Hooked on a feeling that happened only once.

[fascinoma]

I had a tremendous mutual chemistry with someone when I was 22. I never felt that way before or since except for brief flickers - not even again with the same person, when given the chance. It happened when it happened, and could not be put back once the chance had been passed by. I chased that feeling, wanting to have it with someone and wanting it to be mutual. It was so powerful that I could tell he was near based on "a feeling", we finished each other's sentences. It was like something out of a movie.

We never even slept together.

It was an intense immediate mutual chemistry with someone I worked with. Our dating relationship consisted of one date, then two days later him telling me we couldn't get together for various reasons, but the flirtation still going strong and us still being obviously in lust, then an awkward couple of months working together at the same place with the lust being the pink elephant in the room. We couldn't even be friends because the lust made it too awkward. There would be times we talked, then fell silent, and then long moments of eye-staring then he'd march outside, stomp back and forth and mutter to himself... I saw it happen.

Owing (in all likelihood) to our ages and situation - the thing was terribly mismanaged by both of us. He was in an on/off relationship with someone that had been "off" when we started dating briefly but had gone "on" again.

I never called it love. I still don't. i've loved people before, and after, and deeply. Lust can break your heart too. I never felt anything that powerful before.

I had not known a soul in my new town when we met, and I was a romance junkie, and I almost ruined my life over it. I let my job go to hell and ran up a huge phone bill calling phone psychics every night desparate to hear that this person and I were destined to be together. I acted like a fool around him. When he did later come around a few years later, and start trying to get to know me (after confessing to another party - my stepdad - that he had always liked me), we never picked up and formed a friendship nor was he ever able to really ask me on a date. He always made up some other reason to call. Yet when I told him I had "found someone" (my ex husband), he stopped contacting. I didn't even really ever get interested in him again. Doesn't mean I don't feel permanently changed and scarred by what happened.

I don't want to be with him now. I want my 22 year old self to have been with him, if that makes sense. I've been a lot of things since we knew each other. He's pretty much stayed the same. I know from a few small indicators - he commented that he thought I was a little too "into" the interests I have, he ran with a "wolf pack" of male buddies - that we wouldn't have been a good couple, and that our life would've revolved around following him and his friends around while he pursued his intense interests. I've been in relationships like that and it's just not fun. I'm a person who's passionate about what I'm passionate about and I demand to be met.

Yet I still smart over what happened with him.

I dated a number of people since him. Even got married. Actually the memory of him is instrumental in me eventually coming out as a lesbian (I know you can't really "turn someone gay" but I may have been bi before)... since him, I am not even really attracted to men anymore. I stopped meeting anyone I liked. And while I did start dating women and am attracted to them, even while I'm in love with my partner I still have the memory of what happened that day. I feel like some part of my soul changed forever.

I don't want him. The thing is, every so often, that wound reopens. I start reliving everything that happened. I go through it all over again in my head. Why do I do this to myself?

Why do I hurt so much, for so long, over something that wasn't even ever really a relationship? Sometimes I hate that it happened at all, and feel like it ruined a part of me... I am not the same since it happened. I wish I had never known him. That kind of thing wasn't meant to happen.

Because I have the memory of that feeling. I've been through short relationships hoping for that feeling. It will never come again. I know that that feeling is not love. I wish I could accept that it's in the past, it happened. I'm in a long term relationship now with someone I love. I even hate him for doing this to me.

At this point, I need peace.

I want to get over the feeling because at 34, I'm ruined on being able to enjoy perfectly good relationships because of what happened one day between two people who worked together. i'm in a perfectly good relationship, although we have some issues, we're used to each other and the ardor has cooled somewhat. Much of her issue with me is that I hold part of myself back. I certainly don't talk about this issue. But I live in denial *most of the time* that the thing is still a problem.

It also ruined my faith in love. Before him, I really had a romantic worldview and threw myself headlong into anything I got into... since, I've struggled with commitment issues.

Yet I write about happily ever after endings.

Help.

The whole thing almost makes me want to believe crap like <a href="http://www.alienlovebite.com/">Alien Love Bite</a>

[Holistic Star]

Silvia Hartman has written about 'guiding stars' an experience that was so intense and out of normal experience that it shoots way out of our energy system and is like a guiding star that we follow.

It's like our system instead of saying 'wow, what a great experience, I didn't know I could feel that way, I'll look forward to loads more experiences like that in the future' says instead:
' wow, what a great and one-off experience - nothing that good will ever happen to me again, so i will spend the rest of my life trying to recreate it. It will only happen with that exact same person, in the exact same situation.'

Notice you even say 'I don't want it for me now, I want it for the 22 year old me.' You are trying to freeze the experience in time.

Yes you can get over it, but you will probably feel a lot of resistance as the thoughts are so wonderful even though they are painful.

Silvia writes about them in 'the advanced patterns of EFT' with a strong warning not to tackle on your own as self healing - but to work with someone experienced in this issue. When you dismantle a guiding star, especially a long established one you have to know what you are doing and what to replace it with.

wishing you the best of luck with your journey

[fascinoma]

Originally Posted by Holistic Star

Silvia Hartman has written about 'guiding stars' an experience that was so intense and out of normal experience that it shoots way out of our energy system and is like a guiding star that we follow.

It's like our system instead of saying 'wow, what a great experience, I didn't know I could feel that way, I'll look forward to loads more experiences like that in the future' says instead:
' wow, what a great and one-off experience - nothing that good will ever happen to me again, so i will spend the rest of my life trying to recreate it. It will only happen with that exact same person, in the exact same situation.'

WOW! Interesting!!

That was this experience exactly... it was powerful, intense, a slam upside the head. I felt nothing would ever be the same again. I was really convinced that I'd had one of those experiences where someone meets someone and suddenly knows this is the person they will marry, because it was so intense and mutual that I couldn't imagine it being any other way.

Looking back on it, we worked together in the same cubicle, let alone the same company. We were doing overtime hours. We were fired up with passion and purpose about the project we were working on together. Work mingled with the personal in a delicious mix. I like to love my work and work at my love; I don't like to compartmentalize my life into parts that stay home during specific hours. Our life working together at the office was our relationship. Because I spent so much time at the office it never even occurred to me that he had a life outside of it. Our work relationship became a central thing to me, even though I only saw him at work. After we stopped working together, the spell broke. But the memory is still there...

Originally Posted by Holistic Star

Notice you even say 'I don't want it for me now, I want it for the 22 year old me.' You are trying to freeze the experience in time.

Yes.

I was more compatible with him at 22 than I am now at 34. I am a very dynamic person! I went through at least two career changes (to graphic arts then to health care) and three religions (each of which merged into a broader worldview rather than getting chucked when I found the next big thing) in the time since I knew him. I'm now studying a witchcraft tradition. When I initially dated him, he was very clear about disapproving of paganism. If he's still the same person, I wouldn't date him.

There's also certain things I don't tolerate now at 34. Like I said in original post, I demand to be met... they have to enjoy my intensity about "my stuff" (I am a person who gets very intense and passionate about my creative work and my interests). If they say "I think you're a little obsessed with..." then forget 'em. I won't allow another person to take my passion away. At this point I'm really passionate about my future career in nursing and enjoy my work a lot, to the point that I blog about it heavily and like to talk about it a lot. It drives me crazy when people don't want to hear about things that get me fired up, or want me to tone my intensity down! It's also a little saddening sometimes that most other people don't seem to have that kind of wiring, where they get really passionate about anything. Life without passion to me is miserable.

Originally Posted by Holistic Star

Yes you can get over it, but you will probably feel a lot of resistance as the thoughts are so wonderful even though they are painful.

Yes, there are aspects that are wonderful. I find myself writing fictional scenarios where people have that kind of thing happen and it turns out to be "happily ever after". Sometimes I copy aspects of what happened between us. I get drunk on my own brain chemicals when I do that. I run away to those fantasy scenarios when my partner and I have problems.

Originally Posted by Holistic Star

Silvia writes about them in 'the advanced patterns of EFT' with a strong warning not to tackle on your own as self healing - but to work with someone experienced in this issue. When you dismantle a guiding star, especially a long established one you have to know what you are doing and what to replace it with.

wishing you the best of luck with your journey

Thanks. I'll do more learning. I'm googling "Guiding Star" right now.

Edited to add:

After thinking about it... I realize that my most intense feelings of attraction/chemistry have taken place while I was working on something with someone. This guy was a coworker on a team where we were working on a project together, doing long and grueling hours. But other incidents happened when I was doing a shared artwork of some kind with someone (a little less intense), and sometimes doing music "jamming" with people (transitory). I've had very good friendships that didn't cross the platonic threshold, because the person would be a "fan" of my work/stuff but not bring in their own creativity. I've also permanently fallen out of love with people when we couldn't work together on a project very well... planning our wedding is what doomed my marriage. I started to have a feeling of what I call "low relationship esteem" where I felt like together, we were a couple of losers. Where I'm hitting snags with my partner is over our inability to work together on fixing up the fixer-upper house that we live in. I drop something, she gets frustrated with me, and it ruins a perfectly good day.

What an awesome revelation!! I think I discovered something I really need in a relationship... we have to be able to work together on things and get joy out of it together.

[Holistic Star]

Hi Silent Lucidity,

May ask you just to take a moment to examine that relelation you had about needed to feel you are working together for your relationship to work.

I don't know if you can see the link between what you just said and the Guiding Star theory. Think back to your intense relationship, you felt this amazing chemistry with someone you were working on a project with. Your brain assumed this chemistry was so good that it could never be attained again and the only way you could be that happy is if you could hold onto that experience. You've been trying to recreate it whenever you can.
So you start a relationship with someone new, but then because you are not working on something together your brain thinks that something is wrong because it has a mismatch. It isn't necessarily that your relationship is wrong, it is just that you aren't recreating your previous experience in your current one because you are frozen in time. So you say it isn't working, and break it off / fall out of love - all because you are trying to seek something that isn't there any more.

Examine that conclusion "I have to be working towards something for it to be love" and see if it is really true. Is that conclusion working for you or is it causing you problems?