A back-to-basics video this week on why limerence happens and is so hard to escape:
Does love sometimes feel overpowering?
Like you’ve been bewitched by another person, and their romantic magnetism is an irresistible force?
You crave them so much that it feels addictive?
You can’t stop wanting them?
Well that mental state is known as limerence, and in this video I’m going to show you how that runaway desire builds up, what makes them so special, and what you can do to free yourself from the romantic obsession if you want it to end.
Right. Let’s go through the factors that make some people so hard to resist.
First up is understanding…
1. Your limerence avatar
There are lots of attractive people in the world. There are also lots of theories about what makes people attractive—symmetrical faces, average features, genetic diversity, scent, personality, assortative mating and so on.
But most limerents come to realise that only a few of the many charming people out there spark an especially powerful emotional reaction.
They cause a glimmer of limerent excitement.
They have peculiar romantic potency.
People like that can be intoxicating.
Especially if you have some hope that maybe, possibly, they might like you too. That hope can trigger a rush of euphoria and exhilaration. Your heart races, you get butterflies in the tummy, sweating, stammering, the full overload of overarousal.
Naturally enough, most people experiencing that limerence sugar-rush conclude that this other person must be special. Just being with them gives you a huge natural high.
But what makes them special isn’t necessarily anything to do with them being extraordinary.
It’s that something about them excites your subconscious.
They are triggering some deep desire in you, but what those triggers are is actually a very personal thing.
For some limerents it’s the physical appearance of the other person, for others it’s personality quirks, for some it’s an urge to rescue a damsel in distress, or maybe to tame a lovable rogue.
All the stories, and movies, and songs, and personal experiences that saturate us as our sexuality and romantic temperament develops through adolescence, shape our perception of what an attractive lover is like.
They embody your romantic desires.
All your formative romantic experiences have crafted in your subconscious a limerence avatar who represents a desirable mate.
Now, you might never properly distangle all the social, emotional, and cultural influences that formed your avatar, but you’ll know it when you meet one.
So, the glimmer of excitement sparkles into life, the attraction feels uncanny, the air almost feels charged, electric.
In effect, a limerent object—that person who can trigger limerent infatuation in you—is like a supernormal stimulus.
They are a highly refined, perfectly tailored romantic stimulant that excites your neural systems into a state of hyperactivation.
They cause an emotional high so high that it can become addictive.
And that begs a new question…
2. What’s going on in the brain?
I’ve talked before about the neuroscience of limerence, but the heart of it is this: co-activation of the arousal, reward, and bonding systems in the brain imprint one person as the primary source of reward in your world.
The euphoric rush they trigger feels so good that you steer all your behaviour towards seeking more of it.
Your instincts will lead you into a habit of seeking more contact, seeking more romantic reward, and that can become ingrained.
But, clearly, again, lots of people have successful love affairs full of delight and exhilaration without getting trapped into a state of unrelenting, pitiless wanting.
So, why can what feels like a wonderful blessing turn into an inescapable craving?
Well, that’s when the behaviour of the other person can be crucial in deciding how hard you fall for them.
When a really powerful reward is only intermittently available, the reward-seeking drive—that “wanting” feeling caused by dopamine that sort of motivates you to chase rewards—that can become hypersensitive.
Unpredictable rewards cannot be learned. You never feel satisified that you have secured the reward, and that makes desire ramp up instead of settling down.
So, if your limerent object is behaving in an unpredictable way—if you can’t figure out how they feel about you, or they are already in another relationship but they also seem a bit attracted to you, or they seem unattainable, or they are sort of a “forbidden fruit” that it would be inappropriate for you to pursue—the limerent “wanting” drive gets stronger.
If this state of hope frustrated by uncertainty carries on, the strength of signalling in the reward system changes.
A process known as incentive sensitization can set in, where the dopamine drive gets amplified and reinforced, but at the same time, the moderating feedback from the executive brain gets weakened.
That makes one reward both abnormally desirable and difficult to resist.
Importantly, this state of persistent wanting can become involuntary. It’s intrusive. It disturbs your peace of mind, and it can even carry on after you’ve stopped *liking* the other person. You can know, intellectually, that you don’t want to be infatuated any more, that your limerent object is not a good match for you, but you still want them because wanting and liking are separate processes in the reward centres of the brain and they can become uncoupled.
So, your wanting drive is still permanently on even if you don’t like them anymore.
And in practical terms, what that means is that you’ve become addicted to another person.
They dominate your thoughts. Your mood depends on how they act. They capture all your attention. You neglect your responsibilities and prioritise contact with them over everything else in life.
Slowly but surely you program yourself into an advanced stage of limerence, where the mental preoccupation progresses to become a debilitating and exhausting state of person addiction.
That’s why you want them so powerfully.
And why it’s so hard to let go.
So, what can be done? How do you get out of this mental trap?
3. How to reverse the programming
If you are a limerent—and half the population of the world are—you have the capacity to experience extraordinary euphoria triggered by another person.
That romantic rush can become addictive, and following your instincts can then lead you into that state of relentless wanting that feels impossible to escape.
This isn’t a character flaw, or a sign of childhood trauma, or a mental health condition that needs treatment.
It’s just a quirk of the way that the reward system of the brain works, and how it can be reinforced by arousal and bonding drives.
But, it can certainly get to the stage of degrading your quality of life to such an extent that action is required.
In actual fact, the solution is simple, but not necessarily easy.
You need to reverse the habits of mind and behaviour that led you into the limerence in the first place.
You need to figure out what kind of person is your limerence avatar.
See if you can find patterns in the way that your previous limerent objects looked or behaved, or if you can identify any initiating cues that got you excited in the first place.
That helps you identify what your own emotional vulnerabilities are, what you’ll respond to, and the kinds of people you might need to be more cautious about if you don’t want to fall so hard the next time you meet one.
So, that’s useful for the future, but what about if you’re in the middle of a person addiction episode at the moment?
Well, there are two big things that you can do that work to reverse the connection.
1. Spoil the reward. Fundamentally, your brain is in a rut of associating the addictive person with a very powerful source of reward. You need to retrain it into associating them with bad feelings instead. With punishment, even. So, no more happy daydreams about how you could be together, or browsing their instagram to get a little hit of bliss. Dwell on the bad experiences. Immerse yourself in the times when things were going wrong. Feed your subconscious evidence that they are a threat to happiness, not a prize to be won.
2. Train your executive brain. The feedback system that powers your willpower is weakened during late-stage limerence. So, you need to retrain it, like building a muscle, by exercising it regularly to notice, disrupt, and redirect the habit cycles that are keeping you stuck.
Now, as I said, that strategy is easy to explain but it’s not so easy to implement.
If you want to go deeper into how to escape from the trap of person addiction, and some tactics that will help you achieve that goal, I’ve laid it all out in this video on how to overcome limerence. So, check it out next if you want to know all the details.
I love this article. I have re-read it twice.
LO is definitely “a threat to happiness, not a prize to be won.”
That says it all, in just a few words.
The longer I know LO, the more I realize that this is true.
I am so grateful to be here and to know that I am not alone.
Its wonderful. I love how it goes through the process, step-by-step.
I was surprised to see that Dr L now says 50% of the population is prone to limerence, though. Last time I saw this discussed, I thought it was much lower than that?
B
Hi Bewitched.
A breakdown of the numbers is here:
https://livingwithlimerence.com/how-common-is-limerence-the-numbers/
Recently, one man has occupied too much of my attention, but it didn’t reach the point of intrusive thoughts or fear of him thinking ill of me. With my former LO, I obsessively managed my image and dialogue. With this man, I just wanted to look my best when he was around. So, I don’t think it’s an LE. More like a crush.
At one point, I actually wished he was gay. That way, I could invite him to go out to concerts and museums with me and my SO would think nothing of it. But then I have to admit, it was only when I found out he was straight that I started to look at him with interest. I remember, I just thought, “oh,” when I learned that. It was like my pupils were dilated. So, something about him that I already found interesting, plus learning he liked women, made me start wanting him.
Unrelatedly I drifted into no contact with both my best friend and LO towards the end of last summer and by the beginning of 2026 I realized I was entering possibly the deepest depression of my life. Now I spend much of each new day drifting through dense brain fog and inertia (no doubt current world events are having an overwhelming bearing on my condition). But I want to say this.. very often the bright spots of my aimless hours are when I think back to my days with both BF and LO. I feel profound grief, yes, but it’s rather beautiful and tender. There is such a thing as a “good death” as I’ve witnessed it several times, and I now know from experience that “good grief” exists too. Yes, there were so many sleepless nights for so many months over the span of several years where I thought myself going mad over LO… but as many here have experienced I had the most vitality of my life then (and surely I looked my best!). More to the point… LO was never a threat to my happiness, because he brought me happiness. He was a lovely man and I loved him very much. Same with my friend. They were never prizes for me to win and I wasn’t for them: I am a married woman where a strong obligation to morality and financial security ensures I remain my spouse’s “prize” (a bit like Bridges of Madison County but without all the corn or steamy summer sex…) My husband is a very decent, loyal man who has provided stability and contentment but until LO and BF entered my life, it was rather joyless. My goodness, I hadn’t realized I’d gone decades without joy and how meaningful can life be without it? Well, I can tell you, you end up dry and dull and depressed, doom scrolling for hours almost perversely wanting the world to end already dammit… I digress. My lasting impression is limerence is a condition that always requires great effort to manage, but need not always be eradicated from life. My life is better because I allowed myself to grapple with it. Yes, LO is gone now, but I have the memories and they are very much a prize worth keeping. Of course, and as always, YMMV…
Wow thank you so much for sharing that. Very powerful.
Oh my goodness. Until tonight I’d never heard many of these terms and I’m already feeling so much less guilt and self anger. This paragraph about made me cry : “This isn’t a character flaw, or a sign of childhood trauma, or a mental health condition that needs treatment.”
Unrelatedly I drifted into no contact with both my best friend and LO towards the end of last summer and by the beginning of 2026 I realized I was entering possibly the deepest depression of my life. Now I spend much of each new day drifting through dense brain fog and inertia (no doubt current world events are having an overwhelming bearing on my condition). But I want to say this.. very often the bright spots of my aimless hours are when I think back to my days with both BF and LO. I feel profound grief, yes, but it’s rather beautiful and tender. There is such a thing as a “good death” as I’ve witnessed it several times, and I now know from experience that “good grief” exists too. Yes, there were so many sleepless nights for so many months over the span of several years where I thought myself going mad over LO… but as many here have experienced I had the most vitality of my life then (and surely I looked my best!). More to the point… LO was never a threat to my happiness, because he brought me happiness. He was a lovely man and I loved him very much. Same with my friend. They were never prizes for me to win and I wasn’t for them: I am a married woman where a strong obligation to morality and financial security ensures I remain my spouse’s “prize” (a bit like Bridges of Madison County but without all the corn or steamy summer sex…) My husband is a very decent, loyal man who has provided stability and contentment but until LO and BF entered my life, it was rather joyless. My goodness, I hadn’t realized I’d gone decades without joy and how meaningful can life be without it? Well, I can tell you, you end up dry and dull and depressed, doom scrolling for hours almost perversely wanting the world to end already dammit… I digress. My lasting impression is limerence is a condition that always requires great effort to manage, but need not always be eradicated from life. My life is better because I allowed myself to grapple with it. Yes, LO is gone now, but I have the memories and they are very much a prize worth keeping. Of course, and as always, YMMV
“Decades without joy”? Really???
Or is it just rewriting history (excellent Dr. L article – november 25 2018).
I would give anything for my husband to return to being decent, loyal, stable and content. Any one of these would bring me joy.
Also, I’m curious- were you limerent for your husband when you married him? If so, was it different than what you experienced with your latest LOs?
I think there is a problem here. I doubt any research into romantic archetypes will come to any firm conclusions that explain romantic attraction purely in archetypal terms. This type of research never does this. You’ll get correlations open to interpretation like with everything else. But in any case what are the citations?
Can I suggest that one’s limerent object might not be an archetype or for that matter special, but somebody who changes your expectations of romantic attraction. One may have favourite genres of music, but you can still fall in love with a new genre.
And then again, they may actually be special.
What is the purpose of this reductionist archetype theory of attraction? It makes the whole matter something internal rather than relational. It’s a therapeutic stance because it means the entire problem is yours to solve through therapy. But it isn’t a realist stance. It’s a jetisoning of scientific caution.
This stance may chime with people who have a love at first sight experience, or love with minimal contact experience. But why can’t the experience of falling in love be a matter of personal change, transition and growth that takes some time to mature?
The experience of full limerence with the dopamine rush and everything is, in my opinion, a state that involves certain triggers being activated. But I also think this person fitting this archetype in this brain is too simple an explanation for this trigger for many (most?) cases including my own.
What triggers me into full limerence is not my LO exactly, but 1) her absence 2) intermittent presence 3) lack of reciprocity or uncertainty about her feelings for me 4) the sense that I need to act, declare my feelings etc., seize the day 5) the fear she will dissappear from my life. I can be around her, text her etc. without triggering the brain chemistry if I am careful not to trigger the above. So I am not addicted to LO, rather I experience addiction like symptoms when I am not careful around her.
That doesn’t answer the question why my LO and not somebody else. But answering that question does not help me deal with the full dopamine fueled limerence. What I have learned to do is turn my activation down so the brain chemistry isn’t hitting me full force. Keeping LO as a friend as part of my life was part of that control of my limerence activation.
—
The above may not work for everyone and the therapeutic story about person archetype addiction may be useful for a lot of people.
My recent crush seemed like he could understand my inner life better than my SO. He has a nice build and a beautiful smile, too (both better than SO’s). When I learned he was straight, he changed from just an interesting man I knew to someone I fantasized about wanting me. He didn’t fit an archetype, but he fit the unmet desires I was already carrying.
I definitely have a type as such. Needs to be intelligent, has a playful eccentric side, probably neurodivergent, reasonably physically attractive. Most important of all likes me and clicks with me. This is less an archetype and more just someone who I am on the same wavelength with. I dream of being in a happy long term relationship and certain women excite that dream. It’s rational limerence. It’s probably not as talked because it’s not as problematic as limerents who have a thing for eg. dark triad types. Loveable rogues etc. But even here I wonder if these limerents are falling for archetypes as such or whether something more subtle is going on.
My problem is that I’ve fallen for someone who ticks all my boxes and whom I have really bonded with. Calm, quiet, sweet not intoxicating shared moments. And she really likes me. But we are both in other relationships. I would be happy being a close friend (like Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann), but the opportunities to see her are scarce because seeing her on a one to one basis are just too much like an emotional affair. Too close to betrayal of our SO’s.
I realise some people will read this and think it isn’t real limerence. But there have been days I miss her so much that I am completely unable to do anything. I can be completely consumed by longing and fantasy for her. I have broken down crying over her. I love her, and I don’t think that is going to change. I’m not curing an addiction because she is more than just someone who triggers longing in me. She is someone who gives my life meaning. I am learning how to manage heartache.
Limerence is a collection of symptoms, it’s not a universal formula that arrives in a certain manner with universal problems and universal solutions. Dorothy Tennov said it gets its full power when hope and uncertainty/adversity combine. But that says very little about how hope and uncertainty/adversity work in individual cases.
I think you have to find your own way to deal with limerence or live with limerence or resolve limerence.
Hi Leagrave,
A lot of what you’re saying rings true. I also fell limerent for someone who I am on a wavelength with. With what I had happening at that point, it was no massive surprise. Not everyone here says their LO has dark triad traits. Nothing felt too abnormal about her or my feelings. It still doesn’t, nearly 3 years on. In this, I’m much the same as you.
I see that you’ve got some challenges against some of the orthodoxies on this site, as you’ve experienced them. Please take my reply in the spirit intended, which is to say I think challenging ideas is a universally good thing, but I do want to push back on a couple of points myself.
Take for example the ideas of supernormal stimulus or person addiction. Are these universal explanations for limerence? Probably not. But are they useful for many posters on this site as they try to find a way through limerence? Definitely yes.
If you’d met your LO when you were both single, is it likely you’d have got together and seen how a relationship went? I think that was once fairly likely with me and my LO. But I already had an SO, so we couldn’t and didn’t. If we, or any limerent-LO
pair, had, it then just becomes normal relationship development – good or bad.
But when limerent and LO don’t comsummate, a stuckness/inertia occurs, which is where all the longing and wanting and fantasy and rumination (a bit like you described of your LE triggers) take hold. It was THEN (and *because* I was not free to act and got stuck) that I began to feel addicted to the person and like she represented a super-normal stimulus.
I freely admit, I haven’t studied the limerence literature and am not a neuro-scientist. So this is only my garden variety account from personal experience.
But Tom is a neuro-scientist and would be able to explain what’s gone on brain-wise through the different bits of my experience, which presumably would support his theory of what limerence is.
I think a key objective of this site and later the videos has been to express complex information in ways that a lay reader can understand and relate to. To reach a wider audience, because limerence doesn’t only hit neuroscientists who’ve read the scientific papers.
Another intention has been to create community on the site. Yes, for sure, there are some ways that come more recommended than others to free oneself of limerence. But I always said in my posts that I would need to find a different way – to ‘live with’ limerence and to keep some friendship with the LO. I never related to ideas like devaluing my LO or spoiling the rewards (though I have read others who do). It seemed too fake. And nobody here has ever hounded me out of town for that. And in the end, I am now breaking freer of the LE and am less fretful about the friendship through a route I chose.
On a side note:
“opportunities to see her are scarce because seeing her on a one to one basis are just too much like an emotional affair”
If you want to stay loyal to your SO and not give yourself more turmoil, do stay the right side of this line. Crossing it regularly made things much worse for me. You are right not to slip into one-to-one time with her, however tempting it may feel.
Thanks for the reply.
I realise I have been a bit aggressive. I realise some people might find something useful where I don’t.
I am very much on the same page as you regarding my experience. I also absolutely experienced addictive behaviour.
I think this idea of limerence as addiction derives from Helen Fisher et al research on the brain imaging of students who were in love. And they found that thoughts of the students’ loved ones produced high levels of dopamine suggesting the reward system had been high jacked. This apparently is very like addiction.
I’m no neuroscientist, but Helen Fisher’s book on this Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love is very accessible. There are several things I am sceptical about in her book, but actually this central thesis looks pretty sound to me. It rings true. I felt I was addicted to my LO. Absolutely driven, constantly checking social media updates, waiting for her in the car park for hours on end just so I could wave to her…
The problem I have with the addiction model is some of the extrapolations that others have made. And that’s this idea that romantic love or limerence is driven by limerent highs and it’s intensified by building up tolerance to those highs.
I can accept the addiction model describes the intensity of romantic passion (limerence). But I do not accept the extrapolations. I think the Tennov model which has limerence reaching full strength (dopamine drive in Fisher’s terms) via a combination of romantic hope and adversity (usually uncertain reciprocation).
I think the addiction model falls apart most clearly when you consider limerence in a long term relationship. It doesn’t intensify because you need greater and greater hits like a cocaine addict with an unlimited supply. It rather tapers away because adversity tapers away. You need hope on the one hand and adversity on the other to get full limerence.
There is also the question of what exactly is driving the limerence. The addiction model says it is the LO and contact with the LO. The solution being no contact.
The Tennov model says if you can’t manage the adversity keeping you apart, what drives the limerence is something less tangible ie. hope. In this view the solution is less clear I think. But managing/containing hope is something you seem to have done and I seem to have done without resorting to no contact or thinking badly of your LO and all the addiction model tricks.
I really recommend reading Tennov’s Love and Limerence book. Very accessible. Full of case studies, amazing stories. And I really think she got it right. And she stands in stark contrast to almost everything you hear online about limerence.
Leagrave,
I see what you mean about the tolerance part of the addiction explanation not being as solid. At one stage the mantra would have held true “the more I got, the more I wanted / needed”. Even as I taper out of the LE, I get more flare ups when contact is higher than when lower. But I wouldn’t necessarily use “*tolerance*to addictive ‘substance'” to explain that, so much as a liking for it.
So you think adopting an addiction model tends to heap too much blame on the LO and paints them as somehow toxic, when that isn’t always the case? I am not for the limerent blaming the LO, on the whole, as the limerent had to meet certain conditions within themselves to fall into the LE.
I have seen snippets of Helen Fisher’s videos. Didn’t she find that brain scans of people still in love after decades showed those same ‘dopamine’ pathways lighting up as for people feeling newly in love or limerence? What we’d do with that in the context of this discussion I’m not sure.
In anecdotal support of Tennov’s point about adversity sustaining limerence … once, when I continued to experience adversity (uncertainty) with a partner well into the relationship, I continued to have feelings like limerence. Whereas in other more stable relationships, that all settled much quicker.
I don’t know how I’d have fared with NC. My instinct is that the initial pain would have been massive, but the limerence might have cleared faster than it has by the other methods. For a lot of people, me included, NC simply is not an option, and/or not something the limerent is prepared to do. So then it does become about how to contain the situation and learn to live with a smaller amount of the ‘hit’ – which has taken some work but has been possible. That wouldn’t be a cure recommended to substance addicts.
Interesting line of discussion anyway.
The existence of alcohol (just using an example of what I know) isn’t to blame for my alcoholism. I am. No more than LO was to blame for my Limerence. I am. I think the addiction model is fine. At least for my personal experience(s). I can’t speak for anyone else. Look how well Prohibition went over. Blaming something’s existence for your bad behavior is not taking personal responsibility. Even if an LO is manipulative or coaxing. I’ve never found devaluation to be productive. Because it ignores why I drink. Or why I became limerent. The former just has a better hold on me than the latter.
Completely agree that romantic hope coupled with uncertainty is a major factor in driving up a full limerent episode. The hope I put in LO from her simple eye contact, a smile or occasional hello set the LE wheels in motion. Yet it was when I think she figured out my interest and then avoided me caused me great stress. Hoping she was simply just playing hard to get. It was all the uncertainty I needed. Perhaps if she hadn’t checked off all the boxes and then some, on my list of what a perfect looking Woman is. Or if she simply ignored my noticing her all the time. Or if I wasn’t in such a desperate place then to find someone to relate to, it might have not felt like that meteorite hitting me. But I’ve never experienced anything like it and really hope I never do again.
Like Brother Adam, I also am not a fan of ever de-valuing LO, in any facet. I cannot believe she is a bad person for basically shunning me. When I’m the one that didn’t play my cards right. I’m to blame for whatever dumb mindset I had back then. Probably looking too desperate or not being pro-active enough in an approach. Body language speaks volumes and she was very good at letting me know that when she wanted to. What I didn’t know, is she was already with someone. Making my need for her invalid. I suppose I never wanted to believe it.
I think this assessment also makes clear my once interest in LF and now my other two Latina Lady Friends, are just that. Not LEs. Never were. The adversity isn’t there and since I think I know what I’m working with, my hope has a limit. Uncertainty is hardly present. Great if things work out, but disappointed if they don’t. Meaning this time I probably won’t go borderline suicidal if/when that happens.
What triggered my limerence for a friend’s husband was his attention to me. We had known each other for 17 years, I liked him but felt no attraction – then he started to act like he might be “into” me and have feelings that went beyond friendship. I have been very single, and love-starved for years, so that was it. Limerence flared big time. Nothing happened between us – but the limerence destroyed my mental health and our friendship. I can’t think about him negatively because I know him so well, and he is a great guy. There’s actual love mixed with the limerence, even though I know it will never be requited – he’s devoted to his wife. It sucks. We don’t speak or see each other any more. I feel like the only real way that I’ll be able to truly let him go is to meet someone else to love. (I’m working on it.) Has anyone else ended up in limerence for a friend, or someone else you knew well?
Check out the archives at the bottom of the page.
https://livingwithlimerence.com/case-study-limerent-for-a-close-family-friend/
As for someone that you knew well, there is a lot of information on coworkers. Same problem, different environment.
On supernormal stimulation.
Limerence is the experience of being in love. It involves intrusive thoughts and it becomes more amplified when hope combines with adversity/uncertain reciprocation. That is the actual back to basics Tennovian orthodoxy. There is nothing supernormal about any of that. It is perfectly normal. And this is very much the point. Limerence is not something that is the result of the artifice of modern life like porn addiction or fast food. It is ancient, it is common, it thrives in normal communal circumstances of proximity with other people.
People have a hard time accepting that normal human existence can be painful, can be harmful, can be disruptive, can be inappropriate. So they reach for pathological explanations for limerence.
Even if romantic archetypes exist in reality, that just means they are normal not supernormal.
Where the theory of limerent supernormal stimulus may actually have legs is in situations of infatuation for celebrities – pop stars, film stars etc. Or parasocial infatuation on social media. These are situations where celebrity is crafted to induce heart throb. Ie. it is supernormal.
There is nothing basic about the theory that limerence is the result of supernormal stimulation. It is advancing unsupported speculation that contradicts the actual basic theory. This is fine, Tennov’s ideas and theories may be wrong in certain respects, maybe this challenge to the orthodoxy is a real and vital innovation. I’m not going to dismiss someone’s hypotheses and hunches. But hypothesis and hunch should be presented as hypothesis and hunch, not as the back to basics ideas.
The theory that limerence is person addiction and intensifies as tolerance to its highs increases again flatly contradicts the Tennovian orthodoxy which states that intensification is not the result of tolerance but of adversity. It is again, another unsupported hypothesis or hunch.
I don’t think what you’re saying contradicts Dr L’s work. He doesn’t try to say that limerence is pathological. He draws parallels with addiction because it’s a useful comparison. It’s a normal part of human experience, but nonetheless it’s one that can be studied from a neuroscience perspective, and it’s a part of human experience that can cause pain and that people might want to seek help with.
My questions for you and your situation:
What are you hoping to get from hanging out here? You don’t seem to be after a cure for your limerence, but maybe you were hoping that understanding it better would help provide some relief from the pain? Do you love your SO? Do you worry that your limerence may adversely affect your relationship? Or would you prefer to be with LO instead if circumstances allowed?
I’m in a pretty stable pain free state at the minute. I don’t think I have loved my SO for maybe 10 years. It’s something more like platonic companionship with arguments. I’m unhappy. I also still have a low level manageable limerence for my LO. I love my LO, I really do, but I have contained my hopes.
I had full on limerence last year and during that time I developed an interest in the theory around limerence and also about society’s attitudes towards it. The lack of research, the lack of education. During my LE this was the only thing I could think about other than my LO. It’s therapeutic for me. It’s also a very interesting topic scientifically and sociologically.
I think it’s fair to see this site as a research project as well as a self help project.
Reading back my previous message, I realise that it was a bit aggressive. But my LO is more to me than a particular archetype that I like. I realise Dr L carefully rejects pathologising limerence but the flattening of meaning of being in love, and the cure limerence framework are part of a broader pathologisation of limerence trend and I want to return to the non-romantic but non-medical humanist philosophy of Dorothy Tennov.
Here’s an article by Sienna Smith which I am very much on the same page with.
https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/69466/1/limerence-is-bullshit-tiktok-reddit-dating-relationships-dorothy-tennov?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Leagrave – I’m sorry to hear that you’ve been in an unhappy marriage for 10 years. Do you think your SO is happy? I’m curious why you and you SO stay in the marriage.
Helen Fisher on long term romantic love:
https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/69466/1/limerence-is-bullshit-tiktok-reddit-dating-relationships-dorothy-tennov?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Hi Leagrave – The link here is to the Sienna Smith article instead of the Helen Fisher item.
Serena Smith is missing the point.
I think she also missed what sparked Dorothy Tennov’s interest in the first place.
Hi Libra iSO – Would you please be more specific in what point Serena Smith is missing?
SO Miranda, I think Ms. Smith bizarrely doesn’t acknowledge that extreme limerence can potentially cause so much misery not only for the limerent, but others in their lives.
Dorothy Tennov’s observation of a student in crisis is what led her to conduct her research, which is impressive, but didn’t have the benefit of modern neuroscience.
Ms. Smith linked Dr. L’s guardian article, but did she actually read it, or anything else from his body of work? Is she basing her opinion on tik tok mostly? Regardless, the proliferation of info and the sheer number of people seeking it indicates that limerence can be a huge problem.
In addition to not understanding why the subject of limerence is getting so much attention, I just think she’s confusing it with infatuation.
Smith also seems to think that people who are non-limerent or less limerent are so because they have had “frictionless lives or so much therapy”.
Thank you, Libra.
For most people on this site, whether they are limerents or SOs of limerents, limerence does cause misery. However, I think the difficulty in limerence is due purely to the context of having obstacles to a relationship with the LO. If you’re not partnered, if your LO is not partnered, if you’re not your LO’s boss, if your LO does not reject you, you can move on blissfully to a relationship. But whether or not you have those obstacles, it seems 50%+ of the population is prone to having the giddy, euphoric feelings of limerence. And that’s not a bad thing, really. We all could use some joy in our lives.
Tennov felt there was a need to describe the emotional/mental experience of falling in love. That experience is the same for people who are free to act on their desires as well as for the people who are not free.
In the article from the Guardian linked in Serena Smith’s article, Dr. L. writes: “If barriers or uncertainty prevent the open expression of those feelings and the limerence persists unresolved, those same neural systems can be driven into a state of supernormal activation that resembles an addiction.”
You’re right that Serena Smith does not seem to understand that limerence “can be a huge problem.” She thinks that limerence has fallen victim to “concept creep,” and what was “once an innocuous word” has now become a diagnosis. She seems to be missing the point that limerence — the exciting, joyous feelings of falling in love — can turn into miserable feelings of frustration, guilt, dealing with unwanted intrusive thoughts, etc. So what she’s terming “concept creep,” is actually the description of how a joyful (in her words “innocuous”) feeling becomes altered in the presence of barriers.
To be fair, I do see “limerence” used frequently now, and it is sometimes used by people who don’t have a clear understanding of what it is. So Serena Smith is probably right that it is being overused.
The archetypes thing is interesting. All three of my recent LOs over the past six years are very different women. Two are older, one is younger. One is very tall, one average height, one quite short. Two are blondes (although I suspect not natural in both cases) and one has auburn hair. Two are curvaceous, one is very skinny. One has no children, one is a mother and the other is a grandmother (a very beautiful, young-looking and young-acting grandmother). One is basically a high school graduate, the other two have community college (none have bachelors degrees even though I am university educated myself). All three have similar ethnic backgrounds (which are similar to mine), although I had no idea about that when I first met them. Two like heavy rock music, the other not so much. The only other commonalities are having fairly long hair and being single. One has tattoos and the other two don’t. One smokes and the other two are ex-smokers (although I didn’t find out about that until long after meeting them). All three are at least friends-of-friends (although when I first met LO #1 she was a complete stranger and it was a chance encounter; she re-entered my life in a small way a couple of years later). One has a bit of a bad girl image, although the other two are kind of wholesome/girl-next-door types (the one is changing that a little bit by getting more and more tattoos).
I am attracted to lots of types of women, but there are several types I really like. I have a thing for “muscle mommies” (although they have to be feminine looking). I also like very tall Amazon women, and I like the plus size model type as well (although not outright obese). I sometimes have a thing for older women too, but only older women who don’t look or act their age. All of these point to me liking physically and/or emotionally strong women. I hate how my wife dominates and controls me, yet I seem to really like strong, independent women. I like women to take initiative in the bedroom as well (I’m a big guy, but I have this fantasy of a strong sexy woman carrying me upstairs to bed). Unlike many men, I’m also impressed by career success, even though none of my LOs are hugely successful from a career or financial perspective (although none of them are destitute and they’re all homeowners).
I don’t think my LOs necessarily conform to all of the above archetypes (other than my current LO, who is very tall, quite curvaceous and muscular looking, but very feminine and beautiful – and older than me). Therefore, it’s hard for me to spot “the glimmer.” I also don’t understand my desire for strong women. I like women to look and act feminine, but I love tomboys as long as they can clean up nicely. I am not submissive, and I don’t want to be told to sit in a corner or that I’m a pathetic little piece of shit, but I love the dominatrix look. Do I secretly want to be dominated by a woman? Could that be why there are so many problems in my marriage with my wife’s controlling behaviour? I don’t seem to like it in her though. Unfortunately, little of this is helping me to understand my limerence, but I do think Dr. L’s view that “there is no more powerful aphrodisiac than the thought that someone might fancy you” plays a small part in making me limerent for such diverse women. Any thoughts on any of this?
” I do think Dr. L’s view that “there is no more powerful aphrodisiac than the thought that someone might fancy you” plays a small part in making me limerent for such diverse women. Any thoughts on any of this?”
I think there is some truth to what Dr. L wrote, but it really depends. Just a guy showing interest does not make me limerent. It doesn’t necessarily even make me interested. And then if there is mutual interest, it doesn’t always lead to limerence. There are a series of factors that have to line up in terms of me (where I am in life/mindset), the situation itself and the man himself. And then sometimes all those factors can be lined up, and I don’t become limerent.
Totally agreed. Knowing someone likes you might make you take notice of that person, but on its own, it isn’t enough to drive limerence. It is a nice ego boost, but that on its own isn’t enough. I do think it helps a bit though. I first noticed my current LO one night three years ago when she stood right next to me for a long time and no one else was around. I got the feeling she wanted me to talk to her, even though I didn’t really see the point at the time.
VL,
“It is a nice ego boost, but that on its own isn’t enough.”
It really depends on who it is. Sometimes it’s flattering; sometimes it isn’t.