How they make you fall in love with them (even if it’s accidental)

Another video this week, all about the habits that makes some people especially addictive.

You can also test out the new and improved online assessment to find out How addictive is my limerent object?

Have you ever been so lovestruck by someone that it almost felt like they’d cast a spell over you?

Did you wonder what it was about them that was so… intoxicating?

Well, in this video I’ll show you why some people can be so bewitching, why you might be vulnerable, and how to resist their charms.

If you want to.

---

Right then. How can someone else make you fall in love with them?

Well, obviously, I don’t mean that some people actually have magical love powers.

But many of us have had the experience of falling really properly head over heels for someone else—so much so that it feels like love madness.

That other person is so romantically potent that we develop limerence for them, a state of infatuation so profound that it dominates all other concerns in life.

Intrusive thoughts, desperate desire, euphoria, anxiety, overarousal, yearning and a romantic pull so powerful that it almost feels supernatural.

A high so high that it can become addictive.

They become a limerent object—the embodiment of desire that we crave with irrational intensity.

For about half of the population of the world, this is what the early stages of love can sometimes feel like: complete psychological capture.

That’s limerence.

So, what is it about another person that can trigger such a disruptive transformation?

1. What triggers limerence?

So, I’ve been talking about “this other person” being a limerent “object” in a rather dehumanising way.

But that’s deliberate.

Limerence happens in our heads, and it’s all about our own romantic hopes and dreams and emotional vulnerabilities.

We’re not really seeing them as a fully rounded person.

It’s that something about them matches our subconscious blueprint of an ideal mate, which has developed over the course of our lives. So when we meet someone who matches our limerence avatar, we rapidly get a “glimmer” of romantic excitement.

This bypasses our rational mind and gets us right in the feels.

They seem charged with romantic power. Bewitching.

Now, what it is about this other person that our subconscious picks up on is a highly personal thing. We all have our own unique glimmer triggers.

But, having heard thousands of limerent’s stories over the last decade, here are some of the most common triggers:

1. Eye contact. Massively seductive. Easy to misread. One of the commonest causes of limerents suddenly re-categorising someone into a romantic possibility rather than everyday acquaintance.
2. Romantic interest. Linked into the eye contact trigger, lots of limerents report that them suddenly believing that the other person might be attracted to *them* was the catalyst for their own glimmery response.
3. Physical traits. Some people really do have a thing for redheads or tall people or cute smiles or aquiline noses. So this is probably linked into some formative experience in their past, but sometimes people really do have a physical “type”
4. Personality traits. Obviously, a very broad category, but snarky humour, unflappable calm, emotional openness, bookish introversion or any of the other varied ways that people behave can similarly set the “type” of person that triggers limerence for you
5. Archetypes. I’ve done a whole video on this before but it can often be that the limerent object represents a particular, familiar type of person rather than how they individually look or behave. So these are the damsels in distress, men of mystery, forbidden fruit, or authority figures that excite us at a deep level.

So, that’s quite a wide range of people.

Clearly there must be more to limerence that just meeting someone who triggers the glimmer for you. Lots of people are likely to match our limerence blueprint, but they don’t all bewitch us.

So what else is going on?

2. The two key factors

Assuming we feel the glimmer for someone, whether or not we progress into the full-blown infatuation of limerence depends on two other major factors: hope and uncertainty.

We generally have to have some sense of possibility that we might have a chance with them—or that they at least feel warmly towards us.

Now, this is an area where there is a lot a variation between limerents. Some can find hope in a fleeting moment of eye contact. Others need a sustained period of flirting and fairly obvious hints from the limerent object before they begin to believe there might be something there.

Hope can be a bit delusional, but if the other person is hostile, obviously disinterested, or in some other way makes it totally clear they are not attracted, then limerence does tend to fizzle out.

The second factor, though, is where limerence gets amplified.

Uncertainty.

Having some hope for romantic reciprocation, but not being able to find out for sure, is the perfect way to fan the glimmer of limerent possibility into the life-ravaging wildfire of limerent obsession.

Classic causes of uncertainty are mixed messages from the limerent object, social barriers to the free expression of feelings (such as one or both of you being married or having a position of authority over the other), situationships, developing limerence for a friend, insecurity on the part of the limerent, or simple practical barriers to being together (like travelling a lot or often having to change plans at short notice).

Now already, it should be becoming clear that some people will be much more prone to triggering limerence than others.

Smiley, flirty people with chaotic lives are going to generate way more hope and uncertainty than jaded, bluntly honest loners.

There are some behaviours that will reliably generate hope and uncertainty—even if that is not the intent of the person doing it.

Commonly, the most triggering behaviours can be both signs of friendliness and signs of attraction and they kind of have hope and uncertainty bundled in together.

Some examples are:

1. Erratic communication. So texting frequently one day, then nothing for days afterwards. Or being super enthusiastic about meeting up, and then cancelling at short notice. Any channel of communication can cause this sort of confusion if the limerent object’s use of it is unpredictable and inconsistent.
2. Gregariousness. Some people are naturally friendly, open, and fun to be with. Unfortunately, that can be misread as romantic interest. Or, it might actually be romantic interest.
3. Flirting. Now this is obviously a romantically charged behaviour, but many people also just flirt as a form of social bonding or banter. It’s often hard to know how serious someone’s flirting is.
4. Physical affection. Some people are huggy, they touch others to show affection or trust, but they’ve got no intent beyond building rapport. For other people touching is an unconscious sign of attraction.
5. Seeking emotional support. They need you. They lean on you. But, are you building an attachment, or providing a service?
6. Cryptic messages. This final case comes up surprisingly often. The limerent object says something apparently meaningful, but also seems to be inhibited about being direct. “It feels like I’ve known you forever”, or “you should be careful around me” or “My heart is really vulnerable at the moment.” Something that seems intimate, but not exactly encouraging.

The difficult thing, of course, is figuring out what all these behaviours add up to, and that’s why people who display them end up becoming an object of fascination and obsession.

3. Is it deliberate?

So, the framing of this video is about someone “making” you fall in love with them, as though it is a deliberate act.

Sometimes it is.

All the behaviours that I’ve covered can be used cynically to manipulate someone into infatuation.

A really clear example of this comes from the writer Elizabeth Gilbert in her essay “confessions of a seduction addict”:

Seduction is the art of coercing somebody to desire you, of orchestrating somebody else’s longings to suit your own hungry agenda. Seduction was never a casual sport for me; it was more like a heist, adrenalizing and urgent. I would plan the heist for months, scouting out the target, looking for unguarded entries. Then I would break into his deepest vault, steal all his emotional currency and spend it on myself.

Elizabeth Gilbert

Thankfully, that sort of predatory behaviour is rare.

More common is a less deliberate seduction. So, the other person isn’t intentionally staging a heist, they’re just behaving in a way that broadcasts hope and uncertainty unintentionally.

Or… perhaps less charitably, they have some sense of their ability to generate desire in other people and they’re unconsciously testing their powers, and they also quite like the flattering feeling of knowing they could take things forward if they wanted to.

Regardless of their motives, some people can be addictive in this way.

So, what can you do to avoid becoming an addict?

4. How to not fall under their spell

If you are in the situation of feeling bewitched by another person and you’re wondering how they did it, I’ve put together an online assessment tool to help you find out. So you can score how addictive is your limerent object?

It’s free, takes about 5 min to complete, and you’ll get a full breakdown emailed to you at the end, with all the sources of hope and uncertainty in your situation, and your own personal vulnerabilities.

So that’s a good way to figure out what kind of limerent object you’re dealing with.

And, broadly there are four main categories:

Fantasy, Neutral, Friendly, and Enabling limerent objects.

Fantasy limerent objects are people that you don’t have a real connection to—so, celebrities, or people you’ve seen but not approached, or even people who have rejected you but you can’t let go of hope.

Neutral limerent objects are people who you do interact with, but only fairly superficially. People like the barista in your favourite coffeeshop, or the receptionist at your gym, or a teacher at your child’s school. People you know a bit, but who you don’t have a meaningful relationship with.

Now for both fantasy and neutral limerent objects, getting over them is basically a personal battle. The limerence is being generated in your own head. You’ve done the work of creating the hope and uncertainty they are essentially a bystander, albeit maybe one who made eye contact with you once and triggered a whole cascade of emotional consequences.

Now the good news is that these are easy limerent objects to avoid. The bad news is that you’ll need to do a fair amount of personal reflection to understand what it was about them that triggered an emotional crisis in you and led into obsession.

For the last two categories of limerent object, resisting and recovering is harder.

Friendly limerent objects are people you’ve actually got to know and bonded with. They like you, show signs they are happy to see you, maybe even signs of affection, and you want to keep a relationship with them.

The final category, Enabling limerent objects, will feed the addiction. These are people who behave in ways that naturally cultivate romantic hope in others, but is also ambiguous, deniable, not open and honest. So they are—consciously or unconsciously—complicit in the addiction, like the drinking buddy of an alcoholic.

Perhaps the hardest problem for most limerents who feel trapped, is distinguishing whether their limerent object is friendly or enabling.

Now, there is a surefire way to do it, but most limerents generally don’t want to.

That surefire way is to be decisive.

If you are free to be with your limerent object then you can eliminate the uncertainty from the situation by being honest with them about your true feelings.

That way, you might get your heart’s desire if they feel the same way, or you might discover that they are a friendly limerent object who didn’t mean to cultivate limerence in you.

So a friend will likely be sympathetic, but clear about their lack of interest. They may try to let you down gently, or say they still want to be friends, but they won’t string you along.

In contrast, an enabling limerent object is much more likely to get cross (because you’ve spoiled their fun), give a non-committal or confusing response, and then try to get your relationship back to its old dynamic as soon as they can.

Because you being their infatuated friend suited them.

OK, but what if you aren’t free to be with your limerent object—say because you or they are married? Well, that calls for a different kind of decisiveness.

It doesn’t really matter if they are friendly or enabling. It doesn’t matter how they feel.

You need to break the addiction either way.