Another busy week for me, so here’s my latest YouTube video about why limerence exists:
Romantic love is great, and there are obvious reasons why it exists.
What’s less obvious is why those giddy feelings of love can sometimes get a bit… unstable.
Why do some of us get so massively, comprehensively intoxicated with other people that it feels like an addiction?
Why do we apparently have a mechanism for runaway romantic obsession built into our brains?
In short: why does limerence exist?
What value does involuntary, obsessive desire for another person have?
Well, the answers lie in the way that our brains works, and in our evolutionary history.
Starting at the very beginning—limerence is obviously linked to reproduction, as most limerents want to, well… mate with their limerent objects.
It’s also been observed that the typical duration of a limerence episode that leads to a sexual relationship is in the 18-24 month range. That coincides with the time window for having a baby and raising it through the most vulnerable stage of infancy.
But, limerence clearly isn’t essential for reproduction.
People that never experience limerence have children successfully—in fact, you could make a very persuasive argument that they have an advantage. They don’t go completely loopy over their partner and so can make better choices.
So, if limerence isn’t necessary, why does it exist?
1. Love on the brain
The brain is a system of systems that’s been cobbled together and refined through evolutionary history. It isn’t engineered or rationally designed.
Several different brain systems are involved in romantic love—principally the arousal system, the reward system, the bonding system—and these systems certainly interact with one another, but they can also act independently.
They create drives that contribute to love and limerence, but those drives just push as to behave in a certain way, they aren’t a well coordinated team.
The three main drives are lust, attraction and attachment.
Lust is primarily driven by activation of the hypothalamus and amygdala, linking erotic cues to arousal and reward. It’s a fundamental drive that can easily be triggered independently of any affection or desire to bond.
Attraction is more about desire and admiration for a particular person. It’s more discriminating than lust and it’s not just about animal desire.
Same-sex attraction and attraction to people past their reproductive age also shows that attraction is a desire that still operates even when baby-making is impossible.
Finally, attachment is about bonding. This is the sense of emotional intimacy, closeness, and affinity for another person. In romantic love bonding can follow lust and attraction, but it isn’t inevitable. We can feel deep bonds of affection for people we feel no sexual desire for.
Attachment also takes time to develop. It’s built through closeness, unlike the more instinctive effects of lust and attraction.
What’s obvious from these details is that evolution has gifted us with parallel drives that contribute different benefits for reproduction. Lust makes us want to mate, attraction helps us select desirable partners, and attachment helps us form lasting pair bonds.
Sometimes these drives work together harmoniously, but… not always.
Sometimes things can go wrong.
2. System instabilities
In limerence, a specific combination of drives leads to a state of intense infatuation.
Co-activation of the reward and bonding systems in the brain imprints a specific person as the primary source of reward—and usually it’s a heady brew of erotic, euphoric and emotional reward.
That’s a very powerful association, and under the wrong conditions it can become a little too powerful. The reward system can be driven into an overactive state.
The “wanting” urge encoded by dopamine becomes sensitized. At the same time, feedback control from the executive brain, the orbitofrontal cortex, is weakened—it becomes desensitized.
This is a state of addiction. One reward becomes the dominant force in life. Other rewards pale in comparison.
You feel an irresistible desire for your limerent object, and in fact you don’t even want to resist.
This capacity for some rewards to tip over into addiction is well documented. There are other behavioural addictions that have the same basis—gambling being the best validated, but addiction to pornography, shopping, gaming, and many others have been proposed.
Beyond addiction, there are actually lots of other examples of how the systems of the brain can be driven into unstable states.
Scientists have long known about the existence of “supernormal stimuli”—artificial stimuli that can drive brains into overactive states. Classic examples are gull chicks pecking furiously at painted sticks, birds neglecting their own eggs to brood gaudy porcelain eggs, or male butterflies mating urgently with paper decoys rather than female butterflies.
Unfortunately, evolved systems can have instabilities, imperfections and inefficiencies. They can go haywire if they are driven too strongly by a supernormal stimulus.
A limerent object could be seen as a romantic supernormal stimulus. They can drive your romantic reward response into a state of person addiction.
3. Pair bonding
OK, so that’s the how of limerence when it comes to the mechanics of the brain, but that still leaves the question unanswered about *why* that instability exists. Is it just a curious defect or vulnerability, or might it have some reproductive value?
Well, fundamentally, limerence is a drive that promotes pair-bonding. It’s a desire to form a special connection with one other person. It excludes others.
Humans are unusual amongst primates in using pair-bonding as a reproductive strategy. Why humans have this tendency remains a contentious debate, but social monogamy is an effective way of linking reproduction to child survival. It promotes what’s been termed “fitness interdependence” where mutual support improves the odds of offspring surviving and thriving. It also improves the odds of reproduction occurring.
We have this idea that men will sow their wild oats indiscriminately because it maximises their chance of reproduction, but that’s not actually true in practice.
Women do not broadcast their fertility in the same way as say female chimps in oestrus do with their engorged genitalia. Random, opportunistic mating in humans is not very likely to result in conception. Two partners staying together and mating regularly has much higher odds of success.
Pair-bonding is advantageous from the perspective of conception and child development. It makes sense that it would be a stable trait, and limerence promotes pair-bonding. It’s useful.
As a last note on this point, it’s worth mentioning that none of these evolutionary arguments mean that opportunistic mating outside of the pair-bond isn’t an even more effective strategy.
Infidelity is commonly observed in socially monogamous species.
It’s those independent drives of lust and attachment causing trouble again.
4. Evolutionary extravagance
A final thought about limerence from the perspective of evolution is that sexual selection is another important force and can lead to all sorts of wacky outcomes.
Any time lots of males compete to impress females, things can get a bit out of hand.
Perhaps the most famous example of this principle is the peacock’s tail.
Peahens select for males who are able to demonstrate their fitness with a wildly extravagant display.
This squandering of effort is often explained by what’s known as the handicap principle— showcasing an absurd burden is proof of superior health or genetic quality.
Alternatively, it could just be another example of a runaway system instability—females respond to impressive displays, and that leads to an evolutionary arms race that runs out of control.
Regardless of the true selection mechanism, I think limerence could fit into this framework.
Limerence is an extreme drive to pair-bond. It is an extravagant devotion to another person, an ostentatious commitment. A peacock’s tail of loyalty.
Once the milkmaid is limerent for the farmboy, no prince could sway her. Once the billionaire playboy is limerent for the waitress, not even a supermodel would turn his head.
Adoration that profound signals a mate who can be relied upon to commit for long enough to secure the safety of your offspring—of your genes.
It’s only one strategy for securing reproduction in a complex world with both limerents and non-limerents looking for love, but it does make sense.
Limerence is a supernormal reward, a hypersensitive drive for bonding, signaling a commitment so fierce it defies reason.
It’s not just a crush.
Great line: “signaling a commitment so fierce it defies reason.”
My LO contacted me again this week. It destabilized me much less this time. In my head it was just, “oh, it’s LO again.” I am now at the stage where I think we can be friends at a long distance, as long as I don’t pursue closeness and intimacy the way I did earlier this year, as long as I actively lean away from that.
Even friendship can be a “commitment that defies reason” or at least seem so, superficially. All of us “get something,” whether it is a current or future benefit, or the avoidance of a significant cost, from every relationship we maintain. In limerence, it is an illusory future benefit. In friendship, particularly when neither person has much to gain materially, it is the nonetheless real benefit of feeling good from the actual interactions and feeling good about yourself for being a friend. That should be enough.
“Limerence is a supernormal reward, a hypersensitive drive for bonding signaling a commitment so significant it defies reason.” This has certainly been my experience. I am married happily married and have been for 34 years. My LO is married and not limerent for me. I am also past the age of reproductivity. However when I met my LO for the first time and we were together (with my husband) for three weeks I started ovulating again, ten months after I had experienced my last reproductive cycle. This happened again the second time my husband and I spent time in his company seven months later. Fortunately for me I have had no contact with the LO since that time, which was over two years ago. Although I am doing better now than I once, was I still struggle with the “extravagant devotion” described here. I know that there is no rational scenario in which I am with my LO and that he does not have feelings for me and yet I still find myself imagining that I might see him again some day and what that would feel like, how it would play out, etc. As I am coming up on three years since the onset of my LE (my first and hopefully my last) I have been feeling impatient about how long it is taking me to recover. I have started hypnotherapy and I am finding it very helpful. It is not at all what I had imagined; I am not asleep and I am very aware of what is going on during the entire session. It involves a lot of reprogramming rather than deprogramming and an emphasis on my feelings about myself, goals for my life and a future where I am at peace. There is no mention of the LO at all, which surprised me at first, though I now understand how it can be counterproductive to direct attention on the object of your obsession. I suppose it is somewhat consistent with the emphasis on purposeful living in that I am developing affirmations that I recite and listen to with the goal of internalizing them into my subconscious. In emphasizing these aspects of my own life I am essentially de-emphasizing the importance of the LO and becoming the hero of my own story. It has been helpful to have specific and articulate goals to implement and I am noticing that I am thinking less about the LO lately. I still experience pain from time to time when something brings up a memory and I rest my attention for too long in that space. This website has been invaluable to me as I have found no other place that so accurately describes what I have experienced. I wept when I read the blog about the loneliness of limerence and felt my gut tighten reading the explanation of the reasons behind the impulse toward disclosure to the LO. My sister-in-law is an alcoholic and she once told me that as an addict she needed something to substitute for alcohol and that the AA meetings satisfied that need. Sometimes I wonder if checking in here for the latest insight on limerence is creating a new habit or keeping me focused on my thoughts of the LO so my goal is to soon no longer feel the need to look for that silver bullet that will put this all far behind me. But it has been a tremendous help to me over the last six months and I am eternally grateful for what I have learned here.
Impatient Limerent,
Thank you for sharing all that. I think we are at a similar stage of perimenopause and I think that has been a factor in my current Limerent Episode. It’s really interesting to hear about your hypnotherapy, and how focussing on other aspects of life has been helpful in turning your attention away from LO. I recognise your worry that even coming here is a way of ruminating about LO! Your frank descriptions of your emotions are familiar too.
It was such a relief to discover Dr L’s work and find this community of other people who are experiencing these big emotions and wondering what the **** is going on!
You shouldn’t call it obsessive love. That refers to something else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessive_love
Dorothy Tennov never used that term.
You are conflating limerence with obsessive love disorder by doing that. https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+obsessive+love
We do not have enough words for love in English (vs. Greek). We are poorer for that, because we focus too much on Eros (vs. Philia, Storge, and Agape).
“Obsessive love” seems more erotic (like Eros) in nature. Limerence is a fantasy that any kind of love exists to a much greater degree than reality. Limerents are seeking validation from their objects and, not getting that, create fantasies, which may or may not be erotic, to maintain their faith that this love is possible. There may be some overlap with obsessive love if the limerent stalks the limerent object.
Limerents may even convince themselves that their love is pure, unconditional, and divine (Agape). This is almost impossible. Love between humans has conditions that cause even kind, selfless Philia and Storge to diminish. Philia (friendship, loyalty) is not completely incompatible with limerence, but it is compromised by it.
❤️
It’s definitely a headache that so many terms around love have different meanings to different people.
I meant “obsessive love” in the broad sense of *romantic feelings that have overtaken the mind and dominate life* not in the sense that David highlights with obsessive love disorder.
Curse the limitations of communication 🙂
And just to highlight the problems, even with the Greek classifications, some people would say both limerence and obsessive love disorder are “mania” in the Greek system.
I think limerence has elements of all the forms of love, as I’ve written about before:
Love and limerence.
I’ve been thinking about the meanings and limits of love over the past week.
Some say that once a child is no longer dependent, the parent’s love for the child is no longer Storge. By that argument, the love between spouses (unless one is dependent) is not a Storge love; rather, it is a dynamic composition of Eros, Philia and Pragma…
Has anyone written an internally consistent philosophy of love that you recommend?
AI Deep Seek says:
The quest for an “internally consistent philosophy of love” is a central challenge in the history of philosophy, theology, and psychology. No single system is universally accepted, but several thinkers have constructed powerful, comprehensive, and highly consistent frameworks.
The difficulty arises because “love” is not a single thing. The ancient Greeks had multiple words for it (eros, philia, storge, agape), and a consistent philosophy must account for these different manifestations, their conflicts, and their underlying unity.
Here are the most prominent candidates for an internally consistent philosophy of love, each building from a core first principle.
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1. Plato: Love as the Ascent to the Form of Beauty
· Core Principle: Love (Eros) is a desire for the perpetual possession of the good. It is not a god but a “daimon”—a spirit that mediates between humans and the divine. It is born from Poverty (Penía) and Resource (Póros), making it inherently a state of lack and the drive to fulfill it.
· Internal Consistency: Plato’s philosophy in the Symposium and Phaedrus is remarkably consistent because it follows a single, logical trajectory:
1. The Ladder of Ascent: Love begins as physical attraction to a beautiful body (eros).
2. It then recognizes beauty in all bodies, moving from the particular to the general.
3. Next, it ascends to love for beautiful minds and souls (philia).
4. Then, to love for beautiful laws, institutions, and knowledge.
5. Finally, it achieves its ultimate object: a direct contemplation of the Form of Beauty itself—eternal, absolute, and unchanging.
· Consistency Check: This system is consistent because every step is a manifestation of the same core principle: the soul’s desire for and movement toward the ultimate Good and Beautiful. Even “base” physical love is not evil; it is the first, necessary step on the ladder. The philosophy seamlessly integrates the sensual and the spiritual.
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2. Christianity: Love as Agape (Especially in the work of Anders Nygren and Thomas Aquinas)
Christian theology offers a vast and deeply consistent philosophy of love, though different theologians emphasize different aspects.
· Core Principle: God is love (1 John 4:8). Love is not just something God does; it is His fundamental nature. Therefore, all true love is a participation in the divine nature.
· Anders Nygren’s Agape and Eros: Nygren provides a stark, consistent dichotomy:
· Eros: Is human-centered. It is acquisitive, desire-based, and ascending (like Plato’s). It is the human soul reaching up to grasp what it finds valuable.
· Agape: Is God-centered. It is creative, sacrificial, unconditional, and descending. It is God’s spontaneous, unmotivated grace flowing down to creation, irrespective of worth. For humans, to love is to channel this divine agape toward God and neighbor.
· Consistency Check: Nygren’s framework is rigorously consistent but exclusionary. He views eros and agape as fundamentally opposed and irreconcilable modes of being. All Christian love must be agapic.
· Thomas Aquinas (Scholastic Synthesis): Aquinas integrates Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology to create a massive, consistent system.
· Love is an act of the will: To love is to “will the good of the other” (velle bonum alterius). This definition is simple, powerful, and applicable to all forms of love.
· The Order of Love: Our love should be properly ordered (ordo amoris). We love God as the Supreme Good above all else. We love ourselves rightly as creatures made in God’s image. Then, we love our neighbor as ourselves, and all of creation according to its place in God’s order.
· Consistency Check: Aquinas’s system is incredibly consistent because every type of love (friendship, charity, romantic love) is a specific application of the will’s movement toward the good, all under the ultimate good, which is God.
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3. Arthur Schopenhauer: Love as the Will-to-Life’s Deception
· Core Principle: Romantic love (eros) is the most powerful and tragic manifestation of the blind, striving, metaphysical “Will-to-Life.” What we experience as sublime attraction is merely the Will’s cunning trick to perpetuate the species.
· Internal Consistency: Schopenhauer’s philosophy is brutally consistent:
1. The “Will” seeks objectification in individual beings.
2. We are irresistibly attracted to partners who would compensate for our own physiological and genetic shortcomings, producing an “optimal” offspring. The “genius of the species” guides us.
3. The intense bliss of union is the Will’s reward for fulfilling its aim. The subsequent disillusionment is the inevitable result of the trick being revealed.
4. True compassion (agape-like love) is possible only by seeing through the principium individuationis (the illusion of individuality) and recognizing the one, suffering Will in all beings.
· Consistency Check: This is a deeply pessimistic but perfectly coherent system. It explains the overwhelming power of romantic passion, its fleeting nature, and its ultimate biological purpose, all under the umbrella of his overarching metaphysics of the Will.
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4. Modern Synthesis: Irving Singer’s The Nature of Love Trilogy
While the previous thinkers build from a single core, the 20th-century philosopher Irving Singer attempted the most comprehensive modern synthesis. His work is arguably the closest to a complete, internally consistent analysis of love’s philosophies.
· Core Principle: Love is not a single thing but a creative process of “bestowing” value upon another person. He critiques previous models (especially Nygren’s) and creates a tripartite model:
1. Appraisal: Recognizing value that is already present in the beloved (e.g., their kindness, intelligence). This is similar to eros.
2. Bestowal: The act of creating value by loving someone. By committing to them, you bestow importance upon them that they did not have for you before. This is his answer to agape.
3. The Synthesis: All authentic love involves a dynamic interplay between appraisal and bestowal. We appraise certain qualities, but the act of love itself bestows ultimate, irreducible value upon the person.
· Internal Consistency: Singer’s philosophy is consistent because it provides a framework that can accommodate the diversity of love (romantic, friendship, parental) without reducing it to biology or sublimated sexuality (Freud) or pure divine grace (Nygren). It makes love a uniquely human, creative, and meaningful activity.
Conclusion
Yes, several philosophers have created internally consistent philosophies of love. Their consistency, however, depends on their foundational first principles:
· If you start with a metaphysical reality of Forms (Plato), love is an ascent.
· If you start with a personal God who is love (Christianity), love is grace and charity.
· If you start with a blind, striving cosmic Will (Schopenhauer), love is a cruel trick for procreation.
· If you start with the human capacity for creativity and valuation (Singer), love is a bestowal of meaning.
The search for a universally accepted philosophy of love remains elusive because the choice of a starting principle is itself a philosophical (and often personal) decision. Yet, the works above represent towering achievements in constructing a rigorous, logical, and comprehensive understanding of this most human of experiences.
An internally consistent system must define its core terms, establish first principles, and build a framework that doesn’t contradict itself when applied to various dimensions of love (e.g., romantic, familial, platonic, universal).
Here is a proposed internally consistent philosophy of love, which we might call “Relational Completionism.” It draws from Aristotelian virtue ethics, existentialism, and modern attachment theory, but aims for a unique coherence.
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Relational Completionism: An Internally Consistent Philosophy of Love
I. First Principles & Core Definitions
1. Axiom of Incompleteness: The human condition is one of inherent incompleteness. This is not a flaw but a fundamental characteristic. We lack certain perspectives, capacities for growth, and modes of being. This incompleteness is the engine of desire and the potential for love.
2. Definition of The Self: The self is not a static entity but a dynamic, narrative project—a story we are constantly writing through our choices, experiences, and relationships.
3. Definition of Love: Love is the conscious, active, and reciprocal participation in the mutual completion of selves. It is a verb as much as a state; a practice rather than merely a feeling.
II. The Metaphysics of Love: How Completion Works
Love operates on three interconnected levels:
1. Epistemic Completion (Knowing): We cannot fully know ourselves by ourselves. Our own biases, blind spots, and limitations prevent it. A loving other acts as a mirror and a window:
· The Mirror: They reflect back to us aspects of ourselves we cannot see—our strengths, our vulnerabilities, our impact on others.
· The Window: They provide a unique perspective on the world that is different from our own, thus expanding our understanding of reality.
· Consistency Check: This explains why we feel “known” in love and why love often leads to personal revelation. It directly addresses the Axiom of Incompleteness.
2. Ontological Completion (Being): Through love, we integrate the qualities we admire in the other (e.g., their courage, their compassion, their calm) into our own narrative project of the self. We don’t become them, but we are inspired and supported to become a more complete version of ourselves.
· Consistency Check: This explains why love is transformative and why we often grow in positive ways within healthy relationships. It aligns with the definition of the self as a dynamic project.
3. Ethical Completion (Acting): Love creates a new entity: the “Us.” The wellbeing of this relational entity becomes a shared moral compass. Our ethical obligations extend beyond our individual selves to the maintenance and health of this shared space.
· Consistency Check: This provides a foundation for sacrifice and commitment that is not self-abnegating but rather an investment in a larger whole of which one is a part. It turns love from a feeling into a practice.
III. The Framework Applied to Different Forms of Love
The philosophy scales consistently because the core mechanism—mutual completion—remains the same, though the domain of completion shifts.
· Romantic Love: The domain of completion is profound intimacy, vulnerability, and life-building. Partners complete each other’s journey toward a shared future, offering deep epistemic mirroring and ontological growth within the most intimate context.
· Familial Love (e.g., Parent-Child): The domain is foundational identity and unconditional security. Parents complete a child’s world by providing safety and values; children complete parents’ worlds by offering new perspectives and purposes. The nature of completion evolves as the child gains autonomy.
· Platonic Friendship: The domain is shared interests, values, and mutual support. Friends complete each other’s social and intellectual selves, offering epistemic windows into different worlds and ontological support for personal endeavors.
· Universal Love (Agape): The domain is shared humanity. It is the recognition that every other person possesses a unique self-narrative that completes the human story. To love universally is to act in ways that honor their journey and contribute to their ability to complete themselves, even if we never know them personally.
IV. Resolving Key Paradoxes of Love (Internal Consistency Check)
A strong philosophy must handle common paradoxes.
· Love vs. Loss of Self: Critics argue love leads to enmeshment. Relational Completionism resolves this: True love, by definition, requires the maintenance of two distinct selves to have something to complete. The goal is the completion of both individuals, not the dissolution of one into the other. Enmeshment is a failure of love, a corruption of the process where completion is replaced by consumption.
· Love vs. Desire (The “You Complete Me” Cliché): The cliché is partially right but often misapplied. In this philosophy, “completion” is not about finding a missing half (which implies a static, pre-determined whole). It is an active, endless process of growth. You don’t complete me as a final product; we participate in completing each other as an ongoing project. Desire is the energy that fuels this process, but it is directed toward mutual growth, not mere possession.
· Unrequited Love: Is this love? Under this framework, it is an attempt at love that lacks the crucial element of reciprocity. It can be a one-sided offer of completion (e.g., “I see you and wish to know you and help you grow”), but without reciprocity, the mutual process cannot begin. It remains a potentiality, a feeling, but not the full practice of love as defined.
V. The Ethics of Love: Virtues for the Practice
To practice Relational Completionism effectively, certain virtues are necessary:
· Authenticity: You must present your real, incomplete self. Hiding behind a facade prevents true epistemic completion.
· Vulnerability: You must be open to the mirror, willing to see yourself truly, and open to growth.
· Empathy: The ability to understand and share the perspective of the other (the Window) is fundamental.
· Responsibility: A commitment to the ethical wellbeing of the “Us” and to your role in the mutual process.
Conclusion
Relational Completionism offers an internally consistent philosophy where:
· Love is defined as a participatory practice of mutual completion.
· The self is defined as a dynamic narrative project, making it capable of being completed.
· The mechanism works consistently across epistemic, ontological, and ethical dimensions.
· It scales to different relationship types by changing the domain, not the core mechanism.
· It resolves key paradoxes by emphasizing reciprocity, distinction of selves, and process over finality.
This philosophy argues that love is not about finding your other half, but about meeting another complete-in-their-incompleteness person and choosing to build a shared world where both of you can become more than you could alone. It is the ultimate response to the human condition of incompleteness.
❤️
Dr. L,
I’ve been catching up on your latest YT videos. Some feedback.
First up, I think your videos are getting better and better. Either your style of communication is becoming clearer as you go along, or my brain finds it easier to follow presentations in general after recovering from limerence.
“Limerence in Marriage” – loved how you managed to stuff so much good information into under 12 minutes! Definitely no fat to trim in that video. With sublime ease, you move from one golden sentence to the next silver phrase…
Even as a single person, marriage is a super-interesting frame through which to examine limerence. The marriage angle highlights how (non-platonic) limerence relates to pair-bonding somehow. I think singletons can get stuck wondering: “What is limerence anyway? Could it just be a really amazing friendship? Do I really need to recover from this **cough, cough** euphoria-inducing … eh … friendship?” LMAO (I think it’s easier for gay men and lesbian women to lie to themselves that they’re just innocently enjoying some novel “friendship”).
“How to Manage Limerence for a Co-worker”- highly topical, a subject that will surely never go out of fashion. The workplace does indeed provide fertile soil for sundry attractions (both intentional and unintentional) to take root and grow.
“The Agony of Uncertainty” – loved hearing about Skinner, pigeons, and pellets. One of your most accessible forays into the superannuated British biology curriculum. 😁 (Sorry. I’m being cheeky. I know you copped flak for digging up such an old experiment. I don’t think the black-and-white photograph of Skinner in the footnotes helped. Why can’t scientists be more photogenic?).
“Obsessive Love Explained” – brilliant content, if a bit technical in places. Title is a little iffy, because it could promote confusion around terms. However, as someone who is trying to communicate with the general public, you of course need to employ a vocabulary that the general public somewhat understands and relates to. (In her books, Fisher used “romantic love” and not “limerence” because she thought “romantic love” is a term that has currency in society).
I agree (based on personal experience) that limerence did seem to flare up when I found someone who simultaneously lit up (a) my lust system, (b) my attraction system, AND (c) my attachment system. You can only imagine how magical and intoxicating I found the guy in question. You could say he was a “triple threat”. 🤣
Neuroscience would suggest that the “magic” was going on inside my own brain. What was “intoxicating” was the relationship I imagined having with my LO. In other words, neuroscience suggests my LO wasn’t/isn’t inherently “magical”.
I would argue limerence = lust + attraction + attachment. To me, “attraction” seems to be the part that is involuntary, though, and the part of can spiral out of control and turn toxic. I have males in my life right now who inspire lust and attachment, but they don’t have a stranglehold on my attraction drive. For some reason, the attraction component is absent or dialled down to a very low level. No and/or low attraction means no limerence develops for these males (as of yet).
All things considered, limerence probably did evolve to facilitate pair-bonding (directly and/or indirectly) and reproduction (usually indirectly, or as a happy and/or unhappy by-product of pair-bonding).
In “Love and Limerence”, Tennov also touches on another reason why limerence may have evolved – to discourage inbreeding. I.e. one’s LO is usually someone outside of one’s immediate kindship group. One usually won’t develop limerence for someone who was/is “part of the same litter” as one growing up. In other words, limerence can prevent people from mating with people who are too closely related, and that’s a very good thing from a genetic perspective. A cruder way of putting this is that limerence may drive people to “find new blood”.
As always, love your work. 🙂
P.S. that detail about birds neglecting their own real eggs to sit on gaudy porcelain eggs (a supernormal stimuli present in their environment) was fascinating!!
Ooh, another super-interesting point I almost forgot to mention…
Tennov actually had a bias – or, more accurately, a blind spot – in her research. What was the great and extremely insightful and incredibly conscientious Tennov biased about you may ask? Wait for it… Wait for it… This is riveting stuff…. (At least to geeks such as yours truly). 😁
When Tennov was conducting her interviews, she actually came across evidence of platonic limerence. However, this evidence of platonic limerence didn’t fit Tennov’s theory that “limerence is about pair-bonding”. So, in her published work, Tennov largely didn’t incorporate the evidence she collected confirming the existence of platonic limerence.
I don’t think Tennov was being malicious or deliberately misleading or anything. I think Tennov was just so excited about her new theory that she cast aside evidence of platonic evidence as unimportant. She de-emphasised the non-romantic cases.
What Tennov may not have had the foresight to see is that while platonic limerence might not have been a big research concern for her and for her close contemporaries, platonic limerence could potentially become a big research concern for future generations (particularly with the rise and rise of neuroscience as an illuminator of many hitherto-mysterious human behaviours). In presenting her findings, in my opinion, Tennov didn’t look far enough into the future…
Personally, I don’t think the confirmed existence of platonic limerence in any way detracts from Tennov’s theoy that “limerence is about pair-bonding”. Personally, even in evolutionary terms, I think platonic limerence can be viewed as “the exception that proves the rule”. Evolution, as Dr. L points out, is an imperfect force, and sometimes all the different systems in the brain, e.g. lust, attraction, attachment, don’t always come together in a way that seems coherent and logical and predictable. I mean, even many limerents are often flummoxed by the contradictory nature of their own drives, and the strength of their own desires.
In her lifetime, Tennov didn’t get the recognition she deserved for her pioneering work. She died a footnote in her field of psychology. I wonder, had she not dropped the ball regarding the existence of platonic limerence, if her professional reputation would have rested higher at the time of her passing?
Some people think Tennov’s work was so revolutionary that she deserved to receive the Nobel Prize. If I were on the Nobel Prize committee, I wouldn’t vote for Tennov, on the grounds that she did (accidentally?) fumble some of her findings. However, I still think she deserves extreme praise for her work. And I think she would be my “favourite contender for the Prize who didn’t actually win”. I really feel everyone on the Prize committee with me would be a huge fan of Tennov’s work, even if in good faith we couldn’t award her the highest honour.
There is actually a theory of platonic limerence, explained in the Wikipedia article.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence#Independent_emotion_systems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_of_romantic_love#Co-option_of_mother-infant_bonding
Okay. I’ve been doing some more reading and some more thinking, and I’d like to take another shot at explaining what limerence is…
It seems that Tennov DID want people to understand limerence as a synonym for “being in love”. She wanted to distinguish the obsessive feelings in early pair-bonding (what most people understand as romantic love) from affectional bonding (a less obsessive attachment that hopefully forms later on in the pair-bonding process, also the relationship that exists between parents and children).
Problems with terminology arise because different people mean different things, not by the term “limerence”, but by the term “being in love”. E.g. both limerents and non-limerents are likely to claim they’ve experienced “being in love” at some point, because “being in love” is such a culturally-valued experience. But the two camps would likely mean different things by the phrase “being in love”.
Tennov understands that “being in love” always has an obsessional component, and this obsessional component is completely normal and not a pathology. People in love ARE obsessed with the object of their passion. It arguably would be weird not to be obsessed with one’s beloved (very early on in the courtship process).
Fisher agrees with Tennov that being in love (i.e. the early stage of romantic love) has an obsessional component, and this obsessional component is normal.
The obsessiveness limerents feel in the early stages of romantic love is rooted deeply in biology. Phenomena rooted deeply in biology are nothing to be ashamed of. I wonder if limerents feel ashamed about their obsessiveness (i.e. in appropriate budding romances) merely because non-limerent peers don’t feel the same obsessiveness in equivalent scenarios, and talk down to the limerent?
Both Tennov and Fisher would agree that “being in love” involves such distinctive features as (a) intrusive thinking, (b) uncertainty, and (c) mood swings.
So if a person is experiencing intrusive thoughts, uncertainty, and mood swings – and all three things seem to be linked to a specific person – I think it’s safe to say that person may be in love (according to Tennov and Fisher’s definition of “being in love” aka the correct understanding of limerence).
Non-limerents probably have their own definition of “being in love”. I have no idea what that definition might entail.
In light of Tennov and Fisher’s views, Lucy Bain has a take on limerence that is a little bit idiosyncratic, and to me doesn’t seem to be always grounded in the biological reality of “being in love”. For instance, Bain calls limerence “an elevated state” and “a desire for enmeshment that goes far beyond romance/attraction because of how their [LO’s] behaviour lights up your [one’s] brain”.
I have great respect for Bain, and I find her musings very helpful. However, I don’t think she’s right when she says limerence is a desire for enmeshment that goes far beyond romance/attraction. I think limerence is a desire for enmeshment that IS romance/attraction.
In saying limerence goes beyond romance/attraction, I think Bain is overstating her case. I get that she wants to capture the spectacular highs of limerence, and warn about the lows that follow. However, I think the spectacular highs of limerence (along with the lows and the yearning for physical and emotional enmeshment) are a totally normal part of romantic love in its early stages. Bain is moving toward defining limerence as a disorder, which it actually isn’t, according to Tennov and Fisher.
Tom Bellamy (yes, our very own Dr. L) hints (in a YT comment, no less! Why does he hide all his best insights in obscure YT comments?) that limerence can go wrong when healthy bonding (between limerent and LO) isn’t possible. I think this is correct. I think limerence turns toxic when there isn’t the potential for healthy bonding, and all that pent-up sexual and emotional energy has no one to go. I think Bellamy would agree with Tennov and Fisher’s view that limerence by itself doesn’t constitute a disorder. It’s actually a natural part of being human.
“Being in love”/limerence sometimes makes people very happy. “Being in love”/limerence sometimes make people very unhappy. Happiness/unhappiness doesn’t determine the state of “being in love”. Biological changes alone determine the state of “being in love”. I.e. we can’t retrospectively say “I wasn’t really in love” because a particular episode of limerence made us very unhappy.
Having lived through limerence, I think limerence is completely normal. I’m glad I’m out of it. However, I’m also glad I got the opportunity to experience it firsthand, and experience it at great length. I think, however, there are always “rough patches” (in unrequited or in requited-but-unconsummated limerence) where one says: “Surely this isn’t normal! The pain is so great. The stress is so immense. Am I a lunatic? Have I lost my mind? Do I need therapy?” 😜
I have found that the successful resolution of my own limerence has led to a profound sense of peace. I don’t know if my LO loved me or not. The answer to that question no longer matters to me. (He did post a Tiktok video, though, on “how to have more self-awareness”, which I personally find hilarious. He lacks self-awareness? Who knew?) I know that I definitely loved him in the “being-in-love” sense of the word “love” aka limerence. Intrusive thoughts – check. Uncertainty – check. Mood swings – check. I channelled all my pent-up sexual and emotional energy into poetry. The obsession wasn’t a complete write-off.
Special thanks to shiverypeaks, the mod of the Limerence Subreddit, whose general posts have often helped me to clarify my thoughts. I understand he is also the author of the beautifully-written and very thoughtful Wikipedia entry on limerence. I don’t agree with all his views. Or, rather, I don’t agree with the general direction the Limerence Subreddit periodically goes in (very similar actually to the general direction LwL periodically goes in).
I think many posters on the Limerence Subreddit are biased toward viewing limerence as a disorder because of their own personal difficulties. I think to see limerence as a disorder is fundamentally to misread Tennov, and to invent a new condition, or to discuss a wrongly-labelled alternative condition. However, I am the first to acknowledge that even a condition that is completely normal can at times cause a person a great deal of distress. I.e. I have experienced firsthand the tremendous anguish (and simultaneous extreme pleasure) of being in love.
Ultimately, I think if there is any lesson to learn from limerence, that lesson might be: sometimes totally normal and natural things can cause humans discomfort. People should definitely have access to help if they want help. People should definitely have access to good advice, especially people who feel their relationships are under threat. However, not all distress can be eradicated. Distress (when not excessive) may just be a natural part of “being in love”. (Mind you, the distress can become pretty intense and scary when things go wrong, so it’s wise to educate oneself about the potential risks of limerence and have an “exit strategy” should an “exit strategy” prove necessary to one’s mental health).
Dr. L – once again, thank you for all your help. 🙂
I was not “in love” with my LO, and I don’t believe that many posters here are “in love” with the person either. There may be strong sexual desire that will not be consummated but the fantasy is too delicious to relinquish. Or there is a desire to be appreciated by someone important because of how the idea of that raises the limerent’s self-worth.
I don’t think fully unrequited love (with neither sexual affection nor appreciation beyond the requirements of civility received by the limerent) is ever being “in love.” Limerents can fall in love and there is overlap, but the euphoria we get from someone we’re in an actual romantic relationship with (at a stage in which some romantic invitation has been extended and accepted) should be distinguished from the euphoria of a romantic relationship that is yet to commence (and in many or even most cases, never will).
Dr. L,
I caught the podcast “Is it Love or Limerence? Dr. Tom Bellamy on Obsession, Addiction, and Healing” on Sarah Khan’s YouTube channel “Unmasking Narcissism with Sarah Khan”.
The first eighteen or so minutes when you explain the neuroscience of limerence – that was fantastic, perfect, I agreed with everything you said. You nailed it.
I thought the rather wide range of topics covered after you explained the neuroscience of limerence were also quite interesting. I enjoyed haring you explain your own understanding of love. And I thought Sarah Khan asked really thoughtful questions.
Beautiful work! 🙂