What is Limerence attraction?

What Is Limerence? Limerence is a state of infatuation or obsession with another person that involves an all-consuming passion and intrusive thoughts. So, you fantasize that someone else could save you and crystallize those thoughts into a golden image of ‘the one.

What is the Limerence phase?

Phase One: Limerence Limerence is the involuntary part of being in love with another person. Tennov described a range of physical and psychological symptoms such as flushing, trembling, palpitations, excitement, intrusive thinking, obsession, fantasy, sexual excitement, and the fear of rejection.

Is Limerence curable?

Limerence, Professor Wakin tells me, can happen to anyone—of any age group, gender, or socioeconomic status. And one of the most effective approaches for eradicating it, he recommends, is by completely disconnecting from the ex-paramour. Still, the (official) verdict on how to categorize and treat Limerence is out.

Can Limerence be mutual?

But mutual limerence, Romeo and Juliet-style, is possible. Unless continued obstacles from external sources, such as parents or society, stoke the limerence, “reciprocity is usually followed by a decline in limerence.” This can be replaced by love, given the right circumstances, and even a happy marriage.

What does limerence feel like?

Limerence is characterized by intrusive thinking and pronounced sensitivity to external events that reflect the disposition of the limerent object towards the individual. It can be experienced as intense joy or as extreme despair, depending on whether the feelings are reciprocated.

Is limerence just a crush?

“Limerence is not love. It’s not a crush. It’s a crushing obsession with another person — an intense romantic infatuation,” says Barrett. “A person in a state of limerence is primarily focused on the reciprocation of emotions.

What happens when limerence wears off?

After “limerence” wears off, certain things become painfully apparent. So-called “fatal attraction” is another reason why love affairs end. In fatal attraction, a quality that one initially finds attractive in a lover is the same quality that sinks the relationship. Attractive qualities are usually two-sided.

Is limerence a mental illness?

appear to be genetically driven”: indeed, limerence is first and foremost a condition of cognitive obsession. This may be caused by low serotonin levels in the brain, comparable to those of people with obsessive–compulsive disorder.

Is limerence an addiction?

Albert Wakin, an expert on limerence and a professor of psychology at Sacred Heart University, defines limerence as a combination of obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction, a state of “compulsory longing for another person.”He estimates that five percent of the population struggles with limerence.

How do you know when your partner is losing interest in you?

Your partner could stop holding hands or being affectionate, not care about appealing to you, preferring to let their appearance go, and sex may be a distant and hazy memory. These can all be a sign that your relationship may be losing steam.

What does Limerence feel like?

Can limerence turn into love?

Limerence sometimes evolves into love, fades with time, or transfers. If feelings are mutual, limerence has the potential to turn into real, normal love. Other times, limerence will eventually go away and chemicals in the brain will normalize. Alternatively, limerence can be transferred to a new person.

What does limerence mean?

Limerence is a state of mind which results from a romantic attraction to another person and typically includes obsessive thoughts and fantasies and a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love and have one’s feelings reciprocated.

How long do limerence Affairs last?

The good news is that it will go away. It always does. Limerence brings people together; it was not designed to keep them together. On average, limerence lasts somewhere between three months and 36 months.

How does limerence end?

The only real way to end an episode of limerence is to be 100% sure that a romantic relationship with the desired person is impossible. This requires either 1. a firm, clear and irreversible rejection from the crush or 2. the Limerent loses all hope that a romantic relationship will ever become reality.