You know that feeling. You’re going about your day and, out of nowhere, they’re in your head again. You replay a conversation from three weeks ago. You check your phone even though you know you didn’t hear it buzz. You catch yourself spinning out a whole imaginary future and then, when they actually do text, the rush is so intense it’s almost physical. But when they go quiet? Or when you can’t tell how they feel about you? The whole thing somehow gets even more intense. Most people call that falling in love. But what if it isn’t?
Today we’re talking about limerence: what it actually is, how it’s different from love, how to know if you’re in it, and what to do if you are. Whether you’re single, partnered, or in a relationship and suddenly consumed by someone who isn’t your partner, this episode will give you the language and the clarity you’ve been missing.
13-minute read
What Is Limerence?
Limerence isn’t a new concept, it’s just an underused one. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term after spending a decade interviewing more than 500 people about their experiences of romantic attraction, publishing her findings in her 1979 book Love and Limerence. What she found was that a significant number of people described something far more consuming, far more destabilizing, and far more painful than what most people mean when they say they’re “in love.” She named that state limerence.
Limerence, the way Tennov defined it, is an involuntary, obsessive mental state focused on another person, what she called the “limerent object” or LO. And here’s the thing that distinguishes it from love: it’s not driven by who the other person actually is. It’s driven by the intoxicating uncertainty of whether they want you back.
That’s the key. Limerence runs on uncertainty. The moment you know for sure that someone fully reciprocates, or definitively doesn’t, limerence tends to dissolve. That’s not a character flaw, and it’s not a sign that something is wrong with you. But understanding it changes everything about how you interpret what you’re feeling.
What Does Limerence Actually Feel Like?
Tennov identified a consistent set of hallmarks across hundreds of interviews. Subsequent research by Willmott and Bentley confirmed and expanded on these, documenting how limerence plays out across different people’s lived experiences. Here’s what they found:
- Intrusive, involuntary thinking about the person. Not just thinking about them, but genuinely being unable to stop. Willmott and Bentley’s research found that participants described the thoughts as almost continuous, with one participant writing that it “feels as if 100% of your emotions are riveted to the object at all times.”
- Intense longing for reciprocation. More than wanting them to like you, you need to know how they feel about you. The uncertainty is both unbearable and somehow addictive.
- You notice everything wonderful about them and minimize or explain away anything that isn’t. They become, in your mind, essentially perfect.
- Emotional highs and lows based entirely on their behavior. A warm text sends you soaring. A delayed reply or a cooler-than-usual interaction can ruin your whole day.
- Physical symptoms when you’re around them or even just thinking about them: racing heart, shakiness, difficulty concentrating. Tennov’s participants also reported things like flushed skin and sweaty palms that would appear almost automatically.
- You mentally rehearse conversations, imagine future scenarios, play out what it would be like if they finally chose you.
- Acute sensitivity to signs of reciprocation. You over-analyze everything they say or do for evidence that they feel the same way.
Willmott and Bentley also found consistent links between limerence and anxiety, depression, and what they described as “free-floating” emotional distress that becomes temporarily fixated on the limerent object. Limerence, in many ways, is anxiety wearing a romantic costume.
It’s also worth knowing that a 2024 scoping review published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology found that limerence shares cognitive features with OCD, including the intrusive, repetitive thinking and the compulsive behaviors that follow. That doesn’t mean you have OCD. It means the brain mechanisms that drive obsessive states and the ones that drive limerence have a lot in common.
Is Limerence the Same as Love?
No. And this is the distinction that matters most. Limerence is about the ache for reciprocation. Love is about the other person.
When you love someone, you care about their actual wellbeing, their growth, their happiness, even when it doesn’t directly affect you. You can see them clearly, including their flaws, and love them anyway. There’s comfort, steadiness, and genuine warmth in how you relate.
Limerence is, at its core, self-focused. Not in a selfish way, but in a neurochemical way. The limerent experience is primarily about your own internal state: Do they want me? Will they choose me? Did I say something wrong? What did that silence mean? The other person becomes less of a real human and more of a symbol for whether you are wanted, worthy, and safe.
Tennov was direct about this. She wrote that in limerence, the limerent object’s actual qualities matter far less than the interpretation of their signals. You’re not falling for who they are, you’re falling for your own brain’s narrative about what their behavior means.
Here’s a quick gut-check. Think about the person you’re so consumed by. When you imagine your “future” with them, what are you actually imagining? Are you imagining a real relationship, with conflict, compromise, and ordinary Tuesdays? Or are you mainly imagining the moment they finally choose you, the resolution of the longing itself? If it’s mostly the latter, that’s a limerence flag.
Why Does Uncertainty Fuel Limerence So Powerfully?
This is where the neuroscience gets fascinating (at least to me, and you get to come along for the ride). Helen Fisher and Arthur Aron’s fMRI research found that intense romantic attraction activates the brain’s dopaminergic reward pathways, specifically the ventral tegmental area and caudate nucleus, which are the same regions associated with motivation, craving, and goal-directed behavior. Romantic attraction isn’t just an emotion, it’s a drive state. And like all drive states, it’s powerfully shaped by intermittent reward.
Your brain’s dopamine system is wired to respond most intensely not to guaranteed rewards, but to unpredictable ones. When you don’t know if pulling the lever will pay out, dopamine fires more intensely than it would if you got a reward every single time. That’s the neurochemical engine of the slot machine, and it’s the same engine running limerence.
When someone’s interest in you is warm sometimes and cooler other times, when you can’t quite read them, when there are signals but no certainty, your brain treats that ambiguity as a puzzle that must be solved. And dopamine floods in every time you think you’ve found a clue.
There’s also a serotonin piece here. Donatella Marazziti and colleagues at the University of Pisa found that people who had recently fallen in love had serotonin transporter levels that were significantly lower than controls, and statistically indistinguishable from people with OCD. Low serotonin is associated with intrusive, ruminative thinking. So, the obsessive quality of limerence isn’t just “all in your head” in a dismissive sense. There’s a measurable neurochemical shift happening.
And this is why limerence often intensifies when a relationship becomes more available. You’d think certainty would be satisfying. But for a nervous system hooked on the chase, clarity can actually feel deflating. This is also why some people find themselves intensely limerent for someone unavailable or uninterested, while feeling relatively little for someone warm, attentive, and genuinely interested in them. The unavailability itself is doing a lot of the work.
Tennov was clear that uncertainty isn’t just a feature of limerence: it’s a requirement. Without the open question of reciprocation, limerence either resolves into real love or fades entirely.
Can You Be Limerent Inside a Committed Relationship?
Yes, and this is where things get complicated.
Limerence for your own partner is possible, and early in relationships it’s common. The uncertainty of early dating creates perfect limerence conditions. As the relationship becomes more committed and stable, limerence typically fades and is replaced, in healthy relationships, by something quieter and more sustaining: deep attachment and genuine love.
But some people experience the limerence fading and panic, mistaking the loss of the obsessive high for falling out of love. They may begin to feel limerent toward someone outside the relationship instead, because that person offers the novelty and uncertainty their nervous system is craving. This doesn’t automatically mean their committed relationship is wrong. It often means their nervous system doesn’t yet know how to experience safety as love.
If you’re in a committed relationship and consumed by limerent feelings for someone else, it’s worth asking yourself honestly: Am I confused because I’ve found a better match, or am I addicted to the neurochemical hit that comes from uncertainty? Those are very different problems with very different solutions.
Why Are Some People More Vulnerable to Limerence Than Others?
Research points consistently to a few factors.
I. Anxious attachment is the strongest predictor. If you grew up in an environment where love and attention were inconsistent, your nervous system learned to hypervigilate for signs of acceptance and rejection. The ambiguity of early-stage attraction, or the pull of unavailable partners, replicates that familiar dynamic. The hunger for reciprocation isn’t just romantic longing. It’s an old, unmet need trying to finally get filled.
Wakin and Vo, who built on Tennov’s original model, noted that limerence shares functional similarities with both OCD and substance use disorder, including initiating forces like the longing for reciprocation, driving forces like obsessive thinking, and resultant forces like extreme mood fluctuations. When separation from the limerent object occurs, people often experience withdrawal-like symptoms: chest or stomach pain, sleep disruption, irritability, and depression.
II. Loneliness is another factor. When people have unmet social or emotional needs, even a small sign of interest from another person can become dramatically amplified into something that feels like profound connection.
How Do You Know If What You’re Feeling Is Limerence or Real Love?
Here are the questions worth sitting with:
- Do you love them for who they actually are, including qualities that are ordinary, annoying, or imperfect? Or do you mostly love the idealized version of them in your own mind?
- Does your emotional state depend heavily on their responsiveness? Or can you stay grounded even when there’s silence or distance?
- When you imagine a future with them, is it a real relationship you’re picturing, or mainly the feeling of finally being chosen?
- How long have you actually known them and how deeply? Limerence doesn’t require knowing someone well. Real love does.
- If you knew they were completely unavailable, would the intensity drop significantly? That’s a strong signal the uncertainty was doing most of the work.
- Do you feel genuinely seen and known by them? Or mostly just intensely drawn to them?
Today’s free download is a clarity checklist called Am I in Limerence or Love? It walks you through the key markers of each state so you can see more clearly what’s actually driving your feelings.
What Do You Do If You’re in Limerence?
If you’re single and limerent for someone:
Slow down the fantasy. Limerence lives in your head, not in the actual relationship you have with this person. The more you can engage with who they actually are, including their real quirks, limitations, and ordinary humanity, the harder it is for the idealized projection to survive. This doesn’t mean you won’t still find them wonderful. But it brings you back to reality.
Also consider what the limerence is pointing to. Are you lonely? In a transitional moment in your life? Craving the feeling of being chosen? The limerent object is often a screen onto which a lot of unmet needs get projected. Getting curious about the need underneath is usually more useful than focusing only on this specific person.
If you’re in a committed relationship and limerent for someone else:
Don’t act on it. That’s not the same as pretending the feeling doesn’t exist. It does and suppressing it without examining it won’t help. But acting on limerence while in a committed relationship, whether through an affair or by leaving, is almost always a decision made from a neurochemical state rather than genuine clarity. Limerence fades. Decisions have consequences.
Reduce contact with the limerent object where you can. Limerence needs fuel. Every interaction, every ambiguous moment, every unanswered question feeds it. Limiting contact doesn’t feel good short-term, but it’s one of the few things that actually works. Willmott and Bentley compared it to the way someone in recovery avoids their substance: total contact avoidance is the gold standard, even when it’s not fully possible.
Also look honestly at your relationship. Sometimes limerence for someone else is your nervous system’s way of flagging something in your primary relationship that needs attention. Not necessarily that it’s broken, but that there’s emotional distance, a loss of connection, or something unexplored. The limerence may be a distraction from something that deserves your direct attention.
If you’re limerent for someone who’s unavailable:
This one is painful and I don’t want to minimize that. Being deeply consumed by feelings for someone who can’t or won’t reciprocate is its own kind of grief. The work here is partly about tolerating that grief directly, rather than continuing to feed the fantasy as a way of avoiding it.
It also helps to get honest about what unavailability offers you. For some people, limerence for an unavailable person keeps them emotionally occupied in a way that feels safer than real vulnerability with someone who could actually hurt them. If the people you’re most drawn to are consistently out of reach, that pattern is worth exploring.
What Helps Limerence Resolve?
Tennov identified three main ways limerence ends.
- First: the limerent object makes their disinterest unambiguous and final, removing the uncertainty that sustains the whole thing.
- Second: the relationship becomes mutual, committed, and stable, and limerence gradually shifts into something like real love.
- Third: limerence transfers to a new person, which doesn’t resolve the underlying pattern, it just restarts it.
What doesn’t help: feeding the fantasy, maintaining ambiguous contact, or waiting passively for the feeling to pass.
What does help: reducing uncertainty in either direction, building a life rich enough that one person doesn’t occupy all your emotional space, addressing the attachment wounds underneath, and, if the pattern keeps repeating, working with a therapist who understands limerence.
Wrapping Up
Limerence is real. It’s not a moral failing, it’s not proof you’ve found the love of your life and it’s not something to be ashamed of. It’s a neurochemical and psychological state that millions of people experience and that almost nobody has a good name for. Now you do.
Having a name for it gives you a choice. You can keep riding the wave of intrusive thoughts and emotional highs and lows, or you can start asking the questions that actually lead somewhere: What do I really need? Is this feeling serving me? And what would it mean to want something I could actually have?
Today’s free download, Am I in Limerence or Love? A Clarity Checklist is the place to start. It’s short, direct, and it’ll help you get honest about what you’re actually experiencing.
Therapy-to-Go Bundle
And if you’re realizing this is a pattern for you, if you keep falling into this same consuming, destabilizing state and you want real tools for working through it, I’ve put together a Therapy-to-Go Bundle for this episode which includes:
- Journaling Prompts to Uncover What’s Underneath the Longing
- A Step-by-Step Worksheet for Working Through a Limerent Thought Spiral
- Is This Limerence or Love? A more in depth Worksheet for Getting Honest About What You’re Actually Experiencing
- What’s This Really About: A Worksheet for Identifying the Unmet Need Underneath the Limerence
- Breaking the Limerence Cycle: A Personal Action Plan for Starving the Loop and Rebuilding Your Focus
Buy the bundle now for $10 and get all the above. OR join Abby’s One Love Collective for only $8/month, and get a Therapy-to-Go Bundle for each episode, plus ad-free episodes of the podcast, live Q&A’s with Dr. Abby, and access to an amazing community that’s all about real growth.
Resources for Limerence vs. Love: What It Is, Whether You Have It, and How to Break Free
References
- Tennov, D. (1979). Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. Scarborough House.
- Willmott, L., & Bentley, E. (2015). Exploring the lived-experience of limerence: A journey toward authenticity. The Qualitative Report, 20(1), 20–38. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2015.1420
- Bradbury, P., Short, E., & Bleakley, P. (2024). Limerence, hidden obsession, fixation, and rumination: A scoping review of human behaviour. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-024-09674-x
- Fisher, H., Aron, A., & Brown, L. L. (2005). Romantic love: An fMRI study of a neural mechanism for mate choice. Journal of Comparative Neurology, 493(1), 58–62. https://doi.org/10.1002/cne.20772
- Marazziti, D., Akiskal, H. S., Rossi, A., & Cassano, G. B. (1999). Alteration of the platelet serotonin transporter in romantic love. Psychological Medicine, 29(3), 741–745. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291798007946
- Wakin, A., & Vo, D. B. (2008). Love-variant: The Wakin-Vo model of limerence. Presented at the 2nd Global Conference: Challenging Intimate Boundaries. Inter-Disciplinary.Net.
