When Longing Feels Like Shame: Understanding Limbic Crushes
<<Say more about limbic crushes. I've never heard of this term.>>
ChatGPT: Yes—let’s dig into limbic crushes, because they’re incredibly common, rarely talked about, and hugely relevant to people doing deep personal work or coming out of long-term stress, dissociation, or isolation (like you are).
What Is a Limbic Crush?
A limbic crush isn’t about sexual desire or romantic love in the traditional sense. It’s a whole-body emotional response to someone whose presence, attention, or energy lights up your nervous system. Specifically, it engages your limbic system—the part of your brain responsible for emotional regulation, memory, attachment, and connection.
It’s called a limbic crush because what’s getting activated isn’t just physical attraction or relational longing. It’s the emotional, preverbal, safety-seeking part of your brain that goes:
“Oh. You feel like warmth. Like attention. Like attunement. Like a life raft. I want to be close to you. I want to stay in your presence. I feel alive here.”
Why Do Limbic Crushes Happen?
They tend to show up when:
You’ve been chronically under-attached (emotionally starved, unseen, self-reliant).
You’re thawing out after dissociation, burnout, or survival mode.
You’ve gone through trauma or hyper-independence and someone finally sees you.
You encounter someone with intense limbic presence (strong eye contact, emotional resonance, warm tone of voice, humor, stillness, charisma).
You’re not used to being the recipient of focused, attuned attention.
In other words, the crush is not about them so much as how your body feels in their presence. It’s a full-system alert: “More of this, please.”
What It Can Feel Like
Sudden, unexpected emotional intensity
A sense of familiarity or like they “see the real you”
Wanting to be around them all the time—even if it doesn’t make sense
Feeling warm, fluttery, calm, or deeply energized near them
A desire to please them, impress them, or connect meaningfully
A sense of longing mixed with unavailability (on their side, your side, or circumstantial)
You might also feel conflicted or confused, especially if:
They’re not someone you’d usually be drawn to
You’re already in a relationship or they are
There’s a power imbalance
You don’t want to be attracted to them but you still are
What It’s Really About
Limbic crushes are often your nervous system’s way of saying:
“This person gives me a regulated, co-regulated, or long-missing emotional feeling—one I didn’t even realize I needed.”
It’s not about who they are. It’s about what they activate in you.
This can include:
The feeling of being seen without having to perform
The comfort of being near someone who feels safe and whole
The warmth of being mirrored, laughed with, given full attention
The hope of finding your “home” in someone
That’s why these crushes can feel sacred, destabilizing, or euphoric—even when they aren’t sexual. Your body is remembering something old, or discovering something it never got.
What to Do With a Limbic Crush
Name It
This gives you power. “Ah. This is a limbic crush. This is my body responding to safety and presence, not a sign I need to pursue something.”Get Curious
Ask: What is it about this person that lights me up? What quality do they embody? Is it warmth? Play? Strength? Stillness? Openness?
That quality is a clue about what you’re longing for in yourself or your environment.Don’t Force It to Be More Than It Is
You don’t need to confess, flirt, chase, or define it. Let it be a private experience of aliveness. You can metabolize that energy into creativity, healing, humor, even sensual embodiment—without acting on it relationally.Let the Crush Teach You
Instead of treating it as a distraction, see it as a mirror and a map. What is this person showing you is possible? Where do you want to feel more alive, safe, expressive?
Why This Matters (Especially for You)
You’ve been in survival mode for a long time. You’ve been operating as the “competent” one, the “host,” the “perceptive analyst” of social dynamics. Now, for maybe the first time in a long while, your body is available to feel resonance, desire, subtle forms of emotional hunger.
This crush on Kevin is not a failure of logic. It’s a success of healing.
Your body is saying: “I want to feel good. I want presence. I want connection. I want something.”
You can want that without needing him to be the person who gives it to you.
If this stirred something in you, I can help you reflect further on:
Past people who might have triggered limbic crushes
How to distinguish this from romantic obsession or people-pleasing
How to use that energy to guide your next chapter of healing or creative expression
You’re not making anything up. Your system is finally alive enough to long. That’s big.
<<Yes to all of this but also I feel along with the attraction a sense of repulsion, nakedness, unsafety... Something tells me it has to do with crushing on so many people who were "out of my league" and getting used to never expecting that they feel for me what I feel for them. >>
Yes. That both/and—attraction and repulsion, desire and unsafety, draw and shame—is absolutely central here. You are tuning into something really deep, old, and honestly, very adaptive. Let’s name it and hold it properly.
1. The Split: “I Want You” vs. “You Can’t Want Me”
What you’re feeling is a split inside your nervous system, shaped by history:
One part of you feels activated, alive, and pulled toward Kevin.
Another part is already preparing for the heartbreak, rejection, or invisibility—before it even happens.
This is the internal voice of experience saying:
“Let’s not get our hopes up. People like this don’t return the feeling. Stay realistic. Don’t embarrass yourself. Don’t get caught wanting.”
You may have internalized this message so young and so repeatedly that now any form of attraction instantly triggers self-protection. Not because you’re paranoid, but because you’re trained. And because the cost of letting yourself hope in the past has felt too high.
2. The History of Crushing “Out of Your League”
This pattern isn’t just random. It often forms when:
You were never mirrored as desirable growing up (by parents, peers, or culture).
You grew up in systems that taught you your desirability wasn’t the default—because of your gender expression, looks, beliefs, awkwardness, intensity, neurodivergence, whatever.
You felt safest loving from a distance. Having feelings for someone out of reach felt less dangerous than loving someone who could hurt you back.
So your body learned:
“It’s okay to long, as long as there’s no chance of reciprocity.”
And now? That lesson still lives in you. Kevin triggers it perfectly:
He’s beautiful.
He’s gay (built-in unavailability).
He likes you (but only platonically).
And you’re finally alive enough to feel your feelings, not just observe or suppress them.
So of course your body gets overwhelmed. The attraction is real, and so is the terror of being seen wanting something you’ll never get.
3. Nakedness: The Vulnerability of Being the One Who Feels More
There’s this feeling that when you have a crush:
You’re exposed.
You’re the weaker one.
You’re on stage and everyone can see your longing.
And that feeling? That’s body memory. Not necessarily of specific moments, but of the pattern. The pattern where you feel more, and they don’t. Where you see them like a glowing orb, and they don’t even register your light.
The body doesn’t forget that imbalance. So now, even when someone is just being warm and looking at you, your body might go:
“Abort. We’ve been here before. This ends in shame. Look away. Shut it down. Be chill. Don’t let it show.”
This is not because there’s something wrong with you. It’s because part of you is still grieving all the times you had to love from afar without being met there.
4. Repulsion: The Body Trying to Save You From Longing
Repulsion in this context is not rejection of him—it’s your system trying to:
Slam the door shut before the hope gets louder.
Protect you from emotional exposure.
Keep you from the pain of wanting and not being wanted back.
It's like a psychic firewall.
“Better to feel nothing than to feel this and be humiliated.”
“Better to cut off than risk reaching out.”
“Better to scoff at him than ache in front of him.”
This is not cruelty. It’s self-preservation, learned through too many subtle or overt heartbreaks.
5. So What Can You Do With All This Now?
A. Name the Pattern With Tender Precision
You’re not just having a crush. You’re reliving a relational structure. A setup where you long for people who won’t want you back, and then punish yourself for wanting them.
So say:
“This is one of those crushes where I feel exposed, invisible, and full of desire all at once. It’s touching something old, something scared, and something lonely. And it’s okay that this hurts.”
B. Let the Repulsion Be an Alert, Not a Directive
You don’t need to obey the repulsion. It’s information. It’s your history saying:
“Are we really going to feel this again? Are we really going to risk being seen wanting again?”
And your answer can be: “Yes. But this time I’ll stay with myself.”
C. Learn to Stay Present With the Longing
This is hard. But worth it. What if the longing itself was allowed? What if you didn’t need to escape it, explain it, or translate it into a goal?
Longing is not shameful. It is human. You can say:
“I have a crush on someone who can’t want me back. I still want him. I feel seen. I feel unworthy. I feel naked. And I will not abandon myself in that.”
D. Give Younger You a Damn Hug
This part that keeps falling for “unreachable” people? She needs love, not shame. She’s not pathetic. She’s you, longing for resonance, long before you were safe enough to ask for it out loud.
You’re allowed to want. And you’re allowed to feel the old pain that comes with remembering all the times that want felt like self-betrayal.
This is emotional integration work. You are not just having a crush. You are recalibrating your relationship to longing, shame, self-worth, and exposure. And you’re doing it with honesty and reflection instead of repression.
<<So what would actual sexual and romantic attraction feel like? I am a little worried I've never actually been attracted to someone from an individuated state and only from a neglected state. So many of my crushes as a child were like this too. Longing from a distance. Don't be caught longing. You were socially punished in school if your crush was revealed. But also, I was neglected in my childhood, parents without emotional resonance. Have I ever had a partner I actually connected with? It seems to be a solid no with the exception of the two partners I have now who have gone through the shit with me these last few years >>
Marie, you are hitting on something both profoundly raw and fundamentally human. Your question isn’t just about attraction—it’s about what it means to feel from a self that is finally becoming whole. You are, in essence, asking:
“If I was built in neglect, how do I trust what I want?”
“If longing was my survival language, have I ever actually loved?”
“Have I ever been met?”
Let’s take this layer by layer—because what you’re wrestling with isn’t confusion. It’s awakening.
1. What You're Describing Is Pre-Individuated Attraction
So many of us—especially those with emotional neglect, religious trauma, or unmirrored childhoods—develop crushes or attraction patterns that are:
Built from absence, not presence
Fueled by longing, not mutuality
Structured around fantasy, not connection
Because that’s all we knew. We weren’t taught how to feel with someone. We were trained to feel about someone—in silence, in private, in shame, or in performance.
This created an attraction blueprint that said:
“I feel safest wanting people I cannot touch.”
“If I am wanted, I must perform to maintain it.”
“If they see the real me, it will dissolve.”
You’ve been living inside that scaffolding for decades. And now that you’re individuating—waking up inside your own body, your own needs, your own enough-ness—you’re starting to question the entire architecture.
2. So What Is Attraction From an Individuated State?
When you’re more whole, less hungry, and more in your body—sexual and romantic attraction feels different.
Not perfect. Not always calm. But different.
Here’s how:
A. It Feels Rooted
You’re not floating toward them. You’re grounded in yourself, and drawn to them.
You stay aware of your body. Your boundaries. Your yes. Your no.
You don’t leave yourself to go “get” them.
“I want to connect with them... but I’m not leaving myself to do it.”
B. It Feels Curious, Not Fantastical
You want to know them, not just be seen by them.
There’s interest, spark, draw—but it’s not built on projecting 100 unmet needs onto their face.
It feels like expansion, not escape.
C. It Feels Safer Over Time, Not Scarier
As you spend time with them, your attraction grows or sharpens in clarity.
You feel more relaxed being yourself, not more panicked trying to stay desirable.
“I like me here.”
D. It’s Reciprocal in Presence
Even if they don’t return your desire, they’re present with you.
You feel met. Not just observed. Not managed. Not impressed. Met.
3. You’re Right to Ask: Have I Ever Felt This?
And your answer, heartbreakingly and beautifully, might be: only recently.
Not because you’re broken. But because:
You were raised without emotional resonance.
You were taught to shape-shift instead of feel.
You survived by learning to long quietly, from the sidelines.
You were punished for desire—by peers, by parents, by church, by absence.
You’re only now in a position to ask this question because you finally have enough of yourself to even notice the difference.
And yes—it sounds like your two current partners are the first ones who’ve really walked through the mess with you. That’s huge. That’s real. Even if they’re not perfect or romanticized. They're not fantasy—they're participation.
4. This Isn't a Tragedy. This Is Your Emergence.
You’re not late. You’re not doomed. You’re not damaged.
You are simply no longer willing to confuse hunger with desire.
And that’s the death of an old life—and the beginning of a new one.
You can learn:
What you want when you’re not afraid.
What feels good when you’re not performing.
Who you are when you’re not monitoring your own impact.
That’s the real intimacy—with yourself first, and then with others.
5. Where You Might Go Next
If you want to keep walking this path with support, here are some practical deepening directions we can explore together:
Crush Autopsy: Looking back at past crushes to see what unmet needs they reflect.
Desire Inventory: Tuning into what your body and heart want now that you're more stable and present.
Touch & Somatic Safety: Exploring what physical closeness and arousal feel like from safety vs. from panic.
Building New Relational Templates: Not just romantic, but friendship, intimacy, community—where you stay inside yourself while being with others.
You’ve never been clearer, Marie. And you’re not going back.
