One of the most difficult and frustrating things about limerence is that it seems almost impossible to control. Too often our thoughts, words and actions run away with us in moments when obsession takes hold. With our eyes fixed on Jesus, we can exercise self-control consistently, trusting the Lord to fulfill His perfect will.
Limerence and Self-Control Start with Decisions
To make any permanent strides toward successful, consistent self-control, we have to establish the fact that living with ongoing limerence is a decision. Granted, limerence feels very involuntary when out of nowhere a song or movie calls to mind thoughts of our UTHC. Often these thoughts evoke intense emotions as well.
We can trace those thoughts and emotions back to the core of our hearts, what it is we really wanted at any point in our lives. If we closely examine our struggle with limerence, we see a series of decisions that ultimately led to overwhelming desire.
Take my experience as an example. Between the ages of 5 and 23 years, I went back and forth between multiple undesirable life paths. I followed a “limerence decision cycle,” if you will. Hopeless pursuit of the two greatest loves of my life led to attempting to trust God to work out His good will. When that seemed not to work, I turned to new prospective romantic partners, whom I thought could replace those two great loves. In short order, it would become clear that I was in hopeless pursuit once again.
Cycle of One Believer’s Limerence Decisions
1. Hopeless Pursuit
The vast majority of my time was spent being hopelessly in love with one of two major romantic interests. I say ‘hopelessly’ because I had realized and been reminded on several occasions that they would never love me back. Nevertheless, in my heart I pursued them with greater passion than I knew in any other aspect of my life.
2. Attempt to Trust God and Move On
Another direction I took was trying to move on and be patient until God brought me the romantic other I hoped with all my heart He had planned for me. My efforts failed because my hope for requited love remained greater to me than my hope in Christ.
3. Romantic Replacement
After a short while in the process of moving on, inevitably I would feel the need again to replace those major loves with suitable alternatives I thought might be interested in me. Sadly, my heart ended up wounded by rejection from them too. Then I perpetuated the cycle by starting a new hopeless pursuit.
Each part of this decision cycle involved extreme discontentment. What I longed to have with my entire being was requited love. Not getting it (at least not in the way I wanted it) made for a blessed yet distressed existence.
Blessed because everything I needed, including safety, shelter, sustenance, school and satisfactory social interactions, was mine. Distressed, however, because in spite of that provision from God, I couldn’t be truly happy. None of those things mattered to me as much as returned romantic affection.
How Daily Choices Can Prolong Limerence
The “limerence decision cycle” offers a simple overview of the general progression followed by a Christian in limerence. However, it may not be very helpful for those trying to understand how they can catch themselves before going deeper into limerence. So here’s a more practical assessment of how the progression occurred in my life.
Unresolved Doubt
When my first major love told me he wasn’t Christian, I decided I needed to move on. But then doubt crept in as I faced repeated rejection by crushes. Many of my classmates started dating, and I wondered when it was my turn.
I suppose that was the devil’s cue that I could be deceived if he tried hard enough. If and when doubt in God enters your mind, get closer to Him and talk with Him. Otherwise, it is too easy to be lured away and endure very unnecessary heartbreak.
1 Peter 5:8 – “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
Following False Hope
I think I was approaching stability in my romantic pursuits when I decided to take a renewed interest in a certain boy in my class who would have been good for me. It is true that I should have taken a break from trying to start a romantic relationship at all. But that would have been asking too much of me. So, to choose this particular boy to like was, in my opinion, a step in the right direction.
That stability only lasted until my second major love entered the picture. As soon as he delighted me with his politeness, he reignited my hopes and thereby completely changed my life. It may be that Lucifer himself got involved at this point, making an ordinary boy seem like an angel. In any case, I fell hard, deciding he was the one I needed, who could complete me and make my romantic fantasies come to life.
Fighting with One’s Own Strength
I realized he would not return my love and decided to try to move on, many times. Not being strong enough to deal with the recovery from fascination with him, I gave up trying to let go and decided to pursue him again. As Jesus advised His disciples, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41) Only calling upon God’s strength could free me from the cycle for good. (Philippians 4:13)
Self-Control Is Embracing God’s Plans
Each decision to pursue him again strengthened the chains of my love for him, until finally I was too desperate and depressed to live that way anymore. Then I decided to surrender unequivocally to the Lord’s will in the matter. That is when everything really started to change for the better.
I still struggled greatly, tempted to become pessimistic and cynical because I had to sacrifice what I wanted most. At my first job I remember wondering what the point of menial tasks was, because I couldn’t care anymore about such things. The weight of grief and bitterness was too heavy, because I was not clinging to God’s absolutely, amazingly sufficient grace. (2 Corinthians 12:9)
Hebrews 12:15 – “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God. That no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.”
Self-control enabled me to press on, to maintain the positive, youthfully bright-eyed attitude in which I have always reveled. It reminded me to believe in the word of the Lord which I had been taught so faithfully and already known to be true. In other words, self-control was one of the first steps in the process of leaving limerence in the past and instead embracing God’s wonderful plans.
Editor’s Note: This post is Part 1 of the Self-Control theme in the Rebuild Your Heart with the Fruit of the Spirit blog series. Part 2 focuses on how God can take a heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh.
