Limerence

Limerence is the term the psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined in her 1979 book Love and Limerence for the involuntary, intrusive, and often obsessive form of infatuation that differs from ordinary romantic interest in both intensity and resistance to will.

Tennov interviewed hundreds of people about their experience of being in love and identified a distinct state, neither casual attraction nor mature attachment, characterized by intrusive thinking about the limerent object, hypersensitivity to their signals, mood that rises and falls on the slightest perceived reciprocation, and difficulty redirecting attention even when the limerent person knows the situation is unworkable.

What it actually feels like

Limerence is involuntary in a way ordinary infatuation is not. The limerent person spends hours each day mentally rehearsing scenes, parses ambiguous signals from the object for meaning, oscillates between euphoria after small positive cues and despair after small ambiguous ones, and often cannot concentrate on other parts of their life. The state can run for months or years, and it does not necessarily resolve into either consummation (the object reciprocates and the limerence becomes a relationship) or termination (the limerence simply ends).

Why it is not the same as new love

The contrast Tennov drew was between limerence and what she called affectional bonding: ordinary new love is mutual, builds steadily, survives small disconfirmations, and is not characterized by intrusive rumination. Limerence runs on an entirely different psychological circuit, closer to the obsessive-compulsive spectrum, and the limerent person often describes themselves as being unwell rather than as being in love. Many cases of limerence are not even with a viable partner; the object is married, distant, fictional, or barely known.

What helps

The clinical work on limerence is thinner than on attachment or grief, but the practical recommendations from Tennov and from the modern community discussion converge: deliberate reduction of contact with the limerent object, structured attention to other parts of life, therapeutic work on the underlying attachment patterns (limerence often correlates with anxious-preoccupied attachment), and time. The state usually does, eventually, burn out; the process is not fun and the limerent person rarely speeds it up by trying harder.

Where it shows up around VibeLovely

Limerence sits alongside love bombing and the attachment styles in the Modern Norms desk's coverage of intense emotional states that the standard romance vocabulary mishandles.

References

• Tennov, D. (1979). Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. Stein and Day.
• Wakin, A., & Vo, D. B. (2008). Love-variant: the Wakin-Vo I.D.R. model of limerence. In 2nd Global Conference on Challenging Intimate Boundaries.
• Fisher, H. (2004). Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. Henry Holt.
• American Psychological Association. Romantic obsession and intrusive thinking. apa.org/topics/relationships