Lifelong Limerence

The involuntary obsession with another person

I picked up the phone before sunrise. It was a school day. The kids weren't awake yet.

“Oh my God,” the voice said. “It's really you.”

I woke up unusually early this particular morning. It was between night and dawn. I saw an email from an alias. I am used to people from the past reaching out. Usually, the alias comes with something cruel and snarky, with no signature.

Three emails:

“This is Eric.”

“I love your writing.”

“May I call you?”

Once I saw his name, my heart rose to my throat, and then my ears. It felt like jumping in a rising elevator as a kid.

I am hesitant to call him the love of my life because our relationship was unhealthy. I was codependent in our relationship. We both indulged in substances to excess. That said, my love for this person is unparalleled.

Twenty years ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, I was married when we met. We both remember the first moment. The giddiness. His surprise when he felt my wedding ring as we shook hands.

In the moment, in that precious and unforgettable moment, I fell in love and in obsession with him.

If you were to celebrate the holidays with my ex-husband, I would be spun into an adulteress and villain. It was much more innocent and cosmic than that.

Simple people need villains. There are no villains in this story.

I've written about our relationship in the past, and I will likely write about it again, but he has emphasized to me how important his privacy is, and I want to honor that.

Therefore, this story is abridged and nonlinear.

“Oh my God,” the voice said. “It’s really you.”

Bad Obsession

A friend once described an attraction to a man: “I could feel myself get wet just sitting next to him.” That is and always will be how I feel about Eric.

Even saying his name puts me under some erotic spell. Eric. Air ic.

We tried dating and tried living together. Our relationship grew intense and eventually exploded after five years. He severed contact in 2009. And I deliberately forgot his phone number, which took a lot of mental work.

I was addicted to him, and continuing without him took several years, several boyfriends, and a lot of writing and blogging.

Every ten years, he sent me an email. He would find my writing online and express gratitude toward a boyfriend for taking care of me.

When those relationships ended in apathy or abuse, I always felt bitter towards Eric for not getting his shit together to be the man we both know I deserve.

Time passed by. Through the years, I've left breadcrumbs of my photos and inner thoughts on different platforms, under different aliases. He watched the YouTube videos I recorded when I was bored and too pregnant to do much but bounce on a fitness ball.

He was there the whole time, like a guardian angel or a ghost. Somehow I felt it.

Diamonds and Rust

When I heard his voice on this cold, foggy, and black morning, Joan Baez’s song burst through my mind:

“Well, I'll be damned Here comes your ghost again.

His voice was the same. All my bitterness and welled-up resentment melted into warm and sticky affection.

He stayed on the phone while I got the kids ready for school — the entire 90 minutes just listening to us.

Later he would say, “I still can't believe you have kids!”

We were wild together. Cocaine and kink. It was the kind of sex you only have once in a lifetime. Part of that was the obsession I carried for him, the total lust for his body and heart. The other part was the total lack of inhibition fueled by substances. He was the one who introduced me to cocaine and Molly, in a bathtub of champagne. And this inspired us to explore role-play.

Those sexual explorations and midnight talks, the reading of my college poetry, and those freckles under his eyes and on his back, it was the kind of trauma bond you bleed for. While it was unhealthy, even toxic, there is still a small part of me that yearns for that level of intimacy, trust, vulnerability and excitement.

“I still can’t believe you have kids!” I laughed and said goodbye. Our day was just beginning. And that concluded our first phone conversation in 15 years.

Love Will Tear Us Apart

Our second conversation was a post-mortem. We spent roughly three to four hours discussing the bad stuff. And there was plenty.

This is usually where the ex-boyfriends scream into the night and vanish with their tails between their legs.

Eric kept calling and chatting. Every night, we spoke honestly for three to four hours.

Once we resolved the negative, our friendship shone through again. I forgot why I fell in love with him. Now, suddenly, I remember.

Not only was he who he was in our best moments, but he was also coming to terms with woke culture as a Midwestern conservative. He now packaged his ideas with great care toward transgender people, women, and people of color.

“We should have gotten married at 18,” he said.

“I read that you lost your job, and I got really worried about you. You need a friend.”

“I just want to hold you.”

“I love everything about you, but what I love about you the most is how you’ve raised happy kids.”

“Do you know how lucky you are? Do you know how many people I know who are desperate to have kids? And you have these two beautiful, happy girls.”

My fence was up and electric. It still is. He was circling around me, peeking in, taking his time, and gently spending all night on the phone with me.

“I miss you. I miss us,” he said.

I felt like parts of my brain imploded. I asked for a break from our talk just to process those words. We got off the phone, and I had to fall asleep to work through the shock of hearing what I always wanted from the man I wanted the most.

To Love Somebody

“We will keep talking on the phone for months until you trust me,” he said.

We talked. We giggled. I send nude pictures, he talks dirty, and we laugh like teenagers. It isn't something I would enjoy with anyone else. Just like the role-play, the light bdsm, that was only ever for him, with him.

“No one wants to take care of another dude's children!” he says.

“That's what I think men say to each other. That's it, right? Because some guys will be hot and heavy until they hang out with their buddies or their family, and suddenly they are radio silent.”

“Yes! That's rule number one. You don't take care of another guy’s kids.”

“Thank you for being honest with me,” I said.

“But I want to take care of yours. I want to be a dad. Or adopt. I don't know. Listening to you with your kids in the car, and when you guys are just hanging out… it's so funny. I don't see that in your writing. I mean, can you write like the way you guys are?”

“I don't know,” I say and I think. And I still think and think.

Back to Black

I started this draft before the holidays and did not publish it because he didn't want to upset the father of my children.

Now, things have changed.

During our calls, he began slurring. He wasn’t listening anymore. He was repeating things, traumas, sad memories.

I asked him to call when he was sober and hung up.

He called and insisted he was just tired. But I know him when he drinks.

The secret about alcoholics is when they are sober, they are the best people you will ever meet. There is an authenticity and humor that doesn't appear in many other people. But when they drink, it is like they channel some kind of dark spirit. The horrible things they say border on bad writing and The Exorcist.

And I can’t believe I am about to write this, but the one thing I learned from the first few seasons of The Kardashians was how to treat someone you love spiraling into addiction. You don’t alienate them. You don’t cut them off. You answer the phone and say, “I can’t talk to you right now. Call back when you are sober.”

So I pick up. And I always tell him I love him. Call me when you are sober.

If you really love me, stop.