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For most people, crushes come and go.
But for others, the longing can last years and become addictive. A spark of interest turns into obsessive rumination sustained by a pernicious cocktail of hope and doubt. This is not a crush. This is limerence.
Limerence is a state of overwhelming and unexpected longing for emotional reciprocation from another human, known as a limerent object (LO), who is often perceived as perfect but unavailable.
This may sound similar to the lyrics of a Taylor Swift love song, a scene in “The Great Gatsby,” or the lines in a Shakespeare sonnet. The experience of limerence is timeless, but the term is relatively new.
In 1979, Dorothy Tennov, an experimental psychologist and professor at the University of Bridgeport, coined the term limerence in her book “Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love,” based on a decade of research and several hundred case studies on romantic attachment.
What differentiates limerence from a crush or love is the intensity, an emotional roller coaster that fluctuates from euphoria to despair. Giulia Poerio, a psychologist and mind-wandering researcher at the University of Sussex in England, said, “Any sign of rejection can make somebody hit a low, and any sign of interest can make somebody hit a high.” It’s an endless mind game of, “She loves me, she loves me not.”
Limerents, deeply fearful of rejection, allow their self-esteem to rest in the hands of an LO who may not even know they exist. The LO is most often a friend, colleague or stranger met in passing. It can also be someone with whom you’ve had a brief romantic encounter that feels unresolved, explains Poerio, especially if the LO continues to leave breadcrumbs.
Sue Crump, a 67-year-old volunteer at a mental health charity shop in Sheffield, England, said for 18 months, she obsessively watched YouTube videos featuring her LO, a much younger, married singer she’d briefly met a handful of times. “I fantasized about a relationship with him and read things into texts and online messages he sent in reply to my own.” She turned to a limerence support group on Facebook soon after the isolation of the pandemic lockdown made her longing worse. “It made me realize I was not alone, and I was not going mad,” Crump said.
Limerence is nourished by replaying memories and rehearsing future interactions. “There’s a fair amount of mental time travel,” said Poerio, who asked survey respondents to write descriptions of these fantasies. “It’s often not romantic or sexual in nature. It is very much about wanting to feel loved and cared for.”
Chris Gregory, 53, a certified yoga instructor in Denver, recalls first experiencing limerence in high school. “I would develop insanely obsessive crushes on women and then not pursue them. Then I would be crushed by them not responding the way the scene had played out in my own head and heart. I felt unworthy,” he said. Gregory continued to experience limerence throughout his adult life, he said, but mistook it for love.
Limerence toward one person can last many years, even while you’re in a relationship with someone else, explains Poerio. However, most people are serially limerent, having one LO after another, stuck chasing the same dopamine high felt in the initial stages of love.
The Brain’s Reward Cycle
Dr. Judson Brewer, psychiatrist, neuroscientist and author of “Unwinding Anxiety,” describes limerence as an addiction. “When somebody’s on a diet, all they obsess over is food. So you can think of this as a person diet,” Brewer said. “They get stuck in the fantasies that are future-oriented and regrets that are past-oriented.”
If the trigger is loneliness or boredom, for example, the resulting behavior is anticipating reciprocity from the LO, Brewer added. That reciprocity never comes, but the anticipation yields the reward, dopamine.
Brewer added, “Dopamine is jet fuel. It’s what gets us motivated to do something” — even if doing something only means anticipating. The uncertainty, or intermittent reinforcement, of the occasional message from the LO keeps our brains hooked. “It’s gasoline poured on the fire,” Brewer said. We begin to mistake anxiety for excitement and excitement for joy.
Culture as a Catalyst
There are a growing number of online limerence support groups and informational blogs. Psychologists and social scientists aren’t surprised.
Alexandra Solomon, a licensed clinical psychologist in Chicago and host of the “Reimagining Love” podcast, said, “There’s a whole cultural element here about the way online dating and hookup culture create a climate of low accountability and foster insecure attachment. There’s a kind of collective insecurity.”
The American Perspectives Survey found that almost one-third of single Americans (roughly equal between men and women) have been ghosted by someone they were dating. The lack of communication common after physical intimacy is enough to drive many people to feel anxious, if not limerent.
With a dating pool that seems infinite, people feel expendable. Being ghosted can create an open tab inside your brain. “It’s easy to feel like there’s no obligation to close a loop,” Solomon said. “You can start to project onto that person a whole bunch of what-ifs. It’s easy to idealize somebody you’ve just met.”
While people experiencing limerence often put their LO on a pedestal, social media further encourages idealization. Individuals who exchange Instagram profiles in a bar instantly have access to years of curated data they can use to build up the other person in their minds, explains Jennifer Douglas, a psychologist and a clinical professor at Stanford.
When is it a problem?
Most people experience some degree of limerence, said Poerio, but it’s problematic when it’s uncontrollable. Poerio uses the analogy of a person whose mind has been hijacked. “It interferes with your ability to have meaningful, real-world relationships because you are sustaining a relationship in your mind. It’s a normal process that’s gone slightly wrong.”
Vincent Harris, 49, a freelance writer in Greenville, South Carolina, said he lost his first marriage and a job because of the presence of a limerent object he considered his soul mate. Harris met his latest limerent object through social media during the pandemic.
“For three years, I felt like I was living under a cloud. I had no motivation other than to hear from her,” Harris said. “I was paralyzed with fear that if I reached out to her, I would say the wrong thing. As she lessened contact with me, I became more desperate and unbalanced.” In May 2023, he was medically treated for a second mental breakdown.
How do you stop intense longing?
Cultivate self-compassion and a more purposeful life: Brewer recommends practicing Loving Kindness Meditation to develop self-compassion and create connections with others who don’t require anything in return. Brain scans show doing this meditation deactivates the part of the brain active during longing or worrying, according to Brewer.
You can also get involved in grounding activities with people who bring you joy and fulfillment. For Gregory, becoming more present helped him manage his limerence. Gregory attributes working in yoga education and becoming sober to helping him cultivate honest, open relationships with people.
Disrupt the fantasy: Brandy Wyant, a psychotherapist in Arlington, Massachusetts, who specializes in helping patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, describes her lifelong history with limerence and the 10-week treatment that diminished her ruminating in a published case study on limerence.
One of the cognitive behavioral therapy techniques that worked for Wyant was listing all the ways she was trying to seek physical or emotional closeness to her LO. That might be daydreaming, relistening to voicemail messages or playlists, rereading texts, rehearsing messages, or looking at pics. She said to rank what’s easiest to hardest to stop, and then start with the easiest.
One strategy she uses with her clients to de-idolize their LO is listing reasons the LO is not perfect. Another list includes ways in which the LO and the patient are not compatible.
Name it to tame it: You can deliberately interrupt the habit by calling it out — “Hello, limerence” — and paying attention (for example, through journaling) to what it feels like when you’re in that state of longing. Recognizing the feelings of self-denigration, anxiousness and depression will lead to disenchantment, Brewer said.
You should also believe you deserve more. As Tennov wrote, “Limerence can live a long life sustained by crumbs.” Don’t let it starve you of time, energy and self-esteem. It may distract you from the emotionally available loving partner right in front of you.