Chapter 9: What It Feels Like to Become Someone’s Fantasy
At first, Avery likes the attention.
Why wouldn’t they?
Riley listens in a way that makes people feel interesting.
Remembers tiny details.
Sends thoughtful messages.
Laughs hard.
Seems genuinely happy when Avery walks into the room.
There is warmth between them.
Maybe attraction too.
Avery is not pretending otherwise.
That matters.
This is not a story in which one person imagines an entire relationship with a stranger who has shown no interest.
There is something real here.
That is what makes the next part harder.
Avery gradually begins noticing that ordinary behavior no longer feels ordinary around Riley.
If Avery replies quickly, Riley brightens.
If Avery takes longer, Riley asks whether everything is okay.
If Avery mentions spending time with somebody else, something changes in Riley’s face.
If Avery has a bad day and seems withdrawn, Riley becomes unusually worried.
Avery starts reassuring before reassurance has been requested.
“Just tired. Nothing you did.”
The first few times, it feels thoughtful.
Then Avery realizes something:
I am managing the meaning of everything I do.
That is the beginning of a different kind of relationship.
Being intensely seen is not always the same as being known
There is something deeply flattering about another person’s focused attention.
They remember what you ordered.
Notice your haircut.
Know when your mood shifts.
Remember the name of the teacher you hated at sixteen.
Ask what happened after the story you told last week.
Many people would love more of that attention in their relationships.
The problem is not being noticed.
The problem is what happens when attention stops serving curiosity and starts serving prediction.
Riley is no longer merely interested in Avery.
Riley studies Avery.
What does that tone mean?
Why is Avery quieter?
Was that smile different?
Who is Avery texting?
Why did Avery leave early?
When did Avery start following that person?
From Riley’s side, this may feel like extraordinary sensitivity.
From Avery’s side, it can begin to feel like being under observation.
There is a strange loneliness in that position.
You may be the most watched person in someone’s emotional world and still feel that they are not fully seeing you.
They are seeing:
what your behavior means about them.
Whether you are moving closer.
Whether you are moving away.
Whether hope remains available.
Your ordinary actions start becoming evidence in another person’s internal case.
You are present as a person.
You are also being used as information.
That can become exhausting.
The pedestal changes shape
A pedestal sounds positive.
You put someone up high because you admire them.
But a pedestal is also a place where normal movement becomes dangerous.
Avery is kind.
Riley experiences Avery as exceptionally kind.
Avery is emotionally perceptive.
Riley experiences Avery as the only person who truly understands.
Avery is attractive.
Riley experiences Avery as almost uniquely desirable.
The difference may seem small until Avery acts outside the role.
Avery forgets something.
Riley is hurt far beyond what the mistake would normally justify.
Avery is impatient.
Riley seems shocked.
Avery sets a limit.
Riley interprets the limit as evidence that the relationship was never real.
This is the problem with being idealized.
The version of you that lives in the other person’s mind can become difficult to inhabit.
You are expected to remain warm enough to preserve their belief.
Available enough to protect them from uncertainty.
Attuned enough to recognize distress before they explain it.
Careful enough not to accidentally create hope.
Careful enough not to accidentally destroy it.
No person can do this indefinitely.
The pedestal eventually reveals itself as a narrow platform.
There is very little room to move.
The pressure to perform
Avery starts thinking before replying.
Not:
What do I want to say?
But:
How will Riley take this?
A simple message becomes a strategic exercise.
If Avery is too warm, will Riley read it romantically?
If too brief, will Riley spiral?
If Avery mentions a date, will Riley become distant?
If Avery does not mention the date and Riley finds out later, will that become another problem?
The relationship gradually acquires a performance requirement.
Avery has to be responsible not only for what Avery means, but for how Riley might interpret it.
This is too much responsibility for one person.
Communication does require care.
If you know somebody has feelings for you, it is reasonable to avoid deliberately sending contradictory messages for your own gratification.
Kindness matters.
Clarity matters.
But another person’s emotional regulation cannot become the price of your ordinary autonomy.
Avery should be allowed to be tired.
Busy.
Interested in somebody else.
Unsure.
Less available.
Happy without Riley.
Upset for reasons unrelated to Riley.
Human.
When those normal states create disproportionate consequences, the fixated-upon person may begin shrinking their own range.
That is where idealization stops feeling like admiration.
It begins feeling like obligation.
When kindness becomes a contract you never signed
Suppose Avery knows Riley is hurting.
Avery cares.
The natural impulse is compassion.
Maybe Avery sends a reassuring message.
Spends an extra hour talking.
Says:
“I don’t want you to think you don’t matter to me.”
Riley feels better.
Avery feels relieved.
Then the same need returns.
This is where compassion can quietly turn into a job.
Avery begins feeling responsible for preventing Riley’s pain.
If Avery creates distance, Riley suffers.
Therefore Avery stays closer than Avery wants.
That feels kind in the short term.
But the relationship now contains a hidden rule:
Your boundary is allowed only if the other person can tolerate it.
That is not a workable rule.
Boundaries frequently disappoint people.
Sometimes they hurt badly.
A boundary can be loving and still cause grief.
Avery cannot guarantee both:
I will act according to what I genuinely want and can offer
and:
Riley will never be hurt by that.
No relationship can guarantee both.
This is where guilt becomes powerful.
The guilt trap
Guilt can be healthy.
If you harm someone, guilt may tell you that your behavior violated your values.
But people can also feel guilty for causing pain when they have done nothing wrong.
Avery says:
“I don’t want to text every night anymore.”
Riley cries.
Avery feels guilty.
But what is the guilt claiming?
That Riley’s pain proves the boundary is wrong?
It does not.
Pain tells us that something hurts.
It does not automatically tell us who has behaved badly.
This distinction is crucial for people who become the emotional center of someone else’s fixation.
You are allowed to disappoint somebody.
You are allowed to say no to a relationship they desperately want.
You are allowed to reduce contact.
You are allowed to protect your current partnership.
You are allowed to stop discussing their feelings with them.
You are allowed to change your mind.
You are allowed to decide that a dynamic has become too intense for you.
Another person’s sadness does not make those choices cruel.
Avery can care about Riley’s pain without becoming responsible for eliminating it.
That is the difference between compassion and obligation.
Compassion says:
I care that this hurts you.
Obligation says:
Because this hurts you, I must give you what you need from me.
Those are not the same thing.
When the person starts managing the weather
Remember how Riley began experiencing Avery as emotional weather?
Now imagine the other side.
Avery learns that Avery’s behavior changes Riley’s weather.
A warm message creates sunshine.
A missed reply creates a storm.
A boundary creates collapse.
A new romantic interest creates panic.
Soon Avery begins monitoring Riley’s forecast.
Is Riley okay?
Will this upset Riley?
Should Avery wait to mention something?
Should Avery soften this?
Maybe send another reassuring sentence?
The emotional responsibility starts moving in both directions.
Riley monitors Avery.
Avery monitors Riley’s response to being monitored.
This can become enmeshment.
Enmeshment is a relationship pattern in which the boundary between one person’s emotional life and another’s becomes difficult to maintain.
Avery’s freedom begins depending on Riley’s stability.
Riley’s stability depends on Avery’s behavior.
Both people become less free.
That is not intimacy.
It is mutual constraint.
Boundary fatigue
One boundary is usually manageable.
Ten negotiations about the same boundary are different.
Avery says:
“I can’t talk tonight.”
Riley asks why.
Avery explains.
Riley asks whether something is wrong.
Avery reassures.
Riley asks whether Avery is upset.
Avery says no.
Riley says:
“I just feel like you’re pulling away.”
Avery explains again.
Twenty minutes later, the original boundary—I can’t talk tonight—has required a full emotional processing session.
The next time Avery is tired, it may feel easier just to answer.
This is how boundaries can erode without anyone explicitly saying:
“You are not allowed to have limits.”
The cost of holding the limit becomes higher than giving in.
That is boundary fatigue.
A person becomes tired of defending ordinary separateness.
This is especially concerning when another person’s “no” is repeatedly treated as the opening offer in a negotiation.
A boundary does not always require agreement.
Sometimes it simply requires respect.
“I only need reassurance”
Riley may not experience any of this as pressure.
Riley may think:
I’m just asking for reassurance.
And perhaps Riley is.
But frequency and consequence matter.
One request:
“Hey, you seem quiet. Are we okay?”
Normal.
Repeated demands for reassurance after Avery has already answered:
different.
Avery knowing that insufficient reassurance will produce anger, despair, repeated contact, self-attack, or punishment:
more different still.
Requests stop feeling fully optional when saying no reliably produces a serious emotional consequence.
That does not mean Riley is consciously manipulating Avery.
Intent matters morally.
Impact matters relationally.
A person can create pressure without waking up in the morning planning to pressure anyone.
This is why understanding patterns rather than villains is useful.
We can say:
Riley is genuinely distressed.
and:
Avery is genuinely becoming constrained.
Both statements can be true.
The loss of ordinary friendship
This is one of the sadder outcomes when limerence develops in a friendship.
Before the fixation became explicit, Avery could simply send a message.
Now every message carries potential meaning.
Before, Avery could hug Riley.
Now the hug may become a week of analysis.
Before, Avery could mention dating.
Now dating becomes relationally charged.
Before, the friendship had ordinary spontaneity.
Now both people are aware that any increase in closeness may feed hope and any decrease may cause pain.
The friendship begins losing its innocence.
This is difficult for Avery too.
Avery may genuinely miss what the relationship used to be.
That grief can create mixed behavior.
Avery pulls back.
Then misses Riley.
Reaches out.
Riley experiences renewed hope.
Avery feels the intensity return.
Pulls back again.
Neither person may be trying to hurt the other.
The cycle still hurts.
Sometimes the kindest choice is not the warmest choice in the moment.
Avery may need to tolerate being misunderstood as distant in order to stop participating in a pattern that keeps reopening hope.
That can be painful.
Clarity often is.
The strange burden of being “the only one”
Riley says:
“You’re the only person who understands me.”
This is meant as love.
Avery hears pressure.
If I am the only one, what happens if I leave?
If I am the only one who can calm Riley down, what happens when I am unavailable?
If I am the only person Riley can talk to, can I ever take space without becoming cruel?
Statements of exclusivity can sound romantic because our culture often treats them as evidence of exceptional connection.
Sometimes they are.
But they can also reveal dangerous concentration.
No one person should have to be:
your entire support system;
your only source of emotional regulation;
your sole witness;
your reason to stay alive;
your complete identity;
your proof of worth.
That is too much responsibility to place on anyone.
Even someone who loves you.
Especially someone who has not agreed to be your partner.
When concern becomes fear
Most people experiencing limerence do not become threatening.
This needs to be stated clearly.
Intrusive thoughts are not the same as intrusive behavior.
Intense longing is not stalking.
Fantasy is not violence.
Most people who struggle with limerence are dealing with their own distress, not plotting to harm another person.
But some patterns can escalate.
Researchers use the term obsessive relational intrusion, or ORI, to describe repeated pursuit of intimacy with someone who does not want that level or type of intimacy. Stalking is related but generally involves a repeated course of unwanted behavior associated with fear, threat, or substantial distress. 36
This adjacent literature matters because some behaviors that feel like “trying to stay connected” from one side can feel invasive from the other.
Repeated unwanted messages.
Showing up unexpectedly.
Using mutual friends to get information.
Monitoring social media obsessively.
Tracking location.
Creating new accounts after being blocked.
Following someone.
Pressuring them to explain a boundary again and again.
These behaviors are not inevitable outcomes of limerence.
They are not excused by limerence either.
Once another person has clearly withdrawn consent for contact, the relevant question changes.
It is no longer:
How strong are my feelings?
It is:
Am I respecting their autonomy?
The surveillance line
Digital life makes this line easy to blur.
There is a difference between seeing a public post that happens to appear in your feed and organizing your day around monitoring someone’s online activity.
There is a difference between knowing someone’s usual routine and deliberately tracking where they are.
There is a difference between mutual location sharing and continuing to use location information after the person no longer wants that access.
Technology can turn emotional vigilance into actual surveillance.
The U.S. Department of Justice explicitly recognizes technological monitoring, tracking, repeated unwanted messaging, and social-media monitoring as behaviors that can occur in stalking and abuse contexts. 37
Again, context and pattern matter.
Looking at an ex’s Instagram after a breakup does not automatically make someone a stalker.
But if the behavior becomes repeated, unwanted, invasive, frightening, or designed to bypass another person’s attempt to create distance, it has crossed into a different ethical territory.
Your pain does not authorize access.
Avery gets to exist outside the story
This may be the central principle of the chapter.
The person you are fixated on has an interior life that does not belong to your narrative.
Avery’s silence may have nothing to do with Riley.
Avery’s new relationship is not necessarily a message to Riley.
Avery’s boundary is not a puzzle designed to reveal hidden desire.
Avery’s autonomy is not abandonment.
Avery’s disappointment is not betrayal.
Avery’s compassion is not consent to more intimacy.
Avery’s attraction, if it exists, is not a promise.
This is difficult because limerence makes the person’s behavior intensely meaningful.
Recovery gradually restores something simpler:
They are a person having a life.
Sometimes that life includes you.
Sometimes not as much as you want.
That reality can hurt.
But it also gives the other person back their humanity.
If you are the person being idealized
You may be reading this chapter from Avery’s side.
If so, perhaps you have spent months trying to find the exact amount of kindness that will soothe someone without encouraging them.
There may not be one.
That is not necessarily a failure of communication.
Sometimes there is no configuration in which you can simultaneously give a person the closeness they want and maintain the distance you need.
You are allowed to choose clarity.
You are allowed to stop explaining the same boundary.
You are allowed to seek support from someone outside the relationship.
You are allowed to document behavior that frightens you.
You are allowed to take unwanted pursuit seriously even if the person pursuing you is deeply distressed.
You are allowed to care and leave.
The other person’s pain deserves compassion.
Your autonomy does not require their permission.
The next chapter develops that distinction more carefully because there is a point where “intense feelings” stops being the most important description of what is happening.
The feeling may still be intense.
But behavior has entered another person’s space.
And once that happens, love, attachment, fear, and pain all have to answer to boundaries.