Limerence: When a crush becomes obsessive

Overwhelming, distressing, all-consuming: this little-known form of romantic longing can have a devastating impact.

Tom Bellamy, a neuroscientist, was happily married when he developed feelings for his co-worker. He loved his wife. He did not want to start a romantic relationship with the co-worker, nor did he even tell her about his feelings. And yet, he could not stop thinking about her.

It may sound like a crush, but Bellamy uses another word for it: limerence. Coined as a psychological term in the 1970s, limerence is an intense, all-consuming, often obsessive attachment to another person that is different from other romantic feelings, according to Bellamy and other researchers. 

"Limerence is best described as an altered state of mind," Bellamy says. It feels fantastic at first, he adds, describing it as a natural high, giving you increased energy and optimism. "And that's why it's addictive. Your thoughts are racing, and you just generally feel more optimistic and euphoric," he says.

According to Google trends, worldwide search interest for limerence has risen since 2020. There has also been an increase in online material relating to limerence, such as threads and blogs wrestling with the question of when, and why, love might tip into obsession – and what those affected can do about it.

"Limerence is something that happens to us," in a way that may be involuntary, said Dorothy Tennov, the psychologist who first coined the term in her 1979 book, Love and Limerence. After conducting over 300 interviews about romantic love, she identified a phenomenon that didn't yet seem to have a name of its own – an involuntary, intrusive and overwhelming longing for another person. In psychological research, this person, the obsession, is known as the limerent object (LO). Being limerent does not necessarily mean then pursuing the other person, or feeling entitled to their attention. However, research suggests that in some cases limerence has the potential to develop into harmful behaviour, such as stalking.

Tennov wrote that an experience or "episode" of limerence might happen just once, or numerous times throughout a person's life. An average episode reportedly lasts between 18 months and three years, though some may last longer.

But most importantly, according to Tennov, if limerence is left unmanaged, it can have a devastating impact on the person experiencing it.

Bellamy describes it as a distressing experience. "I could clearly see – intellectually, there's no good end to this, and I don't want this to be happening. But I just could not get a hold of my emotions," he says, of his limerent episode. At this point, he adds, it can start to feel scary because "you feel helpless", and out of control.

The glimmer

How do you know if you're limerent, rather than infatuated or in love in a more conventional way?

One crucial aspect of limerence is that it feeds off a sense of uncertainty, says Bellamy, who has written a book about limerence and his experience of it, Smitten. In a non-limerent romantic situation, a person who is in love with someone would usually move past the initial stage of uncertainty, and feel relieved, happy and secure when they find out that they are loved back (or, feel sad when their feelings are not reciprocated). A limerent person, however, tends to be stuck in that stage of uncertainty, longing and hope, researchers suggest.

Serenity Strull/ BBC

Uncertainty is "really one of the major driving forces for it developing into what I would call 'addiction', where you literally are in a state of constant wanting", Bellamy says. He calls this sense of uncertainty the "glimmer" – essentially, a glimmer of hope for potential reciprocation, or connection with the longed-for person, though not necessarily in the form of a relationship.

"Some of these people don't even necessarily want a sexual relationship or romantic relationship with the other person. They just want their feelings to be reciprocated by them," says Ian Tyndall, a cognitive-behavioural psychologist at the University of Chichester in the UK. The higher the degree of uncertainty, the more the limerent person will desire reciprocation, while also fearing rejection.

Limerence is known to cause distress and disrupt productivity for sufferers, to the extent where limerent people might start to neglect themselves, says Tyndall. That could include neglecting eating, sleeping and personal hygiene, to not being able to hold down a job and neglecting other relationships with family, friends or siblings. "They tend to be stuck in the past, thinking about their previous interactions with the person, trying to ruminate and think about the meaning of that interaction," he says. "Their thinking is totally and utterly caught up with the person, and it dominates their life so much, that there's no room for anything else."

This is what makes limerence different to infatuation, which is another component of romantic love, characterised by its overwhelming nature and intensity in the early stages of a romantic relationship. Infatuation occurs at the beginning of many romantic relationships, and usually lasts from around three to six months, or sometimes up to a year, Tyndall says. But "there's usually nowhere near as many negative consequences for the person's physical health and their mental health," he says, whereas limerence is severely more intense. "When you're infatuated with someone you don't obsessively think about every single emotional cue where there's eye contact or a raised eyebrow… You don't tend to analyse the person's body language quite at the same level of as a person who is limerent."

Limerence is also somewhat different from romantic passion, researchers say. Romantic passion involves a longing for intimacy and closeness with another person, not only physical intimacy but emotional connection and emotional intimacy too – "to know and be known by that person", says Kathleen Carswell, assistant professor in the psychology department of Durham University in the UK. However, "someone who is limerent not only feels strong desire for intimacy with that person but will ruminate obsessively over that individual", she says.

Nevertheless, there may be some overlap between romantic passion and limerence, she suggests, as romantic passion can also have an obsessive, ruminating component and feel similar to an addiction. "Romantic passion has been found to operate on the dopaminergic or reward system of the brain and someone highly limerent or having high levels of the obsessive component might be thought of as someone who is addicted," she says.

Not everyone agrees with that view of limerence sharing some common ground with other forms of love and romance. Two researchers, who proposed their own model of limerence in 2008, argued that limerence is not interchangeable with love at all – the two exist independently. Limerence, they argue, is "negative, problematic and impairing".

Is limerence unique?

There is a lot we still don't know about limerence. We can't even be sure how many people experience it, due to small sample sizes in studies. It is not formally recognised as a psychological condition that a person is able to seek treatment for.

Some researchers speculate that it may be linked to attachment disorders, or other mental health conditions such as OCD, ADHD or PTSD, but there is little research on these potential links.

Nonetheless, Tyndall says that the topic is gaining more prominence in the field of psychology.

He and his colleagues developed a limerence questionnaire, completed by more than 600 people who had, or currently were experiencing limerence. Answers suggested that while limerence was associated with an anxious attachment style, the correlation wasn't large. Limerence is a "much, more profoundly debilitating condition" than anxious attachment, Tyndall says.

Some participants found that limerence "came out of nowhere", Tyndall says – they didn't report low self-esteem or self-worth beforehand. Similarly, the study's results suggest that people with limerence are not generally socially anxious, but feel very anxious about the person they are limerent about. For example, despite obsessing over every interaction and desiring to interact with the other person again, when faced with them, the intensity can be so severe that they might even run away.

Serenity Strull/ BBC

One of the potential negative impacts of limerence, outlined by Tennov in her 2005 follow-up book, was that limerence could lead people to engage in other obsessive, anti-social behaviours, such as stalking. But limerence is not in itself a pathology, or associated with a personality disorder, says Emma Short, professor of cyber psychology at London Metropolitan University.

"Limerence seems to be an exceptional connection and it's to do with that one individual and what they mean to you emotionally. It seems to be state-dependent on that one person that somehow has ignited this within you," she says.

Stalking differs, Short says, as you would begin to project your feelings onto that other figure and imagine you were entitled to them, or that they felt the same way as you. One study suggests that up to 72% of stalkers have some kind of psychopathological diagnosis. "Most people are protected by feelings of empathy for others, by clear boundaries as well – about what is their emotional experience and what is reality," Short says. "There's a personal integrity about it [limerence]. It's contained and there's full knowledge that it comes only from within."

In her study, Short and her colleagues concluded that while limerence might share traits associated with stalking, limerent individuals have not yet, and might not ever, progress into engaging in behaviours that are harmful to another person.

Love and limerence

Given its potentially distressing and obsessive nature, can limerence ever lead to a healthy, mutual relationship?

In the case of Bellamy, it did: with his wife. His wife, in fact, is also limerent (she was contacted by the BBC for this story, and has agreed with Bellamy's account and consented to its publication). "That relationship worked out. We fell into, sort of, proper love – a classic love, based on mutual respect, mutual affection, mutual care and desire, importantly," Bellamy says.

Bellamy never told his co-worker about his limerent feelings, but he did confide in his wife – which he regards as turning point.

But how did he get rid of the limerence for his co-worker? "I starved it out, essentially," he says. In his experience, avoiding contact with the person can help gradually lessen the addictive state.

Tennov also says in her book that limerence can fade away if all contact is cut, or if there is an outright rejection.

After all, without a glimmer of hope, there is nothing for the limerence to hold on to.

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