Limerence: when falling in love doesn’t stop

'Falling in love' is a phrase that has danger and pain built in. How long will you fall? What do you hit on your way down? We know that some struggles are coming, a reshuffling, before the possibility of an incredible reward. But what if you fall in love with someone who barely knows you exist? 

In my therapy, I have had clients with spouses, others who were still at university, and some who had just entered retirement. Each of them was coming to me for the same reason – they were each obsessed with someone in a way that was ruining their lives. They had fallen, and it wouldn't stop.

Its own fantasy land

People who become obsessed over another person are rarely thought of warmly or with much empathy. The person obsessing is blamed for their fixation, not least because their 'target' could suffer the consequences. It's also generally assumed something sad or sinister characterises those who are infatuated. Yet often, obsession can be something the sufferer carries exclusively in their own mind, without any awareness to the person it is directed to. It becomes its own fantasy land. They don't (or can't) pursue it; they just suffer alone.

Perhaps you have made unrequited advances, and have been left wanting, or what feels like needing, more. For some, this can last for months or perhaps years, even if it was just a few dates. Maybe you never had a real romantic encounter with them at all. When this happens, and the rumination over this person lasts an inordinate amount of time, taking over much of the person's waking moments, there appears to be a pathological type of 'falling' that doesn't stop.

We are seeing a resurgence of the use of the word 'limerence' to describe this phenomenon, and it appears that for many this word is the only one that describes what is happening to them. Coined by behavioural psychologist Dorothy Tennov in her 1979 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love, limerence is a state of chronic romantic infatuation toward another person (called the 'limerent object' or 'LO'). 

There are a number of symptoms described in Tennov's book. I'll focus on those I have noticed most prominently in my practice.

What is it?

Limerence is characterised by an intense need for reciprocated feelings from a single 'limerent object' (LO), with extreme mood fluctuations based on perceived reciprocation or rejection. Sufferers experience intrusive thoughts, physical discomfort around the LO, and temporary relief through fantasies. They display heightened sensitivity to the LO's actions, often interpreting neutral behaviours positively. Limerence intensifies with adversity, dominates the sufferer's attention, diminishing interest in other life areas, and leads to idealisation of the LO while minimising their faults. The experience takes up the majority of the sufferer's waking attention and lasts on average 1.5 to 3 years. Limerence involves a near complete takeover of conscious attention for the sufferer.

Those symptoms might remind us of adolescent affairs and pursuits: a time where your hormones and social microcosm take up the majority of what you consider to be important in life. What we begin to see is that romantic infatuation can be a condition like any other, worthy of not just a new Taylor Swift album, but specific attention, empathy, and treatment. Sufferers deserve compassion because they actively want to be out of it.

This obsessiveness does not come in one flavour. For some, it's entirely mental, a cacophony of repetitive ruminations and fantasies about the limerent object. Beyond the innate suffering, Wilmott and Bentley (2015) found sufferers of limerence tended to concurrently experience anxiety, depression, and substance use. Even if limerence does not achieve a stand-alone presence as a condition or state, it's clear that many people out there can only find their experience explained by this word. We should take it seriously.

Working with limerent clients

Clients may initially report benefits, including emotional regulation via fantasy, being entertained or soothed by this kind of daydreaming. However, this soon takes a turn as they become unable to work, have conversations, or focus on anything else while having intrusive limerent thoughts. A big part of working with limerent clients is the role and nature of such fantasy. What is the content and what emotions are solicited? What do they represent for the client? Are the themes generalisable beyond the LO, for example, being appreciated for a talent or popularity? For some it is simply imagining being held or complimented. Regardless of the modality you are working with, these will likely lead to the deeper needs of the client that the limerence appears to tap into and store into the image of the limerent object, hence the extreme overinflation of the value of the LO. Addiction to attention and approval from the LO likely follows if they are in some way in touch with the LO.

You might have guessed from the label 'limerent object' for the target of infatuation, the theory of limerence has baked-in the idea that the infatuation is toward more than the real person, or, in fact, not about them at all. Instead it's about the limerent sufferer's mental representation (hence 'object') of that person. Limerence sufferers do eventually tend to come to this realisation – it's not about the person they're fixated on. It's about them and what they have projected onto this person, as well as the internalised representation, i.e. the 'object'. Clients who experience limerence tend to realise this the longer they experience limerence, but this can also be realised while in therapy. 

ACT as a primer

In practice, a first line of defence for clients can be learning to respond to limerent thoughts and feelings in a similar way that OCD clients deal with symptoms using acceptance and commitment (ACT) principles. First, cognitive diffusion, empowering clients to choose to openly experience thoughts, feelings, or body responses relating to limerence, and not react disproportionately to them or ascribe excessive meaning. The aim is to change the relationship with their limerent obsessive thoughts and feelings, through psychological flexibility. Their default response to limerence is likely a mixture of anxiety, panic, guilt, shame, and unsettledness. 

By anchoring them using ACT, a broader range of responses can allow them to continue their lives despite the presence of limerence and its cognitively intrusive nature – the noise fades more into the background, albeit it may not end for now. By equipping them with more than fear and avoidance responses, they can begin to accept unpleasant feelings of anxiety and develop a greater range of responses to limerent experiences. 

Finally, the client would benefit from establishing their values and goals in life, as these will allow them to not simply be 'less limerent' but to be as aligned with what they want from life as possible while being limerent. The deeper work of exploring the client's developmental journey can then follow as they better navigate the everyday while limerent.

The 'Limerent Object' as archetype

In my own practice, I have noticed that the LO appears to fill the role of an archetype of someone who meets the limerent sufferer's needs, whether they be known or unknown. It might be something the limerent person wants more of in their own personality, wants to have in a partner to 'complete' them, or generally something they want more of in their life. I have also noticed that limerence tends to co-occur with uncertain life transition, loneliness, and/or a personal void that was there which is now being filled by thoughts of the LO. 

For one client, it was avoiding the turmoil of her existing relationship and coming to terms with ageing. For another, it was her loneliness and grief over their dissolved marriage and the new life he had to negotiated with their children. For a university student, perhaps it's the new country they migrated to and their yet-to-be-established social circle. 

Not everyone has a glaring event that has been ignored or supressed until limerence came to take the attention away from it, but it is worth being curious about what might be there. The void could relate to being out-of-touch with your values, apathetic about your career, or just not having much of sight of the future you're working towards. The limerent has become uninterested in themselves and their life. Disconnection and boredom appear to be dangerous precursors to limerence.

Is research available?

In a literature review I did in preparation for my doctoral thesis, a mere 201 hits came out of searching 'limerence' in the scientific literature, and about a quarter of those were either not peer-reviewed or otherwise not fit for inclusions for the review. So that left 156 papers, published since 1979, which reference the word. The number of them actually including the concept in what they were studying was even lower, in the few tens of papers. 

Yet despite a clear gap in the psychological literature, limerence has gained significant attention in online communities, with forums dedicated to the topic attracting anywhere between 4,000-49,000 members on Facebook and Reddit forums. The risk here is the increase in interest is not supported by enough peer-reviewed scientific research on limerence, leaving it instead to non-technical writers to fill the gap which sufferers of limerence then turn to. Research is needed on whether limerence is a distinct phenomenon, and if not, how do we help people that only identify with that experience? Practitioners should welcome labels brought to them by clients even if they are not yet scientifically validated – their focus should be on being curious about how and why this label works so well for their clients. You don't need to accept the label generally as a practitioner, but accept it as language to connect with your client's experience.

Is this real?

Limerence is not a formal diagnosis, and some believe existing terms already describe the experience. Helen Fisher, an American anthropologist with much experience researching love and mating, stated that limerence was effectively romantic love: 'the negative aspects of it with the term, and that can be a disorder'. 

I disagree, mainly on the basis of the distinction between fantasy and the real person, albeit being lost and consumed in the former. Many limerent people will openly state that 'actually being with' or 'achieving' what their limerence calls for would not be desirable in the real world. 'Romantic love' does not allow us to decouple the natural process of falling in love with that caricature of the side-effects of falling in love expanded out over months or years, around a person who does not reciprocate. The clients I see often know that their experience has little to do with the person they're fixated on, and rather something about themselves that requires attention and has done for some time. 

I hope that by presenting the case here, practitioners will be open to learning more about limerence and contributing to our understanding of it, even if this means finding an existing term that would satisfy the growing communities online who are seeking to understand their feelings. Even if limerence does not need to exist as a distinct psychological term, the phenomenon deserves some love of its own.

• Marios Georgiou has been working with limerent clients for three years, and is now on the counselling psychology doctorate at City, University of London. [email protected]