Limerence


Limerence is the mental state of being madly in love or intensely infatuated when reciprocation of the feeling is uncertain. This state is characterized by intrusive thoughts and idealization of the loved one, typically with a desire for reciprocation to form a relationship. This is accompanied by feelings of ecstasy or despair, depending on whether one's feelings seem to be reciprocated or not. Research on the biology of romantic love indicates that the early stage of intense romantic love resembles addiction, but academics do not currently agree on how love addictions are defined.
The psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term "limerence" as an alteration of the word "amorance" without other etymologies. The concept grew out of her work in the 1960s when she interviewed over 500 people on the topic of love, originally published in her book Love and Limerence. According to Tennov, "to be in a state of limerence is to feel what is usually termed 'being in love. She coined the term to disambiguate the state from other less-overwhelming emotions and to avoid the implication that people who don't experience it are incapable of love. Tennov was inspired to study romantic love after encountering people in her post as a professor who experienced severe heartbreak and personal perils. Tennov's research suggested to her that limerence is normal, and a 2025 survey suggested that as many as 50–60% of the population had experienced it.
Limerence is a descriptive concept, rather than a diagnosis or disorder; it is not in the DSM. The polysemous nature of love words has led to semantic confusion which Tennov meant to clarify, although there is even still disagreement on how "limerence" is defined. Love research has never adopted a unified terminology or definitions. According to Tennov and others, limerence can be considered intense romantic love, falling in love, love madness, intense infatuation, passionate love with obsessive elements or lovesickness. Limerence and obsessive love are similar, but obsessive love has connotations of possessive and self-defeating behavior. Limerence is also sometimes compared to and contrasted with a crush, with limerence being much more intense and impacting day-to-day functioning more: "when a crush has taken over your life".
Love and Limerence has been called the seminal work on romantic love, with Tennov's survey results and the various personal accounts recounted in the book largely marking the start of data collection on the phenomenon.

Overview

research was intended to be a scientific attempt at understanding the nature of romantic love. She identified a suite of psychological properties associated with a state she called limerence—usually termed "being in love", but distinguishable from other types of attraction patterns which the phrase "in love" might also refer to. Other authors have considered limerence to be an emotional and motivational state for focusing attention on a preferred mating partner or an attachment process.
Joe Beam calls limerence the feeling of being "madly in love". Nicky Hayes describes it as "a kind of infatuated, all-absorbing passion", the type of love Dante felt towards Beatrice or that of Romeo and Juliet. An unfulfilled, intense longing defines the state, where the individual becomes "more or less obsessed by that person and spends much of their time fantasising about them". Hayes suggests it's "the unobtainable nature of the goal which makes the feeling so powerful", and occasional, intermittent reinforcement may be required to support the underlying feelings. Arthur & Elaine Aron speak of a "constant, overwhelming, and even debilitating absorption in the unrequited desire" characterizing limerence. Stanton Peele compares it to "severe emotional disability", with an often inappropriate love object. Frank Tallis calls it "love that does not need liking—love that may even thrive in response to rejection or contempt" and notes the "striking similarities" with addiction.
A central feature of limerence for Tennov was the fact that her participants really saw the personal flaws of the object of their affection, but simply overlooked them or found them attractive. Tennov calls this "crystallization", after a description by the French writer Stendhal. This "crystallized" object of passionate desire is what Tennov calls a "limerent object" or "LO", "because to the degree that your reaction to a person is limerent, you respond to your construction of LO's qualities".
Limerence has psychological properties akin to the concept of passionate love, but in Tennov's conception, limerence begins before a relationship and before the person experiencing it knows for certain whether it's reciprocated. Limerence is frequently unrequited and turns into a lovesickness that can be difficult to escape. Tennov argues that some type of situational uncertainty is required for the mental preoccupation and feelings to intensify, for example: mixed messages, physical or social obstacles, or even an LO's unsuitability as a partner.
Not everyone experiences limerence. Tennov estimated that 50% of women and 35% of men experience limerence based on answers to certain survey questions she administered. Another survey administered by neuroscientist and limerence blogger Tom Bellamy indicated that 64% had experienced it at least once, and 32% "found it so distressing that it was hard to enjoy life".
It can be difficult for people who haven't experienced limerence to understand it, and it's often derided and dismissed as some kind of pathology, or an invention of romantic fiction. According to Tennov, limerence is not a mental illness, although it can be "highly disruptive and extremely painful", called "irrational, silly, embarrassing, and abnormal" or sometimes "the greatest happiness" depending on who is asked.

Components

The original components of limerence were:

Famous examples

Historical

Love

gives several reasons for inventing a term for the state denoted by limerence. One principle reason is to resolve ambiguities with the word "love" being used both to refer to an act, as well as to a state :
Many writers on love have complained about semantic difficulties. The dictionary lists two dozen different meanings of the word "love". And how does one distinguish between love and affection, liking, fondness, caring, concern, infatuation, attraction, or desire? Acknowledgment of a distinction between love as a verb, as an action taken by the individual, and love as a state is awkward. Never having fallen in love is not at all a matter of not loving, if loving is defined as caring. Furthermore, this state of "being in love" included feelings that do not properly fit with love defined as concern.

The other principle reason given is that she encountered people who do not experience limerence. The first such person Tennov discovered was a long-time friend, Helen Payne, whose unfamiliarity with the state emerged during a conversation on an airplane flight together. Tennov writes that "describing the intricacies of romantic attachments" to Helen was "like trying to describe the color red to one blind from birth". A person not currently experiencing limerence is called "nonlimerent", but Tennov cautions that it seemed to her that there is no "nonlimerent personality" and that potentially anyone could experience limerence. Tennov says:
I adopted the view that never being in this state was neither more nor less pathological than experiencing it. I wanted to be able to speak about this reliably identifiable condition without giving love's advocates the feeling something precious was being destroyed. Even more important, if using the term "love" denoted the presence of the state, there was the danger that absence of the state would receive negative connotations.

Tennov addresses the issue of whether limerence is love in other passages. In one passage she clearly says that limerence is love, at least in certain cases:
In fully developed limerence, you feel additionally what is, in other contexts as well, called love—an extreme degree of feeling that you want LO to be safe, cared for, happy, and all those other positive and noble feelings . That's probably why limerence is called love in all languages. Surely limerence is love at its highest and most glorious peak.

However, Tennov switches in tone and continues on with a fairly negative story of the pain felt by a woman reminiscing over the time she wasted pining for a man she now feels nothing towards, something which occupied her in a time when her father was still alive and her children "were adorable babies who needed their mother's attention." Tennov says this is why we distinguish limerence from other loves. In another passage, Tennov says that while affection and fondness do not demand anything in return, the return of feelings desired in the limerent state means that "Other aspects of your life, including love, are sacrificed in behalf of the all-consuming need." and that "While limerence has been called love, it is not love."