How Shiny Objects Can Lead to Disaster: Three Ways Glimmer Captivated Me

Glimmer is the shiny object syndrome during limerence

Glimmer in limerence is the initial attraction phase. The limerent object sparkles. Because they have somehow sparked this glow of neurochemicals and arousal and desire in the limerent person. It’s like infatuation magnified by infinity.

What triggers this is up for debate. Lucy Bain of Neurosparkle.com says it’s a combination of unpredictability, attraction, and triggering your unmet needs from childhood. (My Limerence Nightmare: This Is What Can Happen — NeuroSparkle. Dr L of The Glimmer — Living with Limerence says the LO triggers a physiological arousal of excitement: increased heart rate, sweaty palms, shallow breathing, similar to infatuation or meeting a celebrity, but more emotionally charged. Like a lightning strike of the perfect person.

It’s very hard to understand the intensity if you’ve never experienced limerence, but I will try to detail the glimmer experience for me.

First Meet

There was something in Mike’s voice. A confidence yet sweetness. We were playing this 4-person multiplayer game with this little kid. He was so kind to this child, I thought he was their divorced parent. But it was a random meeting.

He was a bored dude, and he sent me a message. “Hey Canadian cutie. Enjoyed playing with you. Hope to play again.”

It’s rare to find an adult on any gaming platform. But the word cutie was my glimmer moment. A cute flirt combined with the sweetness of his treatment of the kiddo, and the confidence. I was immediately hooked.

In a normal time, we would have played together a few times and went our separate ways. Spring of 2020 was not normal. Lockdown happened but my husband got to keep working, out of town. I was left alone and stressed and disconnected.

Unpredictable Rewards

Intermittent rewards make gambling and limerence so addictive.

Brains like stability. Consistent rewards quickly diminish the dopamine value of said reward. If I push a button and get a cookie every time, boredom sets in. Intermittent rewards or a variable reward schedule mean a constant dopamine. When you don’t get a reward, when you do, when it’s uncertain. It’s all hits.

At first, it was hard to connect with Mike. I hadn’t learned his schedule yet. We weren’t in lockdown, so I was still working part time. My husband was home, so I couldn’t game daily. Yet. And Mike wasn’t attuned to me, so he was sometimes playing with others. He didn’t care about me. He barely remembered me.

But I shoved my way into his life. I chased him; I messaged him; I tried to watch my PlayStation network to see when he logged on.

This continued in our relationship. He always quit playing at 9 PM to watch movies. End of the day for us. I hadn’t had enough yet, so I’d go to bed fantasising about someone I’d never seen.

He would also cut me off for days to months at a time. If something went wrong with technology, he’d blame this entity he believed controlled his life. They could make games more difficult to frustrate him. To make me do things. I can’t make this up, ya’ll. This entity appeared related to Scientology from his explanation. They controlled his mother, occasionally.

Once, my voice chat cut out in the middle of a dungeon. He could hear me, but I couldn’t hear anyone. We were nearly finished, so I just completed the dungeon, rebooted my system to get the voice chat back. By that time, he deleted me from his friends list and refused to answer my increasingly desperate calls.

An hour later, while I was sobbing into his voice mail, he finally called me and said I was being controlled, and in six months we’d play again and forget this happened.

In those six months, he called me about once a month. Just as interest would begin waning, he would pull me back in with a phone call and reminders he loved me.

Like all addicts, this little unpredictable reward was enough to keep me hooked.

Filling the Voids

Limerence often occurs when a person is lost.

For me, my relationship had been unhappy for years. And the pandemic lockdown and the uncertainty of the future had me totally lost. Also, I felt shitty about my writing career. Despite putting out numerous fictional works, my income was decreasing. The experts on releasing large numbers of items to buy claimed this was the key to success.

I wasn’t lost; I was defeated.

Mike’s confidence about the world, even in this weird controlling entity, appealed to me. He didn’t submit to my pleas for a photo, or longer playing time, or guilt about what others wanted. He did what he wanted, and didn’t care other’s judgement or feelings.

He wanted to devote his time to me.

As someone who had spent their life pleasing people, and felt unwanted since birth, his behaviours filled a void in me. I was confident from being in his presence. He gave me his free time. Being wanted and feeling important to someone haunt me to this day. I’ve cried to my husband that I just want him to think of me. Honestly, Mike didn’t really think of me too much, it was me chasing him, but he responded enough to pull the reward lever in my brain. I think he understood this dynamic.

In summary, glimmer is a sparkle of infatuation and powerful brain chemicals. I think certain people are biologically and neurotically susceptible to limerence. Having an unstable childhood and being susceptible to rejection, means you chase people who aren’t available and won’t be. This way you want them so badly, but they can’t really reject you.

My case is unique, because Mike reciprocated my adoration. But I really believe he knew how to play with my head so he could keep me hooked. Either it felt good to be adored, or he liked the power of it. I’m not sure. His feelings for me were genuine, but he also had enough of his own trauma and narcissism ego to fuck with me.