Chapter 12: Learning Not to Feed the Loop

At 7:28 that evening, Riley reaches for the phone.

The movement is almost automatic.

Avery’s profile is one tap away.

Riley stops.

Nothing dramatic happens.

There is no sudden insight.

No surge of empowerment.

The urge remains.

That matters.

People often imagine that a good coping skill makes the urge disappear.

Sometimes it does.

More often, a skill does something less impressive and more useful:

It helps you avoid turning the urge into behavior.

Riley puts the phone down.

The mind immediately argues.

Just once.

Then:

You already made it this far. Checking now would be stupid.

Then:

What if something actually happened?

Riley notices how quickly the mind can generate a reason.

This is the point where recovery becomes less philosophical.

You already know Avery is partly real and partly projected.

You already understand uncertainty.

Attachment.

Shame.

The Hope Loop.

Insight matters.

Insight does not automatically stop your hand.

Behavior change needs its own practice.

The goal is not thought control

Let’s begin with what we are not trying to accomplish.

You do not need to reach a state in which the person never enters your mind.

That standard is unrealistic and, for many people, counterproductive.

Thoughts happen.

Memories happen.

Attraction happens.

A dream can reactivate feelings you had not experienced in months.

A song can produce an entire body memory in five seconds.

Trying to judge recovery by the complete absence of thought can make ordinary mental events feel like emergencies.

I thought about Avery again. I’m back at the beginning.

No.

You thought about Avery.

The useful measure is what happens next.

Do you spend an hour elaborating the thought?

Check?

Message?

Search?

Cancel a plan?

Use the thought as evidence that Avery is still “the one”?

Or can the thought exist without acquiring the rest of your evening?

Recovery is increasingly about flexibility.

Psychological flexibility is the ability to remain in contact with difficult thoughts and feelings while still behaving in ways that serve your values rather than automatically organizing behavior around relief. Research on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, supports psychological flexibility and reductions in processes such as cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance as meaningful mechanisms of change across many treatment studies. That is not limerence-specific evidence, but the mechanism fits the problem we are addressing well. ⁴³

The thought can be there.

You can still choose.

Regulation before action

When Riley feels the urge to check, the first task is not:

Convince yourself that Avery doesn’t matter.

That argument will probably fail.

The first task is:

Do not let peak activation make the decision.

This is why regulation comes before action.

Regulation does not mean suppressing emotion.

It means helping the body become steady enough for choice to re-enter.

For some people that means movement.

Walk around the block.

Take the stairs.

Stretch.

For someone else it means sensory grounding.

Hold something cold.

Notice the pressure of the chair.

Look around the room and name what is actually present.

For someone else it means slowing the exhale.

For another person it means leaving the device in a different room and taking a shower.

There is no universally correct ritual.

The point is functional:

Can I create enough physical distance from the urge that behavior stops feeling immediate?

If yes, the intervention is doing its job.

The Urge Window

A practical sequence can help.

Notice: There is the urge.

Name: Checking urge. Contact urge. Fantasy urge. Naming changes the grammar. “I need to check” becomes “I am having an urge to check.”

Regulate: Do something that helps reduce the sense of emergency.

Delay: Set a period during which you will not act. Five minutes at first. Then ten. Then longer where appropriate.

Choose: After the delay, ask, What action serves my values rather than just reducing this feeling?

I call this the Urge Window.

It is not a treatment protocol.

It is a practical structure for creating time between activation and behavior.

The window is where agency lives.

Urges are waves, not commands

People sometimes hear “urge surfing” and imagine a peaceful meditation exercise.

It may not feel peaceful.

An urge can spike.

Argue.

Return.

You may feel worse before you feel better.

The useful discovery is not that every urge disappears quickly.

It is that you can experience an urge without completing the usual response.

This matters because the old loop contains a learned expectation:

I feel this → therefore I do that.

The new pattern becomes:

I feel this → I can wait.

Then:

I feel this → I can choose something else.

The first few repetitions may feel clumsy.

That is expected.

A habit that has been reinforced hundreds of times should not be expected to disappear because you understood it once.

Response prevention: useful principle, limited direct limerence evidence

This is where an evidence distinction matters.

Exposure and response prevention, usually shortened to ERP, is a well-established first-line psychological treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder. It involves encountering triggers or uncertainty while reducing the compulsive responses used to neutralize distress.

Some of that logic is clearly relevant to limerence.

The urge appears.

You do not perform the ritual.

You learn that distress can change without checking.

However, ERP has not been established through clinical trials as a standard treatment for limerence.

The direct published treatment evidence is much thinner. A 2021 limerence case study used cognitive-behavioral techniques including response prevention and reported reduced compulsive rituals and dysfunctional thinking at nine-month follow-up. That is encouraging; it is still a single case study, not proof of efficacy across a population. ⁴⁴

So this book will borrow the principle cautiously.

If your pattern involves repetitive checking, reassurance-seeking, or other ritual-like behavior, learning not to perform the response may be useful.

If you have OCD or suspect that you do, formal ERP should be guided by an OCD-informed clinician rather than self-prescribed from a limerence book. ERP is a specialized treatment, and getting the formulation wrong can make treatment less useful. ⁴⁵

That is an important boundary between education and treatment.

Stop solving uncertainty with rituals

Consider how many behaviors may function as rituals even when they do not look clinical.

Checking whether they viewed your story.

Reviewing the last conversation.

Searching their new partner.

Reading old messages.

Asking a friend:

“Do you think they like me?”

Drafting a message repeatedly.

Posting something mainly to see whether they react.

Driving somewhere they might be.

Looking at their schedule.

Checking the same information you already checked.

Each behavior may reduce uncertainty or distress for a moment.

That makes it a candidate for change.

The key question is:

Does this behavior genuinely solve a practical problem, or does it temporarily soothe an emotional one?

If Riley needs to know whether Avery will attend a required meeting, checking the calendar may be appropriate.

If Riley checks the calendar to know whether Avery is avoiding the office because of Riley, the function is different.

Same tool.

Different behavior.

Make the behavior harder

We often overestimate willpower and underestimate friction.

If Avery’s profile is available in one tap, the urge only needs to win for half a second.

Create friction.

Mute.

Unfollow where appropriate.

Archive the message thread.

Remove the app from the home screen.

Disable active-status visibility.

Stop location sharing.

Delete shortcuts.

Block search terms if a tool allows it.

Move photographs to a folder you do not casually encounter.

Take a different route at work.

Do not ask mutual friends for updates.

If no contact is required, block the routes that make violating the boundary easier.

Environmental design can feel almost embarrassingly basic compared with the emotional complexity of limerence.

Use it anyway.

You do not need to prove strength by keeping temptation constantly available.

Alcohol recovery programs do not encourage people to store a favorite bottle on the desk as a test of character.

Changing the environment is not cheating.

It is behavior design.

No contact is not a religion

Few subjects in limerence communities produce stronger opinions than no contact.

Some people describe it as essential.

Others cannot do it.

Others do it and remain intensely preoccupied for months.

A universal rule would be irresponsible.

Contact exists in different contexts.

An ex-partner.

A coworker.

A coparent.

A close friend.

A family member.

A person who has explicitly asked you not to contact them.

Those situations are not interchangeable.

The useful question is:

What does contact do to the loop?

If every interaction produces three days of rumination, contact may be too expensive right now.

If the relationship contains ongoing ambiguity that keeps hope active, distance may be necessary for reality to settle.

If someone has said not to contact them, the decision has already been made.

If contact is unavoidable because you work together, the task may become limiting contact to its legitimate function.

Professional.

Brief.

Clear.

No manufactured reasons to extend it.

No-contact is not a magical detox that erases attachment.

It changes exposure and reinforcement.

Grief still has to happen.

Identity still has to be rebuilt.

If the person has been doing several emotional jobs, removing contact may reveal the full extent of what those jobs were.

That is why the first weeks can feel worse.

Worse does not always mean wrong.

“But what if they think I don’t care?”

This is a common argument the mind produces when reducing contact.

If I stop messaging, they may assume I never cared.

Ask yourself why that matters.

Sometimes it matters for a practical reason.

You are repairing a friendship and need to communicate a boundary respectfully.

Fine.

Sometimes the fear is:

If I stop signaling, the possibility will die.

That may be exactly what needs to happen.

A recovery behavior can feel like abandonment of hope because, in a sense, you are stopping the behaviors used to keep hope artificially supplied.

That is grief.

We should call it grief rather than pretending every painful reduction in contact is merely habit withdrawal.

Fantasy needs response prevention too

External checking is only half the loop.

You can block Avery everywhere and still maintain an entire relationship internally.

Fantasy deserves careful treatment because, as Chapter 3 established, it is not inherently harmful.

The target is not imagination.

It is compulsive or prolonged elaboration that keeps the attachment emotionally active against your own goals.

Avery appears in thought.

Riley notices.

The old response is:

enter the scene.

Build it.

Change the ending.

Replay touch.

Imagine reunion.

The new response may be:

Avery thought.

Then return to the current task.

Not angrily.

Not:

Get out of my head.

More like noticing a familiar road and deciding not to turn down it.

Sometimes the mind goes there anyway.

Notice again.

Return again.

This is repetitive work.

It is also exactly the kind of process ACT calls defusion: reducing the degree to which thoughts automatically control behavior by seeing them as thoughts rather than literal instructions or facts. A 2024 systematic and meta-analytic review of ACT mechanisms found changes in defusion and broader psychological flexibility were linked with reductions in distress across treatment research. Again, this supports the general mechanism, not a specific limerence protocol. ⁴⁶

Do not argue with every fantasy

Some people respond to fantasy with rebuttal.

That would never happen.

Avery isn’t that great.

We’d be miserable together.

This can keep Avery mentally central.

Now you are debating the relationship instead of fantasizing about it.

Sometimes Reality–Story–Unknowns is useful.

Other times, the best response is less analysis.

Maybe.

Maybe Avery misses you.

Maybe not.

Maybe you would have been good together.

Maybe not.

Maybe the chemistry was mutual.

Maybe it was.

You are still going to work.

This is a form of uncertainty tolerance.

You stop trying to win the internal court case.

The case can remain unresolved while your life continues.

Reassurance can become another ritual

Riley tells a friend:

“I just need you to tell me I’m not crazy. Avery definitely liked me, right?”

The friend reassures.

Riley feels better.

The next day, the question returns.

Support is good.

Compulsive reassurance is different.

One clue is whether the same question keeps returning after it has been answered.

If so, ask your support person to help differently.

Instead of:

“Yes, Avery obviously liked you.”

perhaps:

“I can hear that you’re activated. What do you already know about what you’re choosing to do?”

This is less satisfying.

That may be why it is more useful.

Good support does not always eliminate uncertainty.

Sometimes it helps you survive it.

Regulate without creating a new avoidance problem

There is another trap.

You discover that exercise helps.

Great.

Then every Avery thought produces an urgent two-hour workout.

Now exercise may be functioning as another attempt to make thoughts disappear.

Coping strategies can become rigid too.

The goal is not to immediately eliminate every uncomfortable internal experience.

Sometimes you need to feel sad.

Sometimes you need to sit on the couch and miss someone.

Sometimes crying is the regulated response.

Regulation is not anesthesia.

It is the capacity to feel without being pushed automatically into harmful or reinforcing behavior.

That distinction matters.

The difference between willingness and resignation

Acceptance-based approaches use the idea of willingness.

Willingness does not mean liking pain.

It means allowing an internal experience to exist because fighting it has become more costly than carrying it.

Riley may be willing to feel:

uncertainty;

longing;

jealousy;

grief;

shame;

sexual desire;

the urge to contact Avery.

Why?

Because Riley values:

integrity;

Morgan’s autonomy;

Avery’s boundary;

work;

sleep;

self-respect;

the ability to choose.

This is why values matter.

Without a reason to tolerate discomfort, discomfort wins.

Values are not goals

A goal is:

Do not contact Avery for thirty days.

A value is:

Respect.

Integrity.

Presence.

Honesty.

Autonomy.

A goal can be completed.

A value is a direction.

Suppose day twenty-two goes badly and Riley sends a message.

The goal is broken.

The value is still available five minutes later.

Riley can stop.

Own it.

Re-establish the boundary.

Values prevent one mistake from becoming:

I failed, so nothing matters.

This is one of the strongest reasons to orient recovery around values rather than perfection.

What do you want your behavior to stand for?

Imagine Avery never knows about your recovery.

No applause.

No final conversation.

No chance to demonstrate how much you have changed.

What do you want your behavior to stand for anyway?

That question is powerful because it moves recovery away from performance.

Perhaps:

I want to become someone who respects no.

I want to be present with my children.

I want my partner to experience me as trustworthy.

I want to stop arranging my day around another person’s attention.

I want to be able to feel desire without behaving dishonestly.

I want my life to become larger than this loop.

These are values.

They can guide action even while longing remains.

A lapse is not a collapse

You do well for two weeks.

Then check.

The shame voice says:

Nothing changed.

That is inaccurate.

A lapse is an event.

Collapse is what happens when the event becomes a story:

I am incapable of change.

Then:

So why bother?

Then thirty more checks.

Behavioral change is rarely perfectly linear.

The relevant questions are:

What triggered the lapse?

What did it provide?

What boundary failed?

What needs more support?

What can you change now?

A relapse analysis should make the next repetition less likely.

Not make you hate yourself more.

When self-compassion becomes practical

This is where self-compassion earns its place in the book.

Not as soothing wallpaper.

As relapse prevention against shame.

Research on self-compassion-focused interventions finds meaningful reductions in self-criticism across randomized studies, though that evidence is transdiagnostic rather than specific to limerence. ⁴⁷

The practical move sounds like:

I checked. That strengthened the loop. I understand why I wanted relief. I am going to stop now and look at what made tonight harder.

Not:

Poor me, so it doesn’t count.

Not:

I am disgusting.

Compassion without accountability becomes avoidance.

Accountability without compassion becomes shame.

The goal is both.

When you need more help than self-guided work can provide

This book is educational.

Some patterns deserve professional treatment.

Consider seeking a licensed mental health professional when:

obsessive thinking or rituals consume large portions of your day;

you suspect OCD;

trauma symptoms are becoming intense;

depression is severe;

you are unable to function at work or home;

you repeatedly violate contact boundaries despite trying to stop;

you are using substances heavily to manage the feelings;

you are experiencing self-harm or suicide urges;

you are afraid you may harm yourself or somebody else;

a relationship has become coercive or unsafe.

Professional support does not mean limerence is a formal disorder.

It means the mechanisms involved may overlap with problems for which effective treatment exists.

If the pattern contains OCD, treat OCD.

If depression is present, treat depression.

If trauma is driving dysregulation, work with trauma appropriately.

If loneliness is severe, treatment should not ignore loneliness.

The label does not have to do all the clinical work.

What happens when you stop feeding it

At first, perhaps not much.

This can be discouraging.

You stop checking.

Avery is still important.

You reduce fantasy.

You still miss Avery.

You stop engineering contact.

You feel lonely.

The mind says:

See? This isn’t working.

But consider what has actually changed.

You are no longer adding twenty new data points per day.

No new story views.

No status checks.

No fresh comparisons.

No repeated micro-rewards.

No constant rehearsal.

The emotional system is finally being asked to adapt to the information already available.

That takes time.

Grief takes time.

Habits take time.

Identity takes time.

The goal is not to punish the attachment until it dies.

It is to stop continually watering what you are trying to let settle.

The empty space is the next problem

Eventually, there is less checking.

Fewer hours lost to fantasy.

More distance.

And then a surprisingly difficult question appears:

What do I do with all this space?

Riley assumed peace would arrive.

Instead, there is boredom.

Loneliness.

A flat evening.

Morgan watching television.

A phone that no longer contains the same possibility.

This is where recovery can fail if it focuses only on subtraction.

You cannot build a life out of:

don’t check;

don’t fantasize;

don’t message;

don’t think.

Something has to return.

Pleasure.

People.

Purpose.

Novelty.

Competence.

Desire.

Rest.

Curiosity.

A self.

The next chapter is about building what the fixation had gradually displaced.