Limerence in Disguise💔💫

"Felt deeply, known barely."

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I once loved someone I never really knew.

Or maybe it wasn’t love. Maybe it was something more dangerous; the kind of feeling that borrows the language of romance but starves you in silence.

It started with a look. Not one that lingered, not one that promised, but just a glance long enough to seed a storm. And my mind, that architect of illusion, began to build. Slowly. Beautifully. Recklessly. I imagined conversations that never happened. I rehearsed smiles. I collected meanings from moments that were never meant to mean anything.

They never told me they loved me.
But I loved them in every way the mind knows how to pretend.

And when they walked past, unaware of the empire I had crowned them in, something inside me crumbled; not because they rejected me, but because I had fed myself on hope that was never offered.

That’s limerence.
It’s not love.
It’s a theater of emotions playing to an empty seat.

You talk to them once, maybe twice.
You see them laugh with someone else and your soul flinches;
not because they owe you anything,
but because in your heart,
they already did.

We don’t like to talk about this kind of love; the imagined one. The unsent message. The obsessive refresh of their story. The hundred rewrites of “Hi” before you delete it all and act unbothered. But this too is a grief. A real kind. A love that breathes without lungs and dies without burial.

I thought I loved them.
What I really loved was the way they made my loneliness feel like it had a name.
What I really loved was the mirror they held up to everything I felt I was missing.
What I really loved was the version of myself that I could only be around them;
even though that version never really existed.

It wasn’t them.
It was the feeling of being seen,
even when they weren’t really looking.

And maybe that’s the hardest part of limerence.
You don’t just grieve the person.
You grieve the version of yourself that only existed in the fantasy.

The “us” that was never spoken.
The closeness that only your heart knew.
The story you told yourself; where they would wake up one day, realize you were the one, and everything would suddenly make sense.

But fantasies don’t apologize. They just fade.
They leave you with memories that were never shared,
with tears over goodbyes that never happened,
with questions that shame you for even asking.

And what do you do when your heartbreak has no villain?
When no one lied to you; except your own hope?

You bring it to GOD.
Because He is not the author of confusion,
and He never builds love on illusions.
(1 Corinthians 14:33)

You heal; not just silently; but surrendered.
You lay the false dreams at His feet.
You untangle the vines you wrapped around someone who was never yours.
You stop calling it love.

Because God is love (1 John 4:8),
and He does not hide behind maybes.
He does not whisper in what-ifs.
He does not tease your heart with shadows.

Love shows up.
Love commits.
Love honors.
And real love, God's kind, is never silent when it's present.

God didn’t create your heart for hunger.
He didn’t wire you to live in loops of longing.
There’s a reason He said,
“Above all else, guard your heart…” (Proverbs 4:23)
Not to keep it locked away;
but to keep it aligned with truth.

Because when the mind falls in love without His permission,
the heart often pays the price.

I once loved someone
who didn’t even know they were being loved.
And in that strange space between imagination and affection,
I lost a part of myself I didn’t realize I had offered.

But I’m taking it back now.
Not bitterly. Not angrily. But with God.

Because He restores.
He heals.
He gathers the fragments of hearts we gave away and says,
“I will make you whole again.” (Jeremiah 30:17)

So if you’ve ever loved someone who never held your hand,
if you’ve ever stayed up rewriting messages you never sent,
if your heart is bruised by someone who never touched it;
you’re not foolish.
You’re just healing.
And God sees you.

Healing begins
when you stop calling it love,
and start calling it what it was:
a lesson.
A longing.
A season. But not your forever.

Because forever is found in the One
who loved you first
and will never love you less.
(Romans 5:8)

~ For every soul who loved without being loved back; this is your closure and your call to healing in Christ.❤

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Beyond the disguise, beyond the ache; He was always there🥰

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