My best friend — oh how I adore her and the way she understands me so deeply — introduced me to the term “limerence” many moons ago. In the interest of my sanity, she gently brought up the term…
“Perhaps you should look this up.”
As always, her advice led me to a profound revelation. I looked it up and had never felt so seen. I no longer felt insane, but rather…diagnosed?
Consistent with the experience of dating in your 20s, I had been psychologically torturing myself over — you guessed it — a man. My days consisted of wondering, pondering, analyzing…yearning, even. I found myself constantly searching for signs of confirmation — signs that the feeling of adoration was reciprocated. At the end of the day though, despite this ungodly feeling that resided deep in the pits of my soul, it wasn’t love. It was limerence.
Psychology Today defines limerence as “a state of involuntary obsession with another person,” which is different from love or lust. It is basically the intense, all-consuming desire to be desired. Which, in retrospect, that tracks. I felt that if only I could say the right thing or look a certain way, that perhaps he would feel the need to profess his love for me on the spot. If I’m being quite honest, there were times where I had lost myself in trying to create this vision that I thought would elicit his attention. I quite literally could not free myself from hyper-analyzing my existence in my own perception of his gaze (which is incredibly ironic). But anyways, in retrospect, this is the epitome of limerence. When experiencing limerence, thoughts of the limerent object (the person you desire) are persistent, intrusive and coupled with feelings of heart palpitations, a flushed face, and anxiety. This anxiety is rooted in the fear that you won’t say the right thing and thus, your limerent object will, essentially, get the ick. Additionally, “the individual [experiencing limerence] may feel conscious and hyper-aware of how they look, what they say, and how they seem, even down to the level of posture and word choice.”
So, you can imagine, limerence is quite the energy vampire. And here I am, feeling like a certifiable nut job, grasping for straws, if only to gain some insight as to how he feels about me (I’m still waiting by the way). I would try to read his micro expressions, revisit our conversations as if there was some secret code I missed, and all in the name of trying to find something — anything, really — that confirmed my suspicions that he liked me back. In other words, limerence had me romanticizing breadcrumbs like they were my last meal. But, as you must know — since I self-identify as the CEO of limerence — the uncertainty is what drives and fuels the experience. In fact, “an individual must not know how the object of their desire truly feels about them,” in order for limerence to play out its sadistic course.
In the state of nihilism I found myself in while experiencing this psychological torment, I longed to be unshackled from my chains. Unfortunately, I am still waiting, but things are looking up! According to Dorothy Tennov, limerence can end in 3 ways: consummation, starvation, and transference. Consummation is probably the best case scenario as it concludes with the desire being reciprocated, and thus, concluding with a romantic union of some sort. Yay! Happy ending!
In contrast, the starvation route entails profound sadness as the “limerent individual is never able to find reciprocity from the object of their desire.” In both these cases, however, the limerent individual is able to move on.
The third development, transference, is less freeing as the limerence continues to exist, but it’s transferred onto a new limerent object. Thus, the cycle unfortunately persists.
But, I’ve found comfort in knowing that this perpetual agony will come to an end one way or another. Vaya con dios.
Anyways, apart from this article being insanely self-deprecating and vulnerable, I hope that readers will find a sense of community. No one is safe from limerence, I fear. But, just know that you’re not alone and experiencing limerence does not mean there is something inherently wrong with you. In fact, according to Tennov, “healthy individuals can find themselves in a state of limerence they would never have expected [and] when they recover from the experience, their lives often go back to normal.” Fantastic news.
So to wrap this up, shoutout Dorothy Tennov for investigating this ludicrous phenomenon and for coining the term. Shoutout Kyndal Corkins for saving me from mental demons. And shoutout white boy who made me go chemically insane for 10 months. As aforementioned, I am still enduring remnants of the madness and I think perhaps this was my attempt to set myself free. A girl can hope.
All that being said. I think I’m gonna text him.
This is a developing story.