limerence

Limerence vs. Love

Love and Limerence

Limerence is an involuntary state of mind which results from a romantic attraction to another person combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one’s feelings reciprocated. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov [1] coined the term “limerence” in her 1979 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love [2] to describe the concept that had grown out of her work in the mid-1960s, when she interviewed over 500 people on the topic of love.[3]

Being “in love”—limerence—is involuntary; you have no conscious control over the creeping obsession and the hormonal-biochemical imperative to Pay Attention to this Fascinating New Creature in your world. One common explanation for limerence is that it serves the evolutionary purpose by irrationally binding couples long enough to rear children. Some recent reading suggests a higher-level game-theoretic signalling purpose: to demonstrate that one’s commitment to the other is irrational and therefore unlikely to be broken by the attraction of a more suitable and advantageous partner. Someone considering a partner can be convinced to commit more easily when evidence shows the partner will not break the commitment just because a better opportunity comes along. The persuasive power of a display of unconditional and irrational love is enormous.[4]

Culturally, limerence is either seen as the desirable state of hyperexcitement all romances should begin with, or the tragic downfall of clueless losers who throw themselves at people they barely know because of some delusional intuition that they must be soulmates. Both of these views are oversimplified—many or even most good long-term relationships start off with a long, slow period of getting-to-know-you, gradually easing into partnership. The limerence that may be present in one (and occasionally both!) prospective partners can help get over the initial hurdle of superficial difficulties in getting them together. Being “in love” is not a necessary or sufficient condition for partnering with someone, but neither does it hurt.

But our culture glorifies drama and passion. Novels, opera, movies all tell us sexual attraction plus passion equals Really Living. Dr. Lewis has some thoughtful comments:

Our society goes the craziness of in love one better by insisting on the supremacy of delectable but ephemeral madness. Cultural messages inform the populace that if they aren’t perpetually electric they are missing out on the pinnacle of relatedness. Every pop-cultural medium portrays the height of adult intimacy as the moment when two attractive people who don’t know a thing about each other tumble into bed and have passionate sex. All the waking moments of our love lives should tend, we are told, toward that throbbing, amorous apotheosis. But in love merely brings the players together, and the end of that prelude is as inevitable as it is desirable. True relatedness has a chance to blossom only with the waning of its intoxicating predecessor.

Loving is limbically distinct from in love. Loving is mutuality; loving is synchronous attunement and modulation. As such, adult love depends critically upon knowing the other. In love demands only the brief acquaintance necessary to establish an emotional genre but does not demand that the book of the beloved’s soul be perused from preface to epilogue. Loving derives from intimacy, the prolonged and detailed surveillance of a foreign soul. [5]

The rush of initial limerence is so powerful it is analogous to a psychoactive drug—indeed, some of the same neurotransmitter receptors may be involved. And by analogy, we have Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug.”[6] A self-help book, Peele and Brodsky’s Love and Addiction[7], covers the topic of people addicted to the rush and unable to stop craving it. Stalkers are people who have fallen into a pathologically deep limerent hole, unable to overcome the delusion that they have a special relationship with the stalked.

But long-term relationships are built on a much deeper jointly-built understanding, and a more real limbic connection between partners. This requires regular physical contact, a long history of supportive message exchange, and a deep sense of trust and knowledge of the other:

Because loving is reciprocal physiologic influence, it entails a deeper and more literal connection than most realize. Limbic regulation affords lovers the ability to modulate each other’s emotions, neurophysiology, hormonal status, immune function, sleep rhythms, and stability. If one leaves on a trip, the other may suffer insomnia, a delayed menstrual cycle, a cold that would have been fought off in the fortified state of togetherness. The neurally ingrained Attractors of one lover warp the emotional virtuality of the other, shifting emotional perceptions— what he feels, sees, knows. When somebody loses his partner and says a part of him is gone, he is more right than he thinks. A portion of his neural activity depends on the presence of that other living brain. Without it, the electric interplay that makes up him has changed. Lovers hold keys to each other’s identities, and they write neurostructural alterations into each other’s networks. Their limbic tie allows each to influence who the other is and becomes.

Mutuality has tumbled into undeserved obscurity by the primacy our society places on the art of the deal. The prevailing myth reaching most contemporary ears is this: relationships are 50-50. When one person does a nice thing for the other, he is entitled to an equally pleasing benefit—the sooner the better, under the terms of this erroneous dictum. The physiology of love is no barter. Love is simultaneous mutual regulation, wherein each person meets the needs of the other, because neither can provide for his own. Such a relationship is not 50-50—it’s 100-100. Each takes perpetual care of the other, and, within concurrent reciprocity, both thrive. For those who attain it, the benefits of deep attachment are powerful—regulated people feel whole, centered, alive. With their physiology stabilized from the proper source, they are resilient to the stresses of daily life, or even to those of extraordinary circumstance.[8]

Being “in love” is the Fool’s Gold of attachment: non-nourishing, short-lived, and more a hindrance to long-term achievement than a help.

[1] Dorothy Tennov in Wikipedia
[2] Tennov, Dorothy (1999). Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. Scarborough House. ISBN 978-0-8128-6286-7.
[3] Limerence
[4] A fascinating operetta by Stephen Sondheim about obsessive limerence and its persuasive power : Lapine, James. Stephen Sondheim’s Passion. Image Entertainment, 2003.
[5] Lewis, p 206
[6] Roxy Music’s Love Is The Drug:
[7] Peele, Stanton, and Archie Brodsky. Love and Addiction. New York: Penguin Group, 1991.
[8] Lewis, p 207

For more, see my book Bad Boyfriends: Using Attachment Theory to Avoid Mr. (or Ms.) Wrong and Make You a Better Partner.

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Mark Manson’s “Six Healthy Relationship Habits”

Mark Manson is also a bit rough on the “fairy tale” conception of romance and relationships. Go read his post on healthy relationship habits and come back here for additional commentary…

Done? Wasn’t that sensible? Now for some comments:

In his research of thousands of happily married couples, some of whom who have been married for 40+ years, he found time and again that most successful couples have persistent unresolved issues, unresolved issues that they’ve sometimes been fighting about for decades. Meanwhile many of the unsuccessful couples insisted on resolving fucking everything because they believed that there should be a void of disagreement between them. Pretty soon there was a void of a relationship too.

I would say “disagreeing” rather than fighting. Constant fighting over anything is relationship-eroding. What he is getting at is that you can agree to disagree about something, discuss it from time to time, and not let negative feelings about it endanger your much more important relationship. Couples who fight over unimportant things because for one or both of them creating perfection is more important than the value of their partner as they are, warts and all, are headed for trouble. You can both be controlling perfectionists and still treasure each other’s differences so long as you *mostly* agree on the ground rules of your home and heart. Over time these differences can become another source of playful banter and perspective. Picking at differences and showing hostility and contempt toward your partner for loading the dishwasher wrong or forgetting to put the toothpaste cap on is a sign of a relationship that won’t last.

It’s important to make something more important in your relationship than merely making each other feel good all of the time. The feel good stuff happens when you get the other stuff right. The sunsets and puppies, they happen when you get the more important stuff right: values, needs and trust.

If I feel smothered and need more time alone, I need to be capable of saying that without blaming her and she needs to be capable of hearing it without blaming me, despite the unpleasant feelings it may cause. If she feels that I’m cold and unresponsive to her, she needs to be capable of saying it without blaming me and I need to be capable of hearing it without blaming her, despite the unpleasant feelings it may generate.

These conversations are paramount to maintaining a healthy relationship that meets both people’s needs. With out them, we get lost and lose track of one another.

I make this point in the book. Supporting one another in the real world requires sympathetic honesty – tactful tough love, not constant ego support by always saying the thing you know will make your partner feel best. Sometimes feeling good is not the path to success for your partner or yourself — the truth about what you need and how you feel must be told, even if you have a duty to speak it tactfully and gently. Otherwise the shared worldview of the couple won’t be realistic, leading to disappointment and distrust.

Our cultural scripts for romance includes this sort of mental tyranny, where any mildly emotional or sexual thought not involving your partner amounts to high treason. Being in love is like a cult where you’re supposed to prefer drinking Kool Aid laced with cyanide to letting your thoughts wander to whether other religions may be true too.

As much as we’d like to believe that we only have eyes for our partner, biology says otherwise. Once we get past the honeymoon phase of starry eyes and oxytocin, the novelty of our partner wears off a bit. And unfortunately, human sexuality is partially wired around novelty. I get emails all the time from people in happy marriages/relationships who get blindsided by finding someone else attractive and they feel like horrible, horrible people because of it. Not only are we capable of finding multiple people attractive and interesting at the same time, but it’s a biological inevitability.

What isn’t an inevitability are our choices to act on it or not. Most of us, most of the time, choose to not act on those thoughts. And like waves, they pass through us and leave us with our partner very much the same way how they found us.

This triggers a lot of guilt in some people and a lot of irrational jealousy in others. Our cultural scripts tell us that once we’re in love, that’s supposed to be it, end of story. And if someone flirts with us and we enjoy it, or if we catch ourselves having an occasional errant sexy-time fantasy, there must be something wrong with us or our relationship.

But that’s simply not the case. In fact, it’s healthier to allow oneself to experience these feelings and then let them go.

When you suppress these feelings, you give them power over you, you let them dictate your behavior for you (suppression) rather than dictating your behavior for yourself (feeling them and yet choosing not to do anything).

People who suppress these urges are the ones who are likely to eventually succumb to them and give in and suddenly find themselves screwing the secretary in the broom closet and having no idea how they got there and come to deeply regret it about twenty-two seconds afterward. People who suppress these urges are the ones who are likely to project them onto their partner and becoming blindingly jealous, attempting to control their partner’s every thought and whim, corralling all of their partner’s attention and affection onto themselves. People who suppress these urges are the ones who are likely to wake up one day disgruntled and frustrated with no conscious understanding of why, wondering where all of the days went and remember how in love we used to be?

Looking at attractive people is enjoyable. Speaking to attractive people is enjoyable. Thinking about attractive people is enjoyable. That’s not going to change because of our Facebook relationship status. And when you dampen these impulses towards other people, you dampen them towards your partner as well. You’re killing a part of yourself and it ultimately only comes back to harm your relationship.

When I meet a beautiful woman now, I enjoy it, as any man would. But it also reminds me why out of all of the beautiful women I’ve ever met and dated, I chose to be with my girlfriend. I see in the attractive women everything my girlfriend has and most women lack. And while I appreciate the attention or even flirtation, the experience only strengthens my commitment. Attractiveness is common. But real intimacy is not.

When we commit to a person, we are not committing our thoughts, feelings or perceptions. We can’t control our own thoughts, feelings and perceptions the majority of the time, so how could we ever make that commitment?

What we control are our actions. And what we commit to that special person are our actions. Let everything else come and go, as it inevitably will.

It’s very important to recognize the power of limerence and sexual attraction to get our attention when we’re in along-term relationship. Foolish people listen to the Siren call of hormones and destroy good marriages that have a history and security to pursue a temporary obsession; this mistake can destroy lives and damage your children. Cultivate the mental detachment to enjoy and be entertained by these hormonal storms without losing your grip on reality; recognize it is no more likely to last than a weekend bender, and take care to reassure your partner that you are committed to them despite this distraction, since there’s no way you can hide such feelings from someone really close to you. Bring your partner in on this temporary insanity and ask for their forbearance. Because you are in this together. And if your partner is in the grip of Fairy Tale Thinking, you have to snap them out of it.

More on Divorce, Marriage, and Mateseeking

Jeb Kinnison

Writing About Life and Love

limerence

Limerence vs. Love

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Mark Manson’s “Six Healthy Relationship Habits”

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