I have no idea what high school literature classes look like in other countries, but in Poland, there is a long list of mandatory books you have to read in your teenage years and most of them are hard to call appealing to the youth.
They are full of unrelatable characters, historic events that don’t mean much to you and sentiments that lost their relevance probably before the end of the XIX century (and most of them were written in the XIX century).
Some of them are great books, such as ‘Crime and Punishment’. Some are traumatising (I am honestly not sure if I really had to read so much about Nazi concentration camps when I was so young). Some are just bloody boring.
One novel that most people tend to like, if they manage to get through it, is ‘The Doll‘, written by Boleslaw Prus and published in 1890.
~
And they like it because the plot is generally just good. It is a tragic love story, so something that, unfortunately, will be relatable for almost everyone in this land of tears.
The main character of this novel is named Stanislaw Wokulski (the same name as my late brother, a strong and very Polish name) and he is a rich merchant, hopelessly in love with a doll-looking, beautiful aristocrat Izabela Lecka.
Stanislaw at the beginning of the book is a modest businessman who has recently inherited a shop and a considerable amount of money from his (much older) wife. For unknown reasons, he suddenly decides to go to Bulgaria which is ridden with war and participate in supplying the troops. War is a risky business but can also be very profitable, so a few years later Stanislaw arrives back in Warsaw as a disgustingly rich man. A man of consequence.
Wokulski finds himself surrounded by rumours about him, both from people who envy him and those who want to get something from him. Nobody understood why he desperately risked his comfortable life for more money and power and this mystery made him a bit of a celebrity in his city.
The real reason was not expected by even his closest friends, who knew him as an ambitious and intelligent man, and its name was Izabela Lecka.
~
Shortly before Stanislaw threw himself into the warzone, he saw her briefly in a theatre – a young and beautiful aristocrat, someone completely unattainable to him. He immediately fell in love and in his despair, he realised that the only way to get closer to her was to make a crazy amount of money.
The money helped him to become more accepted by the society that Izabela was part of. Her father had a lot of debt, so he welcomed the friendship of a rich merchant, even if he kept looking down on him due to his pedigree.
Izabela herself is one of the most hated characters in Polish literature. She was vain, believed that aristocrats were simply better than anyone else because that was their divine destiny and couldn’t even imagine getting married to someone beneath her station. She also could only fall in love with men who seemed to her bigger than life such as fictional characters and artists that added romantic flavour to her existence. Izabela was raised this way, prepared for nothing but a life of luxury; her self-worth was always reinforced by her parents, society and many admirers and she never had to experience any sorrow or discomfort.
For Stanislaw Wokulski, she was thus an angelic being with no flaws. He even acclaimed: ‘If she is not an angel, then I am a dog!’.
He constructed a whole meticulous plan for how to get closer to her. He hired a woman who tracked when Izabela went on walks, so he could ‘accidentally’ meet her. He bought her father’s old tenement house for a much higher price than it was worth (using an intermediary of course), so the excess money could have been used for Izabela’s dowry. He challenged a man to a duel just because the guy slightly insulted Izabela.
~
He was a slave to her every whim. Whenever he was starting to doubt the point of all his efforts, she would give him the slightest glimpse of hope (a touch of her fingers, a smile, a conversation), just to fuel his desire. He experienced a lot of interest from other women he was encountering and whenever he looked at any of them, Izabela would give him some breadcrumbs of attention just to keep him on a leash.
She quickly realised that she was the object of his devotion and even though she never thought she could reciprocate his feelings, she was absolutely ready to use them to her advantage.
Finally, when he confessed his love, she didn’t say yes. She didn’t say no either.
She kept him hanging, in hunger and desperation, until he couldn’t stand it any longer and was on the verge of suicide.
After actually accepting his proposal (due to financial reasons), Izabela was heard by Wokulski flirting in English with her cousin. It was insinuated that Izabela had just had sex with said cousin and she was complaining about being tired due to these strenuous activities, in front of her husband-to-be. She didn’t realise that Wokulski was secretly learning English, again, only to impress her.
The end of the novel is ambiguous and it is not clear whether Wokulski actually killed himself, disillusioned and despondent.
If you think that Wokulski was a complete idiot and you would never behave in such an illogical and self-destructive way then te felicito, you have never experienced the pain and misery of limerence.
~
Limerence is a state of deep and obsessive romantic infatuation towards a person who most likely will never reciprocate these feelings.
Limerent people tend to be suffering from unresolved trauma and unfulfilled psychological needs. The love they are feeling very often serves as an escape from reality, something that adds spice to their sorrowful lives and helps to move the attention from the emotional pain they experience.
The object of their affection is normally idealised and put on a pedestal. Limerent people very often hide their feelings and stay in friendzone sometimes for years, knowing that there could be no happy ending. Stalking, obsessive ruminating and finding ways to get closer to the loved one are all very commonly observed.
The highs are very high and the lows might be so low that they lead to self-destruction.
Even somatic symptoms can occur, such as heart palpitations, stomach problems, loss of appetite and sleep.
And it is not love. Love is reciprocated and built with time. Unavailability and indifference ruin real love; they should not make you only more motivated to go to war in Bulgaria.
~
I expect that some of you, sweet readers, might suspect now that I am writing this based on my own life experiences.
I personally find this topic fascinating and I really learn a lot about myself from reading about common issues related to unhealed childhood trauma.
Limerence is frequent in people with childhood complex PTSD which I believe that within a certain spectrum might be more common than we realise.
Thankfully, I have never gone through Stanislaw Wokulski’s type of obsession, however, I do recognise that I find unavailable people more alluring than I should and I need to work on that. And it did cause me pain.
The line between a crush, love, infatuation, and an unhealthy obsession might be blurry and I am not sure who is able to be so self-aware that they always know where they exactly stand.
Of course, in hindsight, it might become super clear, but I guess the questions that we always can ask ourselves are:
Am I losing myself for love?
Am I becoming love’s dog?
Does paying someone to let me know where my crush goes for walks sound like a reasonable idea to me?
Should I block him? (The answer is usually: oh, yes)
Anything is better than abandoning yourself for a person who will never love you back.
Loneliness is sweet compared to that and it should never make you lose all your self-respect. And some things you will do, while limerent, might accomplish just that.
And trust me on this – sometimes forgiving yourself for your lack of reason is the hardest part of healing.
———————————————————————————————————————————–
~
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.”
~Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
~
That man to me seems equal to the gods,
the man who sits opposite you
and close by listens
to your sweet voice
and your enticing laughter—
that indeed has stirred up the heart in my breast.
For whenever I look at you even briefly
I can no longer say a single thing,
but my tongue is frozen in silence;
instantly a delicate flame runs beneath my skin;
with my eyes I see nothing;
my ears make a whirring noise.
A cold sweat covers me,
trembling seizes my body,
and I am greener than grass.
Lacking but little of death do I seem.
~Sappho
~
PS1. If you happen to speak Polish and want to watch a great summary of ‘The Doll’ check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvKwHnq9ito&t=3141s
PS2. A video on what limerence can do to you (in English this time): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEgtWWFuYlI
PS3. I haven’t given up on love just yet. I am still a hopeless romantic at heart. For better or worse.
