The Over Achievers Trap
The Smartest Woman in the Room Can't Think Her Way Out of Limerence
Issue #2
He had told me that he did not want a relationship. I heard it, but I didn’t really hear it.
I just started working on ways I could show him he was wrong. Not directly tell him he was wrong, but subconsciously figure out a way to prove to him that he needed me. What could I say to show him how much I cared? What did I need to do to get him to change his mind?
It wasn’t the rejection but my response to it. Because my response was not to be sad about it, or accept it, or walk away. My response was to start drafting the email of all emails that would finally explain things correctly. To have the conversation that would make him understand. To find the exact right sequence of words that would shift something in him so that he would finally get it.
I spent hours on drafts of this email he never saw. I would get close to something and then delete and start over because it wasn’t quite right yet. Too much. Not enough. Wrong tone. I would think about what he might say back and prepare for that too, and then prepare for the response after that. I ran the whole thing out in my head over and over, like a madwoman, every version ending the same way, with him finally understanding the real me, with things finally making sense to him.
The email I eventually sent landed nowhere near where I had aimed.
The problem was never the wording. I was trying to explain my way into something that explanation could not reach. He had already told me where he stood. My brain, which is very good at finding solutions to problems, had decided this was a problem it could solve if I just worked on it a little longer, tried a little harder, found the right angle. It could not. There was no angle. There was no solution. I just didn’t know that yet.
The Problem-Solving Brain
Limerence takes everything you are good at and points it in the wrong direction. Understanding how the trap works is the only way to stop it, because you cannot interrupt something you cannot see. When you are in the middle of a limerent episode, the drafting and redrafting feels productive. The rehearsed conversations feel necessary to get things just right. It takes a long time to realize that all of that effort was not moving you forward. It was just keeping the cycle running, and keeping you from healing.
High-achieving women are not more susceptible to limerence because we are weak. We are susceptible because we are strong in exactly the wrong ways for this particular situation.
We are trained to close the gap between where something is and where it could be. We see an unsolved problem and we work on it, because working on things until they are solved has always been the answer. It has built our careers. It has gotten us through hard things. It works.
Limerence looks, to an achieving brain, like a problem that hasn’t been solved yet.
Uncertainty is at the core of limerence. It is the essential feature that triggers and sustains the whole thing. So we investigate and gather more data. We analyze patterns in his behavior, in his response times, in his word choices. We try a different approach. And when that doesn’t work, we try a smarter one.
We cannot solve our way out of limerence. But we will exhaust ourselves trying.
There is a second part worth mentioning. High achievers are rarely in situations where effort makes things worse. When working harder has reliably produced results, the idea that it is actively keeping you stuck is hard to accept. That your best qualities are the exact thing making it worse is not a conclusion anyone arrives at easily or quickly.
So the analysis continues. The drafting continues. The imaginary conversations continue. The very qualities that make you a badass at everything else become the engine that keeps the cycle running.
Here is what makes this particularly hard to see when you are inside it. In every other area of your life, persistence is the right answer. You did not get where you are by walking away from hard things. You got there by staying, by working, by finding the approach that finally worked when the others didn’t. That history is exactly what limerence exploits. It presents itself as one more hard thing that just needs the right approach. One more problem that hasn’t been solved because you haven’t found the solution yet.
But there is no solution. Not because you aren’t smart enough to find it, but because it doesn’t exist. The situation is not a problem with an answer waiting at the end of enough effort. It is a pattern running in your nervous system that feeds on exactly the kind of engaged, persistent attention you are very good at giving it. Every hour you spend analyzing is another hour the pattern gets to keep running. The analysis is not progress. It is fuel.
There is also something worth saying about what it costs to finally see this clearly. Because the moment you understand that your best qualities have been sustaining the thing that is costing you so much, there is a grief in that. About the time. About how capable you are and how little that protected you. That grief is real.
But understanding how the trap worked is not a reason to feel foolish. It is the first requirement for getting out. You are starting that process now. And that matters more than it might feel like it does right now.
Are You Using Your Intelligence Against Yourself? A Simple Checklist
— I spend significant time rehearsing conversations with him in my head: what I’ll say, what he’ll say, how I’ll respond.
— I analyze his behavior, his word choices, or how long he takes to respond — looking for what it actually means.
— I believe that if I explain myself more clearly, or frame things differently, he will finally understand and something will change.
— I have drafted and re-drafted messages, sometimes for an hour or more, before sending, deleting, or saving them.
— I have built a case, using real evidence, for why the situation makes sense, or why he actually does care, despite what the surface suggests.
— I feel that this situation is unresolved because I haven’t found the right strategy yet. Not because the situation itself is the answer.
— I know, intellectually, exactly what is happening. And I am doing it anyway. The knowing does not stop the doing.
If you checked most of these: you are not failing. You are applying a very well-developed set of skills to a situation that does not respond to skill. That distinction matters more than it might seem right now.
The work ahead is not about getting smarter about the situation. It is about recognizing that the situation is not the problem to solve.
Until next week, take good care,
Love, Leslie
Nothing in this newsletter constitutes mental health treatment. Please work with a qualified professional for clinical support. Trust yourself first.
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