Anna Runkle
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
So technically you can call that early love limerence. But these days I think we're talking about it as something else and is very, very common as a trauma symptom.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Whatever it was, then the abandoning relationship can feel, you know, it's just the thing that activates you and you can't help it. And I made up a word for that. It's the erotization of abandonment. Like it only turns you on if you're getting kind of left.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I've done my share of it. And I'm an intelligent person. And it makes no sense.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It's caused me no end of suffering. And just sort of some attachment wound kind of just pushing me along. And that's a lot of what my career is, is I teach people a more structured way to date. So that you can override that problem. You can't necessarily undo the problem because it's sort of imprinted on you, but you can override it by dating in a structured way where you don't let that happen.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You stay with your reason without bonding with somebody so that it's even possible to see the red flags.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
think infatuation is the right word it's just that infatuation ends before it turns sick and so you know limerence when it just gallops forward it's really like up on a level of heroin addiction i would say i've known heroin addicts i've known limerence i've experienced limerence and i've had people limerent on me and it's like that people don't get over it unless they like really go take take strong steps to get over it limerence doesn't go away infatuation does
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
But what we're doing when we're going down the rabbit hole of the red flag man, the bad boy, is we stop talking to people. We don't want to tell anybody about it. We know they'll disapprove and we want to keep the little fantasy intact.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I can think of times when, I don't know, the problem person was so inappropriate that I didn't want to tell them. The CV was pathetic. You couldn't take them anywhere. This one guy, he didn't even have a pair of pants that weren't just cut off and frayed around the calves somewhere and covered with stains. And I was working for some nonprofit.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I'd be like, I want you to have a pair of pants so you can come with me. And he was like, I don't want to come with you.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
But I held on tenaciously. I could change him.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Once you bond, which what I mean is through sex, it's very hard to turn back, especially if you have attachment wounds. It's very hard to turn back. And so you find yourself, you wake up next to someone and you're like, what have I done? I can't stand this person. But if you were actually abandoned as a kid, there's this therapist named Pete Walker. He calls it abandonment melange.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And it's this like toxic cocktail. For people who literally were abandoned as kids, there's this like nervous system. It's a flashback. It's an emotional flashback. You may not even remember the memory of it. Like a combat veteran would kind of remember what this is about. Just this feeling of like, I'm going to die. I'm so frantic. You know, the grief is unbearable. I can't go on.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
even thinking about ending a relationship with someone you don't like. So you can't leave. And this is how people lose years and years of their life. They leap into a relationship and then they can't leave. So that day when you wake up and you're just like, oh, what have I done? This guy doesn't even have a full length pair of trousers. You know, what have I done? And, um, And you can't go.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
So then comes the retrofitting. It's like, I'll try to retrofit him into the person I hoped he was when I leapt into this. And I'll do it with criticism and repetition and force and misery. And passive aggression.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And that's where codependence comes in. It's just, you know, it's a very unhappy life.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I never thought of that, but of course, yes, you're right. Yeah. This person is what makes, this person is who brings meaning to my life. And I have, with all the letters I get, I do see that a lot.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And the commenters will say, oh yeah, she's trying to marry up or she's, I don't know, there's a word for it in the manosphere of when a woman thinks she, you know, she can have, a guy will have sex with her, but he's not really going to have a relationship with her. But she doesn't know that. She doesn't actually have the neurological framework to read the room.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Well, unrequited love is kind of a condition of limerence. And it's like this addiction to hope. Hope has a lot of chemicals in it. I've heard some researchers say there may be a genetic predisposition to it. It's... It's something that springs up. Well, I want to tell you about the relationship to neglect in childhood. I'm in this unique position.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, it is men too. I had a guy do it to me. I had to call the cops. Here's a little secret. If somebody's limerent on you, you say, look, I don't feel that way about you. We can just be friends. And they go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be friends.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Not only do they. Well, it's it's sad, but they'll do anything because they're close there. They'll do anything. And the hope is there. And they just think you'll come around. But the thing is, I think it's really unethical to promise to be friends with somebody just because you said you've made it. I made it clear. I don't want a relationship because they're not if they're limerent.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
They're actually not capable of giving consent to that. And that's what I realized about this man. He ended up very fucked up. And he's not even alive anymore. I recently heard he was, you know, he just got obsessed. He thought that he, he thought, he thought he was like, I think we're the same soul. And I was just like, Oh God, no, stop. You know? And later I found out that's a whole thing.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Like there's a whole industry that feeds people with limerence, with magical thinking that even though this person doesn't like you and is like, Hey, get back, stop, stop calling me. Actually, they love you. And in a past life or whatever,
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
astrologically or actually you're the same soul but one soul is always you know one half of the soul is always going to run and one day you'll be back together and you can you know people are just like draining so much money out of giving hope to people it's a huge thing and you know i have a youtube channel like you so you probably are aware of that stat where you find out where are my people coming from
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And what were they searching when they came? And especially when I first started out, most of the search terms were tarot related and astrology. And I'm like, why? I never talk about that stuff. I talk about childhood trauma symptoms, how to get your life together, how to date in a way that it doesn't go crazy. Why are they doing that? But that's why, because they've got limerence and
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I think that those are all things that people can engage with, you know, kind of psychics and all that, that that could be fun and healthy and fine and not a big deal. But I think there's a large component of it, you know, that unethical people can really prey on limerent people who will pay you any amount of money to hear what they want to hear. And they know what you want to hear.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It's that, yeah, he really loves you.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Well, I wonder sometimes, you know, we don't really have research to prove this. I contributed to a study that's going on right now at University of Sussex. I think they're doing some two-year longitudinal study, and they asked for my input on the questions. So I'll be really interested to see. But this is, you know, it's a matter of just observation and opinion.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
There's not a ton of research about this. But yeah, it does make... It does make it activate more. When you have a real person who likes you back, you're going to smell their farts. You're going to get so annoyed at how they drive, all that stuff that breaks the spell.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And sometimes you can break the spell of limerence just by being honest with another person, just saying, gosh, I just have these huge feelings for you. And they go, well, I don't feel that for you. And then it'll come right down. But a persistent limerent person They'll go, oh, I'm so sad. It's not going to work out. And life feels empty. There's no source of dopamine anymore.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And so there's this period of depression. And then I call it the limerent flip. They find a way again. They saw something in your Instagram today. They got a sign out in the garden from a snail. I don't mean to make fun of it. I think that when I say that, I'm just making fun of people. They can't help it. Their mind just needs to find it. And it's coming from a very natural and good instinct.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I'm not a therapist, but I'm a YouTuber who gets hundreds and hundreds of letters every week from people. And there's a letter that I kept getting over and over again about the same phenomenon where somebody said, I grew up in a house with an alcoholic parent. And now I'm in love with this guy and I can't really tell him. I know he wouldn't be into me in any way.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
LO is limerent object.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
The person you're limerent on. It's kind of a silly word, but yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah. And I think the limerent object is actually a figment of your imagination. The person is a person, a whole human being, and they're not necessarily very well matched at all. And so it can be very intrusive when the real person says what they have to say. It doesn't match at all where you've been going in the story in your mind for so long. So it can be hard to bear and you want to avoid it.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Well, my opinion is neglect from a parent. And I think there's something about alcoholism. I had a severely alcoholic mom, like hardcore, and other drugs. And I had a lot of alcoholism in my family. So that's always been something I've been around. I've been around other people who grew up like that. I feel like we're a tribe. I feel affinity with people who grew up like that.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
We just kind of understand each other. And, and so I noticed that that's highly correlated with people who end up limerent, but also neglected, not seen. I think there are other pathologies, other weird, when I say pathology, I just want to be careful. Like, look, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a therapist, but I, I, I've worked, I've done a lot of work on this.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And, uh, and so there's this sick aspect around it where, uh, People, what causes it? I mean, really, there are life conditions that cause it. There may be a genetic component. Severe neglect teaches you to find love where there is no love. It's like, you know, daddy and me, we have, you know, he's so special. He can't be here right now.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And he's violent, but I know he loves me and I'm the best girl to him. I'm the light of his life and we have this very special thing. So you have this idealization of a parent, which you should, you must, right? What does that do to a kid? To believe your parents don't care about you and wish you were never born, that is not something a kid can handle. So it's a survival mechanism.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And I always just say, thank God for the survival mechanisms. Whatever allowed your little spirit to convince itself it could carry on. Now you're here, but now you're an adult, and that's got to come off. Yeah. Now we have to get real. Now we have to get honest about what's really happening here, which is a total dedication to something that doesn't exist and a total absence of real life.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And people will abandon their goals, their friendships, and to continue to just keep thinking about this person that's giving them that uplift they need. People are lonely. People are depressed. So some people, their pattern, they get out of depression by being angry all the time. And some people get out of it by thinking of a beautiful relationship that is just any day now. Obsession.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It's going to begin, yeah. Or some people fantasize about... great business success. I'm sure you've met people like that, where they're just being totally unrealistic. And every time the going gets tough, they're like, yeah, but when I've got my billion dollar whatever, and you're just like, yeah, but you don't even have a website. So it's the same thing.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
He's married and I can't stop thinking about him. And now my whole life is falling apart and I, I should leave my job, but I can't. And so somebody is really just like going down and, When you're in love with somebody who's good for you, you'll see signs that your life is kind of coming up. That's a sign.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And again, I don't mean to make fun of it. It's like this natural drive for us to try to express the best in ourselves, but there's this little piece missing. So we have to take bold action to, to overcome it. Now, some wounds that happen in life are like a scrape and they're going to heal naturally. Time is going to do it.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You don't even have to know how to heal it, but some are like an amputation. And if you, if you lose a leg, you know, some people have, it's not going to grow back. You can't get it back. You're You can't get it back, but there's a way to carry on. In the case of a leg, literally, you can have a prosthesis. They're pretty good now. Some people even run marathons.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
There's much you can do despite this injury. And in a way, it's a healing. When you find your workaround, it's a healing, and it will work, and it's enough. It's enough for you to become fully expressed as a person and reach your potential. With limerence, it's the same thing. Something's not coming back.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Personally, when I used to go to therapy, some of the stuff they said, it just wasn't helpful. Validating my feelings about it wasn't helpful. Nowadays, I think if there's a lot of just talking about it, why, what happened, how did you end up feeling this way, that goes on too long, I think, at a certain point. It's just like, okay, now, you have to get honest with yourself.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You must stop talking about this. You have to break contact with this person, even if you have to change jobs. You know, there's just no other way.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah. Yeah. And maybe even in real life, maybe you dated somebody briefly and you really felt like your life came into technicolor with them. You could really just feel like, ah, this is what it's like to be in the presence of something divine. Or you feel yourself sort of coming up and shining a bright light into the world. It feels really good in a very important way.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And then they take it away from you and you feel like there's no other way to get it back. And on a certain level, whatever we have with somebody else, we can't You can get something like it with somebody else. But let's be honest, you know, people are not completely interchangeable.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Well, I guess. I think that would be handy if you could, but you just stay fixated on that person. I cannot fully exist. I can't really hop into my full dimension as a person unless I'm with this other person. The world feels bleak. A lot of people will say that. It feels like it went to black and white. It's like when Dorothy walks out of the house after the tornado.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I heard on one of your recent interviews that you're in a relationship, and when you feel good and happy and you notice, you know what, I'm getting better as a person, that's love. That's a good partnership. When you're starting to check out
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It's just like, oh, yeah, it's like this. This is what life is meant to be like. It's kind of like what drugs are like, really pleasant drugs, right? It just feels like the meaning becomes clear. So there's this lack of meaning that makes that feel like the only solution, like it's everything. There's a lack of meaning, there's a lack of connection and it's no fun.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Like it's not fun being alone and it's not fun feeling stuck in yourself and having no real people to love.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I probably have a skewed perspective because my audience is not totally representative. But young women, and especially lately, have it. Because a lot of people have long-distance relationships by chatting with somebody online, if you're a young woman and you're chatting online with somebody for a long time, there's a lot of opportunity for this to tip over into pretty toxic obsession.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
When you're starting to go down, I've sort of defined this whole, this downward ladder of stuff that happens to you when it's taking over your brain and your life. You start avoiding people. You're not emotionally available. You can't love. So it's really a different thing. And it feels like it's about the other person, but it's clearly not.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah. Yeah. And I notice it with a lot of young women who are very pressured by their families to achieve things, go to school, do things that they actually weren't really craving to do themselves. It was just some expectation. They haven't really become themselves. They're living up to some parental expectation. And so there's this emptiness. And sex is amazing. You
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It really changes everything, doesn't it? And it can feel like that is the thing that was missing, the only thing that was missing. But in women, especially, it lights up this whole other belief. The way that sex feels is what love is. And so if I have this experience with somebody, it's absolutely the full dimension of love and it's what I must have. And it's this particular person.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And it's very sad because... It's very sad, but I don't think that's the only reason it happens. I think there's a need for love that's totally unmet and there's a practice. It's almost like a developmental delay is how I see it.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It's like a developmental delay that you don't know how to pay attention to how I really like this about this person I'm having dinner with, but this is a little weird and that's kind of a red flag. I should ask a question about that. It just becomes a total I'm all in. Men have it too. And they have their forms of idealizing. And some guys, it's like a woman is way up on a pedestal.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Limerence is this handy word for this thing that most people have experienced a little bit of, and some people, unfortunately, have completely lost their happiness over. And the phrase, the word limerence was coined in the 70s. There was a psychologist named Dorothy Tenov, and she was sort of referring to that Twitter-pated falling-in-love feeling. But...
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
The most beautiful, the most amazing. Everything she touches, there's a light coming out of her. But there's this other kind that I see where they want to save a woman. They'll ruin a perfectly good marriage because of some woman. Yeah, I had a letter from a guy. He saw a woman unconscious on the sidewalk. And he called 911 and he stayed with her. And then he went to the hospital.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And the next thing you know, his whole life became about her and what was possible there. So you can see it's not real. And in that case, with people who are fragile like that, it's the same thing. We have an ethical responsibility not to mess with their emotions. In her case, she was a drug addict. She was unconscious because she needed Narcan or something.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Oh, about that guy.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I mean, obviously it can, but I don't think that's necessary because people get this way over people they've never had sex with. You know, they can only imagine. And so that's not a necessary component.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
But I do think, you know, I'm sort of in the camp of for women even more than men, you have to guard that thing that happens, you know, with your whole neurobiology around sex and oxytocin and orgasm because it will bond you with somebody whether they're right for you or not, whether you like them or not. It just will... throw you over a cliff, you're under a spell and now you must deal with it.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I think it starts like, oh, what a wonderful person, and I like them. But after a while, with all the secrecy, you can never tell somebody you're limerent over how you feel. And the reason is, I think some people do, it's one way that you can break the spell, because almost certainly the reason it's secret and unrequited is because they're not into you. That's what it is.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And if you're not good at getting out of relationships, you just kind of cost yourself years of happiness.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Well, the best advice anybody ever gave me was that the definition of dating is to find out who somebody is and whether you would like to get close to them. But dating kind of, in our culture today, it means having sex with. Oh, I'm dating this person. It means having sex with. It could be casual. It could be, well, if it were more than that, you might use different words.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
But dating properly, it's spending time with somebody in a fairly structured way so that you can find out what's the deal, and you can get your cards on the table. It's like, listen, I really am aiming for marriage. I already have a child. How do you feel about that? Are you open to that? Are you into monogamy? I am.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Those conversations, when I work with people who are damaged around their ability to bond like that and who have gotten into one unavailable obsession after another or actual relationship with somebody unavailable, or they've been tucked into polyamory, even though that's not what they want, but the mind, hope springs eternal, right? I'll change this somehow. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And, um, and so when I coach them, I always start everybody out and say, you know, could you just describe like, what's your heart's desire? What do you most want? And I would say most people, men and women, what they want is to be married. And, but there's this huge social taboo. You're not supposed to want that. You're not supposed to say it. Like it would be shameful to say it on a date.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You're trying to label things. I'm just like, oh gosh, this whole thing, this whole thing has really messed people up. And it's okay. And that was a huge part of my personal development to learn that I could be open about, I want to get married. I want to have kids. And if you're not into that, goodbye.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
That's right. And it's not only costing you time that may be precious if you want to have children. It's precious under all circumstances, really. It's everybody's precious time, but it's costing you time, but it's also grinding you down. That experience of, I call it being cool girl, you know, cool girl. I'm like, oh, that's cool. You know, oh, you're seeing somebody else tonight? Never mind.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It was my birthday. I was, well, anyway, you know, that's cool girl. Like, no, that's cool. Sorry. And I always say if I had a nickel for everything, Everybody who came to me because they had been trying to lie about who they were and how they felt to be okay in the eyes of somebody else, I would have a lot of nickels, at least $1.50. I don't know.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And so if you avoid telling them how you feel so that you never get that disappointment... You're holding on to this escape mechanism and people need a way to relieve, to get out of here sometimes, to get out of dodge emotionally. But this is a really malfunctioning way to do it because it almost guarantees you're not going to have anybody real in your life.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Maybe a little more, but it's really, really common. We've all been programmed. You're not allowed to like that. One of the things I do with people is I just give them permission to want what they want. Just want what you want and just be open about it. It doesn't mean you're going to get it. Life is not Amazon.com.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You don't always get what you ordered, but you're definitely not going to get it if you're just all wobbly about it and you keep bonding with the wrong person.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, it's weird, huh? I think there's a kind of privilege that nobody talks about. I'm a kid who grew up with a heroin addict mom, very poor on welfare, and when people talk about my privilege, I'm like, you know. not necessarily in every way there, but I think there's this incredible privilege of people who are loved properly all their lives.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And so they have an innate sense of like when somebody talks to them in an, in an abusive manner, they're out of there. They're just like, I don't, I don't tolerate this. They feel it, they see it, they leave and they know they can like, they have people to return to so that they're not all alone.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
But if you're all alone in the world and a lot of people really are, and there's been times I, I just didn't have people to go to and, You know, there's a lot of incentive to just trying to have words for everything. I call it crap fitting. You fit yourself to crap. You just need you need somebody to hang out with so bad that you will tolerate unacceptable people and just intolerable conditions.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And then you get so good at it. You don't want to be good at crap fitting. And it'll keep a roof over your head sometimes, you know, and you stay in something. But sometimes you have to take the bold step and get out. And that's like when we see somebody who's an abused partner and they just don't leave and they keep going back. It's very hard to make that break because...
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Staying grinds down your confidence. It grinds down your realistic vision that, yes, I might have to couch surf or live in a shelter or have some crappy little apartment for a little bit, and I'll have to find a job, and I don't know how I'm going to do it, but there's no other way, and I will find a way. That's what freedom is, like actual healing and freedom.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It's not like controlling other people and stopping them from triggering you or anything. The freedom is just knowing whatever happens, I'll figure it out. I'll figure out what to do. Like that's confidence and freedom.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you've been through some hard times, and many people have, I think that's something that we don't always realize about everybody. And part of my work is getting hundreds of letters from people who are going through a really hard time. It's really opened my heart. I'm a lot less scornful of people who are screwing up. I get it. I get it. And I've been there.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And it was a miracle that I got through a lot of the stuff I got through.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, a real loving relationship is a bit of a validation. It's a healing. There's that fundamental loneliness of being human. Marriage doesn't fix everything, but a good marriage is a healing of sorts. And so it's natural to want that. One of my analogies is it's like plastic fruit. My nana, she was from Brooklyn, and she was an immigrant. Her family was from Norway.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And she liked to have this Baroque living room, and there was fake chandeliers. And there was this crystal bowl of plastic fruit. And as a kid, me and my cousins, we couldn't resist it. We were always just like, oh, those grapes, they just look so good. And we would bite into them, and they were like... That's what it's like. That's what limerence is like.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You're just like, oh, that person is the most beautiful thing. You know, it's weird. I'm sure you get this. Once you're on YouTube, it's a little bit like being a television star or something in our small way. And then people get it for me. And they think my videos were about them. That would be an extreme case. Or they just think... They just think I understand them as nobody else can.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And they're surprised when they meet me in person that I'm very friendly. And I look people in the eye and I'll give them a hug and listen and stuff. But I actually don't know them. I don't know their name or anything. And that comes as a surprise.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And you'd almost have to wonder if there was some payoff in it, right? And I've got a book coming out in October about that. I call it covert avoidance. That if you are continuously getting obsessed with or into a relationship with somebody who can't love you back, you're avoidant. You're avoidant. And no one who's doing that perceives themselves as avoidant. They're hungry. They're chasing.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
They're trying. They're begging and hoping. But it's avoidance.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Oh, that's so good.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, I do.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
That's exactly right. You've outsourced it and now you can perceive yourself as the good one and, um, And put the power, the locus of control in the other person.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, yeah. And I don't think anybody does it consciously, but I think a lot of avoidance is like that. There's so many forms that we are avoiding. We're avoiding our lives. We're avoiding true connection with other people. And... I just finished my manuscript. Congratulations. Thank you. I've been thinking a lot about it. My last book was re-regulated about nervous system.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And I talk about the disconnection there, but now I've gone for the deep dive to the disconnection, which is basically where the devil gets in. That's just... Without genuine connection, we get weirder and weirder and people get, they feel offended when I say that. So I'll speak for myself. When I'm isolated, I get weird and not in a good way. I get cranky.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I think so. That's my opinion. I think there's a little bit of a continuum between what we call trauma bonding, which is intermittent reinforcement that you would have in an anxious, avoidant relationship. One person's like, come on, give me attention. And the other person's like, I'm not speaking to you now, you're overwhelming me. And it activates something. And people get anxious for a reason.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Well, when we're hanging out with other people in real life, we get socialized. And we all saw during lockdown, for example, what were we like when we didn't get to hang out with people very much. And I remember sitting in a cafe for the first time where other people were in the cafe and we weren't acknowledging each other or anything, but they were there. And I was just like, this is great.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
But when I started spending time with people again, I was very salty. I was often stumbling over my words. I was having trouble, like, reading their emotions. I got rusty very quickly. And I wasn't sure I liked them. And then I wanted to sort of crawl back in my hole. It's a vicious cycle. Yeah, like, we're meant to be around each other. And I don't think it's all, like, on the surface either.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I think our nervous systems talk to each other. I'm sort of of the school that some people are putting out there that...
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
our nervous there's one big nervous system and we're we're we're nodes in it and so we feel each other so you can and this shows up in the most practical ways like let's say somebody says um gosh it feels like you're kind of crushing on me and i'm uncomfortable and they go oh no no no no i'm not i just want to be friends no that's not what i want no i have a girlfriend i just but you feel it your nervous system feels their nervous system and you know what you feel
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
So if you're doing drugs or you're depressed or you're or you've just, you know, this happens to kids who are who have parents who are not good parents is you get like your perception gets completely switched off. This is a big part of it. They're like, no, I'm not drunk. No, it is safe to get in the car. Get in. Stop complaining.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Agency. I was going to say, what do you think that is?
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
If it's my fault, I can change it.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I know the name, but no.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
The anxious attachment style, it springs up after a childhood of neglect, emotional neglect. And neglect isn't just psychological. You know, there are things that happen neurologically because of that that are pretty hard to control. So it's tricky to manage. So that activating that chasing instinct. Now, I noticed
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, you're exactly right. They swing too far in that direction. And it is a way that you can hold on to a relationship where you're not wanted. I hear this all the time. My boyfriend is abusive, but he had trauma as a kid, so I know I can't leave him. And I'm like, how do you figure? You know, how do you figure? But that's what happens.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Our minds, we're programmed to look for ways we can make it work. And I think it's hijacking our parenting instinct and, you know, some of our highest motives are hijacked and being used for ill purposes.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I feel like everything is like that. I mean, my experience as a person is that everybody has good and bad. Everybody's kind of capable of the same bad as the worst people. But we countervail it with efforts to do better things and to be virtuous. And so... I kind of think I'm not of the school that everybody's a narcissist. That word is like so overused. There is such a thing.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And for the stuff I teach, it's more like the problem with narcissism is our own traits that are kind of narcissistic, where we get too self-centered. But I think everything is serving a purpose, and it might not be a good purpose anymore. But I think people who actually are narcissists may be necessary for society. That's my theory. Somebody has to be Teflon.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
When I got over my trauma-driven dating patterns, which is a formidable thing, I met my husband when I was 42. And I played things very differently. And what worked for me for the first time was I just let him kind of come after me. I was, you know, mentally, I was just like, you know, I wanted so bad to like go, are we going to see each other? Are you going to call me? Do you like me?
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You know, somebody somebody has to just like not care that everybody hates them or that they're going to get killed in the battle. They just have to be like, but I'm the greatest. And we need those people. And so maybe maybe we're misunderstanding. I think the idea. As a kid who grew up really poor, and I grew up in a family that was very educated, but neglectful.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And so my friends were sort of all on the wrong side of the tracks. And it took me a long time to sort of find my place. And I ended up getting, you know, well-educated. And I do have friends of all types. That's a happy thing about my life.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
but um it was very stigmatizing and there were a lot of things i had no idea how to do and that's one of that's one of the topics that i'm also developing i do content now but just like there needs to be an etiquette book for people who were raised feral we don't know we don't know what it's like how to be a human dot doc how to be a human yeah yeah so i have a i have a
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Nobody, you know, everybody just assumes, you know, and you know how to do this. And so a lot of information is like, like in terms of like, how should women handle their sex lives? And they, I remember when I was like, I don't know, 19 or something.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And in Cosmo magazine, they were like, when you've just had a one night stand with a guy, get up, don't dwell on him, get up, brush your teeth, do some sit-ups. And then go. And I was like, okay, got it. Act like this. It was just like, it was bullshit. And it was like bad advice or another thing. I had to learn from stuff like TV. There was this commercial for the perfume Anjali.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Turns out it's totally resistible and weird and for them and uncomfortable.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I think you could call it a person addiction, but really I think it's an addiction to hope. Hope is the dope. It's hope. In theory, they want to be with the person, but the thing that gives the high is cresting over from devastation to hope again.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Or it's like people who want to suffocate when they're having sex or something. You want to get that close to death and then, ah. It's like that. It's a really unhealthy and toxic high. And it leads to bad things. It makes people alone. And so very few people are actually willing to do what it takes to stop it. A lot of people ask me. Few follow through. But you got to stop talking about it.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You got to stop contact. The talking about it and thinking about it, like a lot of therapists will totally like spend all the time talking about that.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah. And how do you feel about that? And, oh, you had a dream. Tell me about that. Yeah. And all of it's so interesting. When you're addicted to hope, that's just fueling the addiction. How does heroin feel? What do you like best about it? What does it smell like? You wouldn't do that, would you?
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You have to clean up your environment and you have to be with different people and you have to stop cold turkey. And some people may have an easier, softer way out of it. They'll have to figure that out for themselves. But there comes a time when you realize you're only going down. And so you cut it off. I think it's very spiritual, too. I'm a spiritual person.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And I think that if you're craving the divine in another person, you actually need a spiritual life. So that you're not misapprehending that spiritual inclination that's natural for you as being from one person. But you need fun.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
How do you feel? Where's all this going? But I just allowed him to sort of like do the work of that and it it was so powerful and I figured that out very quickly early in the relationship it pushed him off when I was chasing and he could come towards me when I stopped chasing and I think you know we've all heard this but for women today uh And men, men have their own version of it.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You need to start going on bike rides and getting together with girlfriends and having people you can go to so you're not alone all the time with your feelings and people you are honest with. And they have 12-step programs for this. But I think- Yeah, for obsession. And Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous is one place.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
But I think it's important for people to maybe go to gender segregated meetings because there's nothing like a room full of people who have bad boundaries around this stuff and haven't figured it out yet. So that can go south. Yeah.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
you know, in my own healing, I only ever healed when I asked for help from the most formidable, scary person who I knew could see my shit and would tell me the truth about stuff and how I changed my, it was a man friend who I knew.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Um, and, um, he, uh, I knew him in a 12 step environment and we had known each other for 20 years and there was never any attraction and he was married and, and it was, it was, it's kind of an odd choice in 12 step. Um, But I had watched him help dozens of men change their lives. And the men, the problems they were having were a little different than mine, but they were like
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
the equivalent of living in your mom's basement in their 30s. And they would drive some shitty car and feel very sorry for themselves all the time that girls didn't like them. And he would teach them to suit up, dress nicely, go take out a loan and get a proper car that would be appropriate for dating, start to set some standards, and then get to work really hard on the 12 steps. And so
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
When I met my now husband, I just kind of knew he was the one, but half thinking, but I would think that, right? That's what I do. But he was like a really good guy. And I could see that. And at the minute, I was like around him all the time. I was in this class that he was in. And whenever I was around him, I would want to dress nicer. I'd want to stop gossiping.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Like this really good part of myself was trying to come out.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I made me want to be a better person. And that's before we'd ever even spoken. So for two months, I kind of felt like he was the one. But I finally chose my moment to just like chat him up about something. And he just like didn't get the clue for the longest time. So we were, you know, we were just hanging out for a while. And then I put my cards on the table. So we had some dates.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And after a couple months, he broke up with me because I was coming on too strong. At one point, he said, I want to go really slow. And I was like, I do too. And I'm not worried about it. I said, because I already know. I already know where this is. No, it was, I had made a decision, you know, I, I was in my forties.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I had had plenty of experience and someday we'll talk about like the, the, the heinous experiences I've had. They're terrible. They're, they're, they're a little bit funny now, but not even totally. And, um, I, I took some time off and I did deep work on myself to do something differently and to be real about what I wanted. I had kids by this time I was divorced with two boys.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You can't bring some jerk into your life with kids. And so I was really careful. And I said, I'm going to go really slow. Like, it's going to be a long time. I'm not going to have sex anytime soon. Like, forget about it. But if you want to get to know me, I'm here. And then he said, that's what I want. And then I was like. I would get him. That's all I needed to be like, oh, I got to get him.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
So I was coming on too strong. And then he broke up with me. So that's when I asked this man I knew. I said, can you help me? I just think this is the best guy I've ever met. And I blew it. And I just somehow I've got to get him back. And so he helped me. And it took about six months. And he taught me, sit on my hands. Let information come to me. Don't initiate anything.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Because I would see him every week in this class. And it took a little while. First, he would sort of come up and be like, oh, do you want one of the cookies? And I'd be like, yeah, okay. And then go back to what I was doing instead of like leaping at everything. Because being a single mom is very lonely.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, but I think it's important. It's activating some part of us. And it gets disordered. Like, I was so worried about being a single mom that I thought I had better work double time to get him. But it just doesn't work on a healthy man.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
We want to believe, oh, that's not true. That's just some sort of old fashioned thing. But there's something in our brains that we do need to chase a little bit. It does activate something good. But like every good thing in a human being, there can be this sort of disordered side of it where there's a dark side to it, where it goes too far. And the chasing becomes stalking.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You know who anything, you know what, if you don't fix your way of dating, who it will work for is like, you know, the relationship before that turned out to be a heroin addict. I didn't even realize it. But that's who has fine with your foibles, you know.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
A scarcity, I guess. I don't know. It works psychologically. In my case, I was playing a game. Here's when everything turned around with my husband. It happened one day. He called me up and I had been coached to date like a proper lady and don't accept dates after Wednesday. And I was like, you're kidding. Oh, I can't. Who will I ever date? And I always hear that from people now.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
They're like, no one will ever date me if I have standards, you know? But I was like, so he calls me on Saturday evening. What was I really doing? I was just sitting there all by myself. My kids were at their dad's. I was really sad. I felt like crying. Another year, nobody to be with, you know? And I was really sad and wishing he would call. And then he called. It was him.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And he's like, hey, do you want to hang out? I was wondering if you want to hang out. And I was like... No, sorry, I got plans. And he was like, oh, he was really surprised. And I told him later, you know, I didn't have to do that for long. I didn't do it to mess with him. I did it to overcome my own problem with latching on and bonding too fast as a result of being totally neglected as a kid.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I had to just like act like a normal person so that the relationship could begin. Later, when I got to know him, I told him, I said, well, I did this thing. He had no idea. And he was like, that's so weird. Because when you did that, I was just like, it really like made me fall back into you. And he had, you know, he had broken up with me at that point before.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And then he was gradually coming back. It really worked. But I had to act like a person who valued herself even though I wasn't really totally there yet. And that's how it works. Everybody imagines, oh, I'm going to heal. I'm going to get to the island of healed people. And then I'm going to have this great relationship. But it doesn't work like that. We heal by having relationships.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
But we try not to have too much crazy ones that grind you down and ruin your life.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, yeah, serial limerence. And it's a sad fate if they can't stop it. And I had that happen. This guy who stalked me, one day, 15 years later, I used to have a video production company, and I had to hire some people to fill a big crew. And I hired this woman out of 100 people on Craigslist, and we were cleaning up afterwards. And the video we made was about stalkers for some client.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And I said, I had a stalker once. And she goes, oh, that's so weird. Me too. Anyway, it turned out it was the same guy.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
like 15 years apart holy shit it's this weird karmic thing and he had i remember when he was stalking me he was talking about her and then i realized her name was very similar i was getting these weird emails from somebody whose name was one letter off from hers going you don't remember me but i met you at a party and i had this dream about you and i'm very concerned i think you might want to know this and i would just be like what the
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It was him. It was him impersonating a woman and using her name. And there's these weird connections. And we were terrified of each other. It was just like, are you working for him? Are you? And we went and had a drink and we told our stories to each other. But it was very sad. And that's all this guy ever did. He just obsessed on people.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And she actually loved him and wanted a relationship with him in her day. And he couldn't do it. he could only do this. And so that's extreme. Some people have that. It's called erotomania. Some people like, they'll have it for a movie star or something. And they're so into, they're so committed to their lumerant dream. They talk about it and talk about it.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah. A limerent.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And they really believe it's happening and nobody can really reason with them.
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#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, I feel like it's getting better. I happen to really love TV a lot. I think we're in this incredible age where it's the highest art form there is, streaming television. And I think it's getting better and more realistic. I mean, for me, I'll just say I've always loved TV and movies, but until about 15 years ago, women were not very three-dimensional.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
They're occasionally elated and thrilled. They got a text or they caught a glimpse or they got a kind word. And then there's just a lot of depression in between. It's like getting a hit. It's getting a hit of heroin. It's like that, where it lifts you up and there's hope and you think, this is it. I think they're reciprocating.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And now that women are more involved in the writing and the directing and producing, we're all in it now. Now everybody's in it and we're hearing the perspectives and I just see much more realistic things. But if you look at any movie from more than 20 years ago, it's always about some guy who's a little dweeby and some beautiful girl. And against all odds, he wins her heart, you know?
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And that's like the old story. But you don't get that about girls until much more recently, where she's kind of, you know, chunky and not very pretty. And this beautiful guy, there are shows like that now. And I love them. I love them. You know, it's like, yeah. That's my story. But you would be, you know, they're out of your league, but then they see how wonderful you are.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And I think that's everybody's fantasy, really, about to do that. We're not all practical.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I wish I could answer that. I know my sample is skewed. My audience is like 75, 80% women. So, but when men get it, now this might be my perception. I feel like it's more menacing when men get it. Like they, they're bigger than you. When it's happened to me for men, it's been like scary. And, and, uh, Or creepy.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I remember there was this guy, I had this big birthday party at a rental house, got in big trouble with the agency that rented it. I wasn't supposed to bring 30 people, but we had a great time. And he had this present for me that was beautifully wrapped, and I was really scared to open it, and I wouldn't open it at the party.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And later, I ended up talking to somebody who knew him, because I said, I was just really scared. It was like diamond earrings. I don't like him. I don't want to date him, but I know he's obsessed with me. I shouldn't have invited him. I know now. And the friend said, that's so funny. He did buy you diamond earrings, but I made him return them and he got me a travel mug.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
So I was like, oh, travel mug, we're cool. But my nervous system did feel it. I knew he was like that. So I would have loved to have diamond earrings at that stage in my life, but not from him.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yes. So, well, two things. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with horses. And some people say that's sexual. I don't think it was.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And then they don't follow up and you can't really hold on to hope anymore. So there's this pursuit. I just want to get that little high, that little high of, I think maybe I'm going to get them to reveal that they feel the same way about me, but I'm going to do it without tipping my hand. I don't want to tell them because if I tell them and they don't feel that way, they won't be in my life.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I was really obsessed with horses and then Laura Ingalls Wilder, which is really, you know who she is? The Little House books. Well, there was Little House on the Prairie, which was kind of a doofy TV show, but there's these books that are some great literature that sustained me as a kid about going westward in a wagon and trying to survive out there in a homestead. And I loved these books.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
They really spoke to me. And I wanted to go back in time and be in her family, not mine. And And I would think about her all the time. And then I would buy clothes at thrift stores and I didn't know how to sew. I was like 10, you know, so I would staple together fabric. And I bought these used ice skates and I unscrewed the blades and I would walk around in ice skates.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
They have no flexibility in the soles. And I would go to school in these stapled dresses and ice skate shoes and a bonnet. Yeah. And everybody just tolerated me as some weird kid. But I was in her world. And I was just really committed. I don't want dinner. I'm going to go make a fire outside and heat my food up on the fire in the backyard. And my parents let me do it. They were hippies.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It's evolved to mean something much more than that. It's that feeling, but then all of a sudden it sort of goes into hyperdrive and becomes this addiction level obsession with another person who you can't be with generally, either because they're not into you, they're not available, or they don't even exist. Like there are people who feel limerent about fictional characters.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
So they let me do it. So I was sort of already in these other worlds. And I had an imaginary horse. And horses for me were like, you can go where you want to go. You can just like get on your horse and ride where you want to go. And you're not like stuck. My family moved from a commune in Berkeley to this like dumpy little thing in Tucson, Arizona during the Vietnam War. And it was 110 degrees.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And I needed a horse to get out of there. I was so stuck. And so these were my ways of escaping. And so I talked to a lot of people and limerence seems to begin in childhood with these fantasies and this ability to transport yourself. But I've also heard now from people, and this is not something that I've had myself, but they get limerent like over teacher figures, right?
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
There's women who are not gay, but they become completely obsessed with a woman a generation older. And they're telling me this, and I'm always like, I hope you don't mean me. But that's what they do. I've received letters that are really deep and complex and puzzling about it. And the way the mother figure seems to... seems to be getting something out of it too.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And the whole relationship usually explodes. There's something really unstable about it, but they come together like, yeah, there's a fit there with it. And it's really common. I've seen that.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
So I say treat it as heroin. You can't just be friends. If you can be friends, be friends. If you can just get over it, get over it. But if you could do that, you would have done it by now. And so if you're suffering still, it's time to cut ties. So I get a lot of pushback on my channel from people who go, well, that's not fair. You know, she's obsessed with this guy, but he flirted with her.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
He gave her reason to hope he should leave the job. It's like, he's not writing me a letter. He's fine. She's the one who's like losing her happiness over this. So, so I recommend leave the job, stop being in contact with the person around whom you can't be yourself. You can't think about anything else.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And you can't progress as a person to where you're having a happy relationship and, you know, a happy life and fulfilled and what you want to do. And so first you cut contact. Then you have to cut off the talking about it and thinking about it. And people are like, I can't stop thinking about it. I'm like, you can. Just like a person who does heroin needs to stop thinking about it.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
They'll be creeped out. It's cringy, right? When somebody obsesses on you, it's not a pleasant thing when you're not into it. So they don't disclose, but they're always trying to think of like, what's the perfect thing I could say that would sort of go, you know, make a little space where you could say something and give me that clue. And that's what flirting is.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And the intrusive thoughts will come, but you have to remind yourself. And you're going to need friends who will support you. You're going to say, sorry, I'm just like thinking about how great it would be if that boat trip we're taking, if he would come. And they can say, okay, hold on. This is going to be really good. I'm going to be with you. This is going to be fun.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And hey, what are you going to wear? And let's go get something really nice to eat on the boat. And friends who help you come back to present time. You need help. It's very hard to fix yourself all by yourself. And you can do a certain amount.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
and then you have to you have to um sometimes like one thing i had to do is get all the sad songs off my my it was an ipod at the time but i had all these songs about unrequited love like half of all songs are about that so i just took them all off and i only had songs about other things about happy things or neutral things or you know but not just um
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
yeah, there's like certain artists who like, that's their specialty is how sad that you did that to me. And you know, it was true love. So I just was like, I'm not going to entertain this energy anymore. I'm going to stop.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And, um, have you ever had a friend who was limerent and they just yammer on and on and they, you feel sometimes you can, you feel like you're like their, their conversational equivalent of a sex doll or something where they just want to talk about this other person. Yeah. And they're like, and then he did this thing and it was so funny.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And then, you know, we went over to the snack bar and we got potato chips and it was so cute the way he ate them. And then he said, and then I said, and it's like you're using somebody else. You're trying to co-opt their attention so that you can feed yourself the dope. And so your friends should not put up with it. They should say, I don't want to hear about it.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
I know this is, you told me this is an unhealthy thing. I don't want to hear about it. This is like somebody just telling you how great drugs are, you know, or how great running in front of cars is. It's not great. I don't want to hear about it. It's disturbing, actually. And so we can be kind to people, but we need to stop.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And I just think a lot of the solutions out there and the reason I always had to find my own way to heal from my own trauma wounds, including this one, it didn't help me. It didn't help me to do conventional things. I had to be a real stoic about it.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And a woman came along, the woman who showed me the techniques that I teach and re-regulated that are like the thing that I've done for 30 years to keep moving. You can move your difficult thoughts and feelings out of your mind, get them on paper, and release them twice a day faithfully or more. Follow with a restful meditation and allow your mind to recompose.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And if you're steady with this, you come back to present time. You come back to reality. And reality is great. Reality is the only place you ever get loved. It's the only place. So it's a beautiful place to come. And you got to get out of the dream.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
When it's reciprocal, people are flirting. So you sort of say, I just don't have anything to do this Saturday. And then you say, oh, that's funny. I don't either. Well, you know, it's like this very subtle exchange, but the exchange isn't happening the way you want. So your imagination takes over because I think there was something code, a secret code in what they were saying.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
They can come to crappychildhoodfairy.com, the website or the YouTube channel by the name of Crappy Childhood Fairy. And the book is called Reregulated.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Next thing you know, you're looking at all their social media and they're like, oh, they like that song. And the lyrics are about really loving somebody that you can't tell. So your mind just starts to find love where there is no love, which is what you learned to do as a kid when you weren't getting loved.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Mm-hmm. Anxiety and despair. And then just like, la-la, you know, overjoyed. You know, you've got that little bit of like maybe from them.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It was legit.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It, it might've been. How did you feel? I mean, what was your gut check?
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It wasn't about you. It wasn't really something you did. She was reacting to something that was completely in her mind or her heart about it, some memory or some projection. You didn't do that.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah. Yeah. Chasing the good feeling. And everybody wants that good feeling. We need love. We need to feel connected to people. But people can get limerent even when they're married, obviously. They can be limerent when they're surrounded by options, just obsessed on one person.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And it's not just because of modern times either, because there's a lot of examples in literature like Dante and Beatrice and Heathcliff and Cathy, maybe mutually limerent at different times, but not the same time, from Wuthering Heights. So it's been around. Yeah, yeah. I know. See, we love that book because it's like, see, that's what it's like. It's like that. So it's been around.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
It's something that people have in their nature. And I don't think it's always because of trauma. I think kids show signs of it early. And I can't speak for everybody, but I just have an amazing sample of people who write me letters and they tell me about their life. It's like a little wheel of possibility personality types of things that happen to you and how you come out.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Well, technically speaking, yes. But then it sort of morphs into, especially if that person is in your life and maybe reciprocates your feelings, it'll turn into a more ordinary kind of love where, you know, because of the toothpaste cap and the toilet seat and just regular stuff of life, the magic spell starts to dissipate and real love can start to form.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And I don't like to believe like every cause equals the same effect. But there's a really common denominator with people who are stuck on somebody and can't get over it with a lack of enough attention when they were kids. They didn't get seen as a person. They didn't get their personality kind of appreciated and validated like, oh, yeah, you love karate. Yeah. And that didn't happen.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
And that may have affected things to do with neurological development. That's one of the most important discoveries about what's the problem with trauma in childhood is neurological development. There can be some holes there. And so there's just this weird thing. And sometimes, did you ever hear about this? It was a research experiment a long time ago and I learned about it in school.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
You're younger than me, but there was a wire monkey and they tested whether a baby monkey separated from its mother would prefer to go to the fake fur covered wire monkey mother or just the wire frame that had a bottle in it. And the baby would starve to death to hold on to the furry wire model. Okay. I don't even know if that's true. Like nowadays we found out all that kind of stuff is bullshit.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Just the need for love is so great that we will die for it. And I think that's what happens is that natural instinct to fall in love and have a mate is just sitting there going along like an engine without the right person in front of it.
Modern Wisdom
#935 - Crappy Childhood Fairy - Limerence Explained: Why Do We Get Addicted To People?
Yeah, I don't think it's even conscious, mostly, right? Not at all. It may match very closely. We're designed to have that primary relationship with our moms to sort of imprint us with how to fall in love. And let's say that she was high all the time or gone or just troubled, had to work all the time, crying, depressed, mentally ill, running off with a boyfriend.