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I’ve been on both sides of pedestaling. Pedestaling sucks on both sides. If you find yourself on a pedestal, it’s disorienting. If you find yourself pedestaling someone, it’s compulsive. The person who is pedestaled feels like they shouldn’t be, and the person pedestaling them has an ideal picture of them that they keep expecting and praising. It’s rough, it feels wrong. When I was pedestaled, I felt like I had to be happy all the time – I had to be my best because the relationship was centered around me and if I wasn’t my best, my partner crumbled. When I was the one pedestaling, I was in a sort of mania. I fully believed everything I said in praise of my pedestaled person and I craved any closeness I could get. I took meaning from every interaction and I was enthralled by every thing they were willing to share. I was lost in limerence.
Limerence feels like love. It feels so true and pure to the person experiencing it. I can only imagine the other side of it, though. I haven’t experienced anything like the opposing side of my limerence. My love for people runs deep; my friends, acquaintances, family, and even strangers. So, when I think I’m in romantic love – it goes to 11. I’m in 100%, open heart, open mind, open everything. I don’t hold secrets, or hold back my affections. But, limerence shifts the landscape. I’m not holding anything back, but the limerence makes me blind to my wants and needs in a healthy relationship. It’s so easy to fall into if you’ve experienced similar trauma and have a desire for love.
When I was pedestaled, it was simpler. Y’know how people rank each other? Like, “She’s an 8 and I’m a 4.5, so she’s way outta my league!” My partner seemed to think that I was out of their league. That’s how I ended up being pedestaled. They feared losing the relationship because some day, I was going to “wake up” and leave them. That isn’t what happened. Their insecurities ate away at the relationship, and making me the center created an imbalance that ultimately led to resentment. From the outside, people thought our relationship was excellent. We’re both charismatic individuals that were able to build on each other’s joy. However, the imbalance ate away at our private life. Pedestaling is devastating.
At the end of the day, my partner sacrificed too much to try and make me happy. All that work was in vain because my happiness is not dependent on my partner(s). It’s dependent on me. They centered their happiness on mine, and mine was not stable. Every time I crumbled, there was nothing more they could do to fix me, and that broke them. It wasn’t their burden, it was always mine. By taking it on, they hurt themselves. They couldn’t fix me, that’s my job. It broke us. It broke them, first. Things started unraveling and I started feeling unsafe. We tried, but we were not on the same plane. (Math reference!) We were like two ships passing in the night. We saw each other, but we were never meant to stay together.
Unfortunately, the people I’ve pedestaled were not in relationships with me. It’s almost like that’s the trigger: the potential relationship. They never became relationships because I went all in too fast and they were not narcissistic enough to believe it. Any healthy, normal person, is not going to dive in at 100% immediately. Caution is important. Any sense of awareness is important. I lost those. If we lose ourselves in love, it isn’t real. As I said before, I can’t say I’ve found it, but I know that I will still be me if it’s real love. I won’t lose my interests, my drive, or my silliness. Any healthy relationship is going to support the sides of me that I love. Likewise, I’ll be supporting them in what they want and need, not just fulfilling my own wants and needs through them.
I managed to realize in therapy that my limerence is driven by my insecurities. The more I love myself and feel happy and stable in my core – the less I lose myself in such things. So, you can look back at the “Love Me?” post if you’re working on that, even I am still working on it. I think it’s a constant progression and not a finish line. If we stop working on ourselves, we stagnate. When we stagnate, we can fall into unhealthy patterns and lose ourselves. If real, healthy love comes from security in being oneself and sharing it with another… Find that.
This is a story about my cat.
We love our pets, especially in the US. My cat was like an animal companion in Dungeons & Dragons. We had our own language. I got him as a kitten, born on my boyfriend’s parent’s property. He was the oddball of the litter. There were 3-4 gray tabbies, 2-3 siamese-like kittens, and my gray and white poofball. Cats are so cool. It was a cool experience for me to see the kittens from the beginning, and being such an oddball myself – I wanted to keep the gray poofball as my own. When the kittens were old enough, we started checking their sexes, and it appeared that he was female. I named him “Maiden.” Within a week, we realized he was male and I changed his name to “Leo da Vin,” or Leo, for short. This is the point where I used to make a joke about him changing sex because I picked such a bad name; young S. had weird names for cats.
My first cat was Goldy, then came Snow White, Cinnamon Spice, and finally, Leo da Vin. Leo went with me everywhere when he was a little kitten. I took him in my car, which had no air conditioning, that first summer. Poor thing, he was so overheated in the car in summer. But, he was bonded with me well. He curled up with me, allowed me to carry him into places, and stayed by my side. He was my first baby, my fur baby. He learned to ask before leaping into my lap, and we would “talk” to each other in our own language every day when I got home, or got up, etc. He also drooled more than any cat I’ve ever met; he had a special drool blanket for cuddles. He would follow me around the house, respond to verbal requests; I loved him the most of all my cats. There are many stories about Leo, but I will share the funniest one – that isn’t my own.
Leo lived with me and a roommate in undergrad. This roommate is still one of the people I’m most grateful for having in my life. He wasn’t super-fond of Leo, but he liked him. Leo was an indoor-outdoor cat, so my roommate was somewhat annoyed by the constant need to open the door to let Leo in and out, because Leo was a cat, so he wanted in and out a LOT. One day, my roommate was coming back to our apartment when he saw Leo outside. He watched Leo jump from the ground, to the fence of a first floor patio, off a tree, and onto the roof of the complex. Like a ninja. He tells this story so much better than I can, but the part that always makes me laugh is his description of the dichotomy in the fact that my cat was capable of such insane leaps, but would also “Walk. Into. Doors.” Leo was like me, capable of great things, but also blindly dumb at others.
Love yourself, and avoid the blindness of limerence.
With Love, -S.
