For most people,
crushes
come and go.
But for others, the tantrum can last for years and become addictive.
A spark of interest turns into obsessive musings sustained by a pernicious cocktail of hope and doubt.
That's not falling in love.
That's limerence.
Limerence is a state of
overwhelming and unexpected longing for emotional reciprocity
from another human being, known as
a limerent object (LO)
, which is often perceived as perfect but inaccessible.
This may sound similar to the lyrics of a Taylor Swift love song, a scene from The Great Gatsby, or the lines of a Shakespearean sonnet.
The experience of limerence is immemorial, but the term is relatively new.
In 1979,
Dorothy Tennov
, experimental psychologist and professor at the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, coined the term limerence in her book Love and Limerence
:
The Experience of Being in
Love
based on a decade of research and several hundred case studies on the love bond.
What differentiates limerence from a crush or love is
intensity
, an
emotional roller coaster
that fluctuates between euphoria and despair.
Giulia Poerio, a psychologist and researcher at the University of Sussex, England, said: “Any sign of rejection can make a person hit rock bottom, and any sign of interest can make a person reach for the sky.”
It's a never-ending mental game of "He loves me, he loves me not."
Deeply fearful of rejection, limerents allow their self-esteem to rest in the power of an OL who may not even know they exist.
The OL is often a friend, colleague, or stranger known in passing.
He could also be someone with whom you had a brief romantic encounter and who seems unresolved, explains Dr. Poerio, especially if the OL keeps leaving crumbs.
For the most part, people are serial limers and get caught up chasing the same dopamine spike that is felt in the beginning stages of love.
Photo: Shutterstock illustration.
Sue Crump, a 67-year-old volunteer at a mental health charity in Sheffield, England, said that for 18 months she had obsessively watched YouTube videos featuring her OL, a much younger married singer whom she had met. briefly a few times.
"I fantasized about having a relationship with him and thought I read things in the text and online messages he sent me in response to mine."
Sue turned to a limerence support group on Facebook shortly after the isolation of the pandemic lockdown worsened her cravings.
"She made me realize that she wasn't alone and that she wasn't driving me crazy," she added.
Limerence thrives on repeating memories and rehearsing future interactions.
"There is a fair amount of mental time travel," observed Giulia Poerio, who asked respondents to write descriptions of those fantasies.
“Often it's not something romantic or sexual in nature.
“It's largely about wanting to feel loved and cared for.”
Chris Gregory, 53, a certified yoga instructor from Denver, remembers experiencing limerence for the first time in high school.
“I fell in love with women in an insanely obsessive way and then I didn't pursue them.
So it destroyed me that they didn't respond the way the scene had played out in my head and heart.
I felt worthless,” he recalled.
Gregory continued to experience limerence throughout his adult life, he said, but he confused it with love.
Limerence toward someone
can last for many years
, even while you're in a relationship with another person, Poerio explains.
However, for the most part people are serial limers and have one OL after another and get stuck chasing the same dopamine spike you feel in the beginning stages of love.
The brain's reward cycle
Dr. Judson Brewer, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and author of Undoing Anxiety, describes limerence as an addiction.
“When someone is on a diet, the only thing they are obsessed with is food.
So you can think of this as a personal diet,” he said.
"He gets caught up in future-oriented fantasies and past-oriented regrets."
If the trigger is
loneliness or boredom
, for example, the resulting behavior is to anticipate the OL's reciprocity, he added.
That reciprocity never comes, but the anticipation generates the reward, dopamine.
Limerence towards someone can last for many years.
Photo: Shutterstock illustration.
“
Dopamine
is jet fuel, Brewer noted.
It is what motivates us to do something,” even if doing something just means anticipating it.
Uncertainty, or the intermittent reinforcement of the occasional message from the OL keeps our brain engaged.
“It's gasoline thrown on the fire,” he illustrated.
“We begin to confuse anxiety with excitement and excitement with joy.”
Culture as a catalyst
There are a growing number of
limerence
support groups and informative blogs online.
Psychologists and social scientists are not surprised.
Alexandra Solomon, a licensed clinical psychologist in Chicago and host of the “Reimagining Love” podcast, said: “There is a whole cultural element here related to the way online dating and hookup culture creates a climate of low responsibility and encourage insecure attachment.
There is a kind of collective insecurity.”
The American Perspectives Survey found that nearly a third of single people in the US (about equal numbers for men and women) have been cheated on by someone they were dating.
The
lack of frequent communication
after physical intimacy is enough to make many people feel anxiety-ridden, if not relieved.
With a seemingly endless supply of quotes, people feel expendable.
Being ignored can create an open tab inside your brain.
"It's easy to feel like there's no obligation to close the loop," Solomon said.
“You can start projecting a lot of hypotheses onto that person.
It is also easy to idealize someone you have just met.”
While people who engage in limerence generally put their OL on a pedestal, social media encourages idealization even more.
People who exchange Instagram profiles at a bar have instant access to years of curated data that they can use to construct the other person in their minds, explains Jennifer Douglas, a psychologist and clinical professor at Stanford University in California.
When is it a problem?
Most people experience some degree of limerence, Giulia Poerio said, but it is problematic when it manifests itself uncontrollably.
The researcher uses the analogy of a person whose mind has been hijacked.
“It interferes with your ability to have meaningful relationships in the real world because you are having a relationship in your mind.
“It’s a normal process that went relatively wrong.”
Freelance writer Vincent Harris, 49, of Greenville, South Carolina, knows that he lost his first marriage and his job due to the presence of a limerente object that he considered his soulmate.
He met his latest object through social media during the pandemic.
“For three years I felt like I was living under a cloud.
I had no other motivation than to hear from her,” he shared.
“I was paralyzed for fear that if I approached her, she would say the wrong thing.
As she decreased contact with me, she made me more desperate and unbalanced.”
In May 2023, Harris entered medical treatment for a second mental breakdown.
How do you stop that intense longing?
Cultivate self-compassion and a life of
more meaningful purpose: Judson Brewer recommends practicing Loving Kindness Meditation to develop self-compassion and create connections with others who require nothing in return.
Brain scans show that doing this meditation deactivates the part of the brain that is involved during craving and worry, according to Brewer.
You can also incorporate
grounding activities
with people who bring you joy and satisfaction.
For Chris Gregory, being more present helped him manage his limerence.
He credits yoga education work and staying sober with helping him cultivate honest and open relationships with people.
Break the Fantasy
: In a published case study on limerence, Brandy Wyant, a psychotherapist in Arlington, Massachusetts who specializes in helping patients with obsessive-compulsive disorders, describes her own life story with limerence and the 10-week treatment which diminished his usual musings.
One of the
cognitive behavioral therapy
techniques that worked for her was listing all the ways she was trying to seek physical or emotional closeness with her OL.
This could be daydreaming, relistening to voicemails or playlists, rereading text messages, rehearsing messages, or looking at photographs.
She now proposed classifying what is easier and what is more difficult to stop and then start with the easiest.
One of the strategies Wyant uses with its clients to stop idolizing their OL is to make a
list of the reasons why the OL is not perfect
.
Another list consists of ways in which OL and patient are not compatible.
To the bread, bread, and to the wine, wine.
Or name it to tame it: You can deliberately interrupt the habit by calling it out loud—"Hello, limerence"—and paying attention (for example, by journaling) to what you feel when you are in that state of longing.
Recognizing feelings of self-denigration, anxiety
and depression leads to disappointment, Dr. Brewer noted.
You should also
understand that you deserve more
.
As author Dorothy Tennov wrote, “Limerence can live a long life on crumbs.”
Don't let this take away your time, energy and self-esteem.
It can distract you from the emotionally accessible loving partner in front of you.
© The New York Times
Translation: Román García Azcárate