Note: this is an updated version of an older post
Limerence is an altered state of mind. That means its ultimate origins must lie in the brain.
When Dorothy Tennov first defined limerence, she came up with a set of symptoms that can be used to identify that altered mental state of intense romantic infatuation (if you’re curious about whether you fit the description, there’s a quiz you can take here). Whilst this list of symptoms is useful for defining the experience of being “in limerence”, from the perspective of a neuroscientist, it looks a lot like an addiction.
Limerence comes with euphoric highs and crushing lows. There are intense cravings, disruption of everyday routines, habitual behaviour, and a reorganisation of life once contact with the limerent object (LO) your central goal. Your mood becomes destabilised – bliss when you are getting your fix, panic when it seems like your LO is not interested in you romantically. Thoughts and daydreams can start off delightful and intoxicating, but become obsessive.
The progression of limerence mirrors the path of an addiction too. Early on it’s all fireworks and reward, but as time goes on it begins to turn darker – the neurochemical high diminishes, and you need an escalating stimulus to get the same pleasure. That often prompts the limerent into taking more risks, being less cautious, pushing harder at emotional boundaries, and oversharing their secrets and dreams to try and get ever closer and more intimate. Ultimately, there usually comes a realisation that limerence has become detrimental to your life, but you also know you can’t give LO up without significant withdrawal pains. Heads you lose, tails you really lose.
Then there are the other ways that limerents can behave like addicts: lying about their conduct and their motives, concealing their limerence habit, being secretive.
The parallels are obvious, but is it fair to go beyond analogy and claim that limerence is actually a behavioural addiction?
The neuroscience of addiction
Most of what we know about addiction comes from the study of drugs of abuse – heroin, cocaine, alcohol, and so on. Although the details of the mechanisms of action vary from drug to drug (and from person to person – our propensity to become addicted to a given drug depends on our individual physiology), the broad principle is the same in all cases.
The brain’s reward system becomes “sensitized” to seeking the drug that it has learned is so pleasurable, while the executive brain’s feedback control – which should moderate reward-seeking behaviour – becomes desensitized.
It’s flooring the gas while releasing the brake.
Some drugs (like heroin and cannabis) work by overactivating the pleasure centres of the brain (the hedonic hotspots that make us “like” things), others like cocaine and amphetamine overactivate the motivation and arousal systems, making us want the reward with intense craving. I’ve discussed this key distinction between wanting and liking a few times before, and it’s central to addiction.
You could simplify addiction down to irresistible wanting, and that’s actually a pretty good description of the underlying neuroscience. Later on, things get a bit more complex with tolerance, dependency and antireward, but let’s not get too bogged down in the details.
An important point about drugs of abuse, though, is that they directly disrupt the biochemistry of the brain. They activate receptors or block clearance mechanisms, and disrupt the levels of dopamine, noradrenaline, serotonin, endorphins and endocannabinoids in key brain regions that regulate all those reward-seeking behaviours. You’re literally screwing with the circuitry.
That can’t be happening in limerence. Taking a stimulant deranges the proper functioning of the brain, and so it’s easy to see how that could cause long term changes in the circuits that lead to addiction. For limerence, the process is entirely psychological. There is no pharmacological element.
Behavioural addictions
This distinction between chemical and behavioural addiction has long been a point of controversy in the research community. It’s known that there is a major psychological component to addictive behaviour – the environment and paraphernalia associated with drug taking can cause powerful craving – but the concept of a purely behavioural addiction has prompted a lot of debate over the years.
My reading of that debate is that it is increasingly leaning toward accepting the validity of behavioural addictions. The term “process addiction” is increasingly being used to capture the idea that it is possible to become addicted to the feelings caused by an experience rather than a substance, and that the neurobiological basis is essentially the same.
The best studied examples are probably gambling addiction and shopping addiction, but recent social and technological changes have caused other persuasive candidates to emerge: pornography addiction, social media addiction, gaming addiction, exercise addiction.
Again, the neurochemical basis of these addictions is progressive sensitization of the wanting drive and weakening of executive feedback control. The same fundamental changes occur in the brain, even though the driving force is reinforcement of behavioural habits rather than drug-induced disruption of physiology.
Limerence as person addiction
These advances in our understanding of how psychological stimuli can be sufficient to cause reward dysregulation suggest limerence could fit within an addiction framework, but what exactly is it that limerents become addicted to?
Sex addiction and love addiction are obvious parallel phenomena, but while there is some overlap, there are also fundamental differences that make limerence seem to be a separate category. In particular, those other addictions are focussed more on the compulsive behaviour than the other party (or parties) involved.
Sex addiction involves compulsively seeking physical gratification, even after it stops being gratifying. The partner is a secondary concern. Similarly, love addiction involves seeking the giddy feeling of falling in love, but the object of that love is not as important as the romantic ideal.
Neither of these conditions capture the central quality of limerence: feeling desperately drawn to another person, entering an altered state of mind of romantic intoxication, and wanting to form a uniquely special bond with them.
That’s the most important point. As David Perl puts it at limerence.net: “limerence is addiction to a person.” That really crystallises the phenomenon: addiction to another person. LO is the drug. It’s not romantic love or sex per se that is craved, it’s them, specifically. It has a nice clarity of focus; good explanatory power.
For whatever reason – whatever combination of your own emotional state and unmet needs and their particular recipe of personality traits – the company of this person gives you an emotional and physiological high. You seek reward until addiction has set in, and then your behaviour becomes erratic and irrational, and withdrawal becomes painful.
Limerence recovery
The “LO is a drug” perspective also helps make sense of how to manage limerence. You are probably not going to be able to be friends with your LO, just like an alcoholic will never be able to be a social drinker.
This is especially true if your LO is manipulative or narcissistic or limerent for you too, because those guys will be enablers. They’ll be your drinking buddies, egging you on, telling you how boring you’ve become since you stopped hanging out so much, or how much they miss you – and can’t we just go back to how things were before you got so uptight?
Friendship will be impractical, but there are strategies and tactics for recovering from behavioural addictions, and limerence is no exception. While limiting contact is going to be a key part of that plan, it’s not necessary to go cold turkey. There are ways to manage contact, and ways to deprogram yourself out of the altered state of mind.
To return to my perennial theme: your road out of any behavioural addiction is self-awareness, honesty, and the determination to live a purposeful life. The same principles apply for limerence.
Act decisively, and work towards the future you want to live.
This blog represents my experience almost identically. I became limerent for someone and it was definitely the worst experience of my life. We became horribly emotionally entangled and while for my LO the sharing of emotions and experiences was a bit of fun, for me it became something I craved and needed. It also didn’t help that LO was by nature very charismatic but also fickle. I started to feel like a puppet on a string..pathetically grateful and on a high when we connected, and almost starved of attention when LO retreated. It was weird as I have so many other friends and also an SO who I love (very stable but not very exciting..that was probably part of the problem!) but this one person started to represent everything exciting in my life. I spent ages pondering unmet needs and why this happened and ruminating on it all…its annoying as I was pretty content before this person got under my skin. At the moment we are not taking as I keep overreacting to things and I think LO thinks I’m slightly mad. I’ve tried so hard to create some emotional distance but find it impossible. I think the point on the blogs about it being less like a relationship and more like an addiction is a very valid one!
“At the moment we are not taking as I keep overreacting to things and I think LO thinks I’m slightly mad.”
That’s pretty common when you try to walk a fine line you shouldn’t be walking at all, I was getting along pretty well with LO #4 until the landscape changed and the boundaries that were previously there seemed to disappear. Maybe not from her perspective but definitely from mine.
To use a bad engineering analogy we went from inside the control band to overshooting everything. We never were able to reestablish equilibrium.
The right answer was to end the acquaintance and we did, But, we were lucky in that the logistics of the acquaintance made doing the right thing a whole lot easier.
Yes, I had a pretty normal friendship with my LO as well before my my emotions changed everything. I think that is one of my biggest regrets…that I’ve messed up a friendship that was ok to start with, and we can never go back to that. It would be impossible to explain the raw emotion that started flowing through me though…the ecstasy when we felt connected, the panic when I felt we didn’t, the anger when I’d been let down. LO isn’t perfect – thoughtless at times and can blow from hot to cold and cancels plans at the drop of a hat – but I just couldn’t keep my emotions under control. I’d always prided myself on being very emotionally balanced, and didn’t even know I was capable of letting someone get under my skin to such an extent.
I’m going to try and keep the NC thing going this time. I want a peaceful summer without jittering around with my phone, wondering if LO will reply to a text or what LO is doing.
I think the powerlessness of a situation like this is the worst feeling. You feel that your emotions are in someone else’s hands and that made me incredibly edgy and fragile.
“It would be impossible to explain the raw emotion that started flowing through me though…the ecstasy when we felt connected, the panic when I felt we didn’t, the anger when I’d been let down.”
This is a really good description in my opinion and I think it might help any non-limerent readers sort of understand what a limerent feels as attraction deepens into something more troubling and perplexing. One becomes “immersed” in one’s own thoughts. One becomes “lost” in the bottomless well of one’s own emotion. Limerence is like a dream from which the sufferer can’t wake. To me, it definitely felt like an altered state of consciousness…
I fell into reveries so frequently during my LE that my disconnection from the world become obvious even when I was sitting on benches in shopping centres. One day, for example, my grandmother glided past me with her full shopping trolley and said, “What you dreaming about?” I was in a trance – no doubt wondering what I did wrong.
Reclaiming yourself is like piloting a boat. You need a rudder and you need propulsion. You have to both.
Without propulsion, you may be able to orient yourself but are at the mercy of the wind or current. Without a rudder, you can get somewhere but you can go in a bad direction, out to sea or on the rocks.
To make this post even more of a groaner, deciding where you want to go is influenced by your “moral compass.”
Some blogs talk about the minefield you sailed into and how you got there. Some of the blogs here talk about tactics and strategies to get out of the minefield. Some blogs talk about how to implement those tactics and strategies, and some blogs talk about why some choices are more ethical, moral, or noble than others.
There can be a lot of layers in a LE. The onion analogy is pretty good but I prefer thinking of it as a mirrorball. There were a lot of facets, some of them are pretty subtle, and they can spin around pretty fast in your head.
A question about living with limerence. Some background first
I’ve known someone for decades that I was close with but didn’t love. Last year I fell in love with them. At first I put aside the thought but eventually thinking of them started to consume me. It’s debilitating when you think about a person virtually all day long. I also knew they didn’t think of me this way and I started to get depressed.
Eventually i couldn’t hold in inside any longer. I told them. They claimed to me (and others) they loved me in a difference sense, After some painful discussion we have since parted ways.
We are still connected through other people that we are mutually close with but we don’t communicate with one another directly. This is unlikely to ever change.
Since that time my feelings of love and depression have only become more entrenched. I closed down my business. I’m barely functional (mostly in bed). Living with my mother. And on meds.
I believe in unconditional love on a philosophical level so both my feelings and rational side tell me that I don’t want to move on to someone else even if the person I love never loves me back. Living without the prospect of love though seems to have ripped away my motivation to do anything. The depression is ongoing.
Here is the question.
Is there a thought process that allows me to keep my love (without moving on) but not exist in this debilitated state?
Wow, Elpetha. That’s a hell of a question.
First: I am sorry to hear what you are going through. Given the impact on your life, I hope you have sought help from medical professionals. I am guessing so, as you mention meds, but please do continue to take advice from people who know more than laybloggers…
From the perspective of limerence, the most I can say is that your path is not the typical path that the majority of limerents follow. To know and care for someone for decades and then succumb to limerence is unusual. It’s much more typical that familiarity causes limerence to fade over time. I can’t pretend that I understand the significance of that, but it may suggest that you are dealing with limerence emerging due to some other stressor or external cause (rather than bumping into an LO by chance). Can you think of a trigger that set the limerent experience off?
With respect to unconditional love – I would say I am more of a sceptic than you. Adult romantic love is, to me, a distinct category from love for children or parents. There is always the possibility that someone who you fall in love with will treat you badly, even abusively, I’m not suggesting this would be true for your LO, but the point is that there should always be a limiting boundary for what is acceptable for you in a romantic relationship. So, I suppose what I am saying is that unconditional love is possible, but unconditionally pledging yourself to one person regardless of their feelings for you, or behaviour towards you, is potentially very psychologically damaging.
When I look back at previous SOs, I remember them with love and affection (mostly), but know that they are part of my past. You can keep those feelings of love in memory, but once those people have left your life, it is rational and healthy to seek new love with others. Future love does not diminish past love, it just follows it. Also, dedicating yourself exclusively to someone who is not available to you is not altogether an act of love. It’s more like self-sacrifice. As you suggest, denying yourself reciprocated love rips away your motivation, and a major purpose in life. I don’t see how anyone benefits from that.
It’s a very hard question to answer, but I hope that is some food for thought, at least. Best wishes.
HI Elpetha, I am right where you are at: I met my LO on the second-day of law school. Within the first year we became inseparable. He was married. about 6 months after we met, I started a relationship of convenience. I have been in that horrible relationship for 12 years–My LO from law school became my law partner. We had an incredible bond that was very unusual. He was and is still perfect to me. My limerance (now that I know what “it is”) has wax and wained over those 12 years but became really bad for both of us this summer when he said he was leaving the firm. We started into a tail spin–emotions all over the place overcorrection, new boundaries, we do almost all our hearings together, which is extremely unusual. He treats me better than any man I’ve ever been with–he is very kind, generous, emotionally supportive, and of course, he’s extremely attractive. It makes me upset that I’m in a “relationship” (or so I think) that is better than most people’s marriages (as even noted by others). It seemed like we could not get enough of each other’s company, even though we have never had a physical relationship–mainly due to the morality of him being married and I love him too much to make him lose his standing in “the church,” or to lose his family. He said he is leaving the firm in 8 months. I am devastated. I plan on leaving the practice of law altogether. I already live with my mom, so I know, I’m headed right where you are at. The problem is–I do not want anyone else. I’m in my early 40’s and never married. I know what I want, and what I want is him because he is everything I have ever wanted and more. I feel for you. The sad part is the relationship is real, but I have every symptom of Limerence, so I can’t sort out what is “real” from what is in my head. I want this feeling to stop, but I don’t want it to stop at the same time. There is no winning here, and I don’t want to move on–ever.
“There is no winning here, and I don’t want to move on–ever.”
Why, Counselor? But for the fact that this guy’s married, how would your life be different?
If you know what you like about this guy, why wouldn’t you pursue those qualities in someone who’s available to give you a healthy, nurturing, reciprocal relationship? There’s a sizable body of clinical literature (Schreiber, Solomon, et al,) that suggests repeatedly pursuing unavailable partners is a technique that allows one to maintain the illusion of being able to handle intimate relationships without actually risking it. But, that’s why you should take advice from real professionals and not from blog posters.
Sacrifice for a purpose is noble, sacrifice for no purpose is suicide. Being willing to let him go because it’s in the best interest of him and his family is a noble sacrifice. Choosing to enshrine him in the pantheon of “what if?” is martyrdom.
Will you be happy with that decision for half your life?
I wanted to reply to you (LLawyer) a few weeks ago, but I couldn’t find that older blog entry. I know the emotional change that occurred when “he said he was leaving the firm.” That uncertainty of what will happen next completely destroyed me when my LO said she was taking another job. (Perhaps she wasn’t my LO until she said she was leaving.) I mean, completely non-functioning in every aspect of my life. Home, work, even with friends. It was impossible to fake. Absolute suffering that I had never felt before. The time spent waiting for her 3-week notice to expire was torture. But when she emailed me from her family vacation after her last day, I (we) essentially entered into a different emotional phase.
Now, my LO was more like my “work wife” at the time, as we would go out to lunch once/week, spend (probably obvious to others) time talking during work hours, and discuss fairly personal matters at times. She had become my best friend at the time and I did love being with her. And honestly, I did come to wonder what life would be like with her. We did not ever communicate outside of work. And there was a “damsel in distress” element coupled with common interests and caring for one another. But we were both married with children, so nothing to worry about, right? Well, if she had never left work, then maybe things would have been “alright”, though I’m sure that would only have delayed the emotional carnage.
The next 3 months consisted of a phase of mutual love that was confusing, painful, and euphoric. A closeness that I had never had with anyone ever. We talked about almost EVERYTHING. And what were we going to do about it? How did my very rational, logical self become completely dominated by emotion? I think we would have done anything for each other, but each was afraid to ask certain questions. We each privately knew the situation was untenable, and LO ended the extremely close bond nearly one year ago. But she kept the contact going, which put me into a different limerent state where I had no chance to mourn, and all of the attachments to her were still there. I knew her feelings for me were still there, but things were different. Maybe she could handle the new reality, but it wore me down. We continued to go through phases of deep sharing, poor boundary management, until a few weeks ago I felt that going No Contact was what needed to happen. It is too difficult for me be the friend that she wants, and I don’t know if I can be friends with her in any healthy way.
I certainly wish you the best. I’m “working” the end of my LE and it is so very difficult to give up that experience, that fulfilling rush of loving another so madly, so deeply. On days when I don’t have my LE it is refreshing in one way, but also slightly empty and flat. It’s refreshing in that I don’t have that insane psychological bondage to loving her and longing for a response from her, but I so miss that LE high.
Combining your other post, a few things stand out.
1. You’re a 40 yr old never married woman living with her mother. Why are you living with your mother?
2. You have a history of being attracted to unavailable partners, a gay man and a married man. What would you do if he were to become available? Let’s say his family was killed by a drunk driver. Would you leave you mother to start a life together? What’s the “fairy tale ending” for you?
Those two items are likely related and maybe what you want to focus on. Somebody had to prescribe Xanex. Maybe they can recommend a good therapist to go along with it, preferably one with experience in trauma.
It’s interesting most of my los have been unavailable. My particular lo right now is not a good person and has some serious personality issues. And yet I crave her. I wish I could get to the bottom of this
At the time, I never considered my first LO as someone who could inspire addiction. She didn’t seem to have the right mix of traits. But in hindsight I see it. Fickle. Exciting. Charismatic. An adrenalin junkie. She had travelled overseas and was really into sport, life in the fast lane. Only I played down those traits in her at the time (in my imagination) because I wanted to believe we were amazingly compatible. (I’m a nerd. We were not compatible in the slightest).
I’m feeling a bit down today. I’m beginning to see what a ridiculous illusion that whole LE was. I feel I got nothing out of it apart from the chemical high. And if that chemical high was based on a false assumption (i.e. of reciprocated feeling), then it all seems like a terrible waste of time. I rode that surreal rollercoaster ride for nothing. I feel embarrassed. I feel mortified. I feel ashamed I ever got hooked on LO. (Do all recovering junkies have these feelings of self-loathing?).
I’m not bitter. No way. But I’m definitely disillusioned. Disillusioned about LO. Disillusioned about people in general. And disillusioned about my own judgement. How can I ever trust myself again when I fell for a “bad apple”?
The nice thing about this particular LE being over is I can go back to being myself, the person I was at seventeen before I started idealising LO. People said I was very honest and moral then. I feel like I lost my way a bit during LE. I became too erratic, unreliable, etc.
The only “good” thing that came from LE, as far as I can see, is it changed me in some ways. I’m an introvert. But I deliberately went out of my way to develop social skills after meeting LO. Maybe I was copying her. Maybe I wanted to be able to talk to her better. Maybe I wanted to impress her by having many friends. LO is gone forever now. Nor do I want her back. However, I’m keeping the improved social skills – at least I got something out of the whole exercise!
Anyone else emerge from a LE with feelings of disbelief that it even happened?
“I’m not bitter. No way. But I’m definitely disillusioned. Disillusioned about LO. Disillusioned about people in general. And disillusioned about my own judgement. How can I ever trust myself again when I fell for a “bad apple”?”
Yeah, your trust in yourself can take a hit when you tangle with one of these people. Shari Schreiber talks a lot about the effects of tangling with borderlines. The analogies would hold. Pay attention when she talks about how “enlivening” these relationships can be.
As for trusting yourself, you have to cut yourself some slack. Anybody can tangle with a “bad apple.” You don’t know they’re toxic until you tangle with one. Think bee stings, you usually don’t know you’re allergic to them until you get stung by one. Bee stings don’t do much for most people but they can kill some people.
There are several questions that go along with that.
1. How long did you put up with the crap?
2. Did it vaguely remind you of something you’ve seen before?
3. Have you done it more than once?
Now, here’s the biggie:
4. If you’re attraction to unsuitable candidates is a pattern, are you capable of responding to someone who is suitable? I was lucky, I was attracted to unsuitable candidates who met my profile. But, I was able to respond to someone who didn’t. If you are capable, it’s can be a matter of luck as to which one you find first. If you’re not, you’re pretty much likely to get into a cycle of dissatisfying relationships. I think I’ve been able to eliminate my attraction to unsuitable candidates but it took and lot of time, effort, and professional help.
There’s a relatively simple litmus test for this. Does someone make you feel the same way you felt when you were with the “bad apple?” If they do, it’s probably not good. It was the way my wife doesn’t make me feel that makes me know she’s not like my XLOs.
As for disbelief, yeah, I had my “WTF?! What was I thinking?” moments.
Thanks for the feedback, Scharn. Lots of good ideas and insights! 🙂
Sammy,
“then it all seems like a terrible waste of time. I rode that surreal rollercoaster ride for nothing. I feel embarrassed. I feel mortified. I feel ashamed I ever got hooked on LO. (Do all recovering junkies have these feelings of self-loathing?).”
Yes, but unlike you I am bitter. Very angry at him for leading my one with endless, very sexual flirtation … and with no intention of every really doing anything. I am also angry at myself. Intellectually, I knew he was a waste of time but emotionally I am still into him.
@Marcia. I think it’s very natural to feel anger and bitterness during or after a LE. The key is to allow yourself to feel these negative emotions (and other negative emotions) but not get bogged down in them forever. Maybe anger is even the dominant emotion we feel when forced to withdraw from our beloved “drug”? Especially if LO is the one to call time. When this LO of mine “dropped out of my life”, for want of a better phrase, I initially felt heaps of anger. I don’t even think I was fully conscious of how angry I felt.
I get what you’re saying about the discrepancy in your intellectual and emotional responses. I think our emotions take a long time to catch up with our intellects. I also agree with what you wrote in another thread about how non-limerents must find it so much easier to move on.
Tennov noted in her book that there’s something “inhumane” about limerence (i.e. the intensity of the pain the limerent person experiences) and it’s true. She also said limerent suffering is a “unique form of suffering” (because it’s all-consuming, no escape). Consequently, limerents can find LO’s respective lack of suffering “unforgivable”.
If limerence heightens our positive emotions, I guess it can do the same to our negative emotions. Plus our biology doesn’t want us to let go of LO (or the mating opportunity he/she represents?) It’s such a painful situation to be in, and of course the natural thing is to blame the apparent cause of the pain (LO). I don’t have any pat answers at this stage. All LEs are unique. I just want to be happy and hopefully other emotions are just pit stops on the road to “Happyville”. Oh, and it’s hard to give up those fantasies too!
Hi Sammy,
One of the things I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older is that the LEs last longer. I am out and about less, I meet less people, the people I do meet are not available. I just don’t have as many opportunities to meet new people who would be (this sounds horrible) a nice distraction from the LE.
@Marcia. Ah, that sounds like it must be rough.
My first and worst experience of limerence was between the ages of 17-23 and there’s a part of me that thinks maybe I never really got over that LE. All subsequent romantic experiences, etc, have been an attempt to understand and “process” this original LE.
I’ve never been in a proper relationship because I always reach this point where I feel: “No. This is too painful. I can’t go on.” The pain hits when realising my feelings aren’t reciprocated. Though sometimes I couldn’t bond with my date at all because the ghost of LO still loomed too large in my mind. Other times I’ve sought out women similar to LO to date or women LO would have befriended! Gosh, that sounds creepy. But it illustrates the power of limerence.
Before 17, I had crushes and they were pleasant. It was pleasurable talking to crush and pleasurable dreaming about crush. Only when LO came along did I lose control of my mind. My brain become like swiss cheese – full of holes. I found myself apologising all the time and feeling unworthy of whatever little crumbs of attention she doled out. “Addiction” is the only word for it.
For me, the good thing about getting older is my emotions have become more muted in general. The last time I was this happy I was probably a kid. I want to get to a point where I can be friends with possible love interests without them having so much influence on my mood. How nice it would be to feel relaxed around people!
But yes, nothing compares to the euphoria our own brains make. What a feeling! Of course, there’s occasionally still the temptation to fantasise about somebody nice I’ve met. Logic alone tells me the probability of reciprocation is tiny, so why even go there?
A quiet mind. Oh my. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to have?
Sammy,
“Though sometimes I couldn’t bond with my date at all because the ghost of LO still loomed too large in my mind. ”
A dating coach would tell you not to fixate on any one person and to case a wide net and keep your options open … but that coach is probably not a limerent!
“Other times I’ve sought out women similar to LO to date or women LO would have befriended! Gosh, that sounds creepy. ”
I dated a guy for 2 1/2 months because he was friends with my LO, who was married but flirted outrageously with me. I wanted my LO to know and I wanted to hurt him. In the end, did it hurt him? Did he even notice? It was all a waste of time.
“For me, the good thing about getting older is my emotions have become more muted in general. ”
Mine haven’t so much muted as I ‘ve stuffed them down. Sometimes “the other Marcia” pops out — and it’s always the best time I’ve had all in ages. 🙂
Yep, raising my hand here. I shouldn’t be shocked and in disbelief (as now I realize I am a serial limerent) but I have that whole cavalcade of negative emotions and I think it has affected my self esteem, in the throes of the LE I felt fabulous but now I see a lot of damage has been done. I am healing though but it’s slow.
But I am indeed able to extract some good things, I learned about limerence, I traveled to places I would have never gone to if it hadn’t been for LO and had some very unique adventures.
I also learned not to trust how a person makes you feel, and that’s an important lesson. Some of my childlike innocence and trust is gone forever. Maybe all of it.
I have also learned that well meaning dear friends can be hopeless romantics and ride the roller coaster of limerence vicariously with you and therefore, people you love can give you bad advice.
I have learned that euphoric highs are ultimately toxic and to be appreciative and content with real, less exciting thrills.
Now I am trying to learn how to forgive someone who was a catalyst for so much lingering pain.
That’s the last frontier.
@Jaideux. I always find your posts comforting. Another upside to limerence: the kinship between people who have experienced it. It’s like we’re all part of a weird club.
@Sammy …yes we are the “living with limerence” club! Very exclusive…. 🙂
“I have learned that euphoric highs are ultimately toxic and to be appreciative and content with real, less exciting thrills.”
Love this Jaideux and wholeheartedly agree! True happiness in life arises from really noticing and appreciating the many good small moments that happen every single day. But LE highs obscure them all.
Hi Allie,
Yes, limerence is a thief. A thief who steals the good, authentic and healthy little happinesses in life by seducing us with these potent, toxic, superhuman thrills that we mistakenly think are all a part of True Love.
I also feel embarrassed and ashamed.
@Allie and Jaideux. It’s taken me a long time to understand that just as “limerence” isn’t the same thing as “love”, “euphoria” isn’t the same thing as “happiness”. Maybe euphoria could even be called “false happiness”? It certainly looks and feels like the real thing, but it has a different neurological basis and ultimately serves a different function in the brain’s motivation-reward system.
Dear Dr L,
Thank you for this blog. It is fascinating for me to see how similar to others’ my limerence experiences are and you have a wonderful way to describe them simply yet comprehensively. I am just a little conflicted about using the expression addiction to a person to refer to limerence, for at least two reasons. First, it seems to me that addiction to a person defines romantic relationships that may not involve limerence. I am thinking of what is defined as “love addiction” in certain books, like Women Who Love Too Much, and that I would personally call person addiction, where someone makes the other person their “higher power” without necessarily be in love or limerent with them. They are not necessarily obsessed, if I understand correctly, but they can’t leave their unhealthy relationship for a variety of reasons, including a compulsion to rescue, low self-esteem, etc.
Second, I think that the notion of “addiction to a person” only tells part of the story, which is especially clear in serial limerents like me. I have been limerent with a person (LO#9 #10?) who may well be qualified as a narcissist, for over a decade, the longest I have ever been. I went no contact 8 years ago as I could not take the idealization/devaluation/rejection/hoovering cycle anymore. I think about him when I wake up in the morning, when I go to bed at night and I have conversations with him in my head all day long, replaying or anticipating encounters that will not happen. Most of the time the thoughts are involuntary and exhausting and I currently try to catch myself and redirect my thoughts when I can, but when I feel a little anxious I consciously conjure up a couple of sexual fantasies involving him and voila, no need to take an anxiety pill! Just kidding. I hate that I am only reinforcing the involuntary thoughts through the reward but it’s a nice temporarily relief and protection against potent panic attacks. On the one hand, the “side effects” of the limerence are annoying for the reasons you describe very well in your blog, as I am married with children and committed to their well-being. On the other hand, I find the situation comfortable since I know that if the relationship was ever consummated properly with my LO, the limerence would fade within a max of two years, probably less, based on my previous limerence experience. So I would probably do what I always did before being legally and morally committed to my husband: I would find another limerent object, with the risk of things escalating to physical cheating, whereas with my current LO the risk is pretty low considering how determined I am to never contact him. So am I really addicted to him? I would say yes, but only as he is a representation of a potential intense love story (or I believe ecstatic union is the established terminology) that, in moments of lucidity I am very aware I could find in someone else. I would therefore say that I am addicted to an object, a limerent object, currently morphed into a person, who could be another one. French author Musset famously said “No matter the bottle packaging as long as you find drunkenness in it” (this is my best attempt at translating), which I think applies well here although he supposedly meant that a lover does not need to be good-looking as long he/she is passionate. Don’t get me wrong, I am still limerent, so most of the time I am convinced that no other ecstatic union would compare to what I would get, or would have got with him, had he been a little more cooperative with my polyamorous proposal, or had I not ultimately chosen affectionate bonding over the transient pleasure of falling in love every few months. That’s why I believe, in my case at least, we are really talking about love addiction: I crave the early stages of falling in love because before I was pregnant and had children, I suppose for similar hormonal reasons, I realized that the only times in my life that I had been “happy” were those moments, and for me, limerence is the next best thing to control my anxiety after serial monogamy. I am now happier than I have ever been, thanks to my very understanding husband and two wonderful children, but I feel like I need my daily low dose of drug to function, with the side effects it implies, and that other more traditional medications would be worse so I cling to it until I find a way to do without. I am also struggling with the pathologizing of limerence in most cases but this is the best I can describe what is happening for me. I don’t know if I am a rare specimen but I would love to see further studies on the subject, which brings me to the last point of this email, if you have read that far: do you know of any academic research apart from the Wakin study and another study on attachment (https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/20272/Wolf_umd_0117N_18334.pdf?sequence=1) that would be under way? Are you interested yourself in conducting research?
Thank you for your time,
Sierra
Hi Sierra,
I appreciate hearing your story and seeing another fellow serial limerent like me. Sometimes I start to feel alone even in limerence because of my limerence chasing/addiction to the state to regulate my depression/anxiety. I hate it, but I also am terrified to lose it because it’s the only thing that comforts me, inspires me, makes life meaningful. At least, it had been. I’ve been working hard to change that and have been pretty successful over the last four years due to finding a SO that I have high amounts of affectional bonding with. I almost lost him over the summer due to an LE, but incredibly, he was so understanding that he forgave me and I am now determined to go down a much similar road to you (in terms of getting married and having children and replacing my limerent relationships with purpose and family).
But, I have been limerent with my first love since I was 18 years old and I am 34 now. I have been NC with him for the last 4 years and I had been NC for 3.5 years before that (although still actively planning my life/future around him in my head). This last period of NC is the first time that I made the decision and was the time that I realized I could never speak to him again/be friends with him no matter how much I longed to. It’s definitely given me more peace and stability than I’ve ever previously had, but even now, I am still haunted by dreams, thoughts, and cravings that come and go. Some times worse than others. And my biggest fear (and fantasy if I’m truly honest) is that one day he will reach back out and I will have no ability to say no. Because of this, I worry that marrying someone else is unethical. How can I marry someone knowing that my heart is still so controlled by another that if he were ever to return and tell me to jump I would do so unthinkingly…and yet, this is all hypothesis, he could obviously never return. But I already feel guilty in my heart just knowing the hypothetical. And yet does that guilt mean I have to live alone alone forever, suffering, because I am unable to ever fully let him go?
I felt such solace reading your post and knowing that someone else somewhere has a similar experience of having a SO and whole meaningful life while still waking up and going to bed with thoughts of LO. It can feel like I’m living two lives at times, my real one and my interior one. And I’ve always felt so alone with this because no one I know has been this obsessed with a person for over a decade.
At some point I had to start making choices for myself and as though I had moved on, even if in my heart it feels as though I never will. I am hoping that this can be a genuine choice if I am able to commit to it, a life of both marriage and longing simultaneously. And hopefully someday I can fill the emptiness in such a way that the longing no longer has to be a comforting salve or lifelong friend, but just a memory.
Thank you for making me feel less alone!
I can totally understand your moral dilemma Sarah, it is a really tough one. I do think it is vital for you to move on in life and it sounds like you are doing well in trying to deal with your limerence.
Does your SO have any awareness of your LO#1 problem? What would happen if you told him, carefully framing your explanation as a recovering addiction problem?
Have you done DrL’s emergency re-programming? I think it would really help you as it sounds like your situation could be much improved by you completely re-writing your mental narrative about your first LO. It takes time and mental effort to do this but it can be done and it does really make a difference.
What happened with LO#1?
Hello Sarah,
I was limerent for LO#1 from the time I was 18 to 45! NC pretty much after we broke up, but I dreamt about him intensely every night for maybe 4 years. That was really hard, as I was building a solid relationship with my SO at the time – I felt just like you said, “having a SO and whole meaningful life while still waking up and going to bed with thoughts of LO. It can feel like I’m living two lives at times, my real one and my interior one.” I used to wake up crying, and I called them “nightmares” as they were making be question my “real” life with SO (who I eventually married and had children with).
Eventually, over the years I dreamt of LO#1 only sporadically, but when I did, it did bring back the old feelings. I just learnt to live with it. Then, one day, out of the blue, LO#1 asks to befriend me on social media. Okay. I did so. And after a bit of interaction with some trepidation, the LE was over. Completely. No more dreams, nothing. I just wasn’t even remotely attracted to the person LO#1 had become (which pretty much goes to show how LOs are pretty much “objects” rather than a “real person”).
So, I was rather pleased with having shed LO#1 after a quarter of a century. But a few months later, I met LO#2, and boy oh boy, a brand new fresh LE is far more disruptive than an old tired LE! I wish I had kept my old LE, as it hardly interfered with my life by the later years, but this new LE – I was an emotional wreck, and crying, and longing, and hardly able to function. And here I am still waking up next to my SO, while living in my head with LO#2. At the age of 45! I cannot tell you how much this sucks. Why am I not limerent for my SO? (I never have been, but we have a wonderful life together.) I want to be fully present in my life with SO, but it seems not meant to me – I am just living with him and some imaginary object that obviously fulfils some function in my life. Is it so I am never truly honest and intimate with my SO – are the LOs just a way to keep myself a little bit emotionally distant and safe in my relationship with SO? Am I destined for another quarter century long LE with LO#2 (assuming I live that long!)
I tell this story for those of us in long-term LEs, to provoke reflection on the functions LE fulfil in our lives. I suspect if we want to be free of them, we have to understand what factors cause their existence. Also, it is a ray of hope – we can lead wonderful real lives, even while maintaining an interior world of longing for something else.
@same boat
I feel/function same as you: most of my
life I limerent to someone , besides SO.
I forgot to mention in all my ramblings that although my first LO is my longest and most painful limerence, I have been limerent multiple times throughout my life as I definitely sought new relationships as a way to emotionally regulate – and as a way to try and fill the void of losing my first LO. In that sense I agree with you that although it seems like person addiction, the fact that it can be repeated points to it probably being more of an “object to project upon” addiction. Although it is interesting that not all relationships can create it, even for someone like me, who is so ripe for limerence!
I sometimes think it’s simple even though my feelings are so very complicated.
A hole in the soul / emptiness – looking externally to fill it – glimmer / connection / wow this is it – level of uncertainty – obsession to regain the dopamine / the euphoria…
Answer: stop looking externally. Look inside. Don’t just look. Explore. Your youth, your insecurities, your true self and the pain within….
There is no easy fix, no other that can structurally easy your pain! It’s all you….
Thanks for this valuable website!
I am just now (at 51) realizing what limerence is. I have been separated since December of last year. I met someone in February. She texted me on my birthday. We went on a first date, which we connected very well intellectually with good laughter and nice exchange. Second date, she was more provocative. I was still in platonic state. Third date at my house. We kissed and she stayed the night. She would stay over three times a week with lots of great talk, emotional sharing, great sex, spiritual connection and lots of affection. My grief would reemerge at times, though I have grieved a lot and will always be grieving something (such as life). She is nearly 40, living with her sister in basement, used to do manual labor and not working now. She recently went to the other part of the country to help parents with medical things. Right before leaving, she started distancing and soon after she arrived, she needed to work on herself. I feel blind-sided. I felt blind-sided when my wife left too. I am called to really keep the focus on myself, another part of me wants to explore dating apps. I’m scared of being alone. It’s childhood stuff where I was forced to be alone or wanted to be left alone to escape dysfunction. I know this is a great opportunity to recreate many parts of my life. My anxiety is through the roof. I’m sure I could convince this person to come back, when she does come back. Realistically, she seems like a serial dater and not as available as I would like her to be. I am not as available as I would like to be either. I have started to shift focus back to healing the marriage through grieving and moving forward. It has been very amicable, luckily. She was a good partner in terms of secure attachment. Our values just changed over time and we stopped communicating. I miss this other person tremendously. We were tight in so many ways right up until the end. It feels like it was all ripped out at once.
I’m almost 40 now. When I was 20yrs I was going to a friends house & his cousin walked bc past me leaving. Our eyes met & there was something felt inside of me that I’ve never felt. I had a bf at the time & a couple years later I married him.
Fast forward 12 years. My husband and I went to a new church & that guy was there, our eyes met & the feeling came back in that instance. Nearly every Sunday for years now I see this man & he stares at me, it’s like he’s willing me to look at him.
I’m going crazy! Before he got married a few years ago he tried to compliment me, I think he wanted to talk to me & I pretended not to hear him. Outside of this he hasn’t spoken to me. I will go though spells of overcoming this attraction or whatever it is but just when I think I’m over it I will look at a friend & he’s there staring at me. Our eyes meet, he looks away then I do. I feel his eyes on me and I look and sure enough he is holding eye contact with me. I hate this. I want to quit but I also don’t. I want him but it’s not possible. What is happening, how do I break free. It’s like there is this magnetic force drawing me to him. I think about him almost every day, it’s obnoxious.
My So is wonderful. Our marriage is great, the sex is also fantastic. But I know how often my mind wanders. This LO is not even my type. But 12 years is a long time, I need to cut this cord.