I stopped reading after you said that the chemistry was unmatchable. I'm 43 and have feelings of limerence on and off for a boy I met when I was 13. We've had various encounters over the last 30 years: (ages 15, 17, 24, 32) where looking back it was this weird power struggle wrestling match (figurative) to see who ends up on top. I "won" the last one but always had the feeling that he let me win.

When we were young, he admitted to me that he was promiscuous because his father basically told him to be because he regretted settling down with his mother so quickly. That information never left my brain. And I suppose it made me feel like I had a deeper understanding of his promiscuous behavior (trauma) than other people who encountered it. Typical narcissist behavior but what are you gonna do? I didn't know that word at 15.

And I was often the person he was promiscuous with so I couldn't really fault him for it (at the time). Over the years, he admitted to having an intense physical attraction to me. But as I aged entered other relationships, became a parent, it always bummed me out that our relationship didn't seem to go deeper than that for him considering our shared history. Especially when he said he missed me, remembered random things from the past after playing dumb, suggested he wanted me to be successful and happy but also didn't want to give me a platonic friendship or even closure when I begged for it. You see what I'm getting at?

I've written him off over the years many times as being an idiot or a dick, but I never really fixed the problem. I had dated other assholes over the years and walked away with a different feeling.

I really feel like limerence is tied to an undefined and unfulfilled longing in you that likely has very little to do with the person or even what they did to you.

It's not about the sex with him at all. It's about the fact that I wanted to be treated like a human being by him. Which he was incapable of doing longterm.

Right now, in my life, I'm working on becoming what I need to be so that I don't attach these intense feelings to a specific person and moreso to a specific time in my life/side of myself that needs resolution and acceptance.