How I Wrote My Way Into a Lasting, Loving Relationship
I was a 39-year-old virgin when I sat in tears across from my therapist, purging yet another story of a Mr. Maybe. She looked up from several months of notes, reached out her arms to me, and said, “Amanda, longing is your lover.”
Several sessions later she told me about a new-to-her term: limerence. It’s the hyperfixation on an idealized romantic interest, the euphoric highs and the devastating lows, the imagining of conversations or reunions that never happen—and it all described my serial intense crushes since junior high.
Like many limerents, my mood often depended on whether or not my limerent object (LO) had shown me any sign of interest—a look my way, a text back, a like on my Facebook post. It didn’t take much. Limerence is fueled by an ardent cocktail of hope and uncertainty, so it thrives in the low accountability hookup culture and ambiguous online apps that defined much of my two and a half decades of dating.
I was addicted to the feeling of falling in love. But I chose exotic dead-end paths, typically mysterious avoidant men that would quit me before I had the chance to decide how far to go. Since signing a purity pledge in high school, I’d told myself I would wait for a mutually committed and loving relationship in which to have sex, but I didn’t realize my self-sabotaging patterns were keeping me from what I most desired. After all, it was easier to long for someone I put on a pedestal—a savior—than face the vulnerability of real intimacy and the fear of failure in a relationship.
The thing about limerence is you can’t take a pill for it and make it go away. It takes becoming aware of your ruminative patterns, including your triggers, and rewiring your brain to follow a different path. Writing, something I already liked doing, turned out to be one of the most healing practices. But I had to do it differently.
For years, I depended on crushes to inspire my writing. Even if only a poem came from a hookup, I rationalized that my time with them hadn’t been wasted. However, these crushes left me with unfinished endings that my ADHD brain would chew on and turn into fantasies. I’d get a dopamine rush from just anticipating reciprocation from an LO.
Structured narrative writing allowed me to close the mental loop by creating meaningful endings. It also helped me stop blaming myself (a false sense of control) for “screwing up” opportunities with potentially perfect matches. Academic research demonstrates writing your way out of heartbreak (in turn, reconstructing your identity) helps you mentally heal quicker from romantic breakups. Even writing song lyrics helps people heal from depression and grief. Who has better demonstrated this than singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, who created meaning through narration in songs like “Dear John” and “All too well.”
In a 2018 study, individuals were prompted to 1) outline “chapters” of their love lives, 2) then describe nine different key scenes in their love lives, and 3) lastly describe the next chapter of their love lives. Researchers found there was a greater tendency over time for participants’ chapters to become more emotionally positive. And when we’re in a more emotionally positive space, we set ourselves up for a healthier relationship.
As a perfectionist who strove for straight A’s as a kid, I loved when my therapist gave me assignments. The most powerful one was a mantra she asked me to write down every night in my prayer journal: I am ready for and worthy of a deeply loving and intimate relationship.
Of course, I didn’t believe it at the time, but I began repetitively writing it and saying it out loud.
My therapist also asked me to write a letter to my inner critic as if I were her friend. I wrote:
“Dear Amanda, Your desire to love is so big it takes off like a dog dragging its owner behind. You did not ‘screw up’ with the soldier or anyone else. You did your best with what you knew. You sometimes tried too hard in certain situations, where in other circumstances it would’ve been just right. You are more than enough.”
I also wrote down situations in which I felt discarded by various LOs. The time “he” got up and left in the middle of the night disappointed we weren’t having sex. The time I came to see “him” for a planned visit and there were piss stains on his toilet seat. The time I discovered on Facebook “he” was on the same secluded beach with another woman a week after he’d taken me there. This helped me knock them down from the pedestal on which I had placed them—to see them for their consistent behavior and not the potential I envisioned.
Psychologists call this process of reassessing memories cognitive reappraisal, but it’s really just writing the truth.
You see, limerence isn’t about the other person. It’s ultimately about some part of you that needs to be nurtured. The question I had to answer through writing: Why did I feel the need to continue living the same story—the one that left me yearning? It didn’t matter how many experts I interviewed or journal articles I read, I had to write my own story.
When I met Dave, a thoughtful long-haired Irishman from Long Island, the summer before I turned 41, I’d laid the groundwork to receive love, something I’d previously run from. His transparency felt disarming rather than boring. I didn’t feel smothered when he offered to travel to meet my family for the holidays or told me he was falling for me three months after dating.
Just less than a year after meeting, Dave and I flew to French Polynesia where I lost my virginity to him in a bungalow on Huahine (“Hua” means sex and “hine” means woman). The island is known for its prominent mountain shaped like a supine pregnant woman.
In writing my book, When Longing Becomes Your Lover, which I started 5 years before I met my now husband, I wrote myself out of heartbreak and into the redemption story that I hope our daughter will one day treasure and know she too is worthy of love. Without it, she wouldn’t be here.
Amanda McCracken is a health journalist and the author of When Longing Becomes Your Lover: Breaking from Infatuation, Rejection, and Perfectionism to Find Authentic Love: A True Story of Overcoming Limerence. You can find her on Instagram @amandajmccracken or TikTok @thelonginglab.
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