What to Do When You’re In Love With Someone Who Can Ruin Your Life

Work is one of the worst places to fall for someone you can’t—or shouldn’t—pursue. It can destroy your happiness, harm theirs, devastate your spouse, and even cost you your job. The situation is far more dangerous if you’re prone to limerence: becoming romantically obsessed with someone in an addictive way, particularly when that person is off-limits. This pattern often shows up in people who experienced neglect or abuse growing up. Today’s letter comes from a man I’ll call Scott, who is dangerously close to blowing up the good parts of his life. He writes, “Dear Anna, I’m reaching out about a struggle I’ve had for some time: limerence. Even after six months of no contact with the person involved, the feelings remain and I don’t know how to progress in my recovery.” I’ve marked a few things I want to revisit, but here’s the situation Scott describes. He’s in his early 40s, married and childless. Both parents suffered severe childhood trauma and later struggled with physical, sexual, and emotional abuse and addiction; their mental health problems shaped his childhood. His mother was especially critical and gloomy, and his parents’ divorce when he was 13 brought chaos. Scott never experienced physical or sexual abuse himself, so PTSD never crossed his mind until he learned about limerence and its links to past trauma. He now recognizes these obsessive patterns stretching back to his teenage years and persisting through his marriage, growing worse over time. He’s been married for over a decade; for seven years his wife has been debilitated by a serious health condition that limits her functioning—she’s gone from being extremely social and overachieving to avoiding social situations and being on disability leave. Their marriage is supportive and loving, but it’s been an undeniably hard stretch for both of them. Two years ago a much younger woman joined Scott’s company and they quickly became close friends. Although she was in a long-distance relationship with a boyfriend overseas, their friendship deepened: flirtatious texts, frequent hangouts, and even trips with a mutual friend. Scott kept his limerence hidden, but it consumed him. His wife knew about the friendship and encouraged him to spend time with the colleague, trusting him completely. Then one evening the coworker invited Scott for a drink alone and described a friend who was in a long-distance relationship but had entered a friends-with-benefits arrangement with another man—both remained technically committed to their partners. She asked Scott what he thought and whether he’d ever consider such an arrangement. He immediately said no. He had no desire to turn their “friendship” into something physical and assumed his secret limerence would simply continue unchallenged. Soon after, he noticed her warmth toward him fading; her messages grew less frequent and less intimate, and she began flirting with their mutual male friend. Scott had always believed he was her favorite, but she quickly shifted attention to the other man, declined his invitations to hang out, and even told a small lie—claiming she hadn’t been available when she actually had been with that friend. Scott was devastated but tried to act as if it didn’t matter, reasoning that it wasn’t his business. He observed them coordinating sick days and became convinced they were having an affair. He imagined she had offered the same friends-with-benefits deal to the other man and that he’d accepted. The belief that he was her second choice stoked intense jealousy and betrayal. To his shame he felt immediate and overwhelming hatred toward the male friend, even though that man had done nothing wrong and their relationship wasn’t his concern. Gradually she stopped answering his messages, and six months ago Scott chose no contact. But the emotions persist. What haunts him most is a deep self-loathing—replaying the friends-with-benefits conversation, torturing himself over having said no, yet feeling guilty for having entertained the thought at all. That spiral of self-hate is exhausting, and he can’t find peace. Without this limerent object to focus on, Scott feels aimless; the obsession gave his days direction. He’s been reading about limerence and PTSD, trying to understand the roots and how to recover. He recognizes unresolved childhood trauma and unmet emotional needs are part of the problem but is unsure how to move forward and heal, and he asks for guidance on letting go and finding peace. Thank you, Scott—I’m sorry you’re in so much pain. You’ve already taken a crucial step by maintaining no contact for six months, yet the feelings remain. Reading your account, several patterns stand out. First, your wife’s long-term illness and the loss of shared activities create a vulnerability: seven years without normal couple experiences—trips, socializing, hobbies—leaves a deficit that can make an emotionally neglected person fixate on someone who seems to offer excitement or connection. Your wife appears supportive of your friendships, which is generous, but even so, life needs not only meaning but also joy, shared pleasures and new experiences; lacking those things makes a person more prone to fantasize about someone else. Second, the workplace friendship itself was risky. Close friendships across genders aren’t inherently wrong, but when attraction exists—combined with flirting, private meetups, and shared trips—danger rises. That’s the moment when lines get blurred. The coworker’s proposal about friends-with-benefits was a red flag: had you accepted, you would have been complicit in deception and betrayal. You did the right thing by refusing; you avoided a shortcut that likely would have produced misery for everyone, even if the intense fantasy of “what if” now torments you. It’s also telling that her interest evaporated once you declined and that she quickly moved to your mutual friend—an action that speaks poorly of her priorities. This behavior suggests she sought convenience and thrill rather than caring deeply about emotional consequences. If a relationship requires secrecy and lies, it will ultimately be corrosive, not nourishing. You mentioned feeling tempted to treat the affair as an emotional escape: to keep your limerence a private bubble untouched by reality. Limerence thrives in secrecy because disclosure often brings rejection or the mundane realities of actual relationships, which deflate the fantasy. Hiding your feelings from friends and from your spouse is a sign you were going off the rails. You did the mature thing in not confessing those feelings to her, because transparency here could have inflamed matters and pulled you further into the mess. The coworker’s shift toward your friend and the coordinated excuses you observed were painful and betrayed a willingness to lie—another reason to insist that, for a genuinely healthy life, actions and relationships shouldn’t require deception. You made a wise choice in refusing to cross that line. Still, now you’re stuck with the aftermath: jealousy, shame, and an obsession that wastes your emotional energy. When all your love, attention, and imaginative life is poured into a doomed fantasy, you’re effectively giving away vital parts of yourself into a place that won’t nourish you. Prolonged limerence becomes like an addiction: it drains your development, isolates you from real-world connections, and robs your marriage of the presence and delight your spouse deserves. Emotional affairs—sharing deep attention, humor, and intimacy with someone outside the marriage—steal from the partner who is rightfully owed those things. That’s not meant as a hammering of guilt; you already feel badly, but it’s important to clarify the moral harm: withholding your full attention and commitment from your spouse is a kind of selfishness because it denies them what belongs to the marital relationship. You did go no contact, which is good, but because the workplace made the situation unavoidable, true no contact also requires not being around triggers. If seeing them daily keeps lighting the fuse, the healthiest move may be to look for a new job. It’s a hard step and unfair that you landed here, but continued exposure makes recovery far less likely. Recovery also means actively reclaiming what has been given away: your time, joy, and creative energy for the life you’ve built with your wife. When limerence ends, people often say it feels like getting their life back. Practical steps are what help break the cycle. First and most decisive: maintain real no contact. Tell yourself that maybe contact could happen years from now, but for now your focus must be on removing triggers. Second, develop a toolkit to process and release the feelings beneath the obsession—grief over childhood emotional neglect, longing for closeness, and the unprocessed wounds that fuel this pattern. That “processing” language can sound vague, but concretely it means using methods that calm your nervous system and let you face and discharge the intense thoughts and sensations that keep you stuck. People use multiple practices: vigorous exercise; reintroducing joy, play, and pleasurable activities into daily life; cultivating close, healthy friendships outside the marriage; and finding meaningful pursuits to occupy and fulfill you. Look for friends who are themselves doing healing work; peer support from people who understand trauma-driven attachment patterns is especially helpful. Therapy or structured programs that teach nervous-system regulation and practical daily practices can also accelerate recovery. You mentioned trauma links—and indeed, limerence is far more common among those who experienced emotional neglect or chaotic caregiving. Childhood survival strategies—magical thinking, idealizing potential, and fitting yourself into unacceptable situations—can persist into adulthood, but you now have the choice to change those patterns. Reflect clearly on what would have happened if you’d said yes to a friends-with-benefits arrangement: it likely would have begun with intense excitement, then messy complications, and eventually disappointment, since she was unlikely to leave her relationship for you. Even if you’d had the fling, you would have lost the unbroken trust and integrity you now can look back on with integrity—and that’s not a small thing. There’s also the raw shame you feel over hating the male friend; that emotion is understandable, but you’ve shown maturity by recognizing his behavior didn’t deserve your vitriol. Still, if he knew about you and pursued a relationship with her anyway, that’s a painful breach of boundaries on his part as well. To pull out of this cycle more quickly: stop contact completely, remove triggers (including considering a job change), and adopt practices to safely process the buried emotions that sustain the addiction-like pattern. Rebuild a life with pleasure, close friends, structured healing work, and activities that restore your sense of aliveness so you aren’t donating your joy to an impossible fantasy. Finally, don’t underestimate time: six months is meaningful, but limerence can take longer to fade. Some people find peer-led communities, daily practices, and structured programs helpful; others combine therapy, exercise, and social reconnection. If it’s useful, there are courses and communities that teach practical tools for calming the nervous system and rebuilding life after limerence—resources that offer daily practice and peer support rather than therapy per se. You can also find short guides that outline limerence signs and steps to recover; those resources often include a checklist to help you assess how deeply limerence has taken hold and concrete tips for moving out of it. Above all, keep holding the truth that you did not cross the line into betrayal, that your attraction doesn’t erase the commitment you’ve honored, and that with firm boundaries and active healing you can let these feelings go and reclaim your life.