The five forces that drive romantic obsession

Sometimes love can be overwhelming.

We can fall so hard that we end up becoming obsessed with another person—until we literally can’t get them out of our head.

This is a mental state known as limerence—an intense infatuation that feels like you’ve become addicted to another person.

What causes this? Why do some of us have this vulnerability built into our brains?

Well, in this video I’ll show you five key factors that contribute to romantic obsession, how to identify your own personal vulnerabilities, and what you can do about it.

1. Arousal

Arousal is the physical rush of limerence: the racing heart, the jittery excitement, the high that you feel when they seem to like you; and the anxiety you feel when they don’t.

This is the intoxicating euphoria that can become addictive, but arousal can also progress into an exhausting state of overarousal and stress.

The highs and lows of limerence are a reflection of how sensitive the arousal system in your brain is to romantic reward and desire.

2. Bonding

The second dimension is all about a feeling of extraordinary connection.

For many limerents, their limerent object – the person that they are infatuated with – seems impossibly magnetic. You just want to be with them, to bond with them, to feel close to them, to share intimacies. They radiate an aura of attraction.

While bonding can feel arousing, it’s really a deeper feeling of special affinity and almost uncanny connection –  like you’ve met your soulmate, and the bond was “meant to be”.

3. Rumination

Rumination is all about how much time you spend thinking about them when you are alone: rehearsing conversations you might have with them, or replaying past memories of moments you enjoyed with them, or fantasising and daydreaming about them.

For some people, rumination can itself give a sort of secondary high.

You get some of the buzz of arousal, and the warmth of bonding, by vividly imagining that you’re with them.

Now rumination can also become a method for mood regulation – when you feel down you ruminate about happier times to get some fleeting relief from the pain.

4. Preoccupation

This fourth dimension is a measure of how completely they have captured your mind—how present they are in your thoughts and how hard it is to concentrate on other tasks or commitments.

This is also the aspect of limerence that can lead to self-neglect.

You’re so preoccupied with Them that you can’t sleep, you can lose your appetite, and you don’t meet existing obligations and commitments to other people.

You can lose interest in old hobbies, or seeing friends, and when preoccupation is bad, it’s hard to even read books, listen to music, or get any work done because they are such a constant source of distraction.

5. Compulsion

Finally, the fifth factor is compulsion, the most destructive dimension of limerence. Compulsion is the involuntary aspect of limerence: urges that are hard to resist, intrusive thought loops that you can’t turn off, constantly checking social media or looking for texts, even when you would rather not.

This is where it feels like you have lost self-control. You feel unable to self-regulate and manage your own behaviour. You want to stop, but resisting the craving becomes painful, and attempts to withdraw are just too distressing.

This is the strongest indication that limerence has progressed to a state of obsession.

What are your vulnerabilities?

Now if you’ve ever experienced limerence, at least some of these five factors will probably be uncomfortably familiar.

But, we are all unique, and different people have different sensitivities to the different dimensions.

For example, some people are highly sensitive to arousal. Prolonged eye contact with their limerent object, or a brush of a hand, or even a smile or a laugh can be enough to send them into emotional overdrive.

For other limerents, the bonding dimension is dominant. They feel an almost cosmic sense of connection to their limerent object. Like they’ve been struck by Cupid’s arrow.

Some limerents love to spend time alone, because it gives them a chance to ruminate and immerse themselves into an inner fantasy world where all their desires are consummated.

We differ in our temperaments and our susceptibility to the different aspects of romantic obsession.

Now you might already have identified your own vulnerabilities, but if you’re still curious, I’ve put together a quiz that helps analyse your limerence makeup – so it scores you on the different dimensions and identifies what areas affect you most powerfully.

Here’s a link if you’d like to give it a try and find out: https://limerence-quiz.scoreapp.com

Now finally, the intensity of the different factors can also change over time. At the outset of limerence, arousal and bonding can make the experience mostly positive, but a prolonged period of uncertainty can drive limerence into a state more dominated by preoccupation and compulsion.

Despite that variation over time, it does seem to be the case that limerence is a package deal. Very few people get to enjoy the upsides without also having to learn how to manage the downsides.

So, that leads on to the last question:

How can limerence be managed?

An important feature about these five dimensions of limerence is that they don’t just define the symptoms of the state, they actually reinforce it.

Arousal and bonding imprint one person as the primary source of reward in the world and they strengthen the dopamine-based “wanting” drive that makes you seek them.

Rumination and preoccupation keep your limerent object central in your mind, increasing their psychological salience and further reinforcing the connection between them and reward.

And finally compulsion can also contribute to reinforcement, because obsessive desire thinking loops that become difficult to stop also deepen the strength of the addiction.

The five factors can work together to lead you into the romantic obsession trap, and then strengthen the bars that cage you.

So, a critical first step to breaking free is identifying your own vulnerabilities and developing a plan for counteracting them. This strategy is the three stage plan that I cover in Smitten:

First: Limit contact to reduce the arousal and bonding that comes from being with them.

Second: Train your executive brain to weaken the mental preoccupation and develop the clarity of mind needed to ride out the compulsions.

Third: Spoil rewards. So, stop rumination being a secret source of secondhand pleasure, or a dysfunctional strategy for mood repair.

Now there’s loads of resources over at livingwithlimerence.com if you’d like more information and support on how to achieve this.

So, those are the big five factors to beware of.

Check out the quiz if you want to run your own personal situational analysis, and then read this post next to learn how to overcome limerence for good in ten simple steps.

Well, actually they’re not that simple, but there are ten of them.