I was reading an intriguing article in the Washington Post on Monday “What is limerence, and are you confusing it with love?” by Amanda Loudin. It was the first time I had heard the term, so I decided to do a bit of research. Here’s my take.
Somewhere between your first crush and your first real heartbreak, you probably experienced something that felt like love but operated more like a software bug. You couldn’t stop thinking about this person. Their lukewarm reciprocation would launch you into euphoria. Their silence would flatten you for days. You were convinced it was the most profound emotional experience of your life.
Congratulations. You may have had “limerence.” And if the psychology establishment wants to make that sound like a diagnosis, I’m here to push back a little.
The Word You Didn’t Know You Needed
Psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term in her 1979 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love, after interviewing hundreds of people about romantic obsession. She needed a new word because the old ones — infatuation, crush, being in love — didn’t quite capture the particular flavor of madness she was documenting. Limerence, she argued, is involuntary, intrusive, and organized entirely around one terrifying question: does this person feel the same way about me?
The hallmarks are pretty recognizable: the obsessive thinking, the mood swings tied completely to the other person’s behavior, the magical thinking, the replaying of every interaction like game film. Tennov was clear that this isn’t a choice. It happens to you. You don’t decide to be limerent any more than you decide to be constipated.
Modern psychology has more or less kept the word around, and the internet has recently rediscovered it with the enthusiasm of someone who just learned that their chronic condition has a name. There are Reddit communities, self-help frameworks, and no shortage of articles suggesting that limerence is something you should identify, manage, and ideally cure yourself of.
Puh-leaze. That’s where I get off the bus.
Pathologizing Puppy Love
Here’s my actual take: limerence, at least in its garden-variety form, is just what falling hard for someone feels like when you’re young and unjaded. It’s not a disorder. It’s not a trauma response dressed up in romantic clothing. It’s the emotional equivalent of being a newbie — you feel everything at full volume because you haven’t yet developed the scar tissue that turns down the gain.
Worth noting: the American Psychiatric Association agrees, at least implicitly. Limerence does not appear in the DSM-5-TR — the official diagnostic manual for mental disorders. It’s not a condition. It’s an experience. There’s a difference. Tom Bellamy, a neuroscientist at the University of Nottingham and author of Smitten: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last, makes the boundary explicit: “People sometimes tie it with borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, OCD, and even stalking. None of that is grounded in research.”
We as a whole have become adept at turning normal human experiences into clinical conditions that require intervention. Sadness became depression. Worry became anxiety disorder. Now apparently, the gut-punch intensity of early infatuation is limerence, a state you should probably discuss with a therapist and track in a journal.
I’m not dismissing Tennov’s work. The research is real, the phenomenon is real, and yes — in its most severe form, limerence can become genuinely destructive. Journalist Amanda McCracken, who spent years cycling in and out of obsessive infatuations, put it plainly after finally seeking help: “Limerence was a safe place for me to hide from the vulnerability of real intimacy.” That version — limerence as a long-term avoidance strategy rather than a passing storm — deserves attention.
But most of us didn’t have that. Most of us had the version where you were seventeen, completely undone by someone, certain this was the most important thing that had ever happened, and then eventually — through reciprocation, rejection, or simple time — it passed. (Or it became that smoldering torch that flames back up whenever you have a row with your partner.)
Love Is the Follow-Through
The useful distinction Tennov actually drew — and the one that gets lost when limerence becomes a self-help buzzword — is between the obsessive “I want you to want ME” (tanks, Cheap Trick) state and the kind of love that shows up in the boring, unglamorous middle of a long relationship. Limerence is almost entirely about you and your internal state. Love, the kind that matters, is mostly about the other person.
Limerence asks: Do they want me?
Love asks: What do they need?
Bellamy, who experienced this firsthand when he met his wife, describes the transition well: “If you have two limerent people, it’s fantastic. Eventually, however, the limerence fades, and the two people must transition to a different form of love. This will involve affection, communication, respect — all the things we associate with healthy, mature love.”
That’s not a small difference. Limerence is a beautiful, consuming, somewhat selfish state. Love, as a practice rather than a feeling, is a decision you make on the days when you don’t particularly feel like it. Which doesn’t mean limerence is worthless. It’s the kindling. The problem is when people mistake the kindling for the fire and can’t understand why it keeps burning out.
A Word in Defense of Feeling Everything
There’s a version of emotional maturity that looks a lot like emotional deadening. You learn to recognize limerence, you label it, you manage your expectations, you don’t do anything rash. This is probably wise. It is also, at some level, a small tragedy.
Giulia Poerio, a psychologist at the University of Sussex who studies limerence, captures the paradox neatly: “It’s a real cognitive invasion of your mind. It’s also enjoyable, which makes it somewhat addictive.” That’s the thing about limerence that the self-help literature never quite admits — it feels terrible and wonderful at the same time, and some part of you doesn’t entirely want it to stop.
The completely undone feeling — the ridiculous, embarrassing, can’t-eat, checking-your-phone-every-four-minutes feeling — is one of the more vivid experiences available to human beings. It’s not particularly rational. It’s not particularly dignified. But it is alive in a way that’s hard to replicate once you’ve got enough experience to know better.
So yes, understand what limerence is. Know that it’s not a reliable signal of compatibility. Know that it can attach itself to people who are objectively wrong for you. Know that it will eventually end, one way or another, and that surviving it doesn’t mean something went wrong. And it is certainly not a mental affliction. It’s just a normal part of this thing we call life.
References
- What is limerence, and are you confusing it with love? — The Washington Post, March 2026
- Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love — Dorothy Tennov (Amazon)
- Smitten: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last — Tom Bellamy (Amazon)
- Limerence — Psychology Today
- Love and Limerence: Dorothy Tennov’s Research into the Confusions of Bonding — The Marginalian