Member-only story
The Chasing Game: why you can’t keep texting your ex, even if you love them
Limerence and why you really want that wo/man who left
Once I lay in bed as a man cradled my head in his large American hands and kissed my neck, staring into my eyes with that swollen black-pupilled intensity that made my heart sink. Fuck. I knew that look, I’d seen that on another man’s face a month before. A man I loved. “I’m obsessed with you,” he said. “I’m totally obsessed with you.” I smiled, and felt awful.
Because I really, really wanted to feel the same way.
I hadn’t meant to hurt him. I hadn’t meant it to get this intense, this quickly. But he liked me, a lot, and I could tell I was up on the pedestal of future wife, goddess, bride, lover. His lips brimmed with the longing to kiss me and I was soon too exhausted to bat his hands away from my legs and waist. I lay there limp like a doll and took every inch of his adoration and delight. I was beautiful, extraordinary, perfect, fascinating, intoxicating. The adjectives ran from his mouth and left a cloying sadness in my ears, because he wasn’t the one I wanted to say them. It was way too much, way too soon, but I wanted to be held, I wanted to be kissed, I wanted to be wanted after being heartbroken by someone else. I’ll call that ‘someone else’ Barry. That’s not his name…
