Limerence or Love?

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:02]Limrance, love, dependency, infatuation.

[00:00:08]What a mess.

[00:00:11]If you search the life's wisdom playlist on this channel, you will find several videos dedicated to what is love and how to distinguish it from these other states of mind. But today I want to focus on limrance. It's a word a word much used abused and molested. Many people misconstrued or misunderstanded or both. My name is Samakin. I'm the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited and I'm a professor of psychology. And no I am not lirant nor am I in love right now.

[00:00:55]I'm not sure if it's a promise or a threat.

[00:00:59]Okay, Shaim and Sha.

[00:01:03]Let's delve right in. Limrance is intense.

[00:01:09]The first thing about limrance is its intensity and it does include elements of infatuation, but it's a kind of infatuation that is obsessive. an infatuation that you cannot stop, you cannot control, you cannot modify, you cannot forget about for a while. It's omnipresence, constantly there. It's all pervasive. It permeates and pervades everything you do, your rest hours, your dreams, your sleep. Limrance is intense obsessive infatuation. And the subject of limrance is usually a person, another person, but doesn't have to be. You could be lirant with even an idea or a belief or a faith or a nation or you you could be lirant with anything basically although most commonly of course it's with another person. Now limrance is not short whereas infatuation or a crush could be a short-term thing. Limrance usually lasts minimally for weeks, more often months and years long or decades long lirance is not that rare.

[00:02:28]In order to become so obsessed and so fixated on another person, you need to idealize them. Limrance therefore has a pronounced component of idealization. It involves an impaired reality testing, a misaluation, the wrong gauging of another person, superimposing on another person a kind of fantastic image, a narrative, a piece of fiction, rendering the other person a participant in a mental play, in a psychological movie. In other words, limrance is not actually aimed at another person realistically. It's not aimed at a real person. It's aimed at an invented entity that uses the other person as a kind of hangar.

[00:03:28]The lirance is the clothing and the person the other person is the hangar.

[00:03:33]And very often the content of the limrance, the idealized content of the lirance has very little to do with the other person is counterfactual.

[00:03:43]It's therefore much more than a crush.

[00:03:46]It's what we would call an attachment or a bond. And because it is obsessive, it involves intrusive thoughts, intense emotional cycling, highs and lows, liability, and the lirant object has the capacity to regulate the person who is in limrance. In other words, there is an outsourcing of internal regulation from the limmerant person to the lirant object from the person who is in limrance to the target of the limrance.

[00:04:31]The target of the limrance gains control over the limmerant person and is able to change the moods and the emotions and the effects and the capacity to regulate of the other person.

[00:04:47]This is especially true if the lirant object is withholding, avoidant, rejecting, non-resrocating.

[00:04:58]When the person in the throws of limrance directs the limrance at the limmerant object, if the limmerant object refuses to reciprocate, this intensifies the limrance and the obsessive nature of the limrance. Limrance, as I said, doesn't have to be romantic. It can happen in platonic situations. The limrance can be directed at something completely abstract.

[00:05:27]But in the majority of cases of course we're talking about a relationship real or imaginary between two people.

[00:05:34]Limrance when not reciprocated contains strong artifacts or strong elements of delusionality.

[00:05:43]It it is very reminiscent of erottomanic delusions and it's very difficult to demarcate. The differential diagnosis becomes a bit blurry or a bit fuzzy.

[00:05:57]Liberance is a is a word coined in the 1970s by psychologist Dorothy Tennov.

[00:06:03]Teo V. She wrote a book love and lirance the experience of being in love. Tennov defined liance as a type of love sickness.

[00:06:16]Limrance therefore is a cexis. It's the investment of emotional energy in the idea of love in a state of being in love. In other words, limrance is being in love with love itself rather than with any specific person with a love object. In this sense, of course, limrance is a form of impaired or compromised object relations.

[00:06:48]Whereas in healthy mature adults, the psychological energy, the cexis is directed at another person whose separateness and externality are recognized and whose whose uh traits, qualities, shortcomings and so on are properly gauged. This is in healthy relationships. In limrance, all the energy is directed at the state of being in love. It's it's as if the limmeran target or the lirant object is just an excuse to be in love is replaceable, is interchangeable. And this of course reminds us a lot of the opening salvo, the opening phases of the narcissist shared fantasy.

[00:07:40]Limrance is a kind of secure base. Limrance restores a sense of safety because it is the opposite of real intimacy.

[00:07:54]Whereas real intimacy is vulnerable because it does depend on the other person.

[00:08:02]Limrance is actually invulnerable, is actually safe because the individual, the lirant individual is invested in an imaginary fantasy, not in a real human being. And because the investment is an imaginary fantasy, there is a sense of mastery and control instead of pursuing genuine profound deep reciprocal relationships.

[00:08:31]Delimmerant person chases unavailable targets. People who are not likely to reciprocate or whose reciprocation is bound to be temporal or superficial.

[00:08:47]So one of the reasons people prefer lirance to true love is that they don't feel lovable. They don't feel that they're deserving or worthy of authentic, deep, all embracing, containing, holding love.

[00:09:06]They don't believe this. They think they're not lovable. They think that at best they deserve some breadcrumbs.

[00:09:13]Um, and they should never fall in love with the real person because a real person is likely to reject them having come to known to know them. And instead they should fall in love with imaginary characters like in a video game. You know idealization is the conversion of reality into a video game and realizing this breaks the spell of limmerance.

[00:09:41]Now, limmerance of course is not included in any diagnostic manual. Not in the diagnostic and statistical manual published by the American Psychiatric Association, not by the International Classification of Diseases published by the World Health Organization. And so, it's not a mental health issue. It's not a mental health disorder. It's not a mental illness. It's not a diagnosible clinical entity. But there are scholars and researchers for example Julia Poerio um she's an associate professor in psychology at the University of Sussex in England they claim these scholars claim that it's a particular state mental state of longing yearning um pining for someone and there are signs where can you can tell liance there are several signs which sets it set it apart from real love. Number one, you constantly think about someone.

[00:10:47]Even if you are not in a relationship with that person or you haven't been in a relationship with that person for a very long time, you can't stop thinking about them. Now, this is very common at the inception of rel of love. When you fall in love, when you're infatuated, going from crush to actual infatuation and from infatuation to love, the initial phases also usually involve intrusive thinking, intrusive thoughts about the other person. But that's a passing phase. It's a passing phase and it does not obstruct or hamper functioning.

[00:11:26]Whereas in limrance, it does. Another sign intensity.

[00:11:34]The sensations are intense. The euphoria is is almost uh high like like high.

[00:11:42]It's a high. The dysphoria is is depression. Abysmal depression. The everything is very very exaggerated, hyperbolic, allconsuming, digesting. every everything is threatens to not only disregulate you but somehow eliminate you. So when this intensity is is paralyzing in effect uh uh it is a strong indicator of lirance.

[00:12:13]Love is more moderate. The initial phase of love could be intense but it's not a kind of paralyzing intensity. On the very contrary it's a motivating intensity. Whereas in limrance it's it's paralyzing. Gradually in limrance this paralysis disables defenses against negative effects. In in other words this paralysis in limrance is very very reminiscent of decompensation.

[00:12:42]It brings on guilt, grief, um shame. All these negative effects begin to overwhelm the individual.

[00:12:56]This rarely if ever happens with love.

[00:13:01]Loves bring brings up positive effects.

[00:13:06]Extremely rarely is love coupled with guilt or shame or so. That's one test.

[00:13:15]If you are obsessed with someone, infatuated and constantly feel bad, egodistonic, you feel guilt and shame and so that's probably lirance, not love. Next, are you able to entirely separate from the other person? Cut the other person out of your life, break up, go away. Are you able to do that? In principle I'm not saying that you should do that or could do that or will do that but are you capable of doing this if you are you are if you are what you are experiencing is love. If you cannot do this even in your imagination, even as a scenario, even in fantasy, you cannot imagine a world without this person, you cannot imagine life without this person.

[00:14:03]You'd rather die literally, then probably we're talking about limrance, the suspension of will. Even when you want to, even when you know it's good for you to walk away, you can't. And this is of course very reminiscent of trauma bonding. But the but trauma bond is the outcome of intermittent reinforcement which is which is external emanating from the outside. Whereas this kind of trauma bond is self-inflicted.

[00:14:31]It's the outcome of selfadministered intermittent reinforcement. He loves me he loves me not. You know the famous thing with the petals. That's intermittent reinforcement. Now in love when you're in love you are in full control of your faculties. Love is not blind. This complete it's a complete myth. It's nonsense. On the very contrary love renders you a bit hypervigilant. You're alert.

[00:15:03]You are constantly accumulating and gathering information about the loved one. You're trying to fit all these data together. You're trying to create a coherent cohesive narrative which would reduce your anxiety. So in love we are we our capacity to see the other is enhanced.

[00:15:24]When you ignore red flags when you pine for someone even if they are taking advantage of you or they're abusive.

[00:15:34]When you can't live without someone who puts you down, rejects you, mocks and ridicules your affection, perpetually strings you along, criticizes you um harshly and so on. That is a strong indication of limrance, not love.

[00:15:53]Your thoughts about the person are intrusive and uncontrollable regardless of the input from the other person. Whereas in love the input from the other person is crucial. In real love you can definitely fall out of love. In limrance you can't. You compensate for this lack of information by fantasizing about the other person idealizing them as a perfect partner and so on so forth. So there's an information asymmetry. Whereas in real love, the other person is available to you and provides full disclosure and vulnerability. In limrance, usually the elements of avoidance, withdrawal, hiding, surreptitiousness and and so on.

[00:16:43]Again, I want to clarify that the early stages of romantic relationship involve infatuation, which is a close close relative um and nonidentical twin of limits.

[00:16:57]You're thinking about the other person constantly. You perpetually want to spend time with them. You fantasize about the future with them. And it's very reminiscent of limits. But I've told you what the differences are. Many people experience this feeling, this sensation at one time or another when they fall in love. And infatuation is is very overpowering.

[00:17:20]Uh and if it is reciprocated, this develops later into true love, mature love, adult love, profound love in a normative relationship. This never happens with limrance.

[00:17:31]Limrance is being in love with frustration.

[00:17:38]being in love with non-resrocation, pining for the unattainable and unavailable.

[00:17:45]In most cases, eventually in a normal relationship, infatuation fades and disappears. People people transition to the more developed, the more evolved form of love, affection, communication, respect, boundaries, all these things.

[00:18:04]This is healthy, mature love. This never happens in limrance. Even if the limrance leads to an actual relationship, if the relationship is lirant, it's bound to be stormy and very damaging to both parties.

[00:18:21]Limrance involves competitiveness, entitlement, fear of rejection and humiliation, narcissistic injuries.

[00:18:30]Um when the other person doesn't return the lirant individual's feelings and the obsessive thinking and the fantasies take over.

[00:18:44]This takes a lot of head space. It disrupts ordinary life, regular life and destroys reality testing. And the limmeran person becomes then obsessed and compulsive in the sense that they become competitive, jealous, extremely jealous, possessive, entitled. They're terrified of rejection and humiliation. And they constantly experience narcissistic injuries. That's not love. That's nothing resembling love, even remotely. It's a cognitive invasion. It's a colon colonization of the mind. And this is exactly what happens in the initial phases of the of the narcissist shared fantasy. It's enjoyable. It's self aggrandizing.

[00:19:32]And consequently, it's very addictive, but it's very unhealthy.

[00:19:37]According to Tennov in her original book, a typical lirance lasts between 18 months to 3 years. But I mentioned that limrance can last for decades. Limrance can become a way a way of life, a way of avoiding real love of deferring and postponing true relationships.

[00:19:56]And so um there is a book called Smitten Romantic Obsession, the neuroscience of lirance and how to make love last written by Bellamy.

[00:20:07]And uh he described how lirance metastasicizes, metamorphoses, metamorphosize and and and becomes um essentially a personality disorder in a way kind of pseudo or personality disorder light. We're talking about bodily impacts but also um lies.

[00:20:30]Limrance leads to pathological lying.

[00:20:33]You f try try you you lie about your motiv your motivations if you're lirant you lie about motivations you try to find indirect ways to be close to a lirant object so you become a stalker you try to repair your mood cognitively so you begin to to engage in emotional thinking it's it's uh not healthy uh there's another book I forgot who wrote it when longing becomes is your lover.

[00:21:05]Okay, I think it's by McCracken if I remember correctly. Okay, so the same McCracken that I just mentioned uh suggested that modern dating culture and social media are responsible for the resurgence or this the insurgence of limrance. She wrote, uh, "The prevalence of ghosting and the ambiguity of hookup culture has likely led to more instances of limrance. With social media, you have more fuel for the fire, too. You can scroll through your limrant objects feeds and wind up with a mental loop that is enclosed, wondering what might have been."

[00:21:48]Alexandra Solomon is an adjunct professor at Boston University and she has a podcast actually called Reimagining Love which I highly recommend and she said once in one of the episodes she said the apps and social media provide access to inputs and data about the object of your desire. 20 years ago that wasn't the case and so there's a lack of information in the real world. There's no contact in the real world and there is all of this online in essentially a fantasy space and of course this is much more conducive to limrance than to love.

[00:22:30]Limrance is um can should not be confused with classical emotion dysregulation. It's not an element of borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, obsessivecompulsive disorder.

[00:22:45]And even in stalking, you know, limmerance can lead to stalking, but not all stalkers are limited. There's no research to to connect lirance to any of these phenomena. But still, it startingly startlingly resembles many of these things. There is a therapy called cognitive reappraisal strategy.

[00:23:08]It's a it's type of type of CBT, type of cognitive behavior therapy.

[00:23:13]And they teach you how to see the lirant object for who they are, not who they want you want them to be. In other words, they teach you how to get rid of the fantasy by superimposing on it the real person, your lirant form.

[00:23:30]So this helps a lot because the minute the fantasy dies, the limrance dies.

[00:23:35]Same with narcissist by the way. The minute the fantasy dies, the minute the shared fantasy is defunct, you're free.

[00:23:43]That's the first step in healing towards healing and and recovery. Uh there's limmerance is a negative feedback loop.

[00:23:53]You need to break it and convert it into a positive feedback loop. And this can be done even with standard CBT. You don't need special varants of CBT. There is uh exposure and response prevention strategies in CBT. For example, patients and therapists can collaborate on strategies to gradually challenge beliefs, including counterfactual imaginary beliefs such as the fantasy about the lirant.

[00:24:24]So, McCracken describes a conversation she had with a therapist and the therapist asked her, "How can you know that you tried too hard when in another situation your efforts might have been met with equal equal love?

[00:24:39]So Bellamy uh the aforementioned Bellamy recommends reducing contact with a limmeran target avoiding or even blocking them on social media. It can help to try to stop thinking or talking about them.

[00:24:54]Um now limrance is a much neglected topic.

[00:25:02]It's much discussed in in in in pop popular media and so on but not really in scholarly literature. Um and that's why many many therapists are not lirance informed actually and McCracken says lirance can feel inescapable because it's only a thought away but if you find help you can start thinking differently and be ready for a loving relationships. Now, here's a fantasy worth investing in.