Why am I obsessed with a man I barely know?

DEAR Bel,

WHAT I’m experiencing is, I believe, called ‘limerence’. About 21 months ago I met a man who runs his own building business and was doing work in my neighbourhood, including for me.

I’ve only had interactions with him on 12 occasions, but by the third meeting I realised I was developing feelings. He was easy to talk to and seemed to like talking to me - although I admit he’s never sought to get to know me better. But I seem to have lost my heart.

After one of the earlier interactions we had a lot of text exchanges, and I thought there might have been some interest. Later I may have overstepped the mark and sent too many texts, because something seemed to change.

One unexpected meeting, we chatted for about ten minutes. I can only explain the feeling I had after that as euphoria: I felt happier than I have felt for many a year. I’m somewhat ashamed that via social media I’ve found photos of him I now have on my mobile. I ‘allow’ myself to look at these once every ten days. I also saved a message he left me a long time ago, and listen to this when I look at the photos. I hope this is not stalking.

I think about him constantly - always having conversations with him in my head. It is as if there are two of me: the one who tries to reason with the other. One says: if he were interested he’d show it, so stop this. The other side won’t listen and believes we’re meant to be. If I think I never enter his thoughts it can make me feel so bad I feel breathless.

I sleep very badly – and go from feeling sick and not eating much to the other extreme of comfort eating and putting on weight. I am also often very irritable with my elderly parents, for whom I am a carer, and to whom I am almost totally tied. I am very emotional a lot of the time - dissolving into tears at the slightest thing.

I tell myself I must stop this for my own good, but the deluded part of me doesn’t listen. It tells me I can derive some pleasure or happiness by the mere fact of loving him from a distance, even knowing nothing is ever going to come of it - however much I would want it to.

I am not in the first flush of youth and sometimes wonder whether all this is because I am beginning to feel panicky about life slipping away. I feel very alone, as not a soul knows about this and there is no one to talk sense to me.

DEIRDRE

MANY readers will be as puzzled by the word ‘limerence’ as I was.

Two dictionaries didn’t help, so I found it online: defined as the experience of having an uncontrollable desire for someone - an obsession that consumes the limerent person’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

Hmm - I felt sceptical: isn’t that the same as having a ‘crush’ or a ‘pash’ on someone? A romantic obsession? An infatuation? The new word was created in the 1970s by psychologist.

Dorothy Tennov, supposedly derived from a Latin word, limerentia, meaning ‘to be lovesick’. But I can’t find that word in my own Latin dictionary or the online one.

Why I am focusing on the noun? Because I’m suspicious of words invented to describe common conditions in order to make them more complex/worrying than they really are.

You see, you jump in with a term which almost pathologises your perfectly normal yearning for an attractive, unattainable man. Psychologist Tennov defined limerence as a state of profound longing, intrusive thoughts, and heightened emotional dependence on another person. But surely that state of becoming obsessed by a loveobject is almost as old as time?

I understand the feelings you describe but beg you not to believe they render you helpless. You are indeed irrationally lovesick, but that’s for a good reason. There’s no mystery about an older woman wanting an escape from a lonely and unhappy life.

You have no choice about being a carer for your poor parents, and see nothing ahead but ageing, grief, loneliness and death.

I suspect you also feel guilty about being snappy with your parents and wishing to be elsewhere. No wonder you feel ‘emotional’. No wonder you have transferred all your needs to the unattainable man, just as people have always attached themselves to distant fantasy objects like film stars.

Are you guilty of ‘stalking’? No - but you must be very careful. Don’t turn yourself into an object of pity. You’re worth more than that. There’s nothing to be done about your crush on this pleasant man, only to accept it will pass.

In the meantime, have you thought about getting a local authority or private carer to give you some hours of freedom? Investigate possibilities.

Certainly, you need to get out of the house and carve out time for yourself, perhaps to volunteer, say in a charity shop. You really do need to interact with people. Make a GP appointment to discuss ways to help with sleeplessness and emotional stress. Focus on a sensible eating plan, because if you put on weight you’ll feel down.

Please do these things for yourself, delete those photos (yes, you can) and allow the two sides of your nature to merge again and make you stronger.

You start dying slowly: When you kill your self-esteem, When you do not let others help you. You start dying slowly; If you become a slave of your habits, Walking everyday on the same paths. . . FROM MUERE LENTAMENTE BY MARTHA MEDEIROS (BRAZILIAN WRITER, BORN 1961)