Fixated on a person.. save me from my suffering

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I have been moping around all day today because my brain has finally felt the death of a long fixation I have had on a coworker.
An aspie subreddit earlier lead me to the word "limerence" .. a fancy word for being absolutely infatuated and obsessed with a person and mistaking it for love. This is only the second time I have ever had this happen with a real life person and it really really sucked lol. I spent literally hundreds of hours this past month thinking about her, stalking her facebook, forcing myself to start conversations with her, when she doesn't even care enough to say bye to me when we leave in the afternoons or text me first or literally anything She's also married with children so like... what did I think...
I felt insane until I realized it was my brain doing that crazy s**t it likes to do. And now I'm in that post-fixation phase where nothing feels interesting, and I could literally stare at a wall for 12 hours without noticing.. y'all know what I'm talking about?

M-hm. I have a history of developing fixations on work colleagues / bosses. I try to recognise it for what it is and not engage with them too much until it (eventually) passes, but yeah, I feel your pain.

If it's any comfort, I think the ability to trust and see the best in people so completely is better than the opposite.

How do you tell the difference between limerance and love?

Intense desire is ultimately self-serving and consumptive. Like a hunger that can never be satisfied. The fabrication of speculative scenarios can provide some stimulation to support what are ultimately delusions. This can be an unhealthy practice if continued as it can lead to increasing dependence on an imaginary world.

Love might be seen as the willingness to sacrifice self. Children start out completely selfish. When they themselves become parents, they find that they are willing to set aside their own selfishness to care for their children.

I think limerence is more the infatuation with the thought of the person, vs love would entail getting to know them for who they are. There was an obsessive quickness to it, and on days where her tone wasn’t just right while speaking to me i would literally spend all day crying about it because she wasn’t acting the way I wanted her to. She also fits a narrow idea of what I view as attractive so my mind latched on initially because of that and every crumb of attention she showed me convinced me x10000 that she felt the same as me

Hmm I've only felt like that about one person and I was able to get to know her very well.

It didn't change anything and seems permanent.

I have similar experience. I felt this way back in 2016 when I met the girl who is now my wife. I was very infatuated with her. It turned into something stable for us.

Just as this gut-wrenching obsession I have with this other woman has seemed to settle into a normal friendship now that I have gotten past the stage of idolizing her.

But I have read other people say they have to avoid this person completely to end the fixation

I get limerence, or crushes, or infatuations,(whatever term in vogue is now) with folks that I cant even attempt to have a romantic relationship with, but I dont get as manic-depressive about it as you.

They subside, and usually totally go away after a while. And dont cause me to get depressed when they go away.

But even so...

Well...you might try the equivalent of "nicotine patches" for it. This is why they invented celebrities.

There may be some celebrity who could "play" the object of your crush in a movie. Start watching Utube vids of that celeb (clips of her on talk shows or whatever) to get your mind off of the person, and wean yourself off of thinking about her.

And of course it doesnt hurt to try to go out meet new people.

Yeah it helped when I saw major flaws in someone,which only appeared after a long time of getting to know them.

Wait a minute. You have a wife, and yet you have been spending your deepest psychic energy on a woman who cannot have and you will not ever have and who has less than no interest in you as anything but a co-worker? Are you lacking something at home?

That's not autism. You are not helpless or powerless. You need to refocus your values or you risk hurting others and really screwing up your life.

Thank you but my wife is completely aware of everything and she’s the first person I tell when I have feelings like this
and we both are free to enjoy the company of other people as we have something called open communication

Ok. You be you.

I searched this limerence concept and to me it seems to be describing exactly the good old crush. I don't see anything profound in it. People get infatuated with people. When that is reciprocated they get into a relationship. When it's not, they have a crush.

I don't think you are understanding - this IS autism. For some people the autistic obsessiveness (or 'special interest') just happens to be another person. It's actually very very difficult to break out of this kind of fixation once you're in it. The wiki article I just read on limerance says it typically takes 3 years.

I have problems similar to this, but it's due to BPD. I become obsessed with specific people, which with BPD is referred to as a "favourite person", and I spend a lot of my time trying to interact with them, get attention from them, thinking about them, etc. I rely on their attention and approval to be in a good mood, and if their tone even seems off I become very upset (I internalize things though so I don't usually act too unhinged over it, thank God). I obviously idealize them a lot, too. It's much different than a crush, but the difference is hard to explain. It's a lot more intense, and is very dependent and unhealthy.

I recently have started to "get over" my current FP because I finally began to notice their flaws and how mean they actually kind of are to me. I've also forced myself to keep distance and keep interactions benign which has helped my obsession die down.

Thank you. That response realllllllly f*****g rubbed me the wrong way but I’m not trying to beef with someone within my first day of being here LMAO