I confessed and opened Pandora‘s box.

Hi Friends! Honestly, I was so sick with anxiety that I only confessed because I wanted a definitive “no” to finally kill the hope and force me into no contact.

Before this, we had such good days, talking for hours, calling every day, heavy flirting. But then he went to a event and barely spoke to me for a full week and completely silence the week after. The silence was deafening. My anxiety got so loud that I spent the entire week rehearsing the rejection in my head just to survive it. I braced myself for the blow and went into the conversation fully expecting him to say he wasn’t interested.

Instead, he told me he has a crush on me too. And now my brain is completely short-circuiting.

The worst part is that I know, objectively, this isn’t a good match. During the call he admitted he’s emotionally unavailable, immature, and has a pattern of retreating into a cave when he gets overwhelmed.
We’re long distance, in completely different stages of life, and there isn’t a realistic future here.

Somewhere along the way I also put him on a pedestal. I started seeing him as someone whose attention I had to earn, and I filled in all the gaps with fantasy instead of reality. The hot-and-cold dynamic only made that idealization stronger. But also deep down I know this won‘t go anywhere and he has characteristics i really do not like but i loved getting the validation and him desiring me.

But because he didn’t reject me, my brain just got handed a massive fresh supply of dopamine. Instead of the closure I was practically begging for, I got a “what if?” Now the obsession feels even louder than it did when he was ignoring me. I‘m really self-aware but changing my actual patterns is another story..

Has anyone else ever “won” the confession stage with an LO only to realize it made the trap ten times harder to escape? How do you stop idealizing someone when your logical brain knows it’s a dead end, but your limerent brain is throwing a party?

I feel like I just opened Pandora’s box.