u/No-Chocolate-2017

What is the difference between genuine feelings for someone and limerence? Can you experience both at the same time?

I need an outside perspective because after seven months I don’t trust my own objectivity anymore. I’ve had a very intense connection with a man who is in a relationship. Most of it developed remotely through long phone calls, constant conversations, sexual tension, personal discussions, periods of talking all the time, attempts at no contact, and then reconnecting. We have met in real life, but we have never dated or had a physical relationship. I’m fully aware that the central fact here is that he is unavailable, and I’m not trying to minimize that or frame myself as a victim of the situation. What confuses me is that the connection has never felt purely sexual or superficial, and he has explicitly told me it wasn’t that for him either. He has said that he developed feelings for me, that his attraction is both mental and physical, that he values my intelligence, maturity and values, and that he feels emotionally close to me. He has shared thoughts, doubts and desires with me that he says very few people know. At one point I asked whether he thinks about me when we are not talking, and he said that thoughts about me sometimes come to him unexpectedly, even when he is with his girlfriend or lying in bed. When I asked what exactly he thinks about, he said something along the lines of, “I think about you, I think about us. Sometimes I think I would like to be with you.” At the same time, he says he loves his girlfriend. He says that sometimes he questions whether she is the right person for him and sometimes believes she is. He describes himself as very rational and says he doesn’t want to make decisions while he feels conflicted. He has tried several times to end our connection because he says he cannot continue living in uncertainty, and he told me that when things between us started becoming serious, that was when he first wanted to stop. Still, we have never managed to end it completely. We tried no contact for a month, I eventually broke it because I was going to his country for university, and we reconnected. He has openly said that he finds it difficult to imagine ending things permanently and never speaking again. During one argument, when I asked why he couldn’t simply tell me what he felt, he said, “I can’t say it, but the facts speak for themselves. I’ve been here for seven months.” At the same time, he refuses to properly pursue anything with me while he is still in his relationship. His position is that he needs to resolve that relationship first because he does not see himself as a cheater and neither do I. He says that if he were ever single, then we could get to know each other in a normal way instead of through this distorted situation. I actually understand and respect that boundary. But I also keep coming back to the fact that seven months have passed and he has still not chosen to leave his relationship. I don’t mean that as “if he loved me enough he would choose me.” I know relationships and decisions are more complicated than that. I’m trying to understand what weight I should give to his feelings when his actions remain essentially unchanged. Part of why this has been so difficult for me is that we seem unusually similar in certain ways. We are both analytical, stubborn and intense, we challenge each other mentally, the sexual compatibility in fantasy is very strong, and I rarely feel this mentally stimulated or emotionally open with someone. I think I may genuinely love him, but I also recognize that this situation contains almost every condition that can intensify limerence: uncertainty, intermittent reinforcement, emotional distance, an unavailable person, strong sexual tension, the constant “what if,” and the fact that the connection has never had to survive normal everyday life. That is really the question I’m trying to understand: can both things be true at the same time? Can there be a real emotional bond and real compatibility, while the circumstances also turn that bond into something much more obsessive, idealized and intense than it would be in a normal relationship? And could the same thing be happening on his side? I’m not particularly interested in debating whether he has any feelings for me at all, because based on what he has said and how long this has continued, I think there are feelings there. What I don’t understand is what those feelings actually mean. Is this a real connection between two people who met at the wrong time, but one that has become distorted by the circumstances? Is it mutual limerence that feels profound precisely because it has never had to face ordinary reality? Is he genuinely conflicted, or am I assigning too much depth to the ambivalence of someone who has been able to keep the stability of his relationship while also having an intense emotional and sexual connection with me? And ultimately, if someone can have strong feelings for you for seven months and still remain where they are, how much should the reality of those feelings matter? He has now decided that we should go completely no contact until September because he wants to see whether we can actually detach from each other, but at the same time he has already said that he intends to contact me again then. I don’t know what to make of that. Part of me reads it as someone who has real feelings but believes he should not act on them and is trying to regain control. Another part of me thinks that keeping a future date for contact simply prevents the connection from ever being fully closed. He also says that he holds himself back emotionally and struggles to express what he feels, but I’m aware that I may be giving too much meaning to that because I’m emotionally invested. I’d especially like to hear from people who have experienced mutual limerence or limerence involving an unavailable person, and I’d also be interested in male perspectives. I’m not looking for reassurance or for people to tell me that he secretly loves me and will eventually choose me. I’m trying to understand how people who have been through something similar learned to distinguish between a genuine bond that became limerent because of the circumstances and limerence itself making the bond feel more exceptional and meaningful than it really was.

Have you ever walked away from someone you might have loved because your existing life felt safer?

I have met a man online who was already in a relationship. What was supposed to be platonic became an intense emotional connection with an almost unsettling level of compatibility. He told me repeatedly that what he felt wasn’t just sexual, that he cared about me, felt close to me and was drawn to who I was. The strange part was that the more real it became, the more he pulled back into the stable life he had already built. We have met just once just for one hour and we didn't even kissed each other, he just kissed me on my cheek and hugged me. He later said that he felt a sense of protection toward me.

We ended it, and I’m not waiting for him. But I still wonder whether some people genuinely meet someone who could have changed their life and consciously choose not to go there because the cost feels too high.

If you’ve ever chosen stability and a comfortable relationship over someone who felt once in a lifetime, did you eventually stop loving them or did you just decide that love wasn’t enough to risk it all?

Give me your genuine perspective.

People can only meet you as deeply as they have met themselves.

I've spent most of my life keeping to myself and I know a lot of people here can probably relate so I won't get into that. Over the years I've become very clear about what I want from a partner and I've realised that mental stimulation matters to me more than almost anything else. Once that's missing I lose interest very quickly. I've mostly dated older men because I thought maturity would solve that problem and in some ways it did. There were fewer games, more accountability and a stronger sense of self. What it didn't solve was something I didn't really have words for at the time.

The more people I meet the more I feel that most of us don't actually try to understand each other. We form an impression, decide we've figured someone out and then interact with that version of them instead of the person who's actually there. As a neurodivergent INTJ woman I know that being independent, intense and direct makes people read me a certain way, and my appearance doesn't exactly help because it often leads people to assume I'm far more superficial than I really am.

I genuinely thought meeting people from different countries would expose me to a different mindset but honestly it hasn't. I've met intelligent men with impressive careers and interesting lives, yet I kept coming away with the same feeling. Intelligence and understanding aren't the same thing. One is the ability to analyse, the other is the willingness to question your own assumptions about someone. Lately I've started wondering if that's actually the rarest quality to find, not intelligence itself but the ability to look beyond the first impression and stay curious long enough to discover who's really in front of you.

"There are people who come in your life like boosters for a rocket. If you ever watch a rocket go into space, the boosters fall off when it reaches a certain altitude. Some people are not equipped to handle the altitudes that you're going to. So don't be afraid when they fall off, they're not bad people, they just couldn't go where you're going." Tyler Perry

Qual è la giustificazione giuridica del fatto che, per multe di modesto importo, nonostante esista il ricorso gratuito al Prefetto, il ricorso al Giudice di Pace possa costare più della sanzione stessa, rendendo spesso antieconomico contestarla? So che il ricorso al Prefetto è gratuito, ma mi sembra più adatto a contestazioni evidenti o formali, mentre quando si vogliono produrre prove e discutere il merito si finisce spesso davanti al Giudice di Pace.

Mi è capitato, ad esempio, che l’auto venisse rimossa pur essendo parcheggiata dentro le strisce blu e con il parcheggio pagato; al massimo alcune ruote erano sopra linee parzialmente consumate. La motivazione è che quelle strisce blu consumate erano adiacenti ai posti auto dei veicoli di ricarica elettrica. In un altro caso ho preso circa 60 euro di multa per una sosta vicino a un passo carrabile, lasciandola solo per cinque minuti con le quattro frecce per poter scaricare la spesa, pur non essendo davanti all’accesso e senza bloccare l’uscita dei veicoli. Al di là del merito dei singoli episodi, non si crea così un disincentivo economico a far valere le proprie ragioni anche quando si ritiene di avere elementi validi?

Mi interessa soprattutto capire cosa avete imparato e perché vi ha cambiato così tanto la prospettiva. Può trattarsi anche di una persona, un incontro o una semplice conversazione.

https://preview.redd.it/0jti4nqcrv6h1.jpg?width=564&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=afb3a71659e6774bb619c18730901886ed86d141

Walking paradox

Most people fear being alone, I fear spending years surrounded by people who never challenge a single thought I have; solitude is cheaper than intellectual stagnation.

Vorrei aprire una discussione seria sul mercato dell’energia in Italia, in particolare sul passaggio dal mercato tutelato al mercato libero e sull’utilità reale delle fasce orarie. Secondo voi il mercato libero ha davvero portato più convenienza e possibilità di scelta per i consumatori oppure ha reso tutto più complesso e poco trasparente? Mi riferisco soprattutto alla difficoltà di confrontare le offerte, capire il prezzo reale dell’energia e valutare se una tariffa sia davvero conveniente nel lungo periodo. Inoltre cosa pensate delle tariffe monorarie, biorarie e triorarie? Le fasce F1, F2 e F3 hanno ancora senso per una famiglia media oppure nella pratica il risparmio è spesso marginale rispetto alla complessità che introducono?

Are Mathematics, Statistics, Computer Science and Finance still the core pillars of Quantitative Finance?

I’m interested in research directions in quantitative finance that are both technically substantive and meaningfully connected to how the field is evolving in practice. In particular, I’m curious about topics at the boundary between academic research and real-world quant work: areas with nontrivial modelling, statistical, computational or data-related challenges, but where the results could plausibly matter outside a purely academic setting.

From the perspective of practitioners, what frontier areas in quantitative finance seem genuinely promising rather than mostly hype? I’m especially interested in market microstructure, liquidity, high-frequency data, quantitative modelling, machine learning, volatility modelling.

More broadly, what are the core pillars on which quantitative finance is built today? Financial econometrics and empirical finance, statistics and probability, machine learning, applied mathematics and stochastic modelling, asset management and portfolio construction, market microstructure, or pure programming/software engineering?

Which of these foundations are becoming more important in practice, which are losing relevance, and how do you expect AI to change the work of quant researchers, quant traders and systematic trading teams over the next few years?

Finally, beyond the standard Python/R/C++/MATLAB stack, are there any programming languages, computational tools, libraries or frameworks that you think will become increasingly useful in quant research and trading?

I’m especially interested in answers that distinguish genuinely useful tools and research directions from areas that are mostly hype.

\"The Persistence of Memory\" (Dalí, 1931)

The notion of being made to grasp something outside of time, without it coming from my own will, immediately brings Dalí The Persistence of Memory to mind.

Be creative and use metaphors (an object, a place, a sensation or something completely abstract!).