[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Sexology, a podcast that untangles the science of sex and pleasure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now, with this week's episode, your host, Clinical Psychologist, Dr. Naseneen Moali.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello there, you are listening to another episode of The Sixology Podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have you ever known someone was wrong for you, but still felt completely consumed by them?
[SPEAKER_02]: Why do emotionally unavailable people sometimes feel more intoxicating?
[SPEAKER_02]: Then the people who are actually capable of loving us well.
[SPEAKER_02]: an RV mistaking anxiety, obsession, and longing for chemistry.
[SPEAKER_02]: Today's guest is Amanda McRacken, journalist, speaker, an author of when longing becomes your lover.
[SPEAKER_02]: As a 40 year old version, who had dated more than 100 men, Amanda realized she wasn't actually addicted to a person.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was addicted to the feeling of longing itself.
[SPEAKER_02]: In this conversation, we explore this psychology and neuroscience of limits, while almost relationships can become emotionally addictive, how social media feels obsessive with hatchmen, and what happens when we fall in love with fantasy more than reality.
[SPEAKER_02]: We also talk about perfectionism, emotional, unavailability, attachment wounds, and why real intimacy can sometimes feel more terrifying than rejection.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you ever found yourself obsessing over someone who couldn't fully love you back, this episode is going to hit deeply.
[SPEAKER_02]: And before we begin, if you're someone who feels disconnected from desire, intimacy, or emotional connection, in your relationships, make sure to download our free guide on how to increase your desire.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can find the link in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Here's my conversation with Amanda McCracken.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hello and welcome back to another episode of This Excellency podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am so excited to welcome Amanda McCrockett to our show Amanda, welcome to our show.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me, Dr.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nose.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's great to be here.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm so fascinated with your book.
[SPEAKER_02]: when I got a copy, thank you for sending it to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know the focus is on infatuation, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think for so many people, they don't know the distinction between infatuation and love, and that can create lots of confusion and unnecessary pain.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're in your book, you talk about how people sometimes chase the emotionally unavailable individuals
[SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell us a little bit about how did you end up writing the book?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I started writing the book when longing becomes your lover to basically figure out my my own patterns and try to find authentic love because that's what I was searching for, but my patterns were
[SPEAKER_00]: really chasing after unavailable people either emotionally or physically unavailable.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think to speak to what you're saying about the difference between evacuation and love, my body felt like it was kind of hardwired to be attracted to the kind of anxiety that I interpreted as excitement, which then I therefore further interpreted it as love or like those pre-love
[SPEAKER_00]: and anybody who seemed completely available to me and really loving and complementary to me felt really boring and ikki.
[SPEAKER_00]: So because there wasn't that same kind of excitement, you know, there wasn't that roller coaster ride that I had gotten really used to.
[SPEAKER_02]: I know your book you talk about, you dated number of different people.
[SPEAKER_02]: So what patterns were you repeating that you couldn't see when you were in this journey?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I started dating and my first date was to like, with this guy on the swim team, to his Catholic youth group.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was probably when I was like 14.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know, I, I, I mostly hang out with my, hung out with my girlfriends in high school, but I still was going out on dates all the way up until I eventually met my now husband at 40 and so yeah, I dated a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was on all the apps and I never tried.
[SPEAKER_00]: what do you call it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a professional matchmaker sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was too expensive for me, but I tried all the apps and my pattern was kind of like I said like being interested in people who were mysterious, elusive,
[SPEAKER_00]: unavailable in various ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they would come in and love bomb me and and seem really interested all of a sudden, make me feel like I was really unique and special.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then pull away and then I would feel like I did something wrong or I didn't try hard enough or I needed to work harder to win their love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And growing up as an endurance athlete, it felt like if I wasn't
[SPEAKER_00]: then it didn't feel like it was worth anything, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So somebody who was super available, like I said before, was not very interesting because there was no chase.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was no room for me to prove myself.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is such a great point that like if we are kind of glad there's earlier messaging that if it's like you have to earn law or I'd really have to walk hard for relationships.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we wouldn't trust when it comes easy.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you also mentioned that you did not want to have intercourse, like when you were until like a few decades into dating, but you dated a lot of people, how was that showing up, and how was that impacting those interactions?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, well, I'm sure it impacted those interactions in some in different ways, but I, you know, I grew up in Cincinnati was I went to church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went through the purity culture movement in the 90s signed a pledge that I would wait until a marriage.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm a very goal oriented person, especially as an athlete.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: that was something my father really drilled into me as you keep your promises and this was perhaps might be considered a promise to God but more so for me it was a promise to myself that I was going to wait till I was in at least a loving and committed relationship if not marriage that's kind of what it eventually that that decision you know morphed into that's what I'm waiting for
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I would still really, sexually active for me, the line that I drew was sexual intercourse to, you know, other people who blow off virginity is being a patriarchal construct and, you know, for me, that's, that's where I drew the line.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody has their own line, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So, but.
[SPEAKER_00]: that was important to me and I felt like there was something also I wanted to be I wanted to play I wanted to be out there I wanted to be dating and so unfortunately that kind of you know also men hook up culture too and the more that you're in a hook up culture I that really fuels I think what something I talk about in my book which is Limerence
[SPEAKER_00]: which you know is I described as like a crush on steroids so it is a form of like infatuation it's thinking a lot about someone you've put on a pedestal that you don't see their flaws and there's a ton of it's fueled by uncertainty and hope which in hookup culture where
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the rules, which I understood from talking to this one sociologist who studied at Lisa Wade is her name.
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love talking to her.
[SPEAKER_02]: Her book was what it was like hook up hook up called just something like aircuff culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, American hookup culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: And basically the bottom line was like the hookups were supposed to feel meaningless that you're supposed to act aloof, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that automatically leaves somebody open to limmerance because there's so much uncertainty.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yet there's a little bit of hope, especially if the hookup was good, I guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm sure there were guys, especially when I got into my 30s when we were dating and we'd been on three to five dates and we weren't having sexual intercourse, they were probably like, what's going on?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's wrong with her or what's wrong with me, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, and a lot often a lot of times, I feel like they felt like I was trying to manipulate them and to get it being into a relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: that's not true if they weren't, if they weren't wanting to be in a committed loving relationship, then it's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would just part ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think I also had high expectations, obviously.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was complicated.
[SPEAKER_02]: One thing I'm like as a side note, I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I grew up in similar background, not necessarily Catholic, but in a conservative community.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was kind of like very ingrained, a kind of idea of abstinence.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I've never always been a high desire of woman.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really hard to navigate it, it's important, I know that at certain points, especially if there's limits, there's this negotiation of your own boundaries.
[SPEAKER_02]: How were you navigating that?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it something that you were communicating from the beginning that this is my value?
[SPEAKER_02]: Are they kind of like the these are part of the menu we're engaging these are off limit how were you navigating those interaction?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm not Catholic.
[SPEAKER_00]: My husband actually is, but I'm Protestant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was pretty open with people about the fact that I hadn't had sex.
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't like I would tell people on the first date usually.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unless I felt like it was going nowhere and I just wanted to mess with them and see how they would respond.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I mean, I was, and I'm a very sexual person too, so that was sometimes it was it was both confusing to them and to me because I was, you know, I had I had these certain boundaries and I think I was very lucky that most of the men that I was with were really respectful even if they didn't quite understand the boundaries.
[SPEAKER_00]: that weren't and that I had to be pretty forthright with.
[SPEAKER_02]: So do I'm sure many of people are now thinking about am I in the state of Lemurance?
[SPEAKER_02]: Is it genuine love?
[SPEAKER_02]: How can you tell the difference or how are you now reflecting back and can identify the difference?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think for so much of my dating life, I was in like the Lemurance cycle of like one one LO, it's a Lemurant object, the person that you put on the pedestal after another.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I found, I think when I look back on it now, I can be like, oh, well, that was a safe place to kind of hide because you could steer clear of like real emotional intimacy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, yes, I was like getting naked with people, and that is a kind of intimacy, but I wasn't, I wasn't diving into the real emotional intimacy of sharing a life with somebody and the fear of, you know, really being left.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think, which was something deep, deep down I had a fear of.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now that I am in a loving relationship, I can see the difference in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always say this when people ask about this, but I trusted my husband before I fell in love with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: before I loved him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's a really key difference because a lot of people who find themselves in a cycle of limits do not trust that person.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, they might fear them because they have this deep fear that they're going to say or do or look the wrong way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And with Dave, my husband now, there wasn't much of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I had gotten to a point where I had made enough mistakes, and I was burnt enough that I was tired of the chase.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was tired of feeling discarded.
[SPEAKER_00]: My body was literally when I would get into intimate situations with men.
[SPEAKER_00]: In my early 40s, would start shaking.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would start crying and it was, yeah, it was like a, and I would warn these guys, hey, this might happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't, it's not like I'm
[SPEAKER_00]: doing it on purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like my body just would be triggered by it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, as a I'm a massage therapist and as a body worker, I was like, this is actually kind of interesting, but also not good, obviously.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I talked to my therapist about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she said, you know, this is your body saying it's it's time to wake up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like you can't just keep thinking your way through these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have to pay attention to what you're doing to your body.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if I wasn't
[SPEAKER_00]: discarded.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can mentally kind of like, who not out, make enough excuses, but my body was sick of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and these guys that I was didn't trust and that were, I was actually semi-fairfall of, I felt the excitement and the anxiety that I associated with love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I haven't had the little bit of butterflies with Dave, but nowhere near like what I had with these other guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: What did you guys meet like walk us through that journey of like, you know, someone that's been in this limer and roller coaster, how did you get off that roller coaster?
[SPEAKER_00]: How did I get off the roller coaster?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we met, you know, really organically.
[SPEAKER_00]: We had actually known of each other because we had both coached for the same organization out here in Boulder, we're both runners.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he had been married for like 18 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was coming out of a divorce when I met him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was his first date, his first kiss afterwards.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, don't you want to play the field?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I've been out here dating for like 20 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you want to do the same thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, I think he just has more of a secure attachment style than I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the guys that I was attracted to did not have a secure attachment style.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we met just through a friend that on the rooftop bar in the summer of 2018.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we didn't actually start dating for a couple months.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at that point, you know, my, my, I've been really talking about therapists about trying to slow things down with in, in relationships and dates and intimacy wise, like,
[SPEAKER_00]: So he was aware of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was very forthright with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he actually went to my went with me to my therapist within like the first two months of dating, which is pretty, I mean, nobody'd ever done that before.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was willing to meet my parents pretty early on, and I was kind of scared, but I had never met anybody who was like that open and or if I had, I had quickly blown them off.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's awesome, so he continued to show it up, and it seems like that was very meaningful, built trust.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I also see with many of my clients that they're in the same place, because the intensity is not there at the beginning, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: The sexual attraction is not as strong, it's just hard for them to give it a chance.
[SPEAKER_02]: How did you navigate that part?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a great question.
[SPEAKER_00]: The intensity had hadn't used that word yet, but that was something I was really attracted to.
[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe it was part of, again, the athletic part of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also was late in life diagnosed with ADHD, so I think the hyper-fixating on certain people that I was attracted to came naturally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And,
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, with Dave, I mean, there was, there was sexual attraction, but how do we navigate like the, not being as intense?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, walking through it and therapy together was really helpful sitting in therapy and and talking about like how things felt in my body while he was sitting with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: and working on like the somatic level, which is really hard to describe to people who have an experience it, but I highly recommend it, especially for people who don't really like feeling like tuning into what's going on in their body.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, to go back to the athlete metaphor, like I would never have crossed marathon finish lines or run up mountains if I had paid attention to what was going on my body.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that was really key practice with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my body still did that same like shaking from having dissociated, I think, so many times in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's still, I've remort him of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It did happen with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Interestingly, I don't know if I was thinking back about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It didn't happen until I until we hooked up at his place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that the added addition of not being in my territory probably had an impact on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, there was something about I think maybe it's different for everybody, but for me and my book I talk about how important my grandma was to me and she, you know, here I was 40 and a half when I met him, my grandma turned 100 when I met him and there was this significance of like a timeline with a definite ending right and I felt like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't keep making the state.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to change my patterns because I'm not going to live forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: My grandma's life is not going to live forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had wanted her to meet the man I was going to marry for so long.
[SPEAKER_00]: We used to have this joke that if she didn't wear her seat, she had to wear her seat belt and her car.
[SPEAKER_00]: She wouldn't live long enough to see me get married.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we, you know, fast forward, we about a little over a year after we met, we got married at her hospital bedside three days before she died.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was some urgency, and I think sometimes it just takes, I've seen this in guys that I dated too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like when they just flip a switch, and I don't know if it's like the sex in the city, seeing where they talk about their light flipping from red to green all of a sudden.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I just sometimes differ people's timelines shift finally and they wake up, I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you see that with your clients sometimes when finally they're ready to make a change.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's my experience when people change their pattern.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're kind of like, we are working on ourselves.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, if that's what I've noticed, are they investing in yourself?
[SPEAKER_02]: How you show up in the relationship is different, says.
[SPEAKER_02]: Which leads you to have different outcome.
[SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes people want to control the outcome.
[SPEAKER_02]: They focus on therapy.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, oh, I want to get that person.
[SPEAKER_02]: That is just the focus of therapy.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have no control over because we're feeding to that obsessive cycle.
[SPEAKER_02]: But with these talked about it's kind of a internal motivation and pivoting from that that's meaningful and it seems like you had enough attraction from the beginning to your husband.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it wasn't something that you had to generate it, which also I'm sure that was part of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: And what's interesting is like, and now in the time of social media, online stocking is really easy, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like before if the person was moving away and they were not writing to us, that would be it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But right now, we can feel very connected to their life or watching their stories.
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you think that makes Limmerance worse?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yes, 100%.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you still, perhaps you still have a little bit
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes people I've heard refer refer to social media and all these photos or their stories as like limmerant fuel because it just gives you enough of a hit to go off on a fantasy about them with or and plus it's also the they're already they're already showing you their idealized self so you're you as a limmerant person are more likely anyways to see them without their flaws but even even more so on social media they're just they're showing usually
[SPEAKER_00]: their best side.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're best self.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and one thing I was going to say you asked me about Dave too with the intensity and stuff, he said things like, that nobody had said before, like, I will wait for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not in any rush, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who says that?
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, my girlfriend say, oh, he's a unicorn.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, no, I think there are other guys out there like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just, it takes
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, time to build up to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't say that like the first month we were together or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, he was willing to wait and we planned a trip to go have sex for the first time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I didn't want to just like, I'm somebody who likes the party plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like, I like to make things celebratory.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm like, we're going somewhere for this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he, and I said, well, what if I get down there and I freak out?
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like,
[SPEAKER_00]: It's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, and you know, and I was still in my head trying as a perfectionist, which I think also plays into lemurance, like wanting it to be, I knew it was going to be imperfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even with my therapist, we work through a couple scenarios of like the perfect scenario of sex and like the okay scenario of sex, you know, just to work through the imperfections that are obviously there.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to ask a question might be in truth.
[SPEAKER_02]: See, let me now.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a lot of clients that they waited for to have sex in later stages of life.
[SPEAKER_02]: And they feel underwhelmed, but intercourse, like afterwards.
[SPEAKER_02]: What was your experience?
[SPEAKER_02]: Was it all you were hoping would be?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's not in truth at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the question I think everybody thinks about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because so many people said, totally, oh, it's not going to be great.
[SPEAKER_00]: First time, you know, don't be, don't expect, you know, it to be fireworks and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I knew that and it was, I don't want to say underwhelming, but we basically, the good thing was we have sex like,
[SPEAKER_00]: I think like three or four times in like 24 hours.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just experimented.
[SPEAKER_00]: He brought these cards, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: So to make it playful, to try different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that was so cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he surprised me with those cards.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was what was important, I think, is not one time, one ban, and it was the best ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was like, we got good at it in a very short period of time.
[SPEAKER_02]: who seemed like there was kind of like this understanding of how it's not going to be perfect and more intentionality around it that that made it meaningful.
[SPEAKER_02]: So for audience, I'm sure many of them, they kind of think I'm in the same path.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're obsessing over someone that they can't love them back or they won't love them back.
[SPEAKER_02]: What is the first step to break that cycle?
[SPEAKER_00]: love.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're worthy of more than perhaps the bread crumbs that you've been subsisting on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think once you realize that, once you understand the consistency is consistency and communication, transparency, trust is not abnormal, but it's actually good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's it's possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: and that it is a sign of a loving and healthy relationship, then you start seeing, then you can more easily, I think, start letting go of those people that you have held out for that maybe might eventually like you back and see you for the worthy of love person that you actually are.
[SPEAKER_02]: which are beautiful, meaningful, guideline.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm expanding your understanding and capacity for love can be powerful.
[SPEAKER_02]: So our people that might be interested in getting your book, what are some of the places they can access it?
[SPEAKER_00]: The book, I have it here, so when longing becomes your lover, breaking from infatuation, perfectionism and rejection to find authentic love, a true story of overcoming limits, you can find it like it far into noble Amazon, bookshop,
[SPEAKER_00]: and then most bookstores also are carrying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they don't, ask them to carry it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a huge help to authors out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: They can all listeners can find me at www.mandageemacrackin.com or on Instagram at Amanda Jamacrackin as well in TikTok at the longing lab, which is the name of my podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're explore
[SPEAKER_00]: different forms of longing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Beautiful.
[SPEAKER_02]: I will leave a link to all of those free sources at the end.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much Amanda for coming in this show and hopefully we'll have you back in future.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for having me, Dr. Naz.
[SPEAKER_02]: Have a good day.
[SPEAKER_00]: You too.
[SPEAKER_02]: If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to share with someone who may be stuck in an almost relationship or caught in a cycle of longing and emotional unavailability.
[SPEAKER_02]: At if you want to start rebuilding genuine desire, intimacy and emotional connection in your own life, make sure to download our free guide at how to increase your desire.
[SPEAKER_02]: The link is in the show notes.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for listening.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll see you next week for another episode of this Exology Podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: This Exology Podcast.
[SPEAKER_02]: For more great content visit www.exologypodcast.com.
[SPEAKER_02]: Please be advised that information presented on this podcast is not a substitute for seeking help from a licensed mental health provider.