We study the formation of longer-lived states via internal coupling near a special avoided resonance crossing between the interacting states in an open optical system. Away from the parity-time symmetry limit, we discuss unconventional cavity resonance states created by a spatially varying gain/ loss profile. Now, via S-matrix formalism, we have numerically demonstrated that with suitably chosen system openness and coupling strengths, the excess noise generation among the interacting nonorthogonal states (calculated as Petermann factor K ) can be suppressed close to the ideal value of one with a simultaneous order of magnitude enhancement in the quality-factor of the longer-lived state. © 2016 Optical Society of America.