Melinda Wenner Moyer
For eight years, Jordan felt as if she had fallen under a powerful spell. She had what others would have considered a casual relationship with a co-worker, but despite not knowing him well, she was powerfully drawn to him, and certain he was her soulmate.
“I thought about him every day, all the time,” says Jordan, 35, who asked that only her first name be used to maintain her privacy. She thought of him with every song lyric. She invented reasons to contact him. She had elaborate fantasies in which they ended up together.
Jordan’s experience was intense, but not uncommon. Although research is sparse, Tom Bellamy, a neuroscientist at the University of Nottingham in England, estimated that as many as 50 per cent of people experience this kind of obsessive romantic infatuation at least once in their lives. It is called limerence.
What limerence is, and is not
Limerence is a psychological state characterised by a deep longing for someone, obsessive and intrusive thoughts, compulsive behaviours and a strong desire for emotional reciprocation, says Orly Miller, a registered psychologist based in New South Wales. The term was coined in the 1970s by psychologist Dorothy Tennov, but it is not recognised as in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the diagnostic guidebook used in research, medical training and clinical care.
Whereas a crush is typically fleeting, limerence can last months, years or even decades, Miller says. It is also more intense. A crush or infatuation becomes limerence when it starts to impair a person’s ability to function, for instance preventing them from working, sleeping or eating, she says.
Limerence is not the same as love. Miller says although both involve strong feelings, limerence is an inwardly focused psychological experience based on fantasy and ambiguity.
The other person “becomes a symbol: ‘You are the source of my happiness, you are the source of my fulfillment,’” says Albert Wakin, a retired professor of psychology at Sacred Heart University in Connecticut.
Limerence does not have to be romantic or sexual, says Lynn Marshall, a psychologist who studies limerence at the University of Chichester in England. Lili, 46, a clinical social worker in Massachusetts, says she had recently developed strong feelings for a friend. When that friend wouldn’t text or email her back, she fell into despair. “It was intensely painful,” she says. “I’d wake up in the morning, start thinking about it, go to bed at night, keep thinking about it.” She also asked that her last name not be used to protect her privacy.
Limerence involves a compulsion to search for signs indicating that the other person is interested. Something casual – a glance, a text, a social media interaction – might be used to “create these really elaborate stories and narratives around whether it means rejection or reciprocation,” Miller says.
Hooked on the maybe
In limerence, a person holds hope that the other person has feelings, but they also have doubts.
“Uncertainty is the fuel that keeps the whole thing going,” says Abby Medcalf, a psychologist based in California.
According to Bellamy, limerence resembles addiction. When someone senses reciprocation, the brain registers it as a reward. If those rewards come unpredictably, it can intensify the urge to keep seeking them.
Scientists have wondered whether some people are more likely to experience limerence than others. Marshall’s work suggests that adults with an anxious attachment – who have a fear of abandonment and often had emotionally unreliable caregivers in childhood – are at higher-than-average risk.
People with limerence are also often anxious and can display obsessive and compulsive behaviours, but they don’t necessarily have generalised anxiety disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder, Medcalf says.
Breaking the spell
Even though limerence typically makes people miserable, it can’t just be wished away, Miller says.
Still, Bellamy notes, it may help to notice and label compulsions when they arise, to think, “I want to text this person, and that’s a limerent urge”. He also suggests focusing on the other person’s flaws, or imagining what would happen if other people discovered the infatuation.
The most effective approach, he says, would be to cut off contact with the other person. Then the intermittent rewards would stop. But this is not always possible, and it is certainly not easy, he says.
When Jordan’s co-worker eventually cut ties with her, she could not sleep and could barely eat. “It really, really, really shook me,” she says.
Miller says working with a therapist who understands limerence can be useful. Cognitive behavioral strategies may help. Often, she says, people feel limerence toward others who have qualities they yearn for or have lost access to in themselves. In therapy, they can learn to identify and fulfil these desires, turning limerence into a source of healing.
It can be “a vehicle for transformation and personal development,” Miller says.
The New York Times
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