Synopsis: This mini love lesson starts with a
getting to know Nympholepsia; then discusses unrequited love; a typical
case; getting the accurate picture; confusions; sex and Nympholepsia;
not wanting what’s wanted; ever seeking and never finding; and what’s to
be done about this False Form of Love.
Getting to know Nympholepsia
Nympholepsia is one of the most interesting forms of false love.
Sometimes it is like being in love without having to go to the trouble
of actually having any relationship at all. It even can be a love-like
relationship with someone who doesn’t even exist. Nevertheless, the
emotions involved can be extremely intense, the behaviors involved quite
complicated and sometimes the outcome is quite devastating.
Judge Roy Bean, of “The Law West to the Pecos” fame, is thought to
have had a pretty bad nympholeptic problem focused on the greatest
actress of his time, Lily Langtry. He went to all sorts of trouble
concerning her, including even renaming a town for her, Langtry Texas.
However, he never had any but the most formal personal contact with
her. One of America’s greatest salonnières and the female who was
declared the World’s First, Great, New Age Woman, Mabel Dodge Luhan, is
said to have had a terrible nympholeptic relationship with John Reid,
the amazing young chronicler of both Poncho Villa and the Communist
revolution in Russia and who wrote the incredibly influential “Ten Days
That Shook the World.”
Unrequited Love
In the age of chivalry, knights who were supposed to chastely and
platonically ‘pine for’ unattainable Royal ladies, who were above their
own rank and station, may have been being led to suffer from
Nympholepsia (also known as nymphlepsy). The same condition is thought
to affect a fair number of the thousands who go into frenzies when
adoring the rock star of the moment. Then there are those who learn of
some hero or heroine of a past time and are quite sure they have
hopelessly fallen in love with that person who is no longer counted
among the living.
Tragically some of those even suicide so as to have a chance to find
their love-interest in the hereafter. Others swear they meet their
paramour in their dreams, while others testify strongly to having had
wonderful sex with their favorite lover ghosts. Some even claim to be
madly in love with literary characters that never existed in real life.
Most who suffer from this false form of love do so in a more ordinary
way, but that doesn’t make their suffering any less intense.
A Typical Case
Chastity was brought to counseling by her husband who said she cannot
sleep, won’t eat and is in a frenzy about everything, but can’t tell
anyone what is wrong and we are all very worried about her. Talking to
her alone Chastity frantically fidgeted, got up and paced around and
showed many other signs of agitation. After miscellaneous comments she
began to blush and whisper that her condition began right after she
learned her pastor was moving to another church in a distant city.
Slowly it all came out. She had become enamored of her pastor soon after
he arrived at their church some six years ago.
He was a popular, handsome, charismatic figure that many women found
intensely attractive. Chastity quickly came to secretly worship him from
afar. At the church she volunteered for everything that would put her
in contact with him. At night she dreamed romantic but never erotic
dreams of him and never let anyone know her true feelings. She gave him
and his wife and their children very nice appropriate gifts, did them
favors and never strayed over the lines of propriety. It was enough for
her to just serve him and be in his shadow, though her actions slowly
became more and more frenetic.
Her husband, and her children, and later even her parents
occasionally complained that her church activities seemed a bit too much
but that’s all they did. But now that the pastor was going to be even
more completely unattainable than before she was in a frenzy of
uncontrollable, rapidly changing, very difficult to handle emotions. In
time with therapy and some medication she did become healthier.
Chastity came to see she actually did not have an adult, real,
romantic relationship with her pastor but rather she was fixated on the
fantasy of him loving her. By being valued by him in her fantasies she
too became valuable. In real life he would often thank her, praise her,
compliment her, and make laudatory remarks about her to others. This
gave her meaning, purpose and fulfillment for a time. Later she figured
out that all had to do with her childhood and her father who never was
very loving, seldom praising and almost never thankful. She saw that
she didn’t want her pastor to respond to her erotically or even very
romantically because those actions would be too different from a father
to a daughter.
These dynamics are not common to everyone who suffers from
Nympholepsia but they were her dynamics. Today she is well past all
that and has actually grown from the experience but she would not want
to go through it again.
Getting the Accurate Picture
The two most important words for understanding Nympholepsia are
‘frenzy’ and ‘unattainable. The condition throws people into a frenzy
of emotions, and scrambled thoughts and sometimes peculiar behaviors.
The dynamics often involve seeking or even feeling one has love for
and/or from that which is unattainable.
In the worst cases some people ‘go crazy’ trying to attain the
unattainable and then fall into the pits of depression or even
psychosis. In the 1800’s the condition was thought to frequently cause
convulsions and seizures, along with other somatic symptoms.
The word Nympholepsia comes from the Greek ‘nympholeptos’ which means
to have been caught and bewitched, or entranced by a naked, highly
erotic, attractive nymph or Sprite who was by definition unattainable to
humans. This, it was thought, drove people into an emotional frenzy
causing them to spend their lives in hopeless pursuit of the nymphs and
finally to wither and die.
In mythology and Catholic theology the term meant accidentally seeing
a naked nymph and being driven into a frenzy of ecstasy, never again to
be satisfied by a mere mortal human. The only salvation from this
demonic possession required a full-fledged exorcism. Today the term
refers to going into an emotional frenzy while trying to obtain
something or someone unable to be obtained and being destructively
effected in the process.
Confusions
Nympholepsia sometimes is confused with pedophilia because it often
involves people of rather different ages being attracted to each other
or one to another. It also has been confused with the ‘Lolita complex’
and misidentified as something that mostly men do with younger females.
It, furthermore, has been confused with nymphomania, probably partly
because it has the prefix nymph and partly because it has to do with
romantic-like relationship situations and dynamics. It also has been
misidentified as something young girls do toward and with older men.
Some of the people thought to suffer from this false form of love
have been known to be quite fixated, and obsessive and occasionally even
violent in their acting out of their passion. The ones in this
condition who are highly sexed sometimes are confused with having a sex
addiction and the nonsexual ones with having a neurotic or, more
recently, with having a sexual desire problem.
It’s interesting that some therapists seem to think this condition
mostly occurs only in males and others think it mainly shows up in
females. In my experience it’s pretty gender even. It also seems to
occur in homosexuals, bisexuals, older people, younger people, all
races, all socio-economic classes and every other category I know,
although there are those that disagree with me about that.
Sex and Nympholepsia
With this condition there can be people who have no sexual desire nor
even any sex feelings involved in their nympholeptic condition. With
others there is a great deal of sex especially frenzied, passionate
sex. Sometimes the sex is with a surrogate and sometimes with the
target of their passions, and if that target is unattainable sublimation
may occur. A common complaint goes something like “he (or she)
professes lots of love for me, has great sex with me, but won’t stay
with me, marry me and won’t stop going off with others, or won’t stop
doing big, long, involved things that have nothing to do with me and
don’t including me”. Another common complaint is that she (or he) is
emotionally unavailable while at the same time being very sexually
available.
Some nympholeptics have serial sex. I once counseled a girl who just
knew she was truly, and deeply, and incredibly in love with one drummer
after another. She had all-consuming, frenzied emotions with each
drummer right up to the morning after a wild, passionate night of sex
together. Then she would have the realization that the drummer would be
going on to others and never really be hers at a heart level, and he
just would be like the last several drummers and probably like the next
one, which essentially was that he would be unavailable for a healthy,
real, love relationship. In her case the background cause was very poor
self love and very musical parents.
For some people suffering this condition it all can change if the
female becomes pregnant. At that point they often lose interest in the
other person and it’s all over. This leads some of my evolutional
psychology friends to suspect the whole condition has something to do
with genetic survival mechanisms.
Not Wanting What’s Wanted
Some people suffering from Nympholepsia are quite secretly and safely
satisfied if the unattainable person remains unattainable, though they
still suffer about it. By longing for someone they can’t have, they
have a relationship without having a relationship. They can tell people
that they love someone and often can tell a great deal about their
romantic feelings, but when they want to do something as a single they
are completely free to do it. This accounts for some of the people who
marry a prisoner serving a life sentence or serving a very long
sentence. They can say they’re married, they can send love-like
messages back and forth, they even can visit, and they can have
romantic, long-suffering experiences which brings the drama of romance
to their life but with very little of the trouble.
This may be a sort of pseudo-Nympholepsia or just another form of
it. Sometimes people in this variation of Nympholepsia panic and run
away if their ‘romantic target’ suddenly becomes available or somehow
actually comes into their real life. Others truly pine away and, to a
large degree, either dysfunction or excuse their dysfunction with their
unrequited love situation.
Ever Seeking Never Finding
A fair number of people repeatedly go after the unattainable lover,
and for a long time they just won’t quit. This wears them out, drains
them, distracts them from healthy productive living, causes a lot of
agony, depletes their self-confidence, generally wastes a lot of life,
and sometimes gets them to turn to various addictions, become depressed
and sometimes suicidal.
Some of these people keep going after the same person over and over,
and others keep going after ‘versions of the same person’ but either way
they never really get what they’re after. That’s because what they’re
after is truly unattainable. Do they subconsciously know this? Some
therapists think so, others think not.
Interestingly for many with Nympholepsia if they actually do seem to
attain the lover they are after, one of two things happens. They either
have finally won the prize and don’t need to go after it anymore, so
they basically sort of say “thank you, goodbye” and go on to something
healthier.
The other outcome is that what they have attained turns out not to be
all that desirable after all. In both cases the relationship comes to
an end.
In its milder forms Nympholepsia is like a ‘crush’ or ‘the
idealization’ phase of an IFD False Form of Love pattern, maybe without
the F and D stages. (See
False Forms of Love: The Devastating IFD Syndrome)
In a stronger form, the frenzy can get quite destructive and the lack
of attainment can be very deeply frustrating and depleting. All forms
of Nympholepsia generally are thought to have a tendency to block people
from having healthy, real, love relationships develop.
What’s to be done?
Some form of fairly deep psychotherapy usually is what’s needed to
cure this affliction if it is severe. There are those who seem to
‘mature out of it’. Some who are good at insight and redirecting
themselves, figure it out and learn about healthy, real love and go
after that instead. Knowledge about this condition helps people avoid
it, especially in its earlier stages. If a friend or family member
seems to be headed toward suffering from Nympholepsia I suggest you
encourage them to read this mini love lesson and then direct them toward
a therapist known to be able to do deep, psychotherapeutic work.
As always – Go and Grow with Love
Dr. J Richard Cookerly
♥ Love Success Question Are
you now or have you ever set yourself up for love failure by desiring
the unattainable? If so, are you likely to do that again?
Illustration: Nymph by Blanche Paymal-Amouroux, French, 1899, public domain, thanks Wikimedia Commons.
