For as long as I can remember, I've struggled with the intensity of my attractions to other people. "Crushes" for me are not a matter of simple butterflies in the stomach, but are obsessions that have to be managed carefully to prevent them from becoming something socially unacceptable. Limerence is not pleasant, and I think in the quote from the wiki article I included they make allusion to the relationship between the experience of it and OCD symptoms. While they last, the attractions I have become all-consuming, and definitely meet the criteria of "obsessive" and "disruptive" to my usual thought patterns. It's usually triggered by the feeling of genuine connection. Some sort of uncommon spark between myself and the other person. It lasts however long it lasts.
To be fair to myself, I usually don't let things get too out of hand. No one's ever come home to a boiled pet rabbit or anything. But I constantly have to do these reality checks with myself to make sure I don't get too far from the shore in terms of what's going on in my head, versus what's actually happening in reality.
I appreciate you detailing this more deeply, especially because I feel like you'll "get it" when I describe my own intensities here.
To be honest, I'm not sure where I fall. Some people either seem to not have that stark intensity of feeling, or they just button down things naturally and aren't even aware of desires; but I feel like neither describes me well even if on the surface it all looks the same. I've consciously realized a number of times in the last five years that I both seem to feel things inside excrutiatingly, while on the surface and in my behavior I maintain a kind of "hands off / non-imposing" presence where I just never act on them.
I can meet someone and "like them" intensely very very quickly. Not necessarily even a romantic like (in fact, it's not really about physical sex), but an intimate kind of like where I want to know them in all their depth and complexity and would share really intense things about myself. At the same time, I am very very aware of boundaries and not wanting someone else to feel uncomfortable, so often I'll never say much in that regard or even actively "push" to get in there. I'll play around the edges and see if they seem amenable to something deeper and go with it, and if they seem resistant I will never push it but let it go. Yet still feel an ache that I'll never tell them about.
I will still think about them often and wonder about them, even if I act aloof on the surface. And when such people react to me with paranoia or distrust for whatever reason (even while I've been so cautious about boundaries), it wounds me pretty deeply and I don't know if I ever get over it. Again, the funny thing is, I'll never really tell them or try to hold it against them. I just try to keep an even keel about it. I don't want to violate anyone or intrude where I am not wanted. But I'll keep thinking about sometimes inside, and even get caught up in fantasies about where we're actually connecting, until I become conscious of what I'm doing and set it aside again. It can be rather compulsive and even scary, what can go on inside my head.
It's like I am making an attachment to them but it's not necessarily an attachment I've tried to make or that I've earned in some way (which is probably why I rationally put boundaries on my own behavior, so as to not be a psycho about it -- I keep a very clear sense of what trust has been earned vs not, so as not to impose).
So... intensity and constancy of connective feelings coupled with hardcore self-regulation of behavior, to keep it all in check.
I don't know whether this is limerence, or some kind of crazy SX style behavior, or a psychological disturbance/distortion, or ... just who I happen to be, this intense polarization between connection and independence, affection and rationality. Is it inborn? Or did it develop in part because I was always ambivalent toward both my parents, never feeling connected to family growing up and also being internally at war over identity? So this is my way of connection, to compensate for the lack of a responsive outer world? I have no idea. Nor what to label it.
As I've gotten older and am more accustomed to how intense these feelings can be, I've developed a certain objectivity about my own subjectivity, as it were. I know that despite the fact that I'm in the grip of these emotions, they're not real. Well, that's not exactly accurate. The feelings are real, I have to honor them lest they become even more unruly, but ultimately I have control over them. They'll eventually pass and I can get on with my life. It can be excruciating, though, when you can't control the amount of mental bandwidth that's going to the limerence object, though. When something that's largely no more than the product of your imagination animates you as much as anything else.
Yeah, I balance my intensity of "feelings of unearned connection" with, well, my logical understand of that word, "unearned." I won't impose. My brain keeps me in check. Sometimes it's an intense job, but I've adjusted to it. So much energy expended in holding one in what appears to be an easy-floating neutral position to an outside.
I suppose I could try to make this into more than what it is--that it's some sort of "exquisite anguish" or get into some pseudo-metaphysical explanation of it's underpinnings--but the fact of the matter is that it's an illness. It's just that simple and unsexy. I have no control over when it will crop up, or how long I'll be subject to it. It's why I found it so compelling when Z Buck McFate posted that thread a little while ago concerning the dominant instinctual variant as essentially the most complexed or wounded of the variants, because it very much speaks to my relationship with being an sx-dom. If I could be anything, I'd be sp-first, because if I had to fixate on something to this extent, then I'd rather it be something practical and needful. Rather than just stupid, fucking boys.
Not putting that down, and I get what you're saying it; but to me (and I've had sp tendencies at various times of life), it's just half a dozen of one and six of another. If it's not one thing, it's another. They're all needs; it's just some are more tangible versus intangible, or at least physical needs aren't risky in the same way as dealing with equally independent beings that one cannot control.