From time to time, I hear from people who repeatedly become limerent for individuals who are unavailable, unreliable, or just generally have bad character. Their limerent objects are unhealthy to bond to.
The question why such troublesome people glimmer for the suffering limerent is likely to have a complex answer – a psychological stew cooked up from formative childhood bonding experiences, adolescent sexual awakenings, and adult relationships. There isn’t really a single “reason” for something so multilayered, instinctive and emotional, so it’s not something that can be understood rationally.
While I am generally positive about therapy to understand past traumas and the forces that have shaped us, I’m also cautious about how much practical benefit that knowledge has for helping us improve life in the present. We can’t change our personal history. We can’t fix the past. The best hope is that we can reconcile ourselves to the truth of our lives, and then find a positive new direction to follow.
Finding that new direction is no small matter. Almost all people seek love – romantic love – as a pillar of their life. It’s a fundamental drive that can’t be switched off, and shouldn’t be switched off, as it adds meaning to life, and roots from which a family might grow.
But for single limerents who fall for unhealthy LOs, how can they proceed? Therapy might help them understand what they are responding to in, say, an emotionally unavailable man, but what do they actually do they next time they meet one? They somehow need to resolve the conflict between limerent desire, and the bitter experience that such people ultimately cause more harm than good.
So, what can be done? How can the desire for romantic thrills be balanced against the danger of bonding to someone destructive?
Well, it all comes down to moderating animal instincts with hard-won wisdom.
1. The instinctive approach
Most people approach love in an intuitive way. They strike out into the world looking for adventure (or, at least, seeking social connection), and hope to meet someone who excites them. For limerents, this romantic excitement tends to manifest as the glimmer – that delightful frisson of unsettling energy that gives some people romantic potency.
If the excitement is mutual, then the dance begins, and might lead to consummation of desire, or it might lead to disappointment, rejection or limerence limbo.
If everything goes well, and a proper relationship starts, then… well… most people just sort of wing it. They keep following their instinctive scripts about how love should be, and try and fit that into their partner’s idea of how love should be, often without ever actually saying anything about their separate expectations.
This “love will conquer all if you just try hard enough” approach to relationships is quite a gamble. Maybe you will be compatible, maybe you’ll be able to figure out the rough edges, maybe you’ll learn how to communicate effectively before you begin to lose respect for one another, but it’s basically the luck of the draw.
Running this instinctive cycle a few times with bad outcomes is what usually leads people to realise that they become limerent for incompatible people.
2. The intellectual approach
When stung by experience a few times, it can be tempting to try the opposite approach to love. This can also be a mistake.
Some limerents swear off the exciting, glimmery people that press their buttons, figuring that the lows of limerent exhaustion aren’t worth the highs of intoxication. Instead, they use their executive brains to make sensible choices, and try dating someone who is stable, healthy and supportive.
Such people are good to bond to. The attachment will be stable (from their end, at least) and life can end up happier, healthier, and more fulfilling. Their love is warm and reliable; nourishing and encouraging.
BUT…
…taking such a calculated approach to love can sometimes backfire. If it is taken as a impulsive response to a bad episode of limerence, you can find yourself sincerely and stably bonded to someone who doesn’t excite you enough, romantically or sexually, to sustain a mutually gratifying relationship.
Humans are restless. Companionable love is wonderful, but most limerents want it as an follow-on to the fireworks of infatuation. It’s one thing to lament that the thrill of limerence is now just a memory of the early days of your long-term relationship, it’s another to know – with a mix of regret and shame – that you never felt that for your partner at all.
If you end up in this situation because of a hasty reaction rather than deep reflection, that restlessness can nag at you and make you doubt your choice.
Stable love is always a good thing, but the route into it matters when it comes to the odds of it lasting.
3. A balanced approach
So, having helpfully ruled out following your limerent instincts and following your sensible thoughts, what’s left?
A bit of both.
The idea is that you use your rational brain – your executive centre that learns from past mistakes and spots patterns and dangers – to set guardrails along the edges of your romantic adventures.
Excitement is a core part of romantic love. Exhilaration, arousal, titillation, flirtation, risk-taking, surprise, intoxication – these are elemental experiences that enliven us. Monastic denial of such pleasures is rarely wise, unless the only people who provoke them for you are really bad news (the violent, abusive, disordered, or dysfunctional). But wild abandon is equally unwise – the emotional equivalent of throwing yourself into white water rapids for a thrill.
The sweet spot is setting boundaries that allow for excitement but protect against danger. Be open to the hunger for limerent excitement, but be cautious in indulging it.
The idea is to tweak your mindset:
Old thinking: feel the glimmer → this person is special and attractive → I want them
New thinking: feel the glimmer → this person is triggering my limerence → Should I indulge?
The choice to indulge is set by some key red flags that cause you to pull back and slow down. These will be personal, but some obvious choices are: if LO is married, if they are evasive or secretive, if they casually insult you, if they lie repeatedly, if they make you feel unsafe. There are lots of warning signs for dodgy LOs. Figure out your own and use them to fix some behavioural crash barriers.
These intellectual guardrails are an effective way to stop you idealising away serious problems. If someone hits the guardrails, take heed and cool off. If someone excites you, but stays within your guardrails, then go for it and get nice and hot.
4. Long-term love
All these arguments assume that the limerent is single and looking for a long-term, secure pair bond. There are of course other types of love, and other lifestyles that are fulfilling.
Assuming, though, that lasting love is the goal, there is one last step that is important. Even if you find someone who excites you, without exceeding your safety limits, it is likely that they will be following the instinctive model of love. The final part of the puzzle, therefore, is to do the work of developing good communication skills.
By working together to understand your real drives, desires, hopes, dreams, you can come to properly understand both yourself and each other. You may find out that idealisation was covering up incompatibilities, or, if you are really lucky, you may discover that you can help each other grow into the kind of people you each want to be.
Once you’ve navigated your way through the choppy waters of just enough excitement to the calmer waters of long-term bonding, it’s still important to keep that balance between instinct and wisdom poised in a state of creative tension.
It’s a one in a million shot to find someone that you can live with effortlessly – instead you can enjoy the satisfaction that comes from working together to build a good partnership.
Limerence will pass. Love will remain. By taking care on the way into limerence, you stand a better chance of passing through into a love that endures.
The hazmat picture/unhealthy LOs as poison is a good description of things. Another metaphor I have thought of often relates to the deadly combination of an unhealthy LO and a limerent with rescuer syndrome, something I struggle with myself. The limerent thinks they are reaching down into a well to help save the LO stuck below, but in reality what happens is the LO will bring the limerent to fall spectacularly down the well with them, and the ascent out is pure hell. Better to just keep the outstretched hand away…
That is a great analogy, Reader.
Trying to rescue a chaotic LO is… inviting chaos into your life.
Clip of the Blog: “Lost In Space” (1965-1968)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG0ochx16Dg
Going tangential…
There was a lot of subtlety in 60s TV.
“Lost In Space” was a campy TV series in the mid-60s. Where the original “Star Trek” was a serious, LIS was as campy as they come. Kind of like the “Batman” TV (1966-1968). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qddas1Gwmys
“Rocky an Bullwinkle” (1959) had an undercurrent of adult themes, one of which was the Cold War. Each show consisted of 4 cartoons, 2 R&B, 1 Fractured Fairy Tales, and 1 Peabody and Sherman. FF was my favorite, which helps explain my distorted recollection of many classic fairy tales. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=LT2QpCoUWzA&list=PLJhawgENOx2x5HHGS2L_O7b4SBq2xKKyp was chosen for obvious reasons.
True story:
One time, my parents left me with a friend of the family. Along with my parents, they were one of the “It” couples of the neighborhood. I loved going to their house because they had a pool with a pirate chest in the deep end and the only color TV in the neighborhood.
I don’t remember where his wife and my parents were. They didn’t have kids so he asked what I normally did in the early evening. I told him that I watched cartoons. He said then we’d watch cartoons. Fridays were R&B night so that’s what we watched.
After it was over, he said, “That show is not for children.” I told yes it was and he said, “No, it’s not.”
Link to Fractured Fairy Tales:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT2QpCoUWzA&list=PLLhOnau-tupR5l-OSXT1BHzAy_qV8ww-6
“Lost In Space” was a campy TV series in the mid-60s. Where the original “Star Trek” was a serious, LIS was as campy as they come.”
@Limerent Emeritus.
I wasn’t around in the mid-60s. However, my sisters and I grew up on LIS, thanks to the show coming out on video in the 90s and my mother not letting us watch a lot of actual TV…
Funnily enough, I never thought of LIS as “campy” while I was actually watching it. Although so much culture from that period does seem campy e.g. Bewitched, I Dream of Genie, The Brady Bunch. Even the movie “The Sound of Music” seems dreadfully campy to me as an adult. Although, as a child, I lapped it up as some marvellous insight in the real world of adult emotional relationships. (I think even some of the actors on TSOM thought the storyline was too syrupy-sweet).
Is it any wonder my “emotional barometer” is way off, when I spent my entire childhood consuming media that was either campy or sentimental, and mistaking both for real life? Oh yes, I took my television very seriously as a boy. No one explained to me that these idealised depictions of romantic love/suburban family life/family life on a hostile planet with a talking robot in tow weren’t real. 😜
Well, Sammy,
“Those rosy memories we all share are actually memories from our favorite TV shows. We’ve confused our own childhoods with episodes of “Ozzie and Harriet,” “Father Knows Best,” and “The Brady Bunch.” In real life, Ozzie had a very visible mistress for years, Bud and Kitten on “Father Knows Best” grew up to become major druggies, and Mom on “The Brady Bunch” dated her fifteen-year-old fictional son.” – Cynthia Heimel (2004). “Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Good-bye”
You’re not alone.
It’s not surprising we go after unhealthy people. Considering the dichotomy between what we lived with and what we saw on TV, it’s probably more surprising when we don’t.
Maybe Dr. L should start eliminating some offtopic comments, this thread has absolutely no connection with the article or limerence in general.
The dynamic for comments has definitely changed as the site has matured. It’s trying to do a lot of things at once nowadays, with newcomers and old hands having different needs.
Time for a reorganisation, I agree.
Such an insightful post. After being burned a few times as a limerent, I definitely took the “executive approach” to choosing a husband. I decided that my heart couldn’t be trusted, and chose someone I thought was stable, reliable, etc. Many times it occurred to me that I had essentially created an arranged marriage for myself. And I don’t recommend it. The relationship definitely needed more juice. We stayed together for many years and had four great kids; but not six months had passed before I found myself limerent for someone else again. (Luckily, limerence doesn’t strike me that often.)
The thing I wasn’t capable of seeing at the time was that my husband was every bit as narcissistic as some of my LOs. I had no sense of my own value, and my husband proceeded to tear down what little self esteem I had. One of my main tasks in life became refusing to see myself through my husband’s eyes. (“Or, on the other hand, maybe this is just real life,” I would think. “Maybe I really am overly sensitive, and too idealistic about love.”) Now that I’m out of that marriage, it’s shocking to realize how emotionally abusive the situation became, and how harmful for our children.
Not that I’m cured now, or I wouldn’t be here. Currently limerent for a married man. It might even be mutual, but of course it’s hopeless. He’s a customer, and I can’t avoid him without quitting my job, so I just do my best to roll with and enjoy our interactions, without trying to cling or feel entitled and resentful.
I have been in an attachment style -related coaching for quite a while now (a membership, not 1 on 1 coaching though), and even though that has helped me a lot especially with my anxious-leaning side, it is only with the concept of limerence that I’m finally coming to a full understanding of how my dating scenarios have been twisted and what the key problems have been. This post describes it perfectly. I used to always fall limerently for guys, only to always have those relationships or crushes end or turn out to be impossible, and have my heart broken. I then went to this rational mode of trying to only date “the safe guys”, but this has led me to dozens, probably already a hundred dates with guys who I don’t feel attracted to sexually / physically at all, i.e. there’s NO glimmer at all. It has not worked 😑 It’s been impossible for me to develop a relationship with someone like that. Been mostly out of the dating pool during the past two years to work on myself, but found myself meeting an unhealthy LO early this summer, developed a very strong limerent crush towards him only after a couple of dates and have been obsessive about him since. Luckily was able to communicate openly to him about how I feel (this is the result of the attachment coaching, boy did that feel powerful, just told him straightforward I’m going to fall for him too hard and it will be hurtful!!) and cut contact with him, haven’t been so successful in stopping the obsessive thinking though. Then run into this page, thank heavens for that 🙏🏻 I honestly feel like this is a life-changing experience, my attachment coaching has never explained to me this clearly what is happening when I fall for an unhealthy LO so obsessively. Now I can combine the attachment knowledge – which IS useful, too – and this limerence knowledge. I am not over my LO yet, but I can FEEL that this was the last time I let myself plunge into a limerent crush like this. No effin’ way am I going to let this happen to myself ever again, it has been such a devastating summer. Especially when I know he is not a healthy object to attach to, somewhat disrespectful and just a bit of a jerk. 🙄 This page has helped me finally understand why my brain develops such a strong obsession to someone that really doesn’t deserve it. It is an addiction, and I’m superdetermined to break free from it!