The Definitive Guide To Overcome Limerence and The DEVOURING Mother

The Dark Side of Limerence

16.07.24

Before we start, let me tell you that this is the fourth article of The Unorthodox Roadmap For Trauma Healing.

I – Why Some People Never Heal From Trauma

IV – The Definitive Guide To Overcome Limerence and The Devouring Mother

Here’s The Fourth Part:

The term Limerence was coined by Dorothy Tavern in the 1970s and it basically means love addiction, and I don’t use these words lightly. It refers to the state of being completely infatuated with someone. It feels like a spiritual experience like you finally met your soul mate. It generates an instant recognition like you’ve always known that person and perhaps that you shared hundreds of past lives.

While experiencing limerence, you feel completely enmeshed with the other person, like you two are made of the same fabric. You can anticipate everything they’re thinking and feeling, and it feels like the most precious thing in the Universe. Carl Jung calls that mystique participation. Furthermore, many people report crazy experiences like being able to feel the presence or the smell of their partner even being thousands of miles apart.

Everything feels magical, however, if you ever experienced limerence, you know that everything can turn dark very quickly. The immense highs are compensated by massive amounts of anxiety and constantly obsessing about this one particular person. It’s like your life depends on it.

You can’t understand why, but something in you becomes hooked to this cycle and you know it hurts, but just like an addict, you want “just one more drink” of this poisonous “love”. The relationship tends to be wildly compulsive and many people enter a vicious cycle of breaking up and reconciling over and over again.

Some people find a way to delude themselves and stay in this cycle for years and years but more often than not, it inevitably leads to a breakup that crushes your soul. Now, you feel like a piece of you is gone. You experience a massive depression and completely lose your motivation to live your life.

You feel abandoned and start playing the same movie in your mind over and over again… What if we stayed together? What if things were different? What if I was more good-looking? What if I was smarter? Or richer? … And at this point, you basically become a masochist indulging in obsessive fantasies and constantly berating yourself.

The crazy thing is that many people experience limerence with people they met just once or exchanged a few texts online. In many cases, it’s completely platonic, the chance of being together was always inexistent. However, they give in to these poisonous fantasies and allow them to steal their will to live.

The Mother and Father Complex

That’s why I consider limerence to be one of the most powerful drugs that exist and in my opinion, it’s one of the main factors behind toxic and codependent relationships. I noticed that studying this phenomenon has become very popular in the past 5 years or so, however, Carl Jung explored this subject at length under the terms of Animus and Anima projection and every Jungian Analyst knows about it.

In my practice as a therapist, I found that the origins of limerence and toxic relationship patterns tend to be an unresolved mother and father complex which greatly conditions the Animus and Anima, and also leads to an identification with the Puer and Puella Aeternus, aka the man-child or woman-child.

In my last article, “How To Break Free From Childhood Trauma”, we explored how the mother and father complex could be understood as a script we receive from our parents telling us how we should live our lives. This script contains rules and guidelines about how a man or lady should behave, what kind of work is acceptable, what faith you should adopt, how one should dress, and even who you’re allowed to date.

In summary, a manual detailing how you should live your life. Over time, the presence of the mother or father isn’t required anymore, this script is internalized and becomes our modus operandi. In Jungian Psychology, we call it the mother and father complex.

In the last article, I focused on how to break this script and finally become a mature adult capable of making your own decisions and living your own life. Now, I want to explore how the mother and father complex is linked with codependency, limerence, and how it affects our relationships.

The Origins of Codependency

Codependency is a very complex subject, but I noticed that two important factors tend to be present, the first one is an external sense of self-worth, and the second, is having experienced devouring parents and enmeshment. Furthermore, when we discuss codependency, it’s important to understand that this is a spectrum and most people who experience difficulty in their relationships will display at least a few codependent behaviors.

To simplify things, we can say that a “relationship blueprint” emerges from the experiences we have with our parents. Because we learned that receiving love and validation is dependent on fulfilling this script, we quickly understand that we must act in a certain way to not only be validated but to also avoid altercations.

The problem is that following this script often goes against our natural personalities and we end up suppressing many important qualities and our authentic desires. We adopt values that make us feel ashamed of who we are and that there’s even something inherently wrong with us.

We never feel good enough and never develop a strong sense of self. Instead, our sense of self-worth is completely external and dependent on how other people judge us. To compensate for this shame-based identity, we tend to become addicted to perfection and develop a carefully curated persona.

We desperately want to be seen and to be fully accepted, and we try to accomplish that by being immaculate in everything that we do. “If I can only do this one thing right they’ll finally see me, they’ll finally love me!”. But we know this day never comes and when it finally does, it creates even more resentment. Why? … Because we’re not the ones receiving this “love”, but the character we’re playing.

Speaking of which, many people report being social chameleons and “creating” different personalities in each group they participate in. They have the ability to morph into exactly what people expect of them, however, they lose themselves in these characters and have no idea who they are. They also liked to be called “empaths”, but this is just another way of saying that you’re severely codependent.

Another very common pattern is to compensate for this lack of self-worth by putting on this self-sufficient facade and acting like nothing can phase you when In reality, this is just childish arrogance. I know that because this used to be me. The crazy part is that there’s always someone who can truly see us, but we usually get scared and run away because we don’t want to break the character, and we’re not ready to accept who we truly are.

Lastly, this external sense of self-worth primes you to abandon your true self and constantly look for someone to fulfill this internal void. However, the truth is that only you can do that by actively engaging with the parts of you that were repressed, giving life to your talents, and exploring your potential. I won’t go into detail here because I already discussed that in my last article, and I strongly recommend that you read it after this one. Plus, you can find everything you need to know in my accessible course Katabasis – The Shadow Integration Manual. Now, let’s explore the second part of this equation.

Enmeshment – The Devouring Mother

Enmeshment is a term created by Salvador Minunchin that perfectly describes the effects of what Carl Jung called the devouring mother. It’s important to realize that a parent is devouring because they’re codependent themselves and that’s why they can be incredibly suffocating and overwhelming. By the way, I’m using the term devouring mother because that’s more common, however, fathers can also act in the exact same way.

Simply put, enmeshment happens when there aren’t any boundaries between you and your parents, everything is blurred and there’s no sense of individuality, they treat you as an extension of themselves. They’ll usually make you the reason for their whole existence and will make sure that you feel this weight.

They will tell you that everything they do is for you and list all the sacrifices they had to make. So you better behave, act exactly like they want, and fulfill all of their expectations to pay this insurmountable debt. Well, no wonder we tend to feel like a burden and start to let go of our wants and needs.

Furthermore, enmeshment is usually coupled with parentification, which has many degrees, but basically, you feel responsible at some level for their well-being. Instead of you being a kid, you suddenly become their confidant, they tell you everything that’s wrong with their relationship, and even ask you to make important decisions for them. If you have siblings, you usually become a second parent to them and start bearing many responsibilities that a kid shouldn’t have.

You find yourself constantly trying to appease their emotions and care for them and in this process, you forget about yourself and never develop a strong ego. You might feel like having your own dreams and needs is wrong and selfish. You become a people pleaser who can’t say no and doesn’t have any boundaries. In severe cases, you start dissociating from your own emotions which can also lead to psychotic symptoms.

Because your parents are codependent, they unconsciously feel threatened when you want to develop your autonomy and usually sabotage all your attempts to grow up. This usually comes in the form of overprotection never allowing you to have your own experiences. They might even highlight your ineptitudes and all of your mistakes.

In the end, you never learn to live on your own. At the same time that you feel responsible for them, they’re also constantly trying to rule your life. It feels like a prison and the worst part is that you feel guilty for wanting to leave and living your own life.

I distinctly remember having dreams in which my feet were cut off and I was trying to crawl while I was bleeding. That’s a perfect picture of how I used to feel. I desperately wanted to conquer my autonomy but I was afraid of living my own life. Another very common indicator of enmeshment is having sexual dreams with your parents, I don’t think there’s anything more telling than that.

If you were parentified, I know that you feel responsible for your parents and that they need you and perhaps they even guilt trip you. However, you must realize that caring for them was never your responsibility and now that you’re an adult, keeping putting this weight on yourself is just a way to avoid making your own decisions and living your own life. Once again, that’s why I keep saying how important it is to individuate from our parents.

Animus and Anima Projection

Now, when we pair this “relationship blueprint” and an external sense of self-worth, it creates the perfect combo for dysfunctional relationships as you expect the other person to not only fill this void but to give you a sense of meaning and purpose. The mother and father complex are projected and you expect your partner to fulfill the role of a substitute parent that will cater to your every need.

You’re after that mother gaze and you want to feel seen and to be fully accepted, and for it to happen, this object also has to be magical. We want all of that to come from a perfect being and that’s why we put them on a pedestal, so they can finally correspond to our fantasies and idealization.

In that sense, the limerent object has the function to compensate for everything, heal all our wounds, and fix our entire life once we receive the validation and sense of self-worth from this god-like figure. This is so common that I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard about it from my clients and I’m also guilty of it. In fact, every person identified with the Puer and Puella Aeternus has at least one limerence story or a harsh breakup to share.

As I write this, a very common pattern comes to mind, people who experience limerence usually feel lost, don’t have any sense of purpose, don’t have clarity about who they are, and don’t feel proud about the lives they’re living, in fact, they usually don’t feel any sense of agency.

Instead of facing this reality and taking action to change their lives, they unconsciously choose to indulge in obsessive fantasies which usually come in moments of extreme frustration and distress. You want to be rescued and believe that everything will be perfect once you’re together.

It’s interesting that when we analyze limerence fantasies they usually highlight repressed desires, needs, talents, and a picture of the life we wish we could be living. People will usually say that they got attracted because the person seemed confident and authentic, they’re following their passions in life, and they’re so independent and in touch with their emotions. Perhaps they do something you always wanted to do but never had the courage or they have a talent you admire.

Instead of developing your own personality and exploring your potential, you want to live vicariously through them and end up replicating the same enmeshment dynamic you had with your parents. You see them as an extension of yourself and because you get all your validation from them, there’s also an underlying controlling aspect. You want them to correspond to your fantasies and demands, and if they don’t, you feel frustrated, sad, and sometimes even betrayed.

However, it’s imperative to understand that you’re not seeing the real person in front of you, only your projection, and expecting someone to match your fantasies is incredibly childish and narcissistic. Exploring these dynamics is out of the scope of this article but you can read about it in my book on the chapter about the Animus and Anima. You can receive a free copy when you join my newsletter. Plus, there’s a full course about it in the Audacity University.

Reclaim Your Life

Finally, limerence is a mild psychotic state that makes you lose touch with reality and although it seems quite complex, the solution is incredibly simple. It obviously requires effort to overcome it, but it’s still fairly simple. You have to fully accept your reality and direct all the energy you spend daydreaming about other people to create a life you’re proud of.

First, we discussed how the origin is an unresolved parental complex, and that’s why it’s imperative to individuate from your parents and start making your own decisions. Second, you have to understand what was projected upon your limerent object and develop this quality or capacity for yourself. This will involve making practical changes to create a life in which you can explore your potential and feel truly happy.

You know, people will usually spend years ruminating about an ex or hung up on a platonic fantasy because they’re unwilling to take any responsibility and understand how they contributed to creating this situation. In fact, many people will unconsciously go after people who are unavailable to confirm their narratives about being a lone wolf or undesirable, all of that so they don’t have to change. And can keep daydreaming and blaming other people. However, the price of freedom is responsibility.

Lastly, your view about relationships and how it feels to be in love will have to be updated. It’s funny, but when you’re used to experiencing limerence, healthy relationships seem boring. But the truth is that connection and intimacy take time to build, but this subject deserves to be explored in another article.

Rafael Krüger – Live an Audacious Life

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