I suppose this is as good a place as any to write about this. Some of it is a rehash but.. rehash is my specialty, it would seem. Part of ruminating. Part of being obsessed with time travel. Part of growing up in a cultural moment where SHAME was supposed to control a person so a person like me would be told at length how I should have felt more shame then I wouldn’t do or say what I’d already done or said. Everyone’s brain lives partly in the past… that’s how we’re able to have memories at all. A special part of the wet meat controlling and being controlled by bio-electric stimulation that just… accumulated what you call your past. I couldn’t be an actor if I didn’t have the connection to my memory that I do. But… it does lead me to foolishly focus on what cannot be changed. I do spend too much time and energy on The Things That Have Already Been.
I’ve been re-reading 2021 a bit. I sometimes like re-reading February 2021 in my various books because… truly… that was the last time emotion and attraction combined so harmoniously. Which the shame trigger in my mind trips and says, “Well, that’s a horrible thing to say considering Hermia came afterwards!” but… the writing and the memory don’t lie. But all the same, I also remember some of the therapy from back then. The therapist really fucked up by not noticing and naming a specific element but I forgive them because they were intelligently trying to work exclusively on healing from the divorce. And I think what I’ve been saying over the past month or more proves I still have healing to do in that regard.... so a focus makes sense. I’m not upset with any of my previous therapists for missing it. And it certainly wasn’t discussed in my pages that I can see as a Word Search comes up with nada. But re-reading 2021?
I don’t say this to insult or degrade or belittle what I experienced in 2021. I had very strong emotions for a woman who was in a very difficult position. I was very strongly attracted to a woman who was in a very difficult position. And any discussion now does not diminish or disrespect those feelings; nor does it act to make how things ended any easier, better, or kinder. April 2021 is also easily triggered and the rage felt that night is easily called upon. But I do think it is quite fair to say that… what I was experiencing in early 2021 can be described as limerence. Pulling directly from the Wikipedia page-
“Limerence is the mental state of being madly in love or intensely infatuated when reciprocation of the feeling is uncertain. This state is characterized by intrusive thoughts and idealization of the loved one (also called “crystallization”), typically with a desire for reciprocation to form a relationship. This is accompanied by feelings of ecstasy or despair, depending on whether one’s feelings seem to be reciprocated or not. Research on the biology of romantic love indicates that the early stage of intense romantic love (also called passionate love) resembles addiction, but academics do not currently agree on how love addictions are defined.”
SOURCES: Tennov 1998, p. 77, 86; Beam 2013, pp. 72, 75; Hayes, Nicky (2000) Foundations of Psychology (3rd ed.), London: Thomson Learning, pp. 457–458; Bellamy 2025, pp. 3, 10, 253; Tennov 1999, pp. 31–33, 42, 44–45, 57, 119–120: “Uncertainty about LO’s true reaction is an essential aspect of your own limerence.”; Bode, Adam; Kushnick, Geoff (11 April 2021). “Proximate and Ultimate Perspectives on Romantic Love”. Frontiers in Psychology. ; Fisher, Helen; Xu, Xiaomeng; Aron, Arthur; Brown, Lucy (9 May 2016). “Intense, Passionate, Romantic Love: A Natural Addiction? How the Fields That Investigate Romance and Substance Abuse Can Inform Each Other”. Frontiers in Psychology. ; Earp, Brian D.; Wudarczyk, Olga A.; Foddy, Bennett; Savulescu, Julian (2017). “Addicted to Love: What Is Love Addiction and When Should It Be Treated?”. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology.
Now, if you review how things were going between Essen and I from late December 2020 through March 2021?
Could I have been described as madly in love or intensely infatuated with Essen? Yes. The very first time Victoria saw us together again after that meaningful Christmas week, she snapped a candid photo of us and titled it “Fall in love harder”.
Was reciprocation of this feeling uncertain? I think you could say that fairly. She was interested in me as a friend, as a protector, as a safe space, and as a physical/sexual outlet but… even the suggestion of any kind of actual relationship was prohibited so… yeah uncertain is fair.
Were these pages, especially during February, March, and April 2021, repeated evidence of intrusive thoughts, idealization, and ecstasy/despair cycles? YUP. Was the emotional focus and sexual focus to a level that, while I would have been horribly offended to hear it at that time, could have been said to be bordering on an addiction? Yeah, I think that’s fair.
What value is there in naming the experience? I honestly don’t know. On some level, it feels good to know that it was definitely a thing, a thing observed in humans, and a thing that is common enough to have a name and research. It is very true and very honest to say that I would not want to be in a limerence situation again. But all the same… it would be nice to have a budding sense of affection, excitement, and desire towards someone again. And I think I can say one of the reasons why dating aps are becoming despair loops is the knowledge that Dating Apps are almost specifically designed to remove that part from dating. I could (and may yet) write scores of poems or stories about seeing someone from across the room.... building a familiarity… realizing the feelings are growing from friendship to something more.... whether desire, love, want, need, just something more… and a relationship happening spontaneously as those feelings are confirmed. And that… that.... something beautiful growing from simple beginnings.... is really what it feels like these dating apps have destroyed. “Why let something build over time with a guy that might not work out?! Do you know how many matches I get per day?!” And we are seeing that. I have experienced it myself a few times. Where, after a single date, the person responds “If I don’t feel chemistry immediately, I’m not waiting to see if it develops. K, thnx, bai!!” The beauty that used to exist in humans coming together… is gone. Replaced by Profit-Driven Algorithms… replaced by Drive Through sensibilities… replaced by disconnection and isolation being intentional models and not the very things to avoid. I don’t want limerence again… at this age, I’m not sure I could survive it! (lol) But..... this is all, of course, why things with Cassie went how they did. I genuinely wanted to keep giving it a shot, to keep trying, to see if something would grow and… it never did. Which actually makes sense. Cassie does fairly well on the dating apps and on the “her job is to promote events at the Casino, so social and approachable are specifically work talents for her”. But even Cassie wasn’t truly a “will something bloom” because that was a “Hey, I liked you on the Dating Ap. I’ve done work in the same theaters that you have. Let’s meet.” Not that “any connection to a dating app sullies the possibility” but… it seems more and more like we’ve successfully removed ORGANIC from the human experience. And that’s heartbreaking.
Very much keeping in mind Red Versus Blue’s description of how time works as we are always IN THE PRESENT
Sarge: I am the past, where things cost less, and people knew the value of a hard day’s work. But they only lived to be twenty-eight years old.
Simmons: And I am the future, where people have no morals and no emotions but we have a bunch of kickass gadgets.
Grif: And I’m the present, which sucks. We have nothing cool, and also no morals.
Advertisements everywhere for AI Girlfriends and AI Chatbots and Pay More Money For Dating Apps to see if you get lucky (like it was a fucking casino). I don’t want to go back to how things were in 2021. I don’t want to be so focused on the uncertainty that it consumes every hour. It was easy to fall into that considering how much of my marriage had been plagued with similar uncertainty. But… it really does feel like a world where romance has died. As though this were the end of some epic Greek Tragedy where Aphrodite underwent some kind of plastic surgery of the Gods that stripped her of love and left her nothing but lust and beauty and in a mad rage slaughtered Eros and Plutus took that particular throne. “The Gods themselves do weep!” - Shakespeare.
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