Since limerence entails pathological obsession with a limerent object (LO) who you deem ‘magical’, it naturally involves you fretting over how they view you. As long as you stay limerent without treating the psychological root causes, you will be bound to engage in circular thinking and rumination regarding all aspects of your LO’s behaviour. After all, the basis of limerence is the desire to pair-bond with this elusive individual and receive unlimited reserves of their attention/their emotional recognition. When you find yourself ‘researching’ what music, food and books they like on social media, wondering how to re-spark up your text conversation with them or reflecting on a recent real-life encounter, you are really in pursuit mode, the goal being to bond… to tightly enmesh with them. Your limbic system (housing most of the brain regions involved in emotion) and reward circuitry are conjuring up the illusion that a). you ‘need’ this person, and b. that forcing the connection will gain you ‘intimacy points’ and promise you a relationship with them.

NB: As you will be aware, this is not how it works. Thus, the limerent state is only a hindrance and never serves you. If prone to it, you must treat it like the plague and ruthlessly commit to overcoming it. If you’re new here, check out this post about the importance of rewiring your subconscious mind . This is one of the three facets of limerence recovery, which are elaborated on in full depth in my book The Limerent Mind.

All Limerents Make This Fatal Mistake

The recovery programme explored in my book effectively tackles and heals all aspects of your psychology that have aligned you with limerence, permanently curing you and rendering you immune to future episodes if you heed the advice. However, in this post, I would like to bring your attention to a sneaky, insidious collateral effect of limerence that is easily overlooked but very damaging. I believe you may be surprised upon finding out what it is, as it is not an element of limerence that is typically highlighted or even acknowledged.

What is it?

The tendency to conclude things about your own character while you are limerent, based on how your LO is treating you.

“If This Special Person Acts Like This, This Must Mean I’m…”

When limerent, it feels oh-so-natural and intuitive to ‘deduce’ things about yourself in response to your LO and how they act/don’t act with you. After all, the salience of this person currently seems sky-high to you, and your entire reward system has morphed around them/how they treat you. But, most deductions that you make about yourself in this state, in which you feel smitten but dejected and in agony, will be a). non-constructive, b). downright unrealistic/inaccurate and b). potentially devastating to your self-esteem and further aggravate the situation.

I really cannot stress this enough – there is no limit to how much negative momentum can arise from committing this classic limerence error. Why? Because you are already in a nightmarish state of unrequited love, which you can, and WILL, recover from, but which is undeniably very painful and raw. You see, the bulk of the pain that comes along with limerence isn’t deep, visceral anger over the fact that you can’t date your LO – most limerents are incredibly emotionally intelligent and respectful. They realise, early on, that their LO owes them nothing. They will probably still stay in pursuit mode, sure, because their ‘love’ feels so strong and their brain is urging them to do so, but they simultaneously grasp, albeit deep-down, that they are doing so in vain. They know that they are neurochemically and psychologically sick and out of whack, and that this is about them, rather than their LO’s behaviour (although LOs do play a role, we can’t blame them).

No – limerence involves a nuanced set of emotions that extend far beyond mere romantic jealousy/ indignation at not ‘having been chosen’ by this love interest. Since sufferers must possess areas of psychologically fragility to have become limerent in the first place, and because limerence is such a sentimental form of pathological love, it comes along with highly poignant emotional vicissitudes. Before you achieve recovery, which will grant you complete mental stability, peace and (to boot) unreactivity/neutrality all possible future LOs, you will experience grief, regret, embarrassment, humiliation, and a whole host of other similar feelings. Thus, you will be very vulnerable. The very neurotransmitters that underpin limerence, including heightened oxytocin activity, render you much more susceptible to a). imprinting on your LO (in fact, ox. enables the formation of pair-bonds as well as the mother-infant bond) and b). feeling rejection/criticism much more strongly.

This is because oxytocin serves to strengthen neural pathways that represent social memory (read about this here if interested). This is its true overarching role as a neurotransmitter- in order to foment bonding in mammals, it needs to make us more ‘receptive’ to how these individuals that we are bonding to are treating us/rewarding us. The brain is always responding to unexpected contingencies, with those involving our loved ones being taken particularly seriously and being represented by particularly potentiated neural connections.

Please, Do Not Add Insult to Injury

So, you’re unfortunately currently very prone to a). feeling a lot in response to your LO and b). developing new beliefs concerning yourself, your intrinsic nature and your capabilities based on how they act, due to memories involving them treating you being laid down quickly and efficiently. Therefore, you must do whatever you can to engage your higher-level cognition and counter this, rather than adding fuel to the fire..

If you allow the fact that your LO has not replied to your Whatsapp message, looked at you in a derisive way or even made a callous comment to you to genuinely alter how you view your own character, you are putting yourself through even more pain than is necessary. You are also risking delaying the unfolding of your recovery. The fact that you have fallen into this unusual romantic state indicates that you already have some suboptimal psychological areas to sift through and selectively correct. You do not, at this point, want to develop further limiting belief systems by virtue of paying mind to your LO’s behaviour, framing them as ‘insightful’ when they are probably just unpredictable/distant and, at worst, may even be highly disinterested in your character.

Remind yourself of your LO’s flaws, even mentally comparing them to someone you are not too keen on and who they have something in common with if this helps you. Do whatever you need to do to reframe them as a). a normal person, rather than b). an omnipotent, all-wise, commanding figure, whose enlightening judgments you should ‘wholly trust’.

Your LO’s reactions to you are in no way, shape or form ‘perfect, objective deductions’ about who you are as a person. In reality, no one’s are – not your friends’, your colleagues’ or your parents’. However, your LO, of all people, is particularly poorly poised to be someone whose ideas about you are worth meticulously dissecting.

You have no good reason to believe that your LO, of all people, is making accurate inferences about you. Assimilating them/being hyper-reactive to how they may view you, and ‘what that might mean’, will be of zero advantage to you. They are not a good friend of yours who has been with you through thick or thin, or your sibling – they are someone with whom you may have a ‘connection’ of some nature, but who is ultimately acting erratically and causing you a lot of pain.

This still stands true if your LO is someone you technically know well, like an ex-partner; the illusory, toxic dynamic/dance that you two are currently engaging in reveals that they are in no position to judge you, and that it would be injurious and fruitless for you to whip out the magnifying glass and analyse their reactions. In short, their reactions do not deserve your undivided focus – this person is not as capable of seeing you as you think. If they were, they would also a). perceive the current state you are in, b). bring it up with you and (if appropriate) c). stop engaging with you in a way that feeds your hope.

Remember: you currently feel too much for your LO, which is an issue in itself that must be proactively addressed. However, it is entirely unhelpful and unwise to extrapolate from this intensity you feel, assuming that it must mean that your LO is a ‘perceptive judge of character’, that they ‘know you better than anyone else’ or that you must ‘amend your character to meet their standards’.

Your LO Isn’t Seeing ‘The Truth’… At All

So, relatively speaking, your LO is unlikely to be someone whose opinions you should place unwavering faith in. Moreover, this person is seeing you at your absolute worst. Whether you have let the cat out of the bag or not (by exhibiting your unbridled emotions, intentionally or unintentionally), energy does not lie. Your LO, if emotionally astute, will be fully aware that you act strangely around them and crave their attention/recognition. This will be particularly true if they, like most people, are not used to people seeming so enthralled by them. How this makes them feel, and how they relate to you in response, will depend on an array of factors. They may a). have an innate narcissistic streak and enjoy the fact that you are suffering, b). be empathetic themself and wish to end your pain, but find the topic too awkward to bring up so continue treating you as ‘normally’ as they can or c). try to deny the situation and dissociate from all responsibilities, tuning in occasionally but predominantly ignoring you.

It is most likely that your situation will fall into a nebulous intermediate zone between these extremes, with other factors (like your actual connection with this LO/the context e.g. are they a random classmate, your domineering boss or your friend’s girlfriend?) also being of utmost relevance.

But, what is certain is that, even if a lovely, emotionally intuitive individual (who just happens to have resonated with you too much and sent you limerent because they complement specific psychological weaknesses of yours that you need to treat), your LO is seeing you in a very warped, strange light because of how you are acting. This links back into the overarching message that I hope clearly permeates every post on this website – limerence is your enemy. It brings out the worst in you and sends you into a robot, subservient trance – energy that you, an intelligent and passionate individual, should never have to channel. Limerence as a state, in itself, is an absolute insult to who you are; even when involving well-intentioned LOs, it can spiral to colossally bleak, humiliating heights because its effects on you are so potent. When it involves shady characters who enjoy other people’s pain, however, there are no limits to how dark it can get (before you dare to grab the reigns and actively confront its root causes, of course).

The Takeaway

I’ve provided you with a number of bits of evidence regarding why you must do whatever you can to reject the illusion that a). your LO is your ultimate ‘judge’, and that b). you need to analyse every snide smile, blank look, questionable comment, unexplained absence, or straight-up insult that your LO may throw your way and radically change yourself in response. You see, limerence already involves you temporarily viewing the prospect of gaining this person’s affection as a points game, so don’t make this worse.

Don’t conflate a). strong, obsessive romantic feelings and the notion that b). the subject of these feelings (your LO) must possess the supernatural ability to read you perfectly, or that they are your soulmate. By the way, if you do struggle with the soulmate/twin flame delusion (which is likely the case if you are convinced that your LO is doing you a favour by ‘spotting your true flaws’ and bringing them to your attention) this post should help you extirpate this particular idea from your mind.

So, what should you do if your LO acts a little strangely or pulls away, and you find yourself instantaneously bombarded by thoughts about whether you should be colder next time/blink less/maybe wear a less jarring shade of yellow. Always think critically, along these lines: if a casual friend treated me like this, would I really wish to dig so deeply/analyse the interaction in this way/conclude such clear, negative things about myself? Or, is this interest in their view of me a collateral effect of my problematic, self-sabotaging desire to bond with this person, who I must ultimately get over?

(Image source: David Shrigley’s wonderful art.)