It’s a rehearsal, so not as slick or lively as the actual talk (and no Q&A of course).

I thought it might be interesting to see for those who couldn’t make it in person but are curious.

Enjoy!

The post A new way to look at love first appeared on Living with Limerence.

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.

The post Obsessive love explained first appeared on Living with Limerence.

It was a fun evening. My wife, Teika, gamely agreed to act as compere and set the scene with some questions about neuroscience and limerence and the background to the book.

After that preamble, we opened to the audience for a Q&A, and had a lively discussion with some laughs, some serious bits, and some insightful questions.

Because the audience was a mix of friends, fans of the blog, and complete strangers who were learning about limerence for the first time, we ranged over a lot of topics. So, for this week’s post I thought I’d summarise some of the more intriguing queries along with links to some previous posts that expand on the themes.

Here we go:

Is there a reason why limerence exists?

Given how disruptive limerence can be to life, this is a good question – why do some of us have this trait built into us? This tendency to get caught up in a whirlwind of romantic obsession.

My best answer to this was an evolutionary argument about the benefits of pair-bonding and the idea that limerence is like the peacock’s tail – an ostentatious display of single-minded desire that demonstrates an extraordinary commitment to the pair bond. That works as a reproductive strategy. So, it makes sense from the perspective of making babies.

Does childhood experience affect limerence?

Absolutely yes. Our individual attachment styles are going to influence our experience of limerence. While people who have secure, avoidant, anxious and disorganised styles can all experience limerence, anxious attachers are significantly more likely to be limerents too.

There’s so much overlap between attachment theory and romantic desire that it’s inevitable that how you bond will influence how you experience limerence.

Do LGBTQ folks experience limerence in a different way to straight folks?

This question came from a gay man whose limerent objects have tended to be straight men. A rough turn of fate – although he was able to laugh about it. Predictably, that reality has shaped his trials with limerence, and illustrated the point of how our own specific individual circumstances decide the effects that limerence has on our lives.

More broadly, people of all different sexualities report limerence at roughly the same rate as straight people. The only outlier is bisexuals, who seem to be more prone to limerence.

Why do bisexuals experience limerence more commonly?

I guess the inevitable follow up question to the previous discussion! I don’t have a great answer here, but a bisexual audience member chipped in to make a couple of suggestions.

It could be that bisexuals are generally more open to romantic adventure by their temperament and that corresponds to chasing the thrills of limerence. An analogy could be drawn to the Big 5 personality traits, where “Openness to experience” is a key dimension in which people differ. Do they enjoy novelty or do they enjoy familiarity?

The other option suggested was it’s simply about numbers. You have double the chance of meeting a limerent object if you draw from “everyone” rather than “half of everyone” as your dating pool.

Does limerence suggest that monogamous marriage is not the best way to organise our lives?

I took this question to mean “if limerence for one person inevitably fades, and limerence for new people will likely happen, does that mean we would be happier in non-monogamous marriages?”

This topic does come up a lot, as limerents can often end up in the difficult position of being in love with a long-term partner, but in limerence for someone new.

It’s obviously a huge debate. Social monogamy is a near universal human tradition, but there are lots of other ways to organise life. I blathered on about some of the pluses and minuses and then let people decide for themselves.

Do people who are addicted to drugs experience limerence in a different way?

I think this was the question of the evening for me, because it was a new angle that I’d not considered before. It followed a discussion about how behavioural addictions differ from substance addictions, because drugs that act on the brain directly interfere with the operation of the reward and arousal circuits. They mess with your brain chemistry.

One of the audience members had worked with people in rehab and wondered if the disruption caused by drug abuse might change their experience of limerence. Are they more or less prone? Does limerence become a sort of “behavioural methadone” that recovering addicts use as a replacement for their previous habit?

Are the disrupted circuits more or less primed to new addictions?

If you think you are an LO what should you do?

Be clear, be unambiguous about your lack of romantic interest, and don’t make the mistake of thinking that “letting them down gently” is the most compassionate response. It’s actually much better to help the limerent remove the hope and uncertainty that feeds the limerence flame.

Do neurodivergent folks experience limerence in a different way?

This question was initially about how limerence relates to the hyperfocus of autism spectrum neurodivergence, but opened out to other conditions too. I made a video about this topic a short time ago.

The overall message is that any neurodivergent traits you have will affect how limerence manifests for you as an individual, but are unlikely to have “caused” your limerence directly.

Can we email you with additional questions?

This was the last question of the evening, and the honest answer is “Yes” because I always enjoy learning about limerence and hearing people’s stories, but the even more honest answer is “Yes, but I am a bit overwhelmed at the moment!”

There’s bit a flood to my inbox and every time I make headway, some new messages arrive.

So, please don’t feel slighted if you haven’t heard from me despite emailing a query.

I do read everything, but the answers are having to be limited just at the moment.

Any thoughts on these questions, or any ideas to add, go for it in the comments!

The post Some interesting questions about limerence first appeared on Living with Limerence.

I’ve done a few podcasts now, and inevitably – understandably – one of the earliest questions from the host is:

So what exactly is limerence?

I’ve been writing about limerence for over 8 years, and so you’d think that I’d have come up with a simple and pithy definition by now.

Unfortunately, one of the ironies about really immersing yourself in a topic is that, after a while, you become transfixed by all the complexities and uncertainties and nuance, and lose sight of the fundamentals.

The classic “can’t see the wood for the trees” syndrome.

So, when I’ve been asked to quickly summarise limerence, I haven’t always done a great job, regrettably.

As a consequence, I’ve been thinking again about how best to describe limerence – especially to people who have never experienced it – so that I can to do a better job the next time it comes up. As it’s such a central topic to the site and the whole “Living with Limerence” project, I thought it would also be worth setting this all out in a post.

Defining the imprecise

There’s a reason that limerence is a bit of a slippery subject to define – it’s a complex and contested idea.

At the simplest level, limerence is a word invented by Prof Dorothy Tennov to describe some people’s experience of falling in love, which can be described by a couple of dozen symptoms that define the condition. But it took Tennov a whole book to explain what she meant by limerence, how it could be distinguished from other forms of love, who experiences it, what the common elements are, and what might cause a person to fall into the limerent state.

Another issue is that, while Tennov obviously deserves all due respect and credit as the originator of the concept, ideas evolve. Fresh perspectives develop. Other people think about the concept and form opinions.

Limerence has been dismissed by some people as a trivial “semantic carving up” of love. Others have reframed it as an attachment disorder, a form of obsessive compulsive disorder, a behavioural addiction, a manic form of love, or a delusion. In particular, one point of conflict is whether limerence is an innate process that some people naturally experience, or if it is direct evidence of some sort of mental imbalance or disturbance that requires treatment.

Tennov saw limerence as a natural process that could go badly wrong and cause psychological distress; therapists tend to focus mainly on the distress and make sense of limerence as a distinctly unhealthy state.

Another complication is that limerence changes with time and circumstances.

Early on it feels fantastic – a euphoric natural high – but if you cannot form a healthy relationship with your limerent object, and uncertainty persists, limerence transitions into a much more negative experience. All the symptoms of person addiction kick in, with the cravings, anxiety, withdrawal pains and intrusive thoughts.

For Tennov, all of these experiences are part of limerence. It is a changeable and multifaceted state that goes through phases. For others, it is only once the negative symptoms of person addiction begin to dominate that a person can be said to be experiencing limerence.

What lasts through all these disputes, though, is the fundamental reality of limerence as it’s experienced – an extraordinary state of obsessive, involuntary infatuation that feels profoundly different from everyday life.

When it happens, it really does feel as though you are in limerence.

Bug or feature?

Another way of looking at this dispute about definitions is to use the common coding analogy – is limerence a bug or a feature of our brains?

A bug is an unintended glitch or error that stops software working properly. A feature is something that is intentionally part of the operation of the software, even if a particular user finds it annoying or unnecessary.

In this case, the question is whether limerence is a natural mental state that people can enter because it confers some sort of survival or reproductive benefit (feature), or if limerence is revealing a flaw in our neural systems – that they can sometimes be driven into an abnormal state (bug).

A case can be made for limerence as a feature. It is a powerful built in drive to form a pair-bond, and that is a very effective reproductive strategy for humans. It’s not the only one of course, but the evolutionary benefits of co-parental investment during the critical early stages of a child’s health and development is self-evident. Limerence as a mechanism for securing a superlative pair bond makes sense.

The counter argument is that limerence is more like a bug. Obviously, seeking a mate is an imperative that the vast majority of people feel. Non-limerents form pair bonds, and lots of other relationship styles and structures exist than monogamous commitment. There’s no need for wildly over-the-top infatuation and ecstatic union in order to make babies.

Similarly, the extreme craving of limerence as person addiction is obviously detrimental to well being. In fact, the very existence of addictions is evidence that our neural systems are buggy. The basic neural mechanisms we evolved are not intelligently designed, they are riddled with instabilities.

Lots of natural processes – features of the brain – can go wrong. Anxiety, fear, desire, lust, hunger, are all useful, but can all become unstable and destructive under the wrong conditions.

In a world of scarcity, fats and sugar are premium rewards that are avidly sought. In a world full of doughnuts, the natural urge to seek them can cause harmful overindulgence.

Maybe limerence is the same – a feature that has built in instabilities?

So, come on then, what is limerence?

Cutting through the uncertainty and debate, I think there are four essential elements to limerence. It is:

• An altered mental state
• An intense drive to form a romantic pair-bond
• A behavioural addiction
• Defined by a set of characteristic symptoms that all limerents share

My best summary is:

Limerence is an altered state of mind, characterised by intense romantic infatuation with another person. Being with them gives you an intoxicating natural high, but if it goes on for too long it can become an unhealthy addiction.

Why does this matter?

Does any of this matter in practical terms, or is it just the usual academic quarrelling over details? Is it an important issue to have a clear and agreed definition of limerence?

I’d argue that it is important, because it helps make sense of the limerent experience, helps plan a strategy for managing the condition, and helps develop a more lasting treatment strategy for the more problematic cases.

There is an important distinction between a natural trait that some people have that can lead to bad outcomes if it’s mismanaged, and a medical problem arising from a disorder of the brain. You’d respond accordingly. There’s a difference between introversion and agoraphobia, even though the symptoms can overlap.

To give an example of why the definition matters, one of the common questions I get asked is “is limerence always bad?” The answer depends on how you make sense of limerence.

Often the question is prompted by a limerent suffering relationship problems, doing some research to try and understand what happened, and then discovering the concept of limerence and realising that it explains their feelings perfectly. As limerence is often discussed from the perspective of a disorder, it’s easy enough to see why someone would be worried that it’s a sign of unhealthy attachment style that means they are doomed to destructive relationships.

Of course, the other subtext for this question is the limerence feels AMAZING at first. The glorious intoxication of limerence is addictive for a reason. Few natural rewards compete with the exhilaration of limerent ecstasy. Once you’ve tasted that thrill, it’s hard to swear off it for good.

So, perhaps another way to phrase the question is “can you get the good feelings of limerence, without the bad consequences?”

If you see limerence as a natural trait that can become unstable, then the answer would be a qualified “Yes”. If limerence was a mental disorder, the answer would be a qualified “No.” Or perhaps, “it’s possible,” versus “it’s unlikely”.

And that brings us back to the ongoing discussion about the universal versus personal aspects of limerence.

For some of us, it is a early phase of love that can transform into a lasting bond.

For others its a warning sign that you have started to form and unhealthy bond.

Figuring out what limerence means to you, and who you respond to most often, decides the best way to integrate limerence into your life.

The post What exactly is limerence? first appeared on Living with Limerence.

Midlife is an interesting time. It begins to dawn on you that whatever endeavours you threw yourself into in early adulthood are coming to fruition. In most careers, it becomes clear – and pretty much settled – whether or not you will reach the highest levels. By definition, most people won’t.

In love, your choices will have determined whether you are partnered in a long term relationship, bruised from bad encounters, alone, or living one of the many non-conventional models of interdependence. If you have children, they are growing to independence, and you start to face an empty nest.

Midlife relationships can also be burdened by responsibility. At the benign end of the spectrum that could just mean letting domesticity drive out romance, leaving you vulnerable to new limerence. Worse, you might have drifted into a sexless marriage.

Regardless of the choices that you made, the realisation comes that you are halfway through your life and have to decide whether you are still happy with those choices. Our bodies also confront us with evidence of our age – grey hairs, wrinkles, flaccidity, menopause.

Halfway through your life. Or halfway to your death.

The things that you decided to do with your life are no longer characterised by the promise of future achievement – it is now clear whether or not that promise has been, or will ever be, fulfilled. Time is running out if you want to make a change.

For some people this can cause a panic of regret and fear.

For others, it is closer to ennui – a sense of dissatisfaction and fatigue, and nostalgic loss.

It is also, perhaps unsurprisingly, the prime time for affairs.

Romantic misadventures

Many people report that a peculiarity of midlife is a sudden eruption of libidinous energy and romantic interest in others. It’s been described as a second adolescence. Whether this is mainly a psychological response to the emotions of midlife, or also a hormonal surge due to physiological changes at midlife, is unclear, but the consequences are a powerful sense of a “last chance” for a fling, or to reinvent yourself with a new partner.

This impulse can be complicated by the realisation that your appeal has changed (for better or worse) with age. Physical maturity, the confidence of experience, financial and emotional stability; all of these can affect the perception of your attractiveness to others. 

Of course, another common cliche is the desire to secure a younger partner, in an attempt to regain your passing youth or get a second chance at making a relationship work. Equally, spending time in the company of other attractive midlifers going through the same suite of sensations can prove… combustible.

All of these factors come to a head and present a particular vulnerability for limerents.

When I surveyed the general population on the prevalence of limerence, there was a peak in the data at early midlife – the 35-44 age range – where people self-reported experiencing limerence more commonly than at any other age.

It may be a long time since a midlifer felt the pull of limerence, and if it has been an infrequent part of their life, it may be an unfamiliar challenge and upend their emotional stability. 

Limerence hits like a whirlwind. It’s impossible to carry on in the old complacent routines when your romantic circuits are firing explosively.

I’ve speculated before that limerence is a mechanism for establishing a pair bond, but as it typically only lasts for a few years at most, serial monogamy would seem to be the natural outcome. Another realisation that hits at midlife is that such a lifestyle is limited by your ability to reliably find a new lover – which proves a much easier prospect in the flush of youth.

The combination of a sudden urgent sense that this is the last chance to find a new mate, coupled to the whirlwind of resurgent limerence, is a powerful force to resist.

Responding purposefully

Ultimately, all this turmoil may drive our midlife limerent into a tailspin, but what can be done?

Well, they could spend hours studying psychology, throw themselves into new projects, take up a new hobby, or just weather it as best as they are able with the coping skills they’ve developed through adulthood. More pertinently, they might try to reconnect with their spouse and revitalise their marriage, taking the limerence as a warning sign that their need for romance had been neglected for too long.

Alternatively, they could embark on that affair, and start the second half of their lives by jeopardising everything they’ve achieved in the first half.

It will probably come as no surprise to regular readers that I would advocate reflection and self-awareness. As the heart of this is self-honesty, and here are some blunt questions that could help navigate your way forward if midlife limerence throws all your old certainties into doubt:

1. Was I happy in my relationship before this started?
2. Do I honestly think that starting a new relationship will solve my emotional problems?
3. Am I facing the future or running away from it?
4. Do I want to make big decisions when addled by limerence?

Usually with these bloggy ramblings I try to adopt a broad point of view about the nature of limerence, but this topic is a personal one for me, and so it’s hard to be objective. 

The first stage of my adult life is over. I am no longer a young man.

I have a family, who are growing fast and will not need me so urgently in the coming years. I’m facing the second half of life, and determined to attack it with purpose. To take the opportunity to live well, and decide for myself how I want to measure success in the afternoon of my life.

Luckily for me, I have a supportive wife that I love very much – and we’ve spent many enjoyable afternoons together already.

Here’s to a purposeful future.

The post Midlife crisis for limerents first appeared on Living with Limerence.

Limerence can be well described as an altered state of mind. Once the infatuation for someone new sets in, it changes your perceptions, your priorities, and your ability to regulate your own emotions. This can often be experienced as feeling as though your ordinary life has been struck by a powerful external force.

There are lots of fairy tale representations of this phenomenon – Cupid’s arrow, potions of enchantment, True Love – that help to cement the idea of a magical or spiritual driving force for infatuation with a particular person.

The power of this feeling is captured in some of the hackneyed phrases that people use to try and explain their apparently irrational behaviour:

I don’t know what came over me

I just couldn’t resist

You can’t help who you fall in love with

That sense of a being struck by an irresistible external force can also cause some limerents to feel as though they are powerless – that their limerent object is in charge of their fate, and that they are essentially robbed of their agency. Helpless. Blameless. A victim of love.

For the spouse of someone who has fallen into limerence with someone outside the marriage, the question of blame also seems very important. If your partner has betrayed you, it makes a difference if they were the pursuer or the pursued. Did they actively seek out an affair partner, or were they just too weak to resist the determined seduction of a mate-poaching outsider?

Frankly, in many cases, the behaviour of an LO can reinforce that sense of special connection. Perhaps they encourage emotional intimacy, flirt outrageously, enjoy the attention, or just seem to radiate an aura of attractiveness that seems uncanny. Despite wanting to resist, limerents find themselves baffled by their inability to stay strong when LO turns on the charm. They dance as though bewitched.

So, how much blame must LOs bear for the development of limerence? Should flirts bear some responsibility for misleading hapless limerents? Is there some truth to the idea that limerents are powerless to resist a predatory LO’s powers of enchantment? Just how culpable are LOs in feeding the mania?

Let’s work through some case studies to figure this out.

1. The unknowing LO

One of the most powerful counter-arguments to the idea that an LO bears some blame for the emergence of limerence, is the existence of oblivious LOs. A good example is discussed (at possibly a little too much length, if I’m honest) in Tennov’s book. It involves a young man, Fred, who was studying abroad in France for a short period, and became limerent for Laura, the receptionist of the hostel in which he was staying. It is clear from Fred’s diary entries that the “relationship” between them was superficial, business-like, and (as he knew himself in lucid moments) nothing more than the friendly acquaintance that would be expected for someone in Laura’s position.

This case is a clear cut example of Laura becoming an LO simply because she was there. Fred “needed” a limerence experience for some reason of his own, and it grew from an entirely one-sided fantasy played out in his head. His only explanation for the triggering of limerence was a moment of chance closeness (when helping her deal with an overfed fire), followed by a glance when paying his bill:

It was the way she looked at me that did it

Really, Laura did nothing to encourage him – and a fair amount to discourage him – and yet he succumbed to limerence regardless. In this sort of scenario, it is hard to think of anything that the LO could be blamed for.

2. The narcissist LO

At the other end of the scale, we have the narcissist LO. They see the limerent as a source of narcissistic supply, and delight in keeping them hanging on, validating their own wonderfulness. In these cases there seems plenty of blame for the LO; they may even have initiated the initial glimmer, fanned it into a flame, and then cultivated an attachment on their own terms. Even worse, because these LOs are not emotionally invested themselves, they can run hot and cold with the limerent, depending on what other entertainment they have in their lives.

If they are bored, their pet limerent will be stroked and cajoled and given attention. If they have spied another shiny object they want, then the limerent is an irritation and treated disdainfully or ignored. This feeds the uncertainty engine of limerence.

This is a scenario in which vulnerable limerents can reasonably feel they have been treated unfairly. Once the pattern of behaviour is recognised, however, it is then up to the limerent as to whether they decide to continue the dance.

3. The mutually-limerent LO

This is a tricky one. If both limerents are single, then Happy Days. But if they are not both available, then a mutually destructive spiral of behaviour can unfold where they oscillate between drawing together and then drawing back. It is also likely that the strength of the limerence will vary – both between the two, and over time – and so one can be pulling when the other is pushing, and that unsettles both, and so the unhealthy tug of war continues. In the thick of an episode like this, the idea of apportioning blame is a bit redundant: both participants are both instigator and sufferer, and whoever is most blameworthy can vary day by day.

4. The ambivalent LO

The preceding extreme cases are easy to understand and mentally organise. However, to judge from my inbox, far commoner is a situation where the LO is ambivalent, or hard to “read”, or non-committal in one way or another. Here we are on more middling ground. Sometimes, the limerent feels encouraged by something LO says or does:

he always kisses me goodbye, and holds on tight

she says that I understand her better than any other man she has ever known

But sometimes they are discouraged:

he says that it’s complicated at the moment, and he’s sorry if he led me on

she gave me a hug, but whispered ‘you should stay away from me’ in my ear

It often seems as though the LO values the company of the limerent, and seeks their emotional support. Perhaps they are flattered by the attention, but not interested romantically. Perhaps they are non-limerent, and so operating from a completely different set of assumptions about what friendship and love are like. Perhaps they are embarrassed by the attention, but also very shy or tender-hearted and can’t bear the thought of hurting the limerent’s feelings by rejecting them bluntly. Perhaps they just want to be friends and are irritated by the limerent’s emotional incontinence. Whatever the real situation, it becomes very difficult to disentangle who said what or did what or led whom on.

Ironically, this incredibly common and complicated and confusing situation, clarifies everything.

Yes, LOs may sometimes be “getting something” from the limerent in a way that is selfish and transactional, but here’s the thing: so is the limerent. Without fail – by definition – the limerent is getting an astonishingly powerful emotional high from the company of the LO. And we limerents very often don’t ask nicely, or behave transparently, or admit that our friendship is not really just a friendship to us. We keep going back day after day to get our happy fix. We share intimacies, because it lights up our reward pathways and makes life seem more vital, more colourful and more exhilarating. We hang around waiting for the “I feel safe with you” comments, because of the thrill that gives us.

So, ultimately it comes down to this: we can hardly blame our self-centred or ambivalent LOs for sometimes using us for their own emotional needs, because that’s exactly what we are doing to them. Much healthier than trying to tally blame and convince ourselves that they are more in the wrong than we are, is to focus on what we are doing, what choices we are making, and what we want to do next.  We have to decide who’s in control of our lives.

From the perspective of an unhappy limerent, it doesn’t matter how much to blame LO is: you have to decide if you are going to let it continue. They could be the biggest flirt in the world, or give you more mixed signals than a mis-wired telephone exchange, but all you have to decide is: do you want to leave them in charge of your fate? Are you willing to subordinate your life to an asymmetrical relationship? Or do you want to take responsibility for your conduct, and accept that they will behave as they choose?

A key step in managing limerence is accepting that this sense of an “external force” is an illusion. Limerence arises from within you, and you are providing the fertile soil of imagination in which it grows.

Nobody ever got over limerence by proving to themselves that it was all LO’s fault. Taking charge of yourself is the path to freedom.

The post Who is to blame for limerence? first appeared on Living with Limerence.

I appreciate this is might seem a pedantic point to get hung up on (and Lord knows I like exploring a good academic rabbit-hole), but I do think it’s important.

I think most people’s experience of limerence is that it’s an altered mental state – a distinct period in life when you feel like a different person, when your whole emotional being is hijacked by a single focus and overwhelming desire.

I’ve no doubt that people manage those feelings differently, that the intensity of the sensation varies between limerents, and that the difficulty of recovery depends on lots of factors that are highly individual and personal. But, if Tennov is right and limerence is a sort of neural algorithm that is either operational or not, then people really are either limerents or non-limerents. The sorting is as simple as “have you ever experienced that altered state of mind?”.

Simple answers are tidy, but also problematic. As soon as you start to set boundaries on this sort of issue, the exceptions begin. What if someone had a really intense crush during adolescence, but since then have had stable, loving attachments without the limerence madness? Are they a limerent or not? What if they are destined to have a big limerence episode in the future, does that mean they are a “dormant” limerent? What if someone had experienced the altered state of mind, but it had never had a negative impact on their life? Does limerence have to include the more costly, addictive aspects of the experience in order to qualify?

How altered does your state of mind need to be? Do you have to get properly deranged, or is a giddy fix of “new relationship energy” enough? We’re back to a spectrum now – is limerence defined by the intensity of the “altered state” or the impact on your life?

Part of the reason I’m currently obsessing about this is that I am working on a book about limerence and one of the key chapters is about how common limerence is, and what kinds of people experience it.

Previously, from expert estimates and indirect measures, we’ve ended up with a figure of 5% of the population being limerents, but intuitively that feels low, based on my own conversations with friends and colleagues.

Anecdotes are not data though, so I would like to try and answer the question more directly. I have a plan:

1. Come up with a short description of the limerence experience
2. Survey a large number of people (at random) and ask “Have you ever experienced this?”
3. If possible, get some sort of breakdown on their demographics – age, sex, sexual orientation would be ideal – to see if the prevalence varies between groups

That forces a binary decision on the survey respondents, but it does also mean that the question we ask is absolutely critical. If I ask, “Have you ever experienced X, Y and Z symptoms,” and the respondent thinks “well, I have had X and Z, but Y doesn’t sound quite right” then it will be hard for them to answer. So, we need a really clear and unambiguous description that captures limerence in a concise and accurate way.

That’s today’s goal.

Here’s my best first effort:

I have sometimes felt a romantic infatuation so powerful that it overwhelmed all other concerns in my life. My emotions swung between extreme highs and lows, and my thoughts and dreams were dominated by the other person. It almost felt like I was addicted to them.

I suspect that can be improved upon. So, I have two questions for the community:

1. Can you think of a better summary of the limerent experience?
2. Do you have experience of any big online market research/survey platforms that can target this question to people based on the age, sex and sexual orientation demographics?

Thanks all!

Let’s get this question answered once and for all…

The post More on the limerence binary first appeared on Living with Limerence.

Is limerence a specific condition, or is there a spectrum of limerence?

In one case, limerence would be the altered mental state defined by Tennov, and you are either in limerence or not in limerence at any given time in life. As she put it “either the algorithm is operational, or it is not”. This would be limerence as a binary state that is either on or off.

The alternative case is that limerence is just an intense form of a more universal emotional phenomenon. This obviously has some merit because most people have some experience of feeling romantic infatuation, even those who do not relate to the concept of limerence and are sceptical of its existence. The reaction of most “non-limerents” to Tennov’s criteria is to recognise and relate to some of the symptoms, but have difficulty believing they could become an overwhelmingly disruptive force in life.

So, is limerence a real “thing” or is it just a term applied to people who struggle to manage more intense than average romantic feelings?

This sort of issue plagues the field of social psychology. Humans have a tendency to take a phenomenon that exists on a spectrum, draw an arbitrary threshold, and split people into categories based on whether they are above or below the threshold. When does stress become mental illness? When does cleverness become genius? When does sensitivity to arousal make one Highly Sensitive? When does enjoying gambling become a behavioural addiction?

Now, to an extent, this is all academic. There is value in identifying the top few percent of the population on any given personality or emotional trait and classifying them as a special case. Being at the tail end of a bell-shaped curve does make you unusual, after all. For those familiar with Elaine Aron’s concept of the Highly Sensitive Person she is completely upfront about this being her approach. Everyone finds the world arousing, but the top 15-20% most sensitive people will have a different experience to other people and so need to understand their vulnerability (and/or gift) to be able to thrive.

In other cases, though, it does matter if there is a distinct category difference.

Many people enjoy a drink, and the feeling of intoxication that alcohol causes. Desire for alcohol exists on a spectrum, with some who hate the stuff and others who drink daily, but there is good evidence that alcoholics aren’t simply the top 5% of a bell-shaped curve. There is a physiological basis to their addiction (gene mutations for some neurotransmitter receptors and metabolic enzymes cause alcoholics to have a heightened reward response to alcohol). Physiology is not the whole story – environment is just as important in promoting addiction – but the point is that for alcoholism there are additional factors in play beyond ordinary variation in taste or willpower. Alcoholics can rightly be considered a separate class from non-alcoholics. 

So where does limerence fit into this binary versus spectrum debate? Well, social psychologists have developed a range of tools over the years for quantifying love, and trying to put a number on how “in love” people are. This field is of course bedevilled by the problem of what love is but, in terms of limerence, the most relevant test is probably the Passionate Love scale developed by Elaine Hatfield and colleagues. This questionnaire asks people to rate their agreement with various indicators for passionate love feelings (as distinct from companionate love), and serves as a pretty decent list of the symptoms for what we call limerence.

The passionate love scale has been tested across many cultures and many demographic groups and the results suggest that passionate love is a human universal. I’ve struggled to track down the original data, but the average (mean) score on a scale of 0 to 9 is around a 7 (note that a confounding factor is that the test is often applied to people who have self-reported being “in love”). As with my own analysis of the LwL-refined limerence survey there is likely to be a wide range in the scores reported by individuals, but a key question is whether the distribution of these scores is a simple “normal” bell-shaped curve or if there is more complexity to the distribution. I can’t answer this for the passionate love scale, but for my own data it does look like a normal distribution, albeit with a decided skew towards higher scores:

There’s more than one way to interpret these data. The first is that it shows there is variation in the intensity of limerent feelings among self-selecting people who have taken this survey.

Another way to interpret it is that as a blend of results from a majority limerent people (who score higher) and a minority of non-limerent people (who score lower). For the latter case, you’d probably predict a binomial distribution (the sum of two bell-shaped curves), but a significant problem for interpretation of the data is that the survey is anonymous so we have no idea what the individual circumstances of the participants are (I set it up as a tool to help people understand their own situation, not a formal research project).

So what does all this add up to? I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the contribution from non-limerents to the data is minimal, and dwarfed by the large preponderance of limerents seeking help. For these people there is clearly a spectrum of intensity in their symptoms, varying around an average score of 70-75%.

However, the self-selecting nature of this survey still has the same issue that comes up for the passionate love scale: people from all cultural backgrounds distinguish being “in love” from loving someone. We love friends and family, but are usually “in love” with a romantic, sexual partner for a definable period of time at the beginning of a relationship. It’s recognisable as a distinct mental state that isn’t like ordinary life.

Limerents then, are people who score very highly on these psychometric scales of infatuation when they fall “in love”. They skew so powerfully towards the maximum intensity of feeling that their mental state when in love is usefully distinguished as “limerence”.

In other words, the state of being in limerence is binary, but the intensity of limerent feelings is a spectrum.

The post Is limerence binary or a spectrum? first appeared on Living with Limerence.

This could be great if both parties are happy and free to act on their feelings, but in the much commoner scenario that the feelings aren’t mutual, or someone is unavailable, it’s not great. It’s embarrassing, or worse.

We hear a lot about toxic scenarios where people abuse positions of power to harass co-workers, or overstep boundaries and make unwelcome advances. What’s discussed less often – and it’s a bit surprising, because it’s quite common – is the situation where someone develops an unwelcome crush on a co-worker and finds themselves struggling to maintain their own emotional stability. They become so besotted that their ability to concentrate evaporates, their productivity crashes, and their performance is compromised. This can rapidly spiral into a professional and personal crisis.

How can such a fraught situation be managed? What’s the best way to get over an office crush, and recover your emotional equilibrium? Well, here’s a few practical steps that can help:

1. Be honest with yourself

The seriousness of the situation depends a lot on your personal circumstances. If you are single and looking for love, then it’s not too surprising that you have noticed attractive people in your orbit. However, if your crush is unavailable, then it’s obviously a dead-end to try and connect with them.

If you are not single, and have become infatuated with a co-worker unintentionally, then the situation is more complicated.

The first stage in sorting the situation out, is to be honest with yourself. How serious is the crush? How dominant is it in your life? What do you actually, really want to happen?

The worst case scenario is a crush that is so powerful that it becomes limerence. Limerence is a life-disrupting romantic infatuation that is best understood as addiction to another person. Unwanted limerence is a trap that is hard to escape from, as your crush will become the main focus in your life, a source of romantic reward so powerful that it is more than just a simple crush.

Many of us indulge a crush at first – enjoying the thrill of romantic excitement, the pleasant fantasy of an alternative life, the intoxication of their company. But there comes a point when you have to get serious. Is this something you can safely indulge, or are you just deepening an obsession that will have to be broken at some point?

Step one is to let go of the fantasies and daydreams and face the situation as it really is.

2. Be wary of disclosure

Many people feel an overwhelming urge to share their feelings with their crush. It’s a natural impulse, because they make you feel so good that you see it as a positive experience, and want to let them know how amazing you think they are. Unfortunately, your crush may feel very differently.

Disclosing your feelings in a professional setting is incredibly risky. It is possible to do it elegantly, but only in some very narrowly defined conditions – if you have excellent communication skills, are free to start a romantic relationship, there is no power differential between you and your crush, and if you can handle rejection with good grace.

Outside of those circumstances, the downsides to disclosure at work greatly outweigh the benefits. It almost always wiser to keep your feelings to yourself as you work your way through the emotional trial.

3. Share your feelings with a trusted friend

While it’s safest to not disclose to your crush, those pent up feelings do need an outlet. If you have a friend who you trust – ideally outside the office – then talking openly with them can be a valuable pressure-release valve. As well as just unburdening yourself, a good friend can help you understand the situation better, and offer advice and support.

A difficult situation is if you are in a long-term relationship and develop a crush on a co-worker. Disclosure to a significant other seems like a high-risk situation, but it can be transformative. Again, this links back to taking the situation seriously. If you sense that your partner has noticed a change in your mood, they may already know that something is up. Disclosure can be a way of re-establishing trust, by being honest about what’s happening to you.

Disclosure to a long-term partner can help you focus on the crush as a problem to be solved together, rather than a threat to your existing bond. More on how to handle this delicate conversation: here.

4. No flirting

Flirting at work is a minefield. It’s especially bad for limerents, because it feeds the infatuation and reinforces the addiction. It’s also unprofessional, even if everyone involved takes it in good spirits.

Some people are very adept flirts. In one of life’s ironies, we can actually be much more skillful when flirting with people we aren’t especially attracted to, than we are at flirting with a crush. The stakes are lower, it’s easier to be playful, and we’re generally less nervous.

When flirting with a crush, we’re prone to overdoing it, misreading cues, pushing our luck, and generally executing the Dance of Romance with all the grace and emotional sophistication of a nervy teenager.

If you’ve realised your crush is getting out of control, ease up on the flirting. Friendly is fine, cheeky is risky. Tone it down as you readjust your mindset towards recovery.

5. Limit contact

One of the most difficult factors in getting over an office crush is that you typically have to see the person you’re infatuated with every day. That makes it difficult to go “No Contact” as a way to drain the crush of some of its power.

You can, however, aim for limited contact. That means only seeing your crush in professional settings. Obviously, you need to meet your obligations and work with them when necessary – attending meetings, exchanging paperwork and so on – but, there are lots of opportunities to increase contact beyond those essential scenarios.

One good way to starve the crush of reinforcement is to avoid social events where they are likely to be present. Similarly, shared lunch or coffee breaks are likely to reinforce your infatuation and deepen the crush. If you can, reorganise your schedule to limit exposure to their allure.

This probably seems rather humourless and grim. Most people want to get over their crush without having to go into Monk-mode and ruin any chance of friendship. Unfortunately, rather like “social drinking”, maintaining a friendship with someone you are infatuated with is usually wishful thinking – at least until the crush has passed.

6. Be decisive

One of the biggest drivers for limerence is uncertainty. Trying to keep your options open, ride the wave of romantic euphoria, indulge in daydreams and fantasies, or generally kid yourself that you can handle the emotional storm, usually results in the crush getting worse, because it keeps you in a state of indecision.

If you are not being open with them, or honest with yourself, you can end up in a state of limbo. The romantic pressure builds up but has nowhere to go except inwards into gut-churning butterflies. Similarly, it’s possible that your crush has noticed your interest, and are not responding in a straightforward way – perhaps they are sometimes friendly, but sometimes distant. Or maybe they enjoy the attention and flirt with you. Maybe they are also infatuated with you, but not able to express their feelings freely.

There are lots of possible scenarios for how unspoken and unresolved romantic tension can curdle. Ultimately, it all derives from a failure to be decisive. If you know the crush cannot work out, be decisive and stop feeding it.

7. Focus on yourself

Finally, the only surefire way of resolving a crush is to try and shift your focus away from them and onto yourself.

We are most vulnerable to romantic obsession when life is unsatisfying and unfulfilling. If you are single and looking for love, but have found it in an unavailable place, then the decisive and purposeful choice is to detach from your fruitless crush and redirect that energy onto someone who is available. Easier said than done when one person has captured your romantic attention so spectacularly, undoubtedly, but recognising the truth of the situation is the first step in resolving it.

If the crush is unwelcome, and you are already committed to someone else, then figuring out why the fantasy of romantic adventure (or escape?) is so appealing is an important step. Limerence can be used as a trigger for personal transformation, if you can effectively redirect the energy into self discovery.

Purposeful living is the best protection against misplaced crushes, as it helps develop emotional stability, self-esteem, sound judgement and lasting happiness, rather than guilty thrills.

Most of the battle in getting over a workplace crush is in taking control of the situation. Shifting your mindset from suffering romantic doom, to being a purposeful and decisive person who can take useful action is key. Crushes can be fun for a while, but left unresolved, they can become a debilitating burden.

Best to work towards recovery.

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The post How to get over an office crush first appeared on Living with Limerence.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/13/agnes-callard-profile-marriage-philosophy

It details the experience of a philosophy professor who becomes enamoured with a student and breaks up her marriage to be with him. Funnily enough, this is not presented as an abuse of power, or a sleazy middle aged Prof taking advantage of an impressionable youngster. I’ll leave the reader to speculate as to why.

Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating read, especially for those of us who are familiar with the phenomenon of limerence.

It comes across as a classic case, but with the interesting twist of happening to someone whose professional life is all about analysing ideas. From my perspective as a scientist, it also helps to illustrate one of the major ruptures in the history of what used to be called natural philosophy. It comes down to the trustworthiness of internal thoughts and feelings.

Crudely, philosophers have traditionally argued that true insight comes from rational thought. Scientists are more sceptical and counter that while thoughts are all very well for generating hypotheses, you need to test your ideas with experiments to validate them against the real world. The article strikes me as a beautiful illustration of this disparity.

Prof Callard interpreted her new experience of life-altering emotional turmoil as proof that she had accessed a deep truth about the world. That it proved her (happy, but infatuation-free) marriage was a sham, and that by being with her new paramour, all the events of the world became more meaningful. Conventions of behaviour were simply rituals, followed by unthinking people. What others would consider coincidences (such as craving a croissant while walking, and then happening upon a bakery) had amazing salience, and meant some sort of cosmic alignment had evidently taken place. The potency of the internal experience of profound romantic connection was evidence that she had glimpsed an ideal, aspirational state for mutual love.

As a neuroscientist, the same psychological experience made me conclude that I’d accidentally trained myself into a state of infatuation.

For most limerents, the emotional connection to their limerent object has a sense of the numinous. It really does feel extraordinary, profound, exhilarating and elemental. How you interpret that experience depends upon the way you view the world: I took it as evidence that my psychological triggers had pushed me into an altered state of mind, but this did not have meaning beyond my own personal history and individual romantic sensibilities. It also corresponded with what I understood about how the brain works.

For someone with a more philosophical or spiritual outlook, it could instead be interpreted as evidence of a transcendental truth that cannot be accessed during a mundane life of dulled wits.

The story you tell yourself about what limerence means determines the impact it will have on your life, and the lives of those connected to you.

Finally, one could argue that a prediction of my neurochemical hypothesis is that once the altered state of mind has passed, the sensation of the numinous would fade, and the relationship would then stumble as the couple tries to make sense of the new mundanity. For the philosopher the return of “normality” would instead be interpreted as evidence that the relationship was drifting from its aspirational, ideal state.

That disparity really struck me in this exchange from the article, where Agnes (the Prof) is discussing frustration in her relationship with Arnold (the student):

They labored under the shadow of the transcendence of their early romance. “I’ll be, like, ‘Why can’t we get back to that?’ ” Agnes said. “And Arnold will be, like, ‘That was never there.’ He is offended by my attempt to go back in time. And I feel like he is taking away the foundation of our relationship and telling me that our lives are built on a lie.”

A final reminder that the “truth” of any relationship rests upon two pillars.

The post A philosopher’s response to limerence first appeared on Living with Limerence.