A common feature of limerence for many people is a feeling that your ordinary life has been struck by a powerful external force that has changed your perceptions, your priorities, and your ability to regulate your own emotions. There are lots of fairy tale representations of this phenomenon – Cupid’s arrow, potions of enchantment, True Love – that help to cement the idea of a magical or spiritual driving force for infatuation with a particular person.
A key realisation for managing limerence, is recognising that this sense of an “external force” is an illusion. Even once you accept the reality that limerence arises from within you, and that you are providing the fertile soil of imagination in which it grows, it can still be hard to fully shake off this idea. Frankly, in many cases, LO can reinforce your sense of special connection by encouraging emotional intimacy, or radiating an aura of attractiveness that seems uncanny. Despite wanting to resist, limerents find themselves baffled by their own helplessness when LO turns on the charm and makes them dance as though bewitched.
So, how much blame must LO’s bear for the development of limerence? Should flirts bear some responsibility for misleading hapless limerents? Is there some truth to the idea that limerents are powerless to resist a predatory LO’s powers of enchantment? Just how culpable are LOs in feeding the mania?
Let’s work through some case studies to figure this out.
1) The unknowing LO
One of the most powerful counter-arguments to the idea that LO bears some blame for the emergence of limerence, is the existence of oblivious LOs. A good example is discussed (at possibly a little too much length, if I’m honest) in Tennov’s book. It involves a young man, Fred, who was studying abroad in France for a short period, and became limerent for Laura, the receptionist of the hostel in which he was staying. It is clear from Fred’s diary entries that the “relationship” between them was superficial, business-like, and (as he knew himself in lucid moments) nothing more than the friendly acquaintance that would be expected for someone in Laura’s position.
This case is a clear cut example of Laura becoming an LO simply because she was there. Fred “needed” a limerence experience for some reason of his own, and it grew from an entirely one-sided fantasy played out in his head. His only explanation for the triggering of limerence was a moment of chance closeness (when helping her deal with an overfed fire), followed by a glance when paying his bill:
It was the way she looked at me that did it
Really, Laura did nothing to encourage him – and a fair amount to discourage him – and yet he succumbed to limerence regardless. In this sort of scenario, it is hard to think of anything that the LO could be blamed for.
2) The narcissist LO
At the other end of the scale, we have the narcissist LO. They see the limerent as a source of narcissistic supply, and delight in keeping them hanging on, validating their own wonderfulness. In these cases there seems plenty of blame for the LO; they may even have initiated the initial glimmer, fanned it into a flame, and then cultivated an attachment on their own terms. Even worse, because these LOs are not emotionally invested themselves, they can run hot and cold with the limerent, depending on what other entertainment they have in their lives. If they are bored, their pet limerent will be stroked and cajoled and given attention. If they have spied another shiny object they want, then the limerent is an irritation and treated disdainfully or ignored. This feeds the uncertainty engine of limerence.
This is the scenario in which vulnerable limerents can reasonably feel they have been treated unfairly. Once the pattern of behaviour is recognised, however, it is then up to the limerent as to whether they decide to continue the dance.
3) The mutually-limerent LO
This is a tricky one. If both limerents are single, then Happy Days. But if they are not both available, then a mutually destructive spiral of behaviour can unfold where they oscillate between drawing together and then drawing back. It is also likely that the strength of the limerence will vary – both between the two, and over time – and so one can be pulling when the other is pushing, and that unsettles both, and so the unhealthy tug of war continues. In the thick of an episode like this, the idea of apportioning blame is a bit redundant: both participants are both instigator and sufferer, and whoever is most blameworthy can vary day by day.
4) The ambivalent LO
The preceding extreme cases are easy to understand and mentally organise. However, to judge from my inbox, far commoner is a situation where the LO is ambivalent, or hard to “read”, or non-committal in one way or another. Here we are on more middling ground. Sometimes, the limerent feels encouraged by something LO says or does:
he always kisses me goodbye, and holds on tight
she says that I understand her better than any other man she has ever known
But sometimes they are discouraged:
he says that it’s complicated at the moment, and he’s sorry if he led me on
she gave me a hug, but whispered ‘you should stay away from me’ in my ear
It often seems as though the LO values the company of the limerent, and seeks their emotional support. Perhaps they are flattered by the attention, but not interested romantically. Perhaps they are non-limerent, and so operating from a completely different set of assumptions about what friendship and love are like. Perhaps they are embarrassed by the attention, but also very shy or tender-hearted and can’t bear the thought of hurting the limerent’s feelings by rejecting them bluntly. Perhaps they just want to be friends and are irritated by the limerent’s emotional incontinence.
Whatever the real situation, it becomes very difficult to disentangle who said what or did what or led whom on. But ironically, this incredibly common and complicated and confusing situation, clarifies everything.
Yes, LOs may sometimes be “getting something” from the limerent in a way that is selfish and transactional, but here’s the thing: so is the limerent. Without fail – by definition – the limerent is getting an astonishingly powerful emotional high from the company of the LO. And we limerents very often don’t ask nicely, or behave transparently, or admit that our friendship is not really just a friendship to us. We keep going back day after day to get our happy fix. We share intimacies, because it lights up our reward pathways and makes life seem more vital, more colourful and more exhilarating. We hang around waiting for the “I feel safe with you” comments, because of the thrill that gives us.
So, ultimately it comes down to this: we can hardly blame our self-centred or ambivalent LOs for sometimes using us for their own emotional needs, because that’s exactly what we are doing to them. Much healthier than trying to tally blame and convince ourselves that they are more in the wrong than we are, is to focus on what we are doing, what choices we are making, and what we want to do next. We have to decide who’s in control of our lives.
From the perspective of an unhappy limerent, it doesn’t matter how much to blame LO is: you have to decide if you are going to let it continue. They could be the biggest flirt, or give you more mixed signals than a mis-wired telephone exchange – all you have to decide is do you want to leave them in charge of your fate? Are you willing to subordinate your life to an asymmetrical relationship? Or do you want to take responsibility for your conduct, and accept that they will behave as they choose?
Nobody ever got over limerence by proving to themselves that it was all LO’s fault. Taking charge of yourself is the path to freedom.
Another really interesting post. Thank you. This blog is so helpful.
I’ve no idea whether my LO was mutual or ambivalent, but for the sake of the last remaining shreds of my sanity, I’m going with him being ambivalent. He was (note use of past tense – over 3 weeks NC now!) always very friendly to all colleagues and customers and going out of his way to help someone was not uncommon, so I had convinced myself that I was not special to him and it was all in my head.
If it’s all in my head then only I’m to blame. If it’s only me to blame, then only I can free myself of it. I’m getting there. Just wish my husband didn’t keep randomly asking questions about LO and what the attraction was. I understand why he feels he needs to know, and I do answer as truthfully yet tactfully as I can, but it then seems to trigger the return of some of the limerent fantasies which I know are unhelpful.
Thank you for your support as well. Made it back from holiday without making any contact with LO or killing anyone so will put that down as a success.
No luck on the souvenir frogs lips, so chocolate donkey droppings anyone? 😂
Welcome back Sophie, and congrats on both the 3 week NC and the successful non-lethal holiday!
Chocolate donkey droppings do sound delightful, but I think I will pass, thanks…
Ok so here’s the thing that I do not understand, why are you, and others, Dr. L, so bent against the idea that there is something significant, and perhaps spiritual or energetic guiding these attractions. That the glimmer and subsequent developments from that couldn’t be a very powerful and important piece for self development? Everyone we meet and connect with is there for a reason, sometimes they are readily apparent and other times not so much. But there is always some way that we can grow and learn from connection. Neuroscience has progressed leaps and bounds in the last twenty years but twenty years from now we will look at this point in history as being akin to the dark ages. Why are you and others so intent on crafting a narrative that frames the experience of limerance as a sort of failure of character and mind instead of a wonder filled and emotionally exciting time of great personal development? I’ve been caught up in a situation of mutual limerance for entirely too long, I explained it some on a different post. They consistently pushed for space in my life and have gone so far as to state that they believe they should have special status, despite the fact that they have a SO. Yet they continue to maintain their relationship with their SO as well as the one they have with me. They have years in with their SO, I am single. I don’t feel guilt, shame, or any sense of obligation to their SO. I enjoy them, they enjoy me and has the nature of our relationship become inappropriate to varying degrees- including physical and emotional- absolutely. I don’t expect them to leave their SO, and told them that I think they are garbage as a SO and that if they were my SO instead of my LO and had an extra me on the side I would be done, I wouldn’t tolerate it. But honestly you only meet so many people in this life who truly light your world up like the Fourth of July, it seems foolish to stick with a SO and not follow the LO to the natural end of that LE. It would seem to me that this obsession with the idea that limerance is something to be controlled is a fear based, kind of puritanical and archaic way of looking at relationships. Living a life without wonder and magic feels sad, hollow and disappointing to me. And really I very sincerely believe that there is some significant reason why that person glimmers.
And for clarification I haven’t had sex with this person, so I feel completely free of any sort of culpability in their choice to maintain an ongoing emotional affair and highly physically affectionate relationship with me. We snuggle and kiss but no intercourse. And I do see the hypocrisy of how I would feel if I were their SO, but I owe it to myself to enjoy them until they are gone. My friends dislike this person and don’t approve of the situation, their SO deals with it and doesn’t know the full extent of the situation. I really do think that there is something that is energetic, spiritual and significant that creates the draw that is limerance. And not everyone you fall for is someone you should actually date, have sex with or get close to but why not just enjoy them and have fun with it. YOLO
That’s a really important question, LifeisTricky. I think it probably warrants its own post, as (apart from the Twin Flames ones) I don’t think I’ve ever tackled it directly.
Briefly, there are a few reasons why I see limerence as a physical thing – it fits the altered mental state you’d predict from the neuroscience, it makes you behave in similar ways to other addicts, it generally sets in most deeply when an “honest” romantic connection is frustrated, and the feeling of specialness goes away once time or circumstances have caused it the limerence to fade.
I’ll ponder the ideas for a bit, and get writing.
Thanks!
Dr L
” Made it back from holiday without making any contact with LO or killing anyone so will put that down as a success.”
I concur! 3 weeks is a great start and I hope that as time passes not only does he fade but you’re able to find more joy in the life you have.
” Just wish my husband didn’t keep randomly asking questions about LO and what the attraction was. I understand why he feels he needs to know, and I do answer as truthfully yet tactfully as I can, but it then seems to trigger the return of some of the limerent fantasies which I know are unhelpful.”
Speaking from the perspective of the spouse of the limerent, his ego may have taken a mighty wallop and he is now reflecting upon your relationship and wondering if it’s worth continuing. It’s to be expected. He may feel duped, used, shortchanged and possibly lesser-than Mr. Sparkles. Witnessing you moping and mulling over someone outside of the marriage isn’t doing wonders for him either. Or maybe it’s something else entirely.
To be honest, it’s when a spouse no longer asks and suddenly you realize they aren’t discussing much of anything with you that you need to be worried, rather than relieved.
“No luck on the souvenir frogs lips, so chocolate donkey droppings anyone?”
I’ll give them a try. Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?
As an adult with agency, the limerent is always responsible for their actions.
What’s common in all the types above is they fit the limerent’s profile and they afford an opportunity to the limerent. Type 1 limerents put the “O” in LO. Someone is an LO by nature of their very existence. I knew a Type 1 limerent in college.
With LO #4, I got the glimmer pretty early in the acquaintance. I tested the boundary early on. I expected she’d shut me down. Not only did she not shut me down, she responded to what I said. I had the picture in my head of us being on the opposite side of a chain link fence. Maybe this is ego on my part, but I think she was aware that what was going between us was more than superficial. Whether it was a conscious decision or not, it seemed like we had at least an implicit understanding of the boundaries and we respected them.
When she sent the email that said she’d been assaulted and was ending the relationship, my first thought was, “F–k, I don’t need this.” I’d seen this twice before and I had this feeling things would get worse before they got better. I was in a therapist’s office with the email 2 weeks later because I thought I was overreacting and this shouldn’t be a problem,. The therapist’s response was, “A woman 2000 miles away, whom you’ve never met, sends you this and you’re in my office. Yeah, there’s a problem.” I asked a married co-worker if she’d be concerned if a casual acquaintance of her husband’s had told him that. She said, “Hell, yes, I’d be concerned. She probably shouldn’t be confiding in any man about this but to do it with a married one is really inappropriate. It’s too easy for that to go sideways.” She’s a smart woman.
A week or two later, she started reaching out to me. I swear I could feel her in the room even though she was 2000 miles away. And, I liked it. There was no fairy tale ending to this. It was only a question of getting out alive while causing the least amount of pain to anybody. I didn’t want to hurt my wife, I didn’t want to hurt LO #4, and, if possible, I didn’t want to hurt myself. If things went south, LO #4 was going under the bus. She’d never know. It wasn’t going to excuse my actions, it might help to mitigate the consequences. I anticipated my wife’s questions and had answers in the can. And, how close it came to going south was my wife picking up my flashing cell phone one morning and putting it down without opening it.
I thought she’d shut me down after I disclosed. She allowed me the opportunity to return. But the genie was out of the bottle. I pushed her pretty hard on some things. We went back and forth (Type 3). I accused her of having a dismissive style and compared her directly to LO #2. I don’t think she liked that. When she came out of the woodwork after 3 months of NC, I told her I didn’t know what was worse, thinking she ignored me or knowing she didn’t think she could trust me.
I think there was something more than a “friendly online relationship” but I can’t blame her for what happened.
Thank you for another insightful post. And thanks for all the contributors for always providing a lot of interesting discussion.
Heh… emotional incontinence – delightfully apt turn of phrase.
Excellent classifications, thank you! But I think the definition of ambivalence is a little too broad. I would split it into two categories: (1) LOs who flat-out reject the limerent and don’t want their attention, and (2) LOs who give mixed or hard-to-read signals. The first I would call ambivalent; the latter, noncommittal.
Thank you for starting this blog, by the way. It’s been very helpful to me during my umpteenth LE.
In my mid 60s. Never experienced anything like this before.
Knew LO in a professional capacitu 20 years previously. He appeared kind, caring and very professional. I knew he was marriedand had no designs on him but really liked him.
Roll on 20 years I meet him in a non professional context.
After recognising each other and briefly catching up. He becomes very forward in his body. Very seductive and ultimately (without touching)
out of order. I chalkenge him asking what is happening but due to previous trust am slow to walk away.
Over the next week I seem to develop both limerence and confusion about his behaviour. This carries on for nearly a year and I feel like I am just getting through it when I meet hinm again.
He does not speak but goes atraight into the body language. I am more wary this time and feel angry at him.
.. but then the limerance and the confusion starts all over again.
I am just about through it but dread seeing him ever again.
Thanks for letting me share.
Hi She. Thanks for sharing.
That’s a curious story, and interesting. That you were able to recognise the inappropriate behaviour, but also felt it triggering limerence in you. Like real-time “limerence for a bad LO” in action.
Hope you are able to stay strong, and that you don’t have to meet him again…
It took a lot of searching on the internet to be able to recognise the limerance… so thank you for articles like this one.
I have found this so useful in explaining to myself what had seemed inexplicable. In my early 50s I met again, by what seemed like a series of near-incredible coincidences, a girl I had known 25 years before. We had been really good friends, separated by distance, but writing regularly and meeting three or four times a year. It was entirely platonic, but we really enjoyed one another’s company. We lost contact when she got married, and I myself married some 15 months later. There was no ‘grieving’ at that time.
When we made contact again we were living in the same city, and I could see no point in not meeting. My original idea was that all four of us should meet up (marriages remained intact) but this did not happen, mainly because the husband of E (as I shall call her) was not at all happy about the situation (I only found out about this later). So, E and I met, and got on really well, just as before, and she invited us to her 50th birthday party two days later. The only slightly dissonant note was down to the fact that I seemed unduly emotional about the whole thing…
We duly went to the party, and it was all too clear that E’s husband was far from happy (I did ask several times whether he was happy about the situation but was assured that he was!). I was surprisingly, I thought, distressed by the fear that E and I would not meet again.
In fact we did, for she came to work on the same business park as me. And we simply picked up again. But, perhaps I am just too nice a person, I was not happy, as I felt that I was going behind her husband’s back. (In case you hadn’t realised, this was still a platonic friendship.) But, as the end of the year approached, I started to behave towards my SO in ways that have been mentioned elsewhere – and she wrote a letter to E’s sister-in-law, who had been instrumental in enabling E and I to meet again. I don’t know whether the letter was misconstrued or not – but the outcome was that E wanted nothing more to do with me. This was the second rejection, the rejection by her husband being the first, and I was distraught. And to make things worse I felt that my SO was also rejecting me – and I ended up contemplating suicide.
I came back from the brink, and taking my courage in both hands made contact with E again. Our relationship was not quite the same thereafter, but we did have some brief, happy moments. And then she changed her job, and moved into the centre of town. She had indicated, I think, though my memory is no longer clear, that we could not meet again – but stubbornly I did ring her at home (she worked part-time) and she always seemed pleased to hear from me. Until, that is, I crossed the line, probably in criticising her husband, and that brought the threat that if I did not desist she would involve the police. Another rejection! To be honest, I never thought she would do this – but she did, and I had the embarrassment of an Officer calling at my house shortly before Christmas. Luckily, no-one was in…
I had to sign a document at the Station to say I would not contact E again, and I believe that I did do this. I also went into therapy, but we did not get to the bottom of things – though my therapist did seem to think that my problems stemmed from a childhood trauma, which I now believe to be the case. But then in 2013, E and her husband having both retired, they moved away, back to where they had come from, and went to live in the house that his parents had lived in.
This is where what my SO refers to as ‘stalking’ began. Using only search engines, and my knowledge of their interests (I will have nothing to do with social media) I was able to find the postal address, phone number, and E’s e-mail address. These were just insurance, and I hoped not to use them.
But, during lockdown, I cracked under the strain. (I should perhaps mention at this point that I suffer from SAD, and most of the horrible things in my life have happened around the shortest days of the year. I take anti-depressants, easing right off in the summer, but sometimes fail to up the dosage early enough.). I rang E, but she put the phone down on me. In desperation, I contacted her Vicar (she is very involved with the Church, whilst I am an atheist) and steeled myself to ask him to intervene, saying that I did not know what else to do. He did speak to E and her husband, but their response was that they wanted nothing to do with me (another rejection!). I then sent him a much longer account of all that had happened, though omitting ‘limerence’ as I had never heard of it – and asking for their forgiveness for the things I had done which were not within my power to stop. This time, I got that forgiveness – but was told there could be no contact.
I imagine you will say that this is for the best, but I do wonder whether here there might be some exceptional circumstances:
A. I did not have any designs on E – she and I are both happily married. She is more tactile than my SO or myself, but only in a very innocent way;
B. Although E is a lot of fun, and we spark off one another, I cannot ever envisage being with her. The thought of every Sunday morning at Church is anathema!
C. We are now more than 200 miles apart (which is a lot more than when we were young) so there is no reason why we should meet by chance.
I feel I have been battered by rejection, and would like to be able to take back some measure of control. I would like to do this via FaceTime or Zoom, having a long heart to heart, and to then be able to say: “OK. I understand your feelings, but in the circumstances I think we could perhaps meet like this, say, four times a year, gradually reducing. No harm would come from this.”
You will probably think this is completely crazy, and that it is the last thing I should do. Your thoughts?
By the way, the childhood trauma, I am pretty sure, occurred when I was about 5. I contracted a form of meningitis and was sent to an isolation hospital about 50 miles away. I don’t know how long I was there, but it seemed an eternity! I cried a lot, and was apparently told by a Matron that if I didn’t stop crying I would be sent to the Baby Ward -and never go home! My father, I understand, visited me after work, but I was usually asleep by the time he arrived (I have one vague recollection of him being there).
And then, when I got home, I had a baby sister! And my mother, who always doted on babies, would have given her attention to my sister rather than to me, even though I was most probably even more in need of it than she was. That, I think, was the childhood trauma of rejection…