Latest news with #DorothyTennov
Irish Examiner
6 days ago
- General
- Irish Examiner
How falling deeply for someone could point to unresolved emotional issues
When you fall for someone, even if they barely know you exist, is it all-consuming? Do you ache for them, obsess over them, believe that you are meant to be together? Does an innocuous text from them make —or ruin — your day? Does your nervous system go haywire in their presence, reducing you to a stammering wreck? Do you have an acute need for them to reciprocate your feelings? Do you deify their good points, while ignoring their more mortal aspects? There are two common reactions to the above scenario, says neuroscientist Dr Tom Bellamy : 'That's not normal, these people are neurotic'; or 'That's just love'. If you identify with the second reaction, you could be, like Bellamy, a limerent — someone who falls in love obsessively. 'These people are a broad demographic — 'male, female, young, old, gay, straight, bi, asexual, poly, religious, atheist' — and Bellamy, having studied the area in depth, believes they make up about half of the general population: 'All ages, personality types, genders, sexualities, and ethnicities are susceptible.' Around 25% of those who have experienced limerence have found it 'so disruptive that it affected their enjoyment of life'. So is limerence a fancy word for love-sick? It was coined by psychology professor Dorothy Tennov in her 1979 book Love & Limerence: The Experience of Being In Love, and she defined limerence as 'a mental state of profound, involuntary, obsessive romantic infatuation with another person (termed the 'limerent object')'. For eight years, Bellamy, an honorary associate professor at the University of Nottingham, has been blogging anonymously about limerence, creating a community where others share similar experiences. The 49-year-old has recently published a book Smitten: Romantic Obsession, The Neuroscience of Limerence, & How to Make Love Last. It's dedicated to his wife — here's why. 'When my wife and I first met, we fell in to mutual limerence very strongly,' he says. 'We both had that consuming desire and intimate connection. Inevitably, the limerence wore off, and we navigated through that — we're very compatible, with companionate, affectionate love replacing the fireworks. We got married, had children, and were very happy.' Until Bellamy developed unwanted feelings for a colleague. Neuroscientist Dr Tom Bellamy: "I have a wife and family I love dearly — why was I obsessing about this other woman? By then, I'd found Dorothy Tennov's book, so I was able to tell my wife what I was going through.' 'It was such a shock to me to become limerent for someone else,' he says. 'It wasn't born of dissatisfaction. I was — and am — happily married. 'So it was a problem for me to solve. I have a wife and family I love dearly — why was I obsessing about this other woman? By then, I'd found Dorothy Tennov's book, so I was able to tell my wife what I was going through.' She related, identifying with the feelings of limerence she had experienced during the early stage of their relationship. 'That was transformative,' he says. 'It meant we were solving the problem together, as a team. "Obviously, it was painful, a difficult conversation, but she was able to understand the feelings, because she'd gone through it herself and recognised I was seeking support to deal with it, rather than doubting the marriage. I was being accountable. 'We were dealing with it from a mature and sober perspective. We got through it, the marriage continued, and we are still happy and in many ways stronger. We have a deeper understanding of how love changes and develops over time. It doesn't have to be giddy fireworks all the time.' Bellamy says that 'through benign neglect, you can make yourself vulnerable' to developing infatuations outside of your partnership. But he also acknowledges a 'midlife element' to his experience. 'It's not exactly a revelation that you have to look after a relationship,' he says. Nor did he ever disclose his feelings to the object of his limerence, but recognised them for what they were: One-sided and in his head. 'I realised very early on [these feelings] were a threat to my happiness rather than a thrilling, exciting adventure,' he says. 'But because it was a colleague, I couldn't go 'no contact' — I had to find a way to manage the limerence feelings.' Limerence is a mental state. 'You need to address it at that level,' Bellamy says. 'You're probably not going to be able to solve an unwanted limerence episode by engineering your environment or getting other people to fix the problem for you — it really is down to you to understand why you're responding to this person. They're obviously touching something deep in you to provoke this powerful response, this romantic infatuation.' He sees limerence as a person addiction: 'So it's about figuring out what you're doing that reinforces that addiction, and then disrupting it. That's what I was doing — finding ways to have a good professional relationship, and reverse the romantic infatuation, get things back on track.' The stuff of literature From childhood fairy tales to classic literature to contemporary cinema, our culture is built on stories that capture this intense yearning for blissful union. The foundation is limerence. From Rapunzel to Sleeping Beauty to Cinderella, handsome princes risk all for damsels in distress; from Cathy and Heathcliff to Connell and Marianne, we share the romantic agony of characters who pine for each other — often disastrously, in the case of Romeo and Juliet, Anna Karenina, Madame Butterfly, and Lolita's Humbert Humbert. Limerence drives movies from Brokeback Mountain to Notting Hill, Dr Zhivago to Truly Madly Deeply. The Martha character in Baby Reindeer, played by Jessica Gunning, embodies limerence gone badly wrong. Bellamy emphasises that 'limerence is an altered state of mind'. It is a psychological phenomenon, not a behaviour. Smitten by Dr Tom Bellamy 'Probably about half the population has the capacity to fall in to this altered mental state of addictive desire that changes the way they perceive the world,' Bellamy says. 'How any individual person responds to [limerent feelings] depends on their personality, their life experience, their relationship history, and childhood bonding experiences.' So while some people experiencing limerence may act upon their feelings (anything from instigating a positive relationship based on mutual limerence to stalking), others may pine from a distance, sometimes for decades. Bellamy terms this 'limerence limbo' — spending years stuck in an unrequited obsession, unable to move forward, but not wishing to relinquish hope. 'There isn't an archetypal limerent behaviour; it depends on the person going through it,' he says. 'The universal aspect of limerence is the neuroscience basis of it — our reward system, bonding system, arousal system can get pushed in to this hyperactivated state.' Most remember their first crush — exhausting, exhilarating, all-consuming. Pure limerence. Is it essentially juvenile, something we outgrow? 'Limerence usually first manifests in adolescence, so if you have this capacity, it's when you first feel it,' says Bellamy. 'It's more than a crush. Crushes tend not to flip over in to an involuntary, intrusive state, like an addiction. "Not everyone can self-regulate, because the reward is so powerful — with addiction, the brain's reward circuit gets strengthened, while at the same time the brain's executive feedback, which should be regulating and moderating our desire, gets weakened. 'So maybe people who maintain limerence in to adulthood never adapt, never manage moderation. But if you are emotionally mature and secure, you can weather limerence.' Initially, this was not his experience. 'I wasn't entirely in control — I was in an addiction, and it was a struggle to resist and moderate it. Another contradiction is that you can realise intellectually that you don't want to be with that person and yet are drawn to them with a powerful sense of attraction and connection.' Casual sex or something more? Despite limerence sounding like the drawing-room pining of 19th-century literature, it can be exacerbated by contemporary online dating culture. 'It's a lot easier to connect with people and then ghost them, and that kind of emotional whiplash can make limerence worse,' says Bellamy. 'The thing that drives limerence in to that state of addiction and fixation is a combination of hope and uncertainty. "If you've got hope that the other person may reciprocate, then you'll continue to seek that reward — and if there's uncertainty, you can't psychologically adapt to the situation, because you're never quite sure about the strength of the connection, which can drive you in to rumination.' The hook-up culture is a powerful reinforcement, 'especially if you have sex and all the physiological things happen — oxytocin release and so on', he says. 'But if they then treat you casually or ghost you, you end up in a situationship. Is this a special bond or a booty call? 'You'll be getting periodic hope, reinforcement and reward, but it's unpredictable and mixed with occasional disappointment. 'That's almost the perfect combination of factors to drive you in to a state of addiction — you can't adapt to it, your reward system never habituates, so you feel anxious and uncertain.' So, how to stop developing limerent feelings for others? A third of Bellamy's book is devoted to getting rid of limerence, breaking the habit, overcoming it with a specific person, and moving on. He suggests cognitive behavioural therapy for individuals, and couples therapy if the limerence spills in to your relationship. 'First solve the crisis, then figure out why it happened,' he says. Getting rid of limerence involves remembering that it is happening in your head, not real life; that you are making your limerent object special (it's all about you, not them). So manage your instincts — your rational brain needs to step in and take charge — and don't self-medicate, he advises. You're in charge. Anticipate some pain during the recovery process, and believe that a better life awaits. Remember, it's all in your head. For a deeper dive, visit Bellamy's blog, where you'll find other limerent people, at Or check out or the private Facebook support group
Buzz Feed
20-04-2025
- General
- Buzz Feed
I Had A Secret Teenage Romance. It Wasn't Until Years Later That I Realized What Really Happened.
'I can't stop thinking about him,' my client said. 'I even daydream about our wedding.' She stared at me intently from across the coffee table where our two cups of peppermint tea sat untouched. When I didn't respond, she lowered her voice and said, 'I just feel like we're meant to be together.' I'd been counseling this client long enough to know the 'him' to whom she was referring was not her husband of 15 years. Instead, it was the much younger man she'd met two months prior at a yoga retreat. 'OK,' I said, reaching for my mug. 'Let's try to figure out why this person has such a hold on you.' My client could have easily spent another hourlong session obsessing over 'hot yoga guy' — which she'd done many times before — but I wasn't going to let her. My job as a therapist was to help bring deeper awareness to her emotional experience and to identify what was simmering just beneath the surface, driving compulsive thoughts and behaviors. In this case — limerence. *** Almost everyone, at some point, has experienced a romantic crush. However, unlike a typical crush, limerence is defined by obsessive ruminations, deep infatuation and a strong desire for emotional reciprocation — an unfulfilled longing for a person. According to Dorothy Tennov, American psychologist and author of Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love, limerence 'may feel like a very intense form of being in love that may also feel irrational and involuntary.' Tennov identified the most crucial feature of limerence as 'its intrusiveness, its invasion of consciousness against our will.' Limerence differs from the liminal dating phenomenon known as 'situationships,'or 'we're dating but we're also not quite dating.' While both feed off uncertainty, when someone is experiencing limerence, they often prefer the idea of their limerent object (LO) over being with that person in real life. In fact, they might actually feel something akin to disgust when in the physical presence of their LO. I understand this feeling all too well — my own limerent object held my heart and mind hostage for years. *** Levi and I met on the first day of my sophomore year of high school in the mid-'90s. I was wearing baggy denim overalls and combat boots, and my blond hair was long and parted down the middle. I'd just gotten my braces off and my teeth were the straightest they'd ever be. Our relationship unfolded to the soundtrack of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet and August and Everything After by The Counting Crows. There were knowing looks and homemade mixtapes — filled with Dire Straits, Jewel and Better Than Ezra — passed discreetly in the hallway between classes. We were running through the wet grass, desperately wanting, but never quite having. We never actually dated. Earlier that summer, my family — minus my father — had moved to Woodstock, Vermont, from Boston. My parents were unhappily married, but instead of divorcing, they decided to lead two separate lives. My mother, a retired school administrator and former nun, moved to rural Vermont, and my dad stayed behind to work at his law firm. Levi wanted to be my boyfriend. He was unwavering and absolute with his feelings as only a love-struck teenager could be. In response, I held him at arm's length while dating other people. But late at night, I'd let him sneak into my bedroom on the top floor of my family's rambling farmhouse and we'd lie tangled up together underneath the shiny soccer medals and enormous round window that hung above my bed. By homeroom the next morning, it was like it never happened. Nobody needed to tip-toe around my house. After the move, my mother's drinking escalated to the point where she often passed out in her bedroom before dinner. My father visited us once or twice a month. He spent the weekend arguing with Mom and left without saying goodbye. On Monday morning, I'd wake to find him gone and a pile of cash on the kitchen counter. By the time I left for college, my sister and I were basically parenting ourselves. After college I moved to Manhattan. I casually dated — and even had a few serious relationships — but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about Levi. I thought about him a lot. Out of nowhere, his image would pop up, haunting my consciousness like a ghost. Memories of us lying in my twin-size bed, bathed in moonlight, played on a loop with Jewel crooning in the background, 'dreams last for so long / even after you're gone.' Eventually, I began to question whether I still had feelings for this person. Was he the one who got away? The strange thing was every time Levi and I happened to be in the same city at the same time, I avoided seeing him. Something prevented me from exploring an actual relationship with him in real time. A therapist reasoned it was hard for me to let go of his memory because we never had closure, but her take always felt slightly off. My feelings for Levi felt primal — instinctual. Bone deep. Something I couldn't shake. In my late 20s — practically estranged from my father by this point — Levi reached out to me. It was a basic missive, but still, reading his name in my inbox sent an electric current up my spine. I felt like I'd been plugged into a wall. I replied and said I was good, even though I wasn't. I'd just ended a long relationship that I thought was going to end in marriage. I was fleeing to New Mexico to pursue a graduate degree in counseling. My life was poorly packed in 20 boxes, stacked haphazardly in my parents' garage. 'How are you?' I redirected. Levi invited me to coffee. I lost five pounds before we met at a familiar spot in our hometown the following week. I arrived wheeling a suitcase because I was hopping a flight to Santa Fe later that afternoon. He looked a lot different in person than he did in my imagination — older, his hair thinning. Seeing him was like a controlled science experiment. He mostly talked about himself, and I felt relieved when it was time to go. Later that afternoon, as I boarded my flight, he emailed me: 'If you're still in town let's meet for a drink....' His invite gave me goosebumps. I never responded. Eventually, I finished graduate school and began my career as a counselor. I met my husband, Alex, in Santa Fe, and we later got married and had two children. The years passed and we built a beautiful life together, though it hasn't always been easy. Our older son was born with many challenging issues. Shortly after his first birthday, I lost my mother to fast-moving bone cancer. Less than two years later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a unilateral mastectomy and adjuvant hormone treatments that pushed me into premature menopause. Through it all, Alex stuck by me. He held my hand at my oncology appointments. He did the lion's share of parenting our two toddlers while I recovered from surgery. He rocked me back to sleep when I woke in the night riddled with anxiety about mortality and motherhood, and he made me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry. Sometimes, I look back on those first years of married life and wonder how we ever made it through. But somehow, we did — together. And yet, every now and then, I thought about Levi. He'd enter my consciousness without warning like a spectral whack-a-mole or a goblin. And then, just as quickly, his image would disappear, leaving me feeling guilty and ashamed. Even though I didn't feel physically attracted to this person, the thoughts felt like a betrayal to my husband, who I loved. My sweet husband, who nursed me back to health after cancer and snaked the shower drain whenever my hair clogged it. How could I still be thinking of some random person from my past? I was starting to think I needed a seance for my psyche. Instead, I decided to utilize my professional training as a therapist to identify — once and for all — the origin of these adolescent ruminations. *** I first learned about attachment theory in graduate school. The theory, originated by British psychiatrist John Bowlby in the 1960s, posits that attachment is formed during the first few years of life and determined by the quality of relationships between children and their primary caregivers. It offers a psychological framework for understanding how early relationships with caregivers impact interpersonal relationships, behaviors and emotional regulation throughout life. Psychologist Mary Ainsworth later expanded on Bowlby's work by conducting the 'Strange Situation' experiment where babies were left alone for a period of time before being reunited with their mothers. Based on her observations, Ainsworth concluded that there were different types of attachment, including secure, ambivalent-insecure and avoidant-insecure. Later, a fourth type of attachment was added, disorganized attachment, based on research performed by Mary Main and Judith Solomon, two psychologists from the University of California, Berkeley. During my practicum, I took a quick online assessment and wasn't at all surprised to learn that I have anxious/insecure attachment — the unfortunate combo of disorganized and fearful-avoidant. Learning about my attachment style was a critical first step toward gaining a deeper understanding of how I operate in relationships. For instance, it made me recognize my tendency to disconnect during difficult emotional experiences. My college boyfriend referred to this behavior as 'going into Anna land,' which looked like avoiding emotionally charged conversations, daydreaming and pulling away. Over the years, the more I learned about attachment theory, the more I wondered if my anxious attachment and age-old coping mechanisms had something to do with Levi? They both seemed to share deeply entrenched and unconscious patterns of behavior, and there seemed to be an obvious commonality between the two — fantasy. When I was young, I adopted various mental and emotional coping mechanisms to help me feel safe. I carried these limerent strategies — detachment, avoidance and fantasy — into adolescence. Back then, I needed to escape the reality of my childhood home — my sad, lonely mother and my emotionally unavailable father. My limerent object became the lightning rod for all my emotions, both good and bad. My relationship with Levi helped to ease my insecurities and fear of abandonment, but limerence becomes pathological when a person prioritizes the fantasy version of someone over the real, live version of them — especially because those two versions don't often add up. It took me a long time to distill the idea of my LO from the reality of my experience. Love demands a willingness to meet the other person in the moment, and the truth is, some nights I'd hide from Levi — in a closet or my sister's room — as he wandered around my dark, empty house looking for me. Coming to terms with how — and why — I created these maladaptive coping strategies was a pivotal turning point in my emotional development. As a child, I longed to grow up with answers and a sense of certainty — to be taught to believe in things like God and the Red Sox. During adolescence, my limerent object became my mental, emotional and spiritual bypass to get me through. As an adult, I was still using archaic coping mechanisms as a means to self-regulate. I knew that if I wanted to be fully autonomous and present in my life, I needed to let them go. These days, as a mother and wife, I understand that love is an action, not just a feeling. I am responsible for creating my own happily-ever-after. While it's impossible to have all the answers, I try to be honest with myself and others about the things I don't understand. I believe that showing up and being present with the people I love, even when it's difficult, is the best thing I can do — like when my son has a sensory meltdown and I sit with him until he stops screaming, or when my husband and I have a disagreement, I stay in the room and work it out. Equally difficult, I allow — often force — myself to witness moments of beauty — like how my younger son still loves to climb into my bed each morning and press himself into the folds of my body. I know these moments are fleeting. Limerence is not love. It's born from an unmet psychological need, and I believe that it can only be extinguished through the act of self-compassion. This involves the ongoing practice of forgiving myself for the mistakes I made when I was young, and forgiving my parents for their limitations, too. The truth is, my parents often failed me, but that doesn't mean that they were failures. I know they loved me and did the best they could. Over time, I've gotten better at sitting with uncomfortable feelings like grief, shame, anxiety and sadness. Therapy has helped a lot. And Al-Anon, which taught me how to practice discernment, or 'the wisdom to know the difference.' At the end of the day, I know that I've developed the skills and self-assurance to move through life's challenges without needing to check out. I'm working to rebuild my self-esteem from within instead of seeking validation from others, and I'm much more aware when I turn to fantasy as a means of self-regulation (like binging a show on Netflix). Most importantly, I've come to accept that my deepest longings belong to me — these primeval yearnings cannot be filled by another person. Occasionally, I still think of my limerent object. Levi will appear in my dreams or pop into my head at random times during the day, and he's always a much younger version of himself. However, the memories now feel less charged, and slightly melancholic. I understand the longing for a person who was always there and never there. Like a ghost, he'll forever roam the halls of my childhood home — lit up with moonlight — searching for someone to hold in the night. Note: Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals mentioned in this essay. Anna Sullivan is a mental health therapist, author and co-host of 'Healing + Dealing.' She has written for The New York Times, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, HuffPost, Today, Newsweek, Salon and more. She is currently writing a book, 'Truth Or Consequences,' about going through early induced menopause due to cancer treatment. Find more from her at
The Guardian
12-04-2025
- General
- The Guardian
What happens when love tips over into the infatuated state of ‘limerence'?
I never really gave much thought to the nature of love until it became a problem. Throughout adolescence I suffered through a series of intense, mostly unrequited crushes, but just assumed this was the exquisite agony of desire that poets and lyricists work so hard to capture in words. As a neuroscience PhD student in the 1990s, I met and fell deeply, absurdly in love with the woman who would become my wife. We luxuriated in mutual bliss – the classic fairytale – and I just smugly assumed that I'd figured out this love stuff at last, pleased with my intuitive skill. I was right for a surprisingly long time. There were a couple of bumpy patches along the way as the fireworks of early love gave way to the steadier warmth of affectional bonding, but we navigated them, got married, had children, and embarked on a happy and secure family life. Things only went wrong when – in an embarrassingly clichéd midlife crisis – I accidentally became infatuated with a colleague at work. The delirious highs of adolescent crushes were back, but now laced with guilt about the implicit betrayal of being gaga about someone other than my wife. I had absolute intellectual clarity about the outcome I wanted – to break the infatuation and end the threat to my marriage – but I also, repeatedly, failed to master my feelings. I just couldn't turn them off. To manage temptation, I adopted a simple, inviolable boundary: I would never disclose my feelings. I don't know if my limerent object ever knew. I did my best to hide it, but there may have been some 'tells', and I wouldn't have trusted my judgment about reading her mind when I was 'under the influence'. I did my best to maintain professionalism through my private psychological battle, but I wasn't confident I would win. For the first time in my life, I understood the addict's dilemma – a deep part of you wants to fail the moral test, because failure means you get to satisfy your craving. It felt as if I was living in an altered mental state and that turned out to be my first big advantage. As an academic and neuroscientist, altered mental states fell squarely within my expertise. I started to plough through the literature on love, the neurochemical basis of euphoria, the processes that control addiction. The breakthrough came as I was reading a little-known book written in the late 1970s by the psychologist Dorothy Tennov: Love and Limerence, the Experience of Being in Love. It captured my experience perfectly. Tennov invented the term 'limerence' to describe an intoxicating early phase of love defined by intense euphoria, a profound sense of emotional connection, mood swings, intrusive thoughts, overarousal, obsessive infatuation and involuntary craving for the other person. She saw it as a distinct mental state that people were 'in' when they had fixated romantically on another person, and in the half-century since Tennov carried out her social psychology research, we can now make sense of limerence from the perspective of contemporary neuroscience. Under the right conditions, activation of the arousal, reward and bonding systems in the brain can make one person become incredibly romantically potent. They become the primary source of reward in the limerent's life, because they trigger an extraordinary natural high. If barriers or uncertainty prevent the open expression of those feelings and the limerence persists unresolved, those same neural systems can be driven into a state of supernormal activation that resembles an addiction. Most people are familiar with the idea of sex, love or pornography addictions. In the same sense, limerence can be understood as addiction to another person. Their company really is intoxicating. This insight led to a consequential decision, and a second big advantage – I told my wife what was happening to me and discovered that she had also experienced limerence. She understood what I was going through. That was a turning point. I was no longer fighting a secret personal battle but working in partnership with my wife to solve the problem. I tested methods for overcoming the infatuation, reversing the mental programming and freeing myself from the limerent state. This meant disrupting the habits that were reinforcing the limerence by limiting contact with my co-worker, deliberately spoiling daydreams and reframing happy memories to instead focus on the negatives. Equally important, though, I realised that I couldn't just use mental punishment, I needed to develop a new, positive, purposeful vision for the future. Progress was slow but steady. Home life improved, work life improved, and I learned important lessons about not being so smug about the impressiveness of my instincts and intuition. During this period I made another consequential decision that would change my life. I started a blog. I bought the domain name and started writing under the pseudonym 'Dr L'. It was an exorcism of sorts – pouring out what I'd learned, what I'd gone through, the methods I'd trialled for turning down the volume on limerence. Over time, people started to find the site. Comments began to appear, readers discussed their own limerent experiences, asked questions, shared their painful secrets: lawyers who had become limerent for their clients; patients who became limerent for their therapists; people whose previously loving and supportive spouse had transformed into a cruel adulterer in the mania of an obsessive, addictive love. The site grew into a community of people trying to make sense of their limerence, how it had started, what it meant about them, where the origins of this romantic vulnerability might lie in their personal history. Again and again visitors reported the same epiphany that I had been through when reading Dorothy Tennov's book: 'Yes, that's exactly what I'm going through! I'm not going mad. And I'm not alone.' At this stage, I realised that I had two very powerful forces available for understanding limerence: the neuroscience literature and a community of thousands of limerents who had committed over six million words of personal testimony to the site. The blog entered a new phase of gathering information, and refining the definition of limerence, trying to understand the difference between the universal elements of the experience and the unique personal details of individual cases. Case studies were analysed and commented on, and I ran a survey through a market research firm to try to get an unbiased estimate of how common limerence is in the general population. That survey suggested that 50-60% of the population have experienced limerence and, of those people, half again have had it so badly that the addiction damaged their lives. There really do seem to be two 'love tribes' out there, limerents and non-limerents, who experience the early phase of love in a profoundly different way. Some of us fall into wild, ecstatic infatuations that feel like a different operational mode for the brain, others are able to enjoy the 'new relationship energy' of attraction without, well, flipping out. The mismatched expectations of those two tribes about what love should feel like also explains a lot of the heartache and romantic misadventures that we all suffer through. I also learned other interesting details. Limerence is equally common in men and women, whatever their sexuality, but there is one group that seems to be especially prone to the experience: those with an anxious attachment style. This is a bonding style characterised by uncertainty and insecurity. Anxious attachers seek a lot of intimacy from their romantic partners, are highly sensitive to the fear of abandonment and spend a lot of time worrying about the security of their relationship. Small disagreements with their partner can feel like a big threat. This psychological state is thought to arise from unreliable care during infancy and childhood. In our survey, 79% of people with an anxious attachment style reported having experienceding limerence. People without an anxious attachment style had a lower incidence of limerence at 55%. Clearly, an anxious attachment style is not required to experience limerence, but it certainly seems to correlate with it very strongly. After seven years of researching and blogging about limerence under a pseudonym, I finally decided to 'out' myself and wrote my first book, Smitten. It encapsulates everything I've learned about limerence so far, how to make sense of the altered state of mind, and how to recover from it. For myself, that destructive infatuation now feels a long way in the past. I'm thankful that the experience ultimately led to a purposeful new direction for my life and the creation of a community to help other people going through the same trials. It was sobering to have to accept my personal shortcomings. Being driven into an altered state of mind, experiencing a new, heightened emotional range and being forced to confront big questions about your life and your choices is hugely disruptive, but it also forces you to re-evaluate yourself. For anyone going through the pain of unwanted limerence themselves, I hope it is an encouraging thought that what seems like a life-shaking obsession can be turned into a force for personal renewal. Smitten: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence and How to Make Love Last by Dr Tom Bellamy is published by Watkins at £16.99. Buy a copy from for £15.29
The Independent
07-02-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Your Valentine's crush could actually be a nasty case of limerence
Limerence is a term you may not be familiar with. It describes an involuntary, uncontrollable and obsessive desire for another person. This fixation can lead to significant distress, disrupting daily life, and may have negative impacts on other people too. Limerence can affect anyone, but is more likely to occur in people with anxiety or depression. It is thought to affect 4%-5% of the general population, although this is very hard to measure. The term was coined by behavioural psychologist Dorothy Tennov in her 1979 book, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. She described it as a unique psychological phenomenon, different from falling in love, which is driven by an uncontrollable desire for another person – the 'limerent object'. Anyone can become a limerent object to someone with the condition – whether they are a friend, colleague or total stranger. These feelings are almost always unrequited because a core feature of limerence is the uncertainty of another's feelings. The time in which a person is experiencing these feelings is referred to as a 'limerent episode'. The length of a limerent episode differs from person to person. For some people, such as those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it can be particularly intense as infatuation combines with traits such as hyperfocus – an intense fixation on an interest or activity for an extended period of time, which will be familiar to many neurodiverse people. What causes limerence? There is still some academic discussion as to whether limerence is 'natural', as originally suggested by Tennov in her book. Others scholars point to its negative impact on daily life, including a person's mental health, and potentially to the other person. It's also important to note that limerence is not a formal diagnosis. A person in a state of limerence idolises their limerent object, fixating on their positive traits while denying any flaws. Their emotions become dependent on perceived signs of interest or rejection, leading to extreme highs and lows. They will think about their limerent object continually – which can feel exciting and fun, especially if their feelings are reciprocated. In such cases, it may be difficult to recognise the limerent attachment type in a relationship, mistaking these feelings for the early stages of romantic love. However, the intensity of limerence has negative consequences. A person in a state of limerence can experience intrusive thoughts, physical discomfort, intense and one-sided feelings, as well as obsessive-compulsive thoughts in relation to their limerent object. These characteristics distinguish limerence from crushes and similar conventional romantic feelings. There are typically three stages of limerence. First, infatuation involving the initial attraction in which the person starts idealising someone. Second, crystallisation, which is the fully limerent phase, where obsessive thoughts, emotional dependency and euphoria, or despair, dominate. And third, deterioration, when the attachment eventually fades. Though limerence remains an under-researched topic, some studies suggest links with anxious attachment styles, when a person fears rejection and craves constant reassurance. People with this attachment style often experience heightened emotional sensitivity and intense preoccupation with their partner's responses. These traits can make them more vulnerable to experiencing limerence, as they struggle to regulate emotions and detach from the object of their infatuation. It may also affect a person's ability to develop and maintain healthy relationships, whether these are loving or platonic. There is little psychological literature on how people experiencing limerence can regulate their emotions or break the cycle. In terms of external support, therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) may help. ACT works by changing a person's relationship with their thoughts and feelings. Using a process known as 'cognitive diffusion', a person learns to notice their intrusive thoughts and detach from them. For those who experience limerence, this can make it easier for them to develop and maintain healthy relationships. Is there a cure for limerence? But while limerence can be overwhelming, recognising it for what it is, and not judging oneself for feeling this way, can be an important first step. Second, practicing self-awareness is vital: understanding the triggers and patterns of limerent behaviour, and using this knowledge to build healthier foundations for future relationships. Third, setting boundaries such as limiting exposure to the limerent object can help break the cycle of reinforcement. And fourth, practising self-compassion and patience, accepting these emotions without judgment while focusing on personal growth, may help to ease distress. The internet has allowed more people to share their experiences of limerence, find community support and better understand themselves. But greater awareness and more research are needed to support people struggling with its effects – and to offer healthier ways of navigating attraction and attachment.
