In this post, I’ll guide you through the evolution of a single limerent episode… from the initial buzz you feel to the intense, agonising emotional dependence that ensues. This is an excerpt from The Limerent Mind. I’m including it here because I want you to realise that a) your limerent experience is perfectly normal, no matter what stage you’re in at the moment and b) to emphasise just how unpleasant limerence becomes, and how unhealthy it is.

The beginning part can feel too good to be true, but if you ‘go with the flow’ and don’t treat the root psychological causes, you always end up battling the bleak emotional darkness and lows I will describe.

Remember, because limerence is so treatable (regardless of who you are!), I like to deliver some tough love to direct you towards freeing yourself. But limerence is nothing to be ashamed of, and isn’t your fault. Just like no one tries opiates and intends to become a heroin addict, no limerent starts enjoying their LOs company with the hope of becoming utterly needy, enmeshed and addicted.

This is life – things happen. But there are tools available to you, and ways out of limerence… whether you’re in the first, dopamine-stage stage, or the last. With that said, let’s dive in.

The Initial Glimmer

To summarise, limerence starts off with the glimmer, which is your brain recognising that your LO expresses things that reso- nate with your unmet emotional needs. This occurs when they first stand out to you as ‘special’, which may be the first time you meet them but could equally be the first time you two properly interact. You’re feeling new feelings, and you like who you are with this engaging person in your life.

The Honeymoon Phase of Limerence

Soon, you’re drifting into the honeymoon phase of limerence, characterised by delusionality, soaring highs, and mild hypomania. During this stage, you feel really good around your LO and crave interactions with them, and above all, you feel intensely motivated to gain their approval and a ‘guarantee’ that they like you. This initial stage involves strong euphoria, with you enjoying the attention or recognition you get from your LO (even if it is minimal and most of your interactions occur in your mind).

Then, something LESS exciting happens. Due to your brain’s need to regulate its own activity, you habituate to whatever level of connection your LO provides you with and stop experiencing these highs so strongly. Just like a drug addict stops feeling the highs as strongly, and ‘needing’ more of the drug to achieve anything close to them.

In essence, you reach a point where denying your desire for ‘more’ from your LO becomes impossible. You wake up to the truth: you yearn for a highly intense, emotional (and typically romantic) relationship with your LO. Which, you sense, your LO likely won’t or can’t provide.

A Sign the Honeymoon Phase Is Ending? Pain and Reality Set In

At this point, towards the end of the initial honeymoon phase, you also simultaneously start to experience the lows of limerence. These are gut-wrenching, debilitating emotional episodes triggered when you receive less attention, reciprocation, or energy from your LO than you anticipated. Perhaps your LO doesn’t text back as enthusiastically as before, has lunch with someone else at work, or tells you they have a partner – and you feel limerent devastation for the first time, the opposite side of the coin to the highs. Or, if you’re dating your LO, perhaps they’re kind to you but seem to find you less appealing somehow.

At this point, you think, “What’s happened? I used to feel so good around my LO. I’m getting sick and losing control.“

But this neurochemical chaos has always been waiting to strike, hidden crudely behind the sky-high euphoria. Any time your LO fails to ‘reward’ you with the specific flavour of attention that you want in the moment, your brain perceives this as a violation of the fantasy that you two are soulmates who will ‘inevitably end up together AND be permanently emotionally enmeshed’.

You’re forced to take a swig of a medicine you don’t like, a medicine that reminds you of the reality: that you’re addicted to your LO, and misinterpreting your ‘bond’ with them as more meaningful than it is. Or, if you’re in a romantic relationship with them, that your dynamic is seriously imbalanced.

Upon each reminder of this nature, you descend into complete and utter emotional agony that may, absurdly, feel worse than any pain you’ve felt in the past while grieving or dealing with significant stressors.

Crystallised Limerence: Fully-Fledged Addiction, Featuring Highs and Lows

Once you’re acquainted with these strong lows, it’s safe to say that you are in a state of fully developed limerence. This is the crystallisation phase, comprising all the rawest emotions we associate with obsessive love.

You may start to have genuinely mixed feelings about your LO at this point, at times resenting them for the pain you are in and the impact that this obsession is having on your life. You spend a lot of your day feeling depressed, forcing a smile, and trying to be productive regardless. However, CRITICALLY, during this stage you are still able to feel a strong ‘buzz’ when your LO does reward you.

Living Hell: The Dependence Stage of Limerence

Things eventually take a turn for the worse, though. A few weeks after you move into ‘crystallised limerence’, you start to find that a) you stop feeling the giddy elation even when your LO does interact with you and b) you feel demotivated, low and possibly tearful every day, knowing only your LO can quickly make you feel better.

This is dependence, and you must view it for what it is: a temporary neurochemical state characteristic of full-blown addiction.

To Summarise: The Four Stages of Obsessive Love

The stages of limerence are: the initial glimmer, the honeymoon phase, crystallised limerence, and dependence. Some more fun than others, but all of them best treated and avoided entirely.

Limerence Evolves Predictably, But Can Be Treated at Any Stage

Luckily, you can bring this nightmarish state to a much-deserved end. When you meet your emotional needs and do the other psychological work outlined in The Limerent Mind and my other resources, you become someone who no longer needs their LO to access good, interesting, uplifting emotions.

This automatically starts to dismantle and treat the addiction, dissolve your neurochemical dependence on this person to feel functional and happy, and free you from all of the symptoms of limerence. From the highs, the lows, and if you’re in the final ‘dependence stage’, from the fatigue, apathy, and resentment you’ve accumulated.

You’ll be yourself again, unjaded, curious, and free to think about things and people that contribute net-positive results to your life!