At this point, you will be well-acquainted with the addictive nature of limerence, entailing wild highs and lows that lead to full-blown neurochemical dependence. You will also be aware of the immense leverage that lies in radically but simply reprogramming your subconscious mind when it comes to permanently beating limerence and never looking back (for in-depth instructions, refer to my book).

However, limerence has a subtle, insidious way of entrapping you which extends beyond its mental health symptoms and social implications. This feature of limerence is rarely spoken about, yet is experienced by every single limerent on the planet and simply must be addressed in order to successfully slam the door on it forever. In short, it is the fact that limerence feels so sentimentally meaningful that it can seem implausible, unfair and downright impossible to believe that it is something that you actually have to ‘get over’. In order to extirpate these doubts of yours, I am going to present you with a completely novel way of viewing limerence: as one of many emergent phenomena that your brain creates on a daily basis. Definitions will be covered, in case you are not familiar with the concept of emergence.

I am confident that this way of conceptualising limerence will speak to you. It is a very effective way to shatter any lingering illusory thoughts that the sheer intensity and, arguably, beauty of limerence is a). magical and b). something worth holding onto. Other models of limerence fall short of doing this, not quite giving the limerent, an analytical thinker who is not easily convinced, a satisfying reason to permanently kiss goodbye to the romantic rollercoaster. My goal is to introduce you to an array of different ways of thinking about limerence, so that you can decisively and contentedly close all of those ‘but what if…?‘ Google chrome tabs that you have open in your mind, for once and for all.

First and Foremost: The Principal Truth of Limerence

The human brain is designed to chase highs. This is something that you will all be aware of, most likely having delved into some neurobiology by this point with the aim of better understanding your limerent brain. However, I want to remind you of this before I present you with a slightly different way of viewing limerence.

Our tendency to chase a). generic highs, and b). whatever feels psychologically good to us personally, has been preserved over the span of evolution because it has kept us alive and enabled successful gene transmission (i.e. producing offspring that also eventually reproduce). Similarly, we are all prone to a degree of anxious rumination.

If our ancestors had not been prone to craving glucose, stressing about the safety of their children and occasionally becoming infatuated and forming long-term pair-bonds, we would not be around today. A degree of obsessionality is, thus, hardwired into us. Of course, genetic variation renders some of us more capable of a). zooming into topics/tasks that we find interesting and b). maintaining this laser focus than others. While external factors are extremely important with respect to how your genes are expressed, your genetics determine the natural limits of your traits; read about that here if you are interested.

This line of thinking is what I would refer to as ‘the objective truth behind limerence’ – we are all prone to states of fixation/rumination, but you, being limerent, are naturally hyper-susceptible due to your genetic makeup and natural neurotransmitter levels. However, limerence isn’t a pure result of genetics – it also requires psychological components to actually occur. Thus, you can forever free yourself by confronting these root causes.

Every single limerent on the planet needs to start viewing their condition through the lens of an evolutionary biologist-gone-psychologist, realising that intense, obsessional mental afflictions are completely avoidable even if you feel that you are ‘locked into them’. No case is intractable – that I can promise you! But, let’s go a little further and play with how we view limerence – I think this alternative (but complementary) model will resonate with you, and may be exactly what you need to sever your attachment to this emotional chaos for once and for all.

What Is Emergence?

Emergence is seen in the outputs of all types of natural and manmade systems. It involves basic components interacting in a complex manner to produce phenomena with properties that the individual building blocks do not possess. Depending on the nature of the system involved, these emergent phenomena can be types of behaviour, states, physical structures, or even glamorous patterns. In the natural world, a neat example of emergence is tornados; their colossal power and destruction potential is unexpected when the molecular dynamics of air and water are studied (which constitute their basic building blocks), rendering them rather awe-inspiring. Similarly, ants are relatively simple insects whose primary mode of behaviour is to follow pheromones; when thousands of them coalesce operate together, however, the result is a highly sophisticated colony featuring self-organising hierarchies… in other words, a full-blown insect kingdom!

Limerence As An Emergence Phenomenon

Now, the brain is a chief example of a complex biological system, compising roughly 100 billion neurons and 10-50 times that number of supportive glial cells. These are all organised into different brain areas, which have different (but often overlapping) roles and form larger neural networks that also communicate with one another. This intricate, hierarchical structure of the brain enables cellular communication (in the form of neurons sending action potentials) to impact not only their neighbouring cells, but also, eventually, the entire brain. In addition to this feed-forward communication (i.e. small, relatively powerless neurons kickstarting electrical activity that eventually results in the entire brain being recruited), there is also feedback from the higher cortical areas to the rest of the brain. The result is a bidirectional wave of activity, with neurons in the more ‘primitive’ brain regions like the amygdala stimulating those in cortical areas, and these higher regions also influencing the primitive areas. This is is how the brain induces any form of output.

This holistic, all-encompassing view of neurocomputation is in line with the latest cognitive neuroscience research. We used to take a more reductionist approach, assuming that specific, tiny hubs of neurons could all be precisely mapped to different outputs, but the reality is that most brain outputs (including movements, behaviours, moods…) involve the entire brain integrating stimuli, predicting what the situation entails and orchestrating the most suitable response.

We now have an idea of how the brain works, but where does emergence come into this? Well, brain outputs are emergent phenomena because they all a). arise from neurons firing action potentials and communicating in mass but b). possess qualities that are seemingly autonomous to and dissociable from this cellular activity. By ‘brain output’, I am referring to seemingly simple things like the ability to kick a football or speak your native language (which, in reality, aren’t simple!), but also to:

• emotions e.g. guilt, embarrassment
• simple moods e.g. feeling tired and stressed, or energised
• consciousness itself (a prime example of neural emergence, involving neurons essentially creating self-awareness)
• the ability to quickly perceive colours
• different types of pain, the experience of which can be explained by the electrophysiological properties of neurons yet seems to somehow transcend them
• normal romantic feelings
• intense, ongoing psychological states like limerence

… these are all examples of emergent phenomena! Whether we class them as weak or strong emergence is a whole debate in itself (check out the references at the end of this post if you are interested in the semantics).

Why Should You Care?

So, we now have a scientifically and philosophically satisfying alternative way of conceptualising the chaotic state that is limerence: one of the thousands of emergent phenomena that your brain produces. While these outputs seem magical when their true, basic correlates (a.k.a. neurons) are considered, they are not really magic. While sophisticated and impressive to us humans, they are actually not enshrouded in any real mystery because they are inevitable – emergent phenomena seamlessly and predictably arise from complex systems, of which the brain is a clear example.

Why is this revelant to your recovery from limerence? Well, it provides you with an effective way to combat the niggling existentialism that other styles of thinking can’t always fully assuage. Whenever you find yourself spiralling into a pit and and reflecting on how, despite the enormous issues it presents you with, limerence seems to carry such beautiful, powerful sentimental weight, remind yourself of this: it feels colossally evocative, but intensity is to be expected of any emergent state.

Emergent states are all very ‘something’ – it just so happens that romantic states feel closer to our hearts, so we are prone to sentimentalising them and concluding that this ‘very-ness’ is somehow divinely meaningful. Your ability to have a bad headache is also emergent, and an ‘intense’ experience – so is the ability to be conscious.

The intensity of limerence isn’t a sign that the state is spiritually important, or that the highs are worth the lows (they are not!), it just ‘is’. Just like a red car looks ‘very red’, like you may experience a stomach ache viscerally and intrusively for hours and feel ‘very sick’, and like you may feel ‘very tired’ every night before bed’. Feeling ‘very in love’ with the wrong person is no more significant, meaningful or worthy of clinging onto/defending despite the unfavourable consequences than any other unwanted emergent phenomena that you regularly experience.

Conclusion

Intensity is, undeniably, a quality that imbues the experience of limerence, but it is not correct or helpful to equate intensity with a). permanence or b). some abstract, divine ‘meaningfulness’. To fall into that fallacy would be like fixating on the strong, overwhelming properties of pain, and concluding that pain must involve a component of spiritual significance because it is so ‘present’ and ‘intense’. Emergent neural phenomena are, by definition, always a). intense, b). all-encompassing and c). seem to come to life and operate autonomously from the biology that underpins them. But, emergence is not really magical or numinous. When we prompt ourselves to be analytical and question what it really is, it becomes evident that some forms of it are, ultimately, simply better avoided.

Further Reading

Here’s a good review on emergence in the central nervous system (explaining in depth the requirements for a phenomenon to be ‘truly emergent’, and the differences between strong and weak emergence).

For a more philosophical look at emergence and the strong vs weak debate, check out this paper.

Thinking In Systems: A Primer by Donatella Meadows (a highly accessible introduction to thinking about life in terms of the systems all around us – from economics and sociology to biology).