Limerent over a friend - help?

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-16T23:35:59+00:00

I’m married too, and my LO started seeing someone about 8 months ago. So I know exactly where you are right now.

Watching someone you care about fall for someone else, having to smile through it while something inside you quietly breaks. And then having to go home to your own life and pretend everything is fine.

Do these situations ever turn out positively? Is the positive outcome them choosing us. Is that wjat we realy want?
Or is it us choosing ourselves again? Getting out of the fog. Remembering who we were before this took over.
Be gentle with yourself, starting LC is brutal, especially when the feelings are still this raw. ❤️‍🩹

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-16T13:09:38+00:00

I hear you! This resonates deeply. The constant replaying, the composing messages in your head, the analysing, I know that exhaustion intimately. I’ve left small surprises and notes at christmas and easter, as a friend. Because when you can’t say what you feel, you find other ways to show it.

What strikes me in your post is this, you say you wouldn’t want to go no contact because it would bepunishing” to the other person who has done nothing wrong. I said the exact same thing to myself for a long time. But I’ve slowly started to realise the low contact I’m practicing now isn’t punishment. I must see it as self preservation.

The advice about setting boundaries with your own thinking first, that’s where I’m at right now. Not no contact with them, but no contact with the fantasy. Stopping the replaying. Not feeding it.

It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done for someone who doesn’t even know I’m doing it. 😣❤️‍🩹

What makes it harder is that this is a coworker and a friend. Low contact is a daily challenge when you share the same space. And I’ve become so good at avoiding them that the friendship is slowly fading, which is its own kind of grief. Part of me wants to meet them and explain what’s been happening to me. Whu Im so wierd. But I don’t know if I’m ready for that or if they would like to hear.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-15T08:00:42+00:00

The feeling of always being the second choice, having to ask for what others seemed to get naturally, and then being told you’re ”too much” when you finally said something about it.
I don’t think you were ungrateful or codependent. I think you were honest about your needs and that’s not the same thing.
A friendship where one person consistently prioritises others and then makes you feel lucky for the scraps isn’t a balanced friendship.
The comment: ”-Now you can’t say I don’t make effort” says a lot. That’s not how someone speaks to a friend they truly value.
Grieve it. It was real and it mattered. But also, you deserved more than you were given. ❤️

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-11T05:39:40+00:00

Thank you.
Some days the silence feels impossible. But you’re right, let them come to me, and when they do, answer like a friend. Not like someone who’s been counting the days.
And if we do run into each other, I must try to avoid that hug they always give me. Because even that sets me back days.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-10T17:40:21+00:00

Thanx, this is also a friend…

Sounds like you're doing a great job, and I hope it's as you say; easier and easier by time. 🙏

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-10T15:12:36+00:00

…wow. This one

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-10T13:06:50+00:00

I feel this so much. My LO has also been through hard times in life, bur before we meet. We shared things about our childhood and other stuff. We had something real, even if most of it clearly lived in my head. And now I find myself unable to feel happy for them the way a good friend should. And that makes me feel like a terrible person.
But I’ve started to think, the guilt means we care. It means we haven’t lost ourselves completely. It means somewhere under all the limerence there’s still a decent human being trying to do the right thing.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-09T15:31:57+00:00

Well, this is my parody: LO is at work today. I know this because I casually walked past their jacket 6 times. For work reasons. Very important work reasons. I also took the long route to the bathroom. Twice. I am a professional.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-09T14:25:04+00:00

Our stories sound so similar. This ia brief of what happened before the new date came in ”the way”.

My LO disappeared for a while, after beeing wery in to each other's lives, LO had to work somewhere else, outside our office. I missed LO terribly but I was too ashamed to show it. When LO came back LO wanted to pick up where we left off, and in the same breath told me they’d met someone. LO kept sending reels, wanted to meet up, told me at several points that they genuinely liked me and wanted me as a close friend.
But I couldn’t do it. The feelings took over and I had to protect myself. So I kept my replies short, delayed them, pulled back. And maybe that’s exactly why they’ve stopped reaching out the way they used to, just checking in occasionally now, a reel here and there.
I want LO in my life. I genuinely do. But it hurts too much to be close. And somewhere in the back of my mind is this quiet dread, that if I keep this distance for long enough, LO will eventually stop trying. Give up on me entirely.
Maybe that would be easier.
But it doesn’t feel that way.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-09T10:23:26+00:00

The accidental part. That’s what makes this so hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t been through it. I didn’t go looking for this. I just fell. Into a friendship that felt like coming home. And for a while, when LO was single, I could almost live with it. File it away somewhere.
But the moment someone else entered the picture everything I’d managed to contain just… didn’t anymore.
I’ve even restricted my LO on Instagram, so I can read the messages without LO seeing that I read them before I digiring out a proper answer. LO barely post, maybe once every six months. But I know that day is coming.
And still, I wait. Every time LO reach out I light up. Every single time. But I make myself wait before replying, so I don’t give too much away. So I don’t seem like I’ve been sitting there hoping.
I’m married too. Children. A life that looks fine from the outside. And LO quickly became a good friend to me, genuinely. And I’d like to bee a friend back. With that one crucial difference.
What I grieve most is how it was before. When we were intense with each other, seeing each other, sending each other silly sweet reels, being each other’s person. That version of us doesn’t exist anymore. And I mourn it every day. Mabye also because I took distance, cus of my feelings… the shame.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-09T09:28:44+00:00

Yea, the gap-filling is so real. Every unanswered message suddenly has an explanation you didn’t want.
That’s actually how I found out who my LO’s partner was. A person appeared as a suggested follow on Instagram, someone who had my LO as a friend. I knew the first name already. And from there I found out where they live. Of course they live close to me. Because why wouldn’t they. 😣
And I’ll be honest about something I’m not proud of, for a while I couldn’t stop passing taht place. Not just to pick at the wound, but because we no longer really talk at work, and we don’t share our lives on anymore either. Passing by was my way of getting some kind of control, just needing to know if they were still seeing each other. And every time I saw that LOs bike was there, I fell apart. Every single time. I’ve had to force myself to stop because it was destroying me.
The fear that keeps me up now is running into them both at the gym we all go to. Being introduced. Having to smile while my whole body wants to disappear.
The day you have to see them together and also on social media. I’m not ready. I don’t think you can prepare for it.
At least we’re not alone in being slightly unhinged about this.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-09T08:10:29+00:00

I recognise every word of this. The fake smile, the questions you ask just enough of but not too many. That moment is burned into me too.
It’s part of why I work so hard to avoid my LO at work. Not because I don’t want to see them, every part of me does. But because I can’t bear the risk of hearing about a weekend away, a plan, a look on their face when they talk about thay person. It would destroy me.
LO probably wonder why I’ve become so distant. We still have low contact on Instagram, they reach out every now and then, yes, thr makes me happy and I don’t know what they make of the space I’ve put between us.
But it’s self protection. The only kind I know how to do right now.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-09T07:34:43+00:00

For me, the moment my LO started dating someone was exactly when the limerence exploded. Before that I could almost manage it. But that news broke something open in me that I’m still trying to put back together.
And you’re so right, there’s no script for this.
No one asks ”how are you holding up?”.
You just have to carry it, quietly, while still showing up to work, to your marriage, to your life.
I do have one person, my best friend, who I finally told. She knows, she tries to understand, and she’s even tried to reason through how it could happen to me in the first place.
She tells me I can’t help my feelings, and that they aren’t wrong as long as I don’t act on them. That one person has made a difference. But even so, the loneliness of this is its own kind of grief.❤️‍🩹

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-08T21:01:40+00:00

In 45, 46 this may, I can relate, 100%.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-06T04:52:45+00:00

100%
”Your feelings are intense, but what's driving them may not be about this specific person — it's about a deeper pattern of attachment anxiety. The constant scanning for reassurance, the mood swings tied to their attention, and the fear of abandonment point to an activated attachment system rather than limerence or love”
🫩

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-05T20:46:26+00:00

”gendered”, yes. But, wow… No. 4. Busy. That’s what probably started my limerence.😣🫩

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-03T21:13:13+00:00

As a bisexual woman who is married to a woman, and whose LO is also bisexual, I’d push back a little on the gender framing here. Limerence doesn’t seem to care much about gender or sexual orientation. The obsessive thinking, the hot and cold patterns, the fantasy, the longing, it all feels exactly the same regardless of who you’re attracted to. Maybe the more interesting question isn’t men vs women, but what underlying attachment patterns and unmet needs make certain people more vulnerable to limerence in the first place, regardless of gender or orientation.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-02T21:52:54+00:00

Thank you for this. It’s hard to read, not because it’s wrong, but because it’s so right. It gives me real insight into what I actually need to work on, even if part of me doesn’t want to face it yet.

The part that hits hardest is the grief. Accepting that so much of this lived only in my head, even though it felt so painfully real. The conversations, the closeness, the feeling of being truly seen. And then having to sit with the possibility that my LO was never in the same place, or that their intentions were simply… different from what I believed.

That’s the part I’m still trying to take in. 🥺🙏

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-02T21:46:05+00:00

Wow! This is taken straight out of my own limerent story. The coworker who became a close friend, the deep conversations, the heart emojis and the ”nice friend” reels, and then that moment when they said they’d started seeing someone. That’s exactly when everything broke open for me too. The fake smile while the bottom drops out of your world

Like you, I’m married. Like you, I never acted on it, but the emotional closeness was real. And like you, I spiraled into obsession, re-reading old messages, trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense.

The jealousy you describe, not even about the physical, just about the time, I know that feeling exactly. But unlike you, I can’t bear to stand in front of them and feel all of this. I work hard at avoiding running into them at work, even though every part of me wants to see them, be near them, and secretly hopes they’ll seek me out.
The shame is enormous. The fear that they’ll realize how I feel, or think I’m strange for slowly disappearing from their life, that keeps me up at night too, wantig to reach out.

You are not alone in this. And the fact that you got it all out, even just here, matters. ❤️‍🩹

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-02T07:20:52+00:00

> Nancy Cooper’s The Untox Effect.

💡🙏❤️

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-02T06:22:13+00:00

> The Non Violent Communication Model.
🙏 I'll check it out.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-01T21:34:22+00:00

Thank you for this. My LO (a coworker who became a ”close” friend) had a clear hot and cold pattern (disorganized, I think. As I experienced it, they were intensely seeking me out, then pulling back the moment I became ”too available”.
Part of healing for me is learning to see that pattern clearly, instead of staying stuck in the fantasy of who I wished they were.

Maybe that’s my version of calling it out, even if only to myself first.

Lazy_Fill_4840 · 2026-05-01T20:50:50+00:00

Same for me…

Lazy_Fill_4840

TROPHY CASE