Limerence is a mind-bending condition that unleashes an array of obsessional emotions, motivations and behaviours in you. Of course, first and foremost, it drives you to analyse every last thing about your LO. You’ll find yourself incredibly interested in your LO’s life, personal relationships, pastimes, vices, and innermost thoughts and feelings. You’ll catch yourself hanging onto their every last word, dissecting everything they say as if they’re imparting the most valuable information in the world.

For ex:

• “They’ve just told me they’re joining the local gym. What’s their true motivation behind that – is it really superficial, or is it because they want to de-stress… because they’re overwhelmed and suffering in silence? Is there anything I can do to help them in their day-to-day life? Sure, lots of other people I know go to the gym (myself included), but my LO’s different – they don’t just ‘sign up to things’ willy-nilly. There must be a reason, and one worth figuring out.”

• “I wonder how they actually feel right before they drift off to sleep. They’re always so strong, stoic and confident, but surely they must occasionally reflect on things that worry them – contemplate possible future ventures, consider their insecurities, maybe even cry. If only I could see that side of them; I know I could help them connect to their emotions. I could help them loosen up… free them from the façade they feel that they have to maintain. Show them love, like no one else does.”

• “How on earth can they have such deep conversations with me and then not seem ‘affected’ by me? How can they stay up all night texting me, to only flash me a smile the next day and treat me like any old colleague? Does this mean that they’re simply not romantically interested, OR is it some sort of act – a guise designed to make me chase them? … Or am I going about this the wrong way, trying to put myself in their shoes and imagine how I’d feel if I acted like they’re acting? Maybe I should just accept I can’t read their mind, and hope for the best – show them how much I care? “

Despite it being accompanied by desperation, pain and craving, this aspect of limerence feels like a childlike state of curiosity – it’s very peculiar to feel an intriguing ‘world’ being opened up to you to this extent as an adult, a world that you don’t have to do any work to access. A world in which your LO’s coffee order, smoking habit, use of regional slang or brusque manner of greeting you all seem like equally fascinating pieces of a puzzle that will, when assembled, lead you to a goldmine.

It feels druglike and abnormal to be so moved by someone else, because it is. And this is why I’m writing this post – to remind you not to get lost in LO-centred analysis, unless its main purpose is genuinely to work out what it is about them that’s resonating with you. Unless you’re constantly bringing it back to yourself – to the mental stimulation and feelings/experiences/relationship dynamics that YOU crave in life.

Because limerence is all about your unmet needs – this person isn’t affecting everyone else in their life like this. 99% of the people they know will be able to consider them neutrally, occasionally rolling their eyes at their comments and/or actions. You’re so immersed in that LO-specific feeling because you’re in a pathological state of obsession; you must commit to freeing yourself, rather than indulging the delusion that your LO is the most interesting, demigod-like creature to have ever walked the planet.

This Isn’t Innocent, Childlike Curiosity

It’s also important to shatter the illusion that wanting to analyse your LO in this way is somehow a hugely meaningful sign that you should ‘keep them in your life’, or a reflection of your ‘true love’. Because, the obsessional, questioning part of limerence that involves you trying to understand them inside-out is simply your brain trying to get you closer towards emotional enmeshment. Towards securing your LO’s commitment, time and attention… 24/7.

Regardless of what thoughts about them you find yourself bombarded by (“what would they think about X”/”if they like me, why don’t they…”/”they told me they hated animals but send me animal emojis…what an enigma“), you’re subconsciously and unknowingly entertaining this thinking because you think it’ll let you align with them and ‘draw them towards yourself’.

Your brain knows that something isn’t working, as the connection isn’t blossoming as it wants. So, it’s taking matters into its own hands and trying to get you to amass more information about your LO. It’s pushing for more knowledge, more details, more intimacy… providing you with huge dopamine rewards when it perceives that you may be ‘getting closer to a guaranteed pair-bond with your LO’. Ironically, being so hyper-focused on them is pushing them further away, as this is the absolute last way to go about establishing any type of human connection (let alone a romantic one). But your brain doesn’t know this, and is acting in pure survival mode- remember, these emotional drives primarily arise from primitive subcortical regions.

This Thinking Is Harming You By Building The Wrong Momentum

In this way, you can even consider your intense interest and curiosity in your LO to be calculating. However, you shouldn’t in any way view yourself as possessing fixed ‘calculating’ personality traits, nor should you feel any semblance of self-hatred here; this isn’t about that. This is about viewing the intense longing and delusionality that comes along with limerence as your enemy – as something separate from your normal, lucid, well-intentioned character. Seeing the reality of what’s going on here – i.e. that you are only so keen to talk to your LO/ask them questions/steer the connection towards emotional vulnerability because your brain thinks that this will guarantee you a life with your LO (which you don’t need, and soon won’t want!) – is a wonderful way of countering the painful delusionality.

Why? Because it will help you stay in a place of clarity/remember that your LO isn’t your ‘one chance of true love’ – it’ll help you remind yourself that limerence is a beast to fight (and a demonic one, at that), not a fun, teenage-like emotional adventure to indulge. Again, please do be gentle with yourself – limerence is not your fault, nor are you in any way a manipulative person for desiring to ‘influence’ your LO on a primitive, emotional level. But, opting to view the problematic drive to learn everything about them as unwanted/even ‘a little twisted’ will help to squash one of the most tenacious delusions of limerence -> that it is a ‘beautiful expression of Romeo and Juliet-like romance‘. A little bit of tough love can be useful in propelling you away from these dangerous, illusory thoughts, which is exactly what you need to do. You owe it to yourself.

Because remember, limerence is all about your brain thinking that you need this individual in a life-or-death way (because of your current unmet needs, beliefs, and wounds) – and it influencing you to act from a horrid, limiting scarcity mentality that does you, and your real personality, complete injustice. And, recovery is about becoming a version of yourself who simply can’t need your LO, or any LO. This is the only route to true freedom; when you achieve this, you become limerence immune. When these people can’t affect you in this artificially intense, completely druglike way, they don’t become LOs in the first place, there is no limerence, and you are free to think about other things.

What Is The Source of Your Emotional Reaction?

So, next time you find yourself incredibly sad because you’ve heard a song that your LO’s mentioned that they love in passing, or inspired to send them a photo of a mountain you’re climbing because a mutual friend said that they ‘live and breathe nature’, remember to view those feelings/impulses as a mere, logical reflection of your current state – of your desire to enmesh with them. To become one with them. To ditch everything for them. And remember how absurd it is to feel this way towards anything in life – to feel such desperation for anything that isn’t food or water. Particularly in a romantic context, when this type of attitude only pushes people away. Frankly, you need to fight this – to eradicate this behavioural addiction and emerge immune.

And similarly, when your mind takes you on contemplative trips and you find yourself romanticising your LO’s funny little quirks (or even mundane details about their life), remember the following: these quirks/details/aspects of your LO’s character are only standing out to you and impacting you because:

a). your brain thinks “yes! Knowing this information will help me actually move the needle here – help me get the connection gaining some momentum. Now I know X, I can say Y/plan Z/mention something related next time we speak. I might just get a satisfactory response, or an exciting one – we might just edge closer to my goal outcome.”

and/or:

b). these aspects of your LO’s character, life or behaviour somehow balance out and ‘alleviate’ your specific psychological issues (unmet needs, wounds, flawed and limiting belief systems) in a unique way that regular, healthy connections don’t seem capable of doing. This phenomenon is always present at the forefront of limerence, since it’s all about unmet needs. If you find yourself fixating on specific things that your LO is doing/saying (or are just mesmerised with their existence and ‘essence’), you should consider this indicative of your brain screaming “this, I like. I normally feel misunderstood/insecure/restricted/scared/bored/otherwise suboptimal, but I feel safe, enthused and optimistic with this in my life. Give me more of this! Promise me I’ll always be able to access this!”

Whatever Seems ‘Special’ About Your LO is Incredibly Telling

It’s fascinating – your specific issues (i.e the reasons why you’re currently aligning with limerence) entirely dictate what things about your LO stand out as exciting, adorable, special, admirable or otherwise salient in this unnaturally strong way. Sometimes, it’ll be a very specific trait they have that you know you lack – their ability to command an entire room, or instil fear and respect in others. It’ll just dazzle you from the beginning, and you’ll be able to easily put a finger on what you most cherish about them.

If your unmet needs are more subtle (and more easily ignored), however, such as you feeling distanced from your former spontaneous self and just desiring pure authenticity, you might find yourself emotionally affected by very strange, random things. Your LO might be an acquaintance who initially caught your eye, but who you never found yourself interested in. Suddenly, however, you discover that they have a comical, tongue-in-cheek Instagram account where they post pictures of their stuffed toy dog in random locations (featuring fittingly amusing captions) – and this has you smitten. Discovering this aspect of their nature through social media provides you with the glimmer… which eventually develops into full-blown limerence as you two connect. For them, it’s a simple friendship – nothing about you drives them crazy in this way, for they don’t carry around these unmet needs. You, on the other hand, are addicted to their personality. You want nothing more than to live drugged by their ingenious, prankster energy, because it makes you feel free and authentic.

It’s always about you, so bring it back to yourself. Don’t give your LO, a mere mortal human, more credit than they deserve. They may do cool, quirky things and have interesting, juxtaposed personality traits, but so do you, and so does everyone else in your life. So does almost every fictional character you’ve ever read about.

Your intense interest in your LO’s life isn’t love, it’s obsessionality. And overcoming limerence for once and for all starts with viewing it objectively. Only when you trace it back to its roots can they can be extirpated.