By the time she was in her late 30s, journalist Amanda McCracken had dated dozens of people but didn’t have much success with actual relationships. There was the artist, for instance. She cycled in and out of repeated romantic encounters with him, experiencing euphoria when he seemed to reciprocate her feelings, and grief when he didn’t.
While the longest lasting, the artist was one of many people who took up a lot of real estate in McCracken’s mind. She would spend hours thinking about these people, idealizing them as perfect partners and often ignoring the red flags that demonstrated they weren’t. It became a familiar, repeated pattern, and finally, McCracken sought help from a therapist.
After some hard work and reflection, McCracken discovered that her longing was a sign that she was in perpetual limerence, not love.
Limerence is an intense infatuation or obsession with another person that can sometimes last for weeks or even decades. More than a crush, it’s an attachment that can result in intrusive thoughts and intense emotional highs and lows depending on whether the person — sometimes called the limerent object — appears to reciprocate those feelings. Although usually romantic in nature, limerence can also happen in platonic situations as well.
The term was coined in the 1970s by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in her book “Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love.” Tennov defined limerence as a type of “lovesickness.”
“Limerence was a safe place for me to hide from the vulnerability of real intimacy,” McCracken said. “Instead of pursuing genuine, reciprocal relationships, I wasted my time chasing men I felt unworthy of.”
There’s a fine line between love and limerence, and it’s important to understand the difference — especially if it impacts your mental health or ability to form healthy relationships. But there are steps you can take to break out of it, McCracken said. “Learning to believe you are worthy of authentic love, not just breadcrumbs from someone you’ve idealized, is key to breaking free of limerence,” she said.
What is limerence?
Limerence is not included in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM-5-TR), which is the key source for classifying and diagnosing mental disorders.
In other words, limerence is not a diagnosable mental health condition. But researchers, including Giulia Poerio, PhD, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Sussex in England, have continued to investigate this particular state of longing.
Here are a few signs you might be experiencing limerence:
- You constantly think about an individual, even if you are not currently in a relationship with them or haven’t been for a long time.
- You have intense sensations, including euphoria when they seem to reciprocate, and guilt, grief and mourning when they don’t.
- You are unable to entirely cut out the person from your life even if you want to.
- You ignore red flags and pine for someone even if they take advantage of your affection or perpetually string you along.
- Your thoughts about the person are intrusive and uncontrollable.
- You compensate for a lack of information by fantasizing about them or idealizing them as a perfect partner.
“Some think of it as the early stages of a romantic relationship,” Poerio said. “You’re thinking about that person constantly, you perpetually want to spend time with them, and you fantasize about a future with them.”
This is a sensation that many people experience at one time or another, and if that infatuation is reciprocated, it might develop into a normative relationship.
Tom Bellamy experienced this when he met his future wife. “If you have two limerent people, it’s fantastic,” said Bellamy, who is a doctor of neuroscienceat England’s University of Nottingham. “Eventually, however, the limerence fades and the two people must transition to a different form of love. This will involve affection, communication, respect — all the things we associate with healthy, mature love.”
Where this early love can turn into limerence, however, is when the other person doesn’t return the feelings and the obsessive thinking and fantasies about them begin to take up so much headspace it can disrupt daily life.
“It’s a real cognitive invasion of your mind,” said Poerio. “It’s also enjoyable, which makes it somewhat addictive.” Limerence lasts on average 18 months to three years, according to Tennov, although in some cases it can last for decades.
“At its worst, limerence can have secondary consequences,” said Bellamy, who is also the author of “Smitten: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last.”
“You lie about your motivations, try to find indirect ways to feel close to your limerent object, and use your thoughts for mood repair.”
Until she had an awareness of her patterns and an understanding of why she perpetually remained in them, McCracken repeatedly cycled through limerence and eventually wrote “When Longing Becomes Your Lover,” a book about her experience. “It took a therapist to help me recognize I was worthy of more,” she said. “I had to understand that and want to change.”
Finding the path forward
McCracken says the current uptick in interest in limerence is partly fueled by modern dating culture and social media. “The prevalence of ghosting and the ambiguity of hook-up culture has likely led to more instances of limerence,” she said. “With social media, you have more fuel for the fire, too. You can scroll through your limerent object’s feeds and wind up with a mental loop that isn’t closed, wondering what might have been.”
Alexandra Solomon, PhD, adjunct professor at Boston University, and host of the podcast “Reimagining Love,” agrees. “The apps and social media provide access to inputs and data about the object of your desire,” she says. “Twenty years ago that wasn’t the case.”
This lack of information or real-world contact with a person can fuel limerence. For McCracken, the artist lived hundreds of miles away and only intermittently returned her affection, which seemed to perpetuate rather than diminish her deep infatuation with him.
Limerence falls into something of a gray area of psychology and psychiatry and is quite often misunderstood. “People sometimes tie it with borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, OCD, and even stalking,” said Bellamy. “None of that is grounded in research.”
Because research into limerence is limited, there’s no universal standard to treating it, according to Poerio. But cognitive reappraisal strategy — which is a type of cognitive behavioral therapy where you learn to see the limerent object for who they are, not who you want them to be — is one approach. Here, people who are experiencing limerence work to break the negative feedback loop of limerence.
Standard CBT is another option, and sometimes, the subset of exposure and response prevention strategy. Here, the patient and practitioner collaborate on strategies to gradually challenge beliefs. For example, McCracken’s therapist asked her, “How can you know you tried too hard, when in another situation your efforts might have been met with equal love?”
Bellamy recommends reducing contact with the person and avoiding or even blocking them on social media. It can help to try to stop thinking or talking about them as much as possible, he said.
Not every therapist may recognize and know exactly how to treat limerence, but McCracken says that for her, therapy was key. After years of hard work, McCracken eventually found a lasting, stable romance, and is now married and has a child. “Limerence can feel inescapable because it’s only a thought away,” she said. “But if you find help, you can start thinking differently and be ready for a loving relationship.”
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