My relationship with my LO has been going on 4 years. I don't consider myself limerent for him anymore, but he is a part of my life in that he periodically sends me memes on IG. We hardly know each other, hardly friends and hardly lovers.

I once tried to drunk makeout with him in a parking lot. The day after he cut contact on social media, but never blocked me. I should have just blocked him on all platforms at that very moment, and my life may have gone another path. I always told myself I didn't need to go NC, since we had no real relationship and rarely saw each other. So I didn't.

And now here we are, 4 years later, and it's been a slow, gradual thing, but he's slipped into my DMs, I've slipped into his, there's been a lot of slipping. Never anything sexual, never hinting that he wants something more. Just the slow drip, drip, drip of memes and breadcrumbs that give him enough validation that I guess he needs in his life. Why do I put up with it? Well, I have 5 or 6 friends that I send memes to on IG, so it seems harmless enough. Also, my limerence was in part because his initial rejection of me triggered something in my past and became this impossible mountain for me to overcome. So now that intermittent reinforcement has swung the pendulum back, he's the one constantly seeking me out and messaging, it's finally soothing the rejected part of me. In a way I feel I've gotten revenge on his hot/cold texting.

There's a super dark side of me that really wants to fuck with him and intermittently reinforce the fuck out of him now that I know how well it works. But I'm human, I have empathy, I see that he's avoidant, that he has social anxiety, that he has fear, and I'm not so cold as to want to manipulate him. But it's a fantasy I'll share here, because I know some of you can relate. Anyone care to indulge my revenge fantasy? Did anyone ever learn enough about limerence and human behavior and use it to intermittently reinforce their LO?

Once again, I'm not going to do this, I see this sub as a safe space where I can explore the dark thoughts and then let go of them.