my virginity she was introduced to me because she wanted a nice guy instead of the bad guys she had been with many times before okay she also had a troubled past before I came into her life from an abusive mother I treated her like gold and did everything I could to keep her happy I didn't want to lose her as she was the most significant person ever in my entire life I became her

doormat used in many ways and I was constantly worried with anxiety that she might cheat or Treat Me poorly or leave close to a year later she broke up with me as she wanted to go out and have fun drink drugs party I didn't do any of that that breakup absolutely destroyed me I wanted to die I couldn't move I was so angry and screamed and cried so much I felt so worthless I couldn't hold on to what meant the most to me and to this day I struggle with many aspects of it including sexual

trauma I'm not sure what you mean about that I'm not sure you went you explained what that is but okay one other girlfriend was a mistake she cheated on me and a year later I met my now wife of 25 years she's the nicest most supportive person I married unhealed and way too early and I was afraid to lose her because of the past um I sold myself to her as something more than I was I feel it was just to keep her and she was stability um she was a means for survival I've only

now come to realize H I love her as a friend the mother of my children but the chemistry and connection and attraction isn't there and has never been like it was with my first girlfriend maybe I'm still confused with what love really is I've often thought of my ex throughout our marriage I've never been able to shake my feelings towards her I've never been able to provide the emotional needs for my wife that I did for my ex-girlfriend I've always felt a disconnect me to her before she was pregnant with our first child I knew

something wasn't right and started questioning the marriage to myself but in less than a year we were pregnant and had two fantastic children now both adults I wasn't going to leave the marriage because I didn't want them to go through a divorce like I did at an early age but I've not been happy and my wife senses it and has said she's waiting for the day that I announce that I'm leaving but she Remains by by by my side knowing that's a possibility wow okay I reunited with my first love a year ago after 30

years she is married with adult children I met up with her to find closure mistake suggested by a previous therapist what I'm going to say something about that okay my wife was aware of the meeting hoping it would help the situation I found myself in with a recent nervous breakdown at work resulting in job loss but with disability I have skitso effective disorder depression anxiety PTSD and I have no friends uh that is a lot the ex-girlfriend and I connected she apologized for the past we became Facebook friends she invited me into a group she

started that we both shared interest in from this point it has been an anxiety tear filled up and down emotional roller coaster of mixed emotions and signals leading to emotional distress for me my ex and my wife no physical infidelity ever took place but definitely an emotional one I would live live by my phone waiting for my ex to call text message or even for a like or a heart response on a post I would make in the group chat just to feel acknowledged by her and heartbroken when she didn't yeah this is limerance all

right I'd meet up to help the group with her feeling used a lot of times but continued to pursue her she eventually expressed mutual feelings for me for the sake of time and length of story we are still communicating not as much I'm no longer part of this group but I can't stop thinking of her and I'm so sad that I wasn't good enough for her when we were young as she was who I wanted to be with I try to remind myself that the bad things that I avoided by not being with her and

the good things I have but I'm still tortured by it all is this a mix of trauma bonding limerance unhappiness and a mental health issue all wrapped up in one that keeps me from stopping this misery should ex- romantic Partners be friends if each are married to someone else how do I let go go no contact even though I feel I've lost her for good should I divulge my true feelings to my wife about my ex-girlfriend even though I may I may not understand them are these feelings just based on past trauma Bond emotions and

not real ones thank you so much for your videos and your time and consideration of this letter okay Ed I'm so glad you wrote and I think I can help I'm this is so heavy I'm so sorry about all of this with your childhood and what happened with your first romance you said that you thought that you lost her cuz you weren't good enough all right what were you 16 17 and it's not about that what I heard here is that you were the nice guy she had always been with bad guys she had a

nice guy and what is really normal which is happening for you right now in fact you're having it too is when people don't have unhealed trauma and sometimes just people get this it's just human is that if somebody really loves you and is good to you you you don't feel attracted romantically or sexually and so you get that friend feeling and you think no I I really got to go pursue the people who jerk me around and who dumped me before that's what you're doing now and that's what she did before and you're doing it

to your wife not because she's not good enough is because you have a feeling that there's something you're missing out on and you believe rightly or wrongly that it that if you could be with this woman from the past you would be fulfilled and um I I don't immediately discard the possibility that you're right it's possible but I think it's unlikely here's what I hear Ed that I think is one really big marker of why um whatever you feel about women H has spin on it you have no friends you said you have no friends

and you've got these diag diagnoses and some of them are pretty serious and you have no friends so if somebody is really struggling with mental health and has no friends they have one friend their wife of 25 years who's totally stood by them but they're like ah this doesn't give me that feeling I want and you want to go back to the past to somebody you felt strongly about in your teens I do understand that but this is what you are talking about is limerance and Trauma Bond you're not in a trauma Bond right now

as far as I know I don't know you didn't explain why are you guys seeing less of each other now was that her is she totally prepared to leave her marriage for you as you seem to be for her you weren't clear whether you had that conversation and I just think if that was clear you would have mentioned it in your letter it sounds to me like she enjoyed the energy of the whole thing and she shut it down that's my guess I have to guess cuz you didn't tell me but I don't think you

would have shut it down and I don't think that you yeah I just think you would tell me if you had both said I want to leave my spouse for you you would have said something to me and the question would have been more about the logistics of that but it's not the stuff you're asking me you said you thought you had lost her forever so I think what it is these high school reunion things they're notorious a lot of people will get hooked in to somebody they had strong feelings for and they're a little

bit of an archetype of like great expectations and terrible disappointment because of that very thing that there were strong feelings in teens before you know when we were young before we ever got our hearts broken we didn't have so much fear we just didn't have so much fear that if we would open our hearts to somebody we were going to get burned and discarded or shut down and abandoned so there was no fear there there was there was an abandon to the level of love that we were able to receive and give that was wild

but here you are now you're however old you are there's all this water under the bridge and I don't think there's any way that you would feel great with her and the big barometer for that I always remind people is well how do you feel how do you feel so you've had this kind of like emotional affair going on on the side for a while that's the word for it and you're miserable you're totally miserable it's up and down roller coaster you know depressed sad what what did you say you're so afraid to lose her

so that's not what a good relationship feels like you need to know the signs that something is actually legitimate I do think it's possible for people because of circumstances or trauma or whatever to have made a poor decision in their original choice of spouse and that there really is something much more suitable and appropriate that would enliven them and support them and they would feel understood that is always a possibility and it it wouldn't be out of the realm of of you know real IC thinking that if there was such a relationship like that that

the right thing to do would set the whole situation right by being with the other spouse and um I guess a popular example of this would be King Charles and Camila uh you know he they they didn't get married the first time tragedy ensued now they're married they seem to be a very very married couple and so they ended up doing the right thing by themselves but as we know they hurt other people they hurt their existing spous is a great deal perhaps it was the best thing to do that's a moral judgment that we

can refrain from but I'm just saying there are examples out there of you know where this happens and it turns out for the best and with you the fact that you're miserable that you have to be so scared of whether she cares that's not that's not a relationship that is promising that's not it when when you really have a great relationship and if it were an emotional affair or a ship on the side that it would still have signs of marriage which are that this person can be with you will be with you you know

that sounds like that's missing that they cause you to get up at a higher level they cause you to be a better version of yourself so the minute you're sneaking around on your wife that's a there's a big dent in that but let's just say that your real nature was um I just have to like grab something out of the air here you're going to create this great organization it's going to make sure the whole world has food so that would in and in the past you just had some desk job that was meaningless and

nobody cared who you were and that when you're with this person that's who you become and you start doing this thing see that's the sign I sort of made a grandiose one so you don't have to save the whole world for it to be a sign but you become a much more fruitful and better version of yourself and a more moral version of yourself and there's a peace there you feel like they get you and so from all this furtive texting and stuff it's hard to say whether somebody got you as human beings we are

so vulnerable to kind of put a watercolor wash over things when we need to and texting is one of those things that's very you can really put a lot of wash on it it can you know how the meaning changes if you ever had people get very hurt by something you said by text and they totally misunderstood where you were coming from but same thing with like romantic stuff it's not a good way real love that would last comes through time together and so when you have a relationship that's a lie you can't really have

that time together it sounds like you're not willing to end your marriage just because you're not happy there it sounds like you've thought about it but you're not willing to do it and I always think that this is a it's kind of a terrible dilemma if you set it up like I will only leave this marriage I think is no good if somebody else comes along and wants me instead of going by how you really feel and as I say that I also completely understand that choosing to be alone in this lonely world is is

a terrible thing but I'm just thinking about how your wife feels being your what's the word her your fallback plan at must feel really bad you're not likely to get the best out of her or the most shining version of her when she senses and knows through conversations that you don't feel great about her that there's always a threat that you're going to leave now some people will say this therapist who told you that you needed to go get closure I'm so sorry they told you that I guess you know from me there's no such

thing as closure what closure is is you don't have contact anymore you stay with what you what you chose for your life and you do that clo you don't get closure by having contact again now I do think it's possible for exes after many years if it's not terribly charged they can have contact but if it has to be secret you know you're going into a bad territory you're you're sort of dragging yourself into a morally compr compromised position and just take it from me like when you're trying to heal from trauma you really can't

for to be morally compromised and I learned that from alcoholics to get sober they have to really clear up their moral you know errors and that's how they do it and I really took a page from that and I cleared up my moral errors and wow you know my skin changed my posture changed I could look people in the eye again like I really changed when I no longer felt ashamed or guilty about how I was running my life I still make mistakes all the time but I as a rule I tend to correct them

as quickly as possible and apologize to people I've hurt as quickly as possible I don't want to make claims of I'm So Perfect or anything it's certainly not true but I've learned a thing or two about how you can really wreck your life and it's through sneaky behavior and grandiose beliefs that somebody you don't really know very well is really the answer to your life it does point to that you have a idea in your mind of who you could be under better circumstances I'm not of the school of thought that says that's just a

projection of yourself no I I guess that could be true but I think that's oversimplifying and it demeans what it is sometimes through a connection with another person they may not be the right person for you but there's a connection there that gives you a glimpse of the Divine and you see something higher and better that reminds you that you always knew you were meant for something greater and so many people their tragic story is that they invested all of the source of that in this person you know from high school or whatever and it

doesn't tend to turn out well it doesn't tend to give you what you thought it would and I get plenty of letters from people who left and they did the thing and you know the person would have them and they left and and then it was a relationship like all others with the with the usual problems and that usually whatever your pattern was in relationships and for you it sounds like you're a doormat or you're completely uh taking the other person for granted like somebody has to be in a state of painful limerance for a

relationship to have energy for you that is a trauma pattern that's a trauma pattern that's how you know so I will remain agnostic about what the purpose of your relationship with this woman from the past is um but because she's married and because as I understand it she she's does she's cooling the Jets with you please let her have space to do that it's very wrong to try to tear somebody out of their marriage don't do it if if she's interested she will let you know and in the meantime because you're hoping to be told

this you're keeping a terrible secret but I still say don't tell your wife don't tell her things unless you're actually walking out the door CU it will hurt her and I know there are people who are like oh you have to be open and honest uh yeah I disagree I think I think that one of the most important things we can do is consider other people's feelings we can't control our thoughts and feelings and for the record we can't really control who we love and so until until we have made a decision about what we're

going to do at least for the foreseeable future why drag people along through our mental chaos that doesn't really mean anything cuz we don't know because we don't know that's my opinion so uh hopefully she is um busy figuring out getting her ducks in a row so she's prepared to live as a single single person who knows maybe she will make the first move to leave the marriage because this is going to be very hard I would imagine it's pretty harsh for her and maybe she'd like to leave and I shouldn't be surprised Ed that

if she did you would suddenly start to see that she was so great just because what you're describing what you're describing is something that happens it's it seems to be an expression of a trauma driven attachment wound that a lot of people have that we kind of um eroticize abandonment and by eroticize I mean Eros you know not just sex but love like oh the one who abandoned me that was such a great love and it's a trick of the mind isn't it it's a trauma wound and so I do think that that is I

know what you mean when you say trauma Bond a trauma bond is where there's intermittent reinforcement but that's not quite what's going on here it sounds like she kind of got involved with you for a bit and then pulled away so Ed I I I I would hate for you to lose this wife who loves you and I would love for you to heal enough that you could show up lovingly and kind of open your heart and that can happen sometimes with trauma healing what I'm going to suggest to you is to solve the very

first problem is you need friends and you need fun in your life it sounds like this involvement with the the group group from high school that it was fun and you had activities and you had other people to hang out with no wonder it was such a joy you need that in your life and I understand it won't be her it won't be this person who's so important to you but it's still important it's still important that you have fun and connection to other people you mustn't let this go or have the false false idea

that one person can make your whole life like that it doesn't work like that couples have a lot of problems around one of them kind of like making the other one their whole life that does not tend to work it's an unstable Arrangement so whatever happens you don't have to make anything happen right now but I would really encourage you to increase the level of joy and connection in your life you could do that perhaps with a 12-step program you had an alcoholic parent you totally qualify and um you could do it in my programs

if you like the courses the membership we have a lot of stuff going on where people connect we have daily practice calls several times a day with the peers and I'm there every two weeks doing coaching calls daily and then every two weeks doing daily practice calls we have a lot of community and people support each other and now they're posting on Facebook vacations they take together and things people make friends if they choose to not everybody but I hope you'll take positive steps towards your own healing woman or no woman wife or no wife

an emotional affair is a relationship where a person already in a marriage or committed relationship has a secret life with another person that isn't exactly sexual but it's highly charged with romance charged enough that both parties hide and lie about what's going on but the thing about any relationship that you have to keep secret is that there are huge unspoken truths and facts that no one is willing to acknowledge and so rarely can an emotional affair lead to anything but hurt my letter today is from a woman I'll call Zara and she writes hello Anna

the main thing I wanted to ask is how do I move on all right I'm going to go through Zara's letter I'm going to circle things with my pink pencil to come back to on a second reading but let's see what's going on in Zara's life she says I had a relationship with a man I worked with who had experienced a lot of childhood trauma I fell for Doug at Christmas time about four months after I joined his team at work I remember I fell for him at a particular moment when I noticed his integrity

and great work ethic hm we got on really well he was quiet and a bit anxious however I felt comfortable and I encouraged him to seek me out at lunchtime which he immediately did we worked close to a river and very soon started spending every lunchtime sitting by the river watching nature and King Fishers flying by and I felt so calm and happy I was 50 then and he was 33 H I'm married oh boy however my husband and I had not had any physical contact for nearly 20 years which was my decision we lived

together from my perspective only to co-parent our adult autistic son who we both love more than anything else my quote husband at that time used to pick me up from work in our car however once Doug and I became close holding hands I told my husband I would get the bus and made made up some other reason when I actually wanted to get the bus with Doug I had had never been in love with my husband when we met I desperately needed a friend as I lived with my emotionally abusive and vulnerably narcissistic mother my

husband was very much in love with me and was a kind person so I graciously accepted this I was a virgin and always detested sex with him until I got the courage to end the physical side of the relationship after 5 years of utter disgust my husband didn't notice this and thought I was enjoying it apparently with Doug I felt different and I thought finally I found someone I can be happy with and have a whole relationship with quite early on after meeting Doug told me that he had been sexually abused by a man when

he was a child the man lived in a flat in the same building as his family I cried when he told me I had never met anyone before who had experienced anything like this and didn't really think about how it would affect our blossoming relationship especially as he has told me he had slept with four women in his adult life because of this fact I assumed the childhood abuse hadn't affected his ability to make love to someone I was very wrong after two years of blissful friendship and romance working side by side every day spending

Beautiful lunchtimes by the river holding hands every day on the way home spending endless Saturdays having amazing days out going to the cinema theater I could carry on forever we eventually spent the night together all was was fine until we went upstairs to his bed where he ended up pleasuring himself and immediately falling asleep leaving me awake all night feeling rejected shocked and Confused I'll say that was when my problems really started I started researching sexual trauma and how this affects people I couldn't work out if what he did was deliberately meant to hurt me

it felt like it was but I felt so guilty for thinking this I didn't want to make him talk about what happened for fear of traumatizing in him I had to pretend I was okay as we worked together every day but I wanted to run and get away I felt so ashamed of what had happened I did eventually try to discuss what happened with him and all I could get from him was that he felt under so much pressure it seemed to make him angry that I wanted to know but it wasn't enough information for

me and I started to suffer we're six years on from this now and still working together we still get on well and Doug considers us to be friends we don't spend lunchtime together or travel together now or see each other outside of work Doug has been in therapy for about 4 years now and his social life is better and he now owns his flat I helped him by driving him and doing viewings with him he is friends with a 60-year-old flirty woman at work now who I know is jealous of me and is a gossip

so I don't feel I can confide in Doug anymore in case he tells her my business I'm 58 now and feel completely destroyed by the whole sad business and wish I could get away and start a new chapter in my life even though I care about Doug still okay and she says thank you Anna all right Zara what a hard situation what a hard situation uh you know you mentioned it just once but having an adult autistic son is such a big thing and I take it it's it's a you know far up the spectrum

of autism in that your you and your husband who you don't even like have stayed married for this sake so I'm going to have some tough love for you here I feel for you in that you've been in a marriage where you didn't love your husband who loves you and that you felt like you couldn't leave because of your son I feel for you I can see the logic in this but I just want to say like flat out you're lying to your husband this person who trusts you and unless you guys have an agreement

that it's an open marriage and he doesn't want to know everything this is kind of where your troubles began is in the lying you kind of think it began with the episode in Doug's room but it began when you started lying to the person who you know loves you most I recommend that you you don't have to tell him the truth uh if you can stop if you can stop doing what you're doing mentally and physically and I worry though that you say that he's disgusting he's sort of doing what married people do and if

he's clueless uh I feel for him you know he it's it's a shame that he doesn't get it but I just want to you know help you take responsibility that you chose him you married him and I totally understand being young and desperate and now you know parenting this um a kid who has special needs that's a lot I know that's a lot but it doesn't change the fact that you're responsible for this situation and that it's not okay for you to make a fool out of somebody like this that's not okay so many people

do it it doesn't tend to end well for anybody and for the sake of your happiness if nothing else it I encourage you to get right with reality now I don't agree that wronged spouses should always be told the gruesome details if it stops but if you think he's truly disgusting I I do I would recommend you talk to him and this would be something you might want to talk to a therapist about who can actually interact with you in person to see how you want to handle that but living a lie that's just BS

you know that's not it's not for people who recover from trauma that's not it's not for us and if we want to start have being happy and loved we've got to treat people in a in a in a loving way even if what that loving way is is to stop lying to them all right now as for this guy at work I know that occasionally um older woman younger man relationships work out it's rare though I know there's going to be comments going why am I like this if it were a man and a woman

if it were a man and a woman it would be slightly suspect but that's more common but in this case and especially when I hear he's now latched on to a 60-year-old woman at work there's something going on with him there's something going on with him that he's not able to have a you know a full relationship and he latches on to these older women and has is able to create this lovely friendship that's full of Art and enjoyment and rivers and nice things but it in your case anyway it got your hopes and expectations

and your love up and what is that Bob Marley quote about it's a it's a cowardly man who awakens the love in a woman when he has no intention of loving her back so I'm just saying like that's not honorable either to you know participate in this big emotional affair and then refuse to speak to you you know this is this is bad behavior which you know you know he really hurt you with it he won't even tell you what's going on but that as soon as this second woman shows up I see the pattern

and I'm like okay okay I think you two were on very separate pages I think part of emotional Affairs and limerance which I think you this is this counts as limerance it's like a addiction level kind of infatuation with somebody where you're you know it's all about this hoped for thing in the future but it's not really about what is so you've been hoping for years that you could be together and you could get out of this terrible marriage which by the way if you need to get out you can do that with or without

some new guy lined up I'm just saying that's the honor able way to do it is without a new guy lined up if you need to go so you had this big hope Vision going on but I'm guessing that your communication with him was not explicit it was not clear about how everybody felt where this was going what he actually wanted what he was seeking and that's why things so easily blew up in your face as soon as you thought it was going to be this night of sex and romance he couldn't do that he

couldn't do that now I'm questioning I I know that sexual abuse can harm people's you know ability to have a happy sex life I know that that is sometimes true but I don't think it's majority true in this sense and sometimes in the face of rejection it's very tempting to sort of pathologize people and go oh it's just their trauma you know and that's he's been affected and I want to help him and so you were helping him helping him find an apartment and things but still like being that level of friend that you drive

him around like I don't have that level of friend and I don't have that level of friend and and and if I did have a good I do have good friends but we don't lie to each other and we don't refuse to talk to each other when we're hurt that's what a a good friend is is like on your side a good friend doesn't want you to suffer and not have information about something they did that really hurt you so it's not a friend I think you guys have a tacit agreement to not say anything

so that you can both you know take the good part of the what you had the sort of romantic ideal dreamy life with no consequences all secrecy to keep you going and this is this kind of thing is it's like what we do when our lives are empty and so it feels Unthinkable to let it go it feels Unthinkable to like stop having contact with that person but that's because we haven't yet developed like the real source of joy and connection that we can have now if it's not with your husband maybe it's with somebody

else someday whether it is or is not it needs to you need to find a way to have joy and fun in your life right now you need joy and fun and connection in your life friends sitting by rivers and talking and enjoying the birds and going to the cinema and the theater like there are other people you can do that with and I absolutely know how some people are just so great for the their companionship and that kind of thing I get it but he's not that great because he misled you and he wouldn't

talk to you about it and and he hurt you very much he's not that great this is whatever I don't know what it is with him I'm sure people in the comments can speculate but something's going on with this guy he is not emotionally available really like it's an emotional affair but Intimacy in every sense of the word not just sex is not available with him that thing where he just had to like completely vacate the premises when you spent the night at his house that's weird but consider this both of you were doing a

a terrible thing to your husband and I just want you to try to like let that into your reality that for each of you like in your heart each of you knows you're doing something terribly wrong you can't really pressure a relationship to be great and happy under circumstances like that when it's just inherently wrong and a lie and can you let that in that's a hard thing to do that's a hard thing to do it it really shifts though the perspective back to what is your role in all of this and with that comes

the responsibility and some people who want to heal their trauma can go there and everything depends on being able to go there and go did I play a role in some of the suffering that I'm having and if the answer is yes thank goodness because if I play a role in my suffering then I can change what's happening that's causing me suffering if it's completely out of my control you know bombs are being dropped on my head or you know poison is in the water well then I don't have control over that so much but

you do have control over whether you are in this kind of situation or not it just sounds to me like you are starved for love and you were willing to sometimes I call this Limer love is like plastic fruit you are so hungry you just want a nice Apple but it's plastic you can't get what you want out of this apple it just looks like you can it looks so pretty sitting there I always use this metaphor My grandmother used to have this Crystal bowl of plastic fruit on her table and every time time I

visited her lovely house I'd be like maybe this time those little rubber grapes are no not real and that's what these unavailable people are that's what they are so I'm sorry this happened um I think the bigger problem that you have is the lie that you're living and you can straighten that out and you can start to recover your inner power and with your inner power comes an inner sense of who you really are and what you really need to do in your life do you belong in this marriage is that actually best for everybody

is there some way that you can find some terms where you can be happy with him or without him I really hope that you'll take this seriously and look at it and not try to sneak it out of somebody at work who can't give it one way that a history of trauma can affect your relationships is through something called limerance and this is the word for an obsession or infatuation that starts out just like falling in love but it turns into a painful mental addiction to an idea of perfect love and it robs everything good

from your life and it blocks you from experiencing real love so limerance is common in people who were neglected or abused in childhood not everybody who had a har childhood ends up with limerance sometimes traumatized people you know without an element of fantasy or addiction there's just an attraction to people who are troubled unavailable inappropriate or Abus Ive now because of Abandonment wounds it can be hard for us to leave any relationship but the trauma driven Behavior I want to talk about here is limerance and if you've experienced limerance but this is the first time

you've heard a name for it ah what an epiphany right there's probably lights and Sirens going off in your mind like that's what it is it's a thing and it can be hugely helpful just to know that the painful obsession with people that you can't have is normal it probably started as a coping mechanism when you were small and it's possible to overcome it so the word limerance was invented in the early 70s by Dorothy tennov and she'd been researching the experience of falling in love and since then in the writings of a few people

who've continued to Define it limerance has come to mean something more than falling in love it's the same set of feelings but they go on and on and on and they kind of make the leap into the realm of fantasy and even addiction why because it's for someone who is not reciprocating it's almost as if limerance like needs to remain in the Fantasy Realm to feel so magical because real life doesn't really support that magic feeling for long right this is a subject about which I've made dozens of videos and together with other people who

teach about limerance we've come up with a language to describe it so for example the person you're liant on is called the limerent object kind of weird I know or people call it the L and I didn't make it up but it's you know good to have shorthand for the person that all that fantasy energy goes towards and if that person were actually to love you back one day which happens sometimes the day-to-day relationship between you would probably neutralize the magical fantasy feeling because interacting with someone in real life with all the dirty dishes and

the socks on the floor and arguments about money tend to bring the lofty vision of another person down to Earth where where Real Love Actually exists so the tendency to grow liant on others it's said to have a genetic component not always and limerance appears to be just much more common in people who specifically were emotionally neglected as children the ability to believe that love is possible to hold onto and keep the fires burning on intense hope is a survival strategy for a lot of kids who are emotionally neglected or even literally abandoned and when

it carries on into adulthood it can lead to this compulsive enchantment with a person you can't have might be an ex it might be somebody you barely know or even a fictional character and it's it's never someone you're actually in a real life reciprocal relationship with or you know if it became a relation ship it just couldn't stay liant for long because again not having love reciprocated from the person is part of what allows that magical liftoff feeling to be so powerful so how do you know if you're liant here are some signs all right

in the early stages and this is what people who have written about limerance call the glimmer when you first met your liant object before you even knew you were attracted to them did you feel a charge of excitement as if something great was beginning did you find yourself thinking about them even if you're not seeing them and the more you thought about them the stronger your romantic feelings got the intensity can be very surprising because normally I think in a the progression of a romantic relationship it builds by seeing each other so this is something

that builds by not seeing each other or seeing each other but always having you know reciprocated love not there when you see them it feels electrifying that's a third sign you feel more alive more like your real self as if the world just has been shown to you at last in Technicolor and when you think about past meetings do you go over and over them in your mind thinking about what did they say what did it mean you want to see them more often but you hide how strongly you feel and you spend a lot

of time calculating how you can bump into them or see them casually without tipping your hand that you're in love with them so in a later stage which you could call Obsession you fantasize about telling them how you really feel you're hoping for reciprocation but you don't actually tell them because you know on some level that if if it were all out in the open and you said how you really felt chances are good it would drive them away and I think that's a condition of limerance if you really were confident that they felt the

same way about you and you were both available to be together it wouldn't be going into this Fantasy Realm it would be going into the real realm another sign is you begin to feel anxious and sad and empty unless you can see them or at least think about them or talk about them so you know you end up like trying to seek opportunities to talk about them again without ever like just you know making it obvious to people you're talking to that you have a huge obsession with them it's it's it's like walking a tight

rope do you um create a cover story so that you can talk about that person a lot to your friends who would disapprove if they knew how obsessed you that you became with that Limer object and you know they might know more than you think but do you have a cover story of like no I'm just talking about them in light of you know this other thing in the context just because it lifts your depression to talk about them at all you go over and over in your mind what they said the last time you

saw them and do you look for hidden meaning that suggests that they feel the same way about you as you feel about them but they didn't tell you directly they hinted it right um that's a sign and you know rarely is it actually really happening I guess it could really happen but that is what liant people do is they you know think and think and think about it and look oh it could have been a sign when he mentioned Birds cuz birds are a symbol of spiritual flight and maybe blah blah blah you know and

that's what we do do you avoid some of your usual activities so that you can be alone so that nothing will interrupt your thoughts about your liant object gradually when you do that the sad anxious and lonely feelings start to well up and they get worse so that leads to the end stage of limerance and that's addiction full-on addiction you find yourself analyzing past communication like non-romantic texts emails you're stalking their social media accounts to keep tabs on what they're doing from dayto day and maybe searching for signs that they're unhappy in their real life

relationship have you done that and you become convinced that some of the things they say in texts and conversations and emails to you for example or in their post or social media are coded messages designed to sound unrelated to you but are actually secret messages directly to you so it's not just like out you know it's just just casually delivered but they're coding something to you to tell you yes I reciprocate your feelings that is the fantasy that's often like if you've gotten to that stage you are probably an endstage limerance and this is the

big sign you resort to magical thinking telling yourself that even though they don't appear to be interested in you and they say outright if you've asked them that they're not interested in you you believe there's a hidden or secret level of reality such as you know past lives twin flames a psychic connection where you really are destined to be together very very common out there and then that step that takes another step up and you actually seek out and spend money on people who will listen to your thoughts and dreams and stories about the person

which could be even certain therapists for example or who will tell you that on another plane your relationship with this person is real and it's meant to be and this is like psychics and tarot card readers for example and you fantasize about ways that you could disclose your feelings disclosure is like a big sort of turning point in limerance it's one way that you can start to get over it is just to like spill the beans on yourself it's very likely to make the whole thing kind of blow up the person doesn't want to deal

with you it's weird it's awkward so that's why you avoid it is disclosure is that you could they could leave you and then you won't have this fantasy to go to this fantasy that emotionally you're really depending on to be able to cope with what's hard for you right now in your life and here's the thought you think oh if I could just disclose it in exactly the right right way with just the most incredibly carefully Precision crafted words I could tip my hand without committing to that disclosure and I could get out of it

and have plausible deniability you know if if it became unpleasant if the person didn't reciprocate for it the plausible deniability communication sometimes in a liant relationship there is somebody who is giving you romantic energy but they're not available like for example a married person and they will keep everything in the plausible deniability Realm because then they're not responsible they they can say oh I didn't do anything I didn't know and it keeps you you know feeding off of it and chasing after it and giving them the energy that they want out of it the time

and the money and the emotional energy that you pour into your obsession at this point begins to take a major toll on your life if you have a partner you are now damaging your relationship sometimes intentionally you know people will just end their marriages to be alone with that fantasy or to actually go for it if you're single you become entirely unavailable for meeting or dating someone new that's what limerance does it it just like occupies that entire part of you that could be having a relationship in that sense it's a form of avoidance and

when you have it and you're in this stage of it you avoid telling that Limer and object how you feel because you simply cannot afford to lose hope that somehow this is going to work out like you need that hope it's it's better to you to like um have hope than ask and risk that it won't go out even that it won't like turn into anything even though there's a chance if you would disclose that it would turn into something like it becomes preferable just to hold on to the Hope or if they know your

feelings and have rejected you plainly you do what I call a liant flip and you find a way you know first they go hey get away I don't feel that way this is really uncomfortable stop and you go oh okay gosh I'm so ashamed you stop and then a few pass and then your mind does this flip and it goes you know what I actually think what they're doing is sending a coded message to me and you find a way to double down and continue the obsession that's when you know it's far gone the painful

emotions come in waves especially now that you've grown isolated from other people which you have to in order to live in fantasy and you feel immobilized that's a huge characteristic of it like like you just can't like initiate anything you don't want to do anything you're exhausted and you're deeply depressed and it seems like the only thing that would help is if the person would come to you at last and be yours has this happened to you when this is going on you continue in this pattern and until a new person comes along or you

know something comes to intervene and you realize how terrible everything has become a new person can come along and Spark the glimmer which usually happens right when it's needed right when it's it's not possible to keep having hope in the LI the old liant object the glimmer appears again and if you're liant you believe that the glimmer is like a sign from heaven but you know because of how it all plays out what's a lot more likely is that glimmer it's a adaptation It's A coping mechanism inside your psychological being that just finds a way

to once again find love where there is no love and so it's not easy but you can heal your pattern of limerance when you get honest with yourself that this is what's going on with you emotionally and psychologically and if you want to break out of limerance you're going to need tools to help you identify liant thinking and to process the thoughts and feelings that tend to drive you to a world of fantasy there's usually a lot of pain and lack of joy that drives you in that direction you're going to need activities that give

you Joy and that give you meaning and that give you connection you will need people you need the support of people who understand what it's like and they're healing themselves too and you'll find other people who are working to heal limerance in 12-step programs like sex and love addicts anonymous um you can search online for literature and meetings near you for that you can find support and tools in crappy childhood fairy um our membership program supports people in all the phases of healing from childhood trauma and this the the stuff that happens around relationships is

a big one not everybody has that but so many do a lot of people have it in friendships and they even get limerent feelings toward friends or mother figures I've seen that a couple times so you know we have weird coping mechanisms that enabled us to survive in childhood sometimes it carries into adulthood and there's enough narrative out there to just feel like this is normal but it's not it's blocking you from having love [Music] [Music]