Understand Your Romantic Obsession and How to Stop Limerence
The 2009 film, (500) Days of Summer, begins with a statement: “This is not a love story.” It is, however, a good example of limerence.
Limerence is described as an intense, involuntary emotional state often characterized by obsessive thoughts, fantasies, and a strong desire for reciprocation of feelings from another person.
In the film, the romance between the two main characters, Tom and Summer, plays out as a story that is often mistaken for love.
If you’ve ever experienced limerence, Tom’s perspective might sound familiar. Like Tom, you might have believed you too were in love. However, there are signs that can indicate limerence instead. Understanding why you might experience romantic obsession with others can help you move toward developing healthier relationships and teach you how to stop limerence from taking hold.
Recognizing Telltale Signs of Limerence in Your Relationships
To understand how to stop limerence, you first recognize and understand when you’re under its spell vs. when you are experiencing love. Though limerence and love share similar intense emotional feelings, they differ in some important characteristics.
Love is built on connection, trust, security, and mutual respect without trying to control another person. Love gives without expecting anything in return. It is based in reality that involves real experiences and mutual feelings.
Limerence, however, is less stable in nature and one-sided. Those who experience limerence obsess over another person–a limerent object (LO)–living in a fantasy of that person. It seeks affection and attention and worries about being rejected.
So what does limerence look like in your relationships and what signs should you be on the lookout for?
You See Them as Perfect
When you idealize another person, it’s hard for you to see their flaws and imperfections. In limerence, you tend to put the other person on a pedestal. This can be problematic when you don’t see a person as they truly are. This idealization leads you to ignoring behaviors that you would otherwise recognize as red flags and developing an unrealistic view of that person to feed your desires.
You Think About Them Constantly and are Unable to Focus
In limerence, you become fixated on another person. You catch yourself thinking about them constantly to the point that you are unable to focus on other tasks. You might start to neglect family and friends, your work, and even your own wants as your obsessive thoughts take up most of your time.
At first, living in your daydreams about your LO might feel pleasurable. However, over time anxiety may creep in as you begin to over analyze every interaction with them, uncertain of their feelings for you.
Your Mood and Self-Worth Depend on Them
Limerence can leave you with intense mood swings that depend on the LO. Every text, conversation, smile, or even the slightest acknowledgment leaves you feeling either elated or devastated. Your overall mood relies on that other person at any given time rather than your own experiences.
You Believe They Can Save You
You believe that if you were just able to get together with this person you’re obsessing over then everything in your life would be just fine. If you have a void in your life that feels like it can only be filled by another person, that's a sign you have unmet needs and are searching for a way to give yourself support and love. Limerence is often a result of those unmet needs.
Early Attachment Wounds as a Cause of Limerence
There is a close relationship between attachment styles and limerence. If you grew up with an emotionally immature parent (EIP), you are more likely to develop an insecure attachment style, increasing your chances of experiencing limerence with others.
Here are some reasons that can help explain why this happens more easily for those with early attachment wounds.
Unmet Emotional Needs
A child of an EIP often grows up with many unmet emotional needs. Your EIP may have been inconsistent in providing you love, attention, and validation which leads you to seek it with others. Limerence provides you with a temporary fulfillment of those unmet needs that can make you feel, for a time at least, worthy.
Manifestation of Insecure Attachment
Anxious or avoidant attachment styles are the most common to arise from being raised by an EIP. If you have one of these attachment styles, you have learned to develop a fear of abandonment or rejection from others and feel like your survival depends on others. You may find it difficult to trust others in relationships and it can feel safer to live in your fantasy of another person more than in reality.
Idealization of Others
When you’re living in the fantasy of another person, you’re also more open to romantic idealization. This again goes back to compensating for the lack of getting your emotional needs met from your EIP. As you’re looking for a way to meet your needs, it makes sense that you build this person up in your mind as the perfect person to fulfill those needs.
A Need for External Validation
Children of EIP often struggle with self-worth and self-esteem, creating a need for validation from others. To meet this need, you may use attention or love from your LO to derive your sense of worth and to temporarily alleviate deeply held negative core beliefs about yourself.
How to Stop Limerence: Next Steps
How do you stop limerence? Learn to love yourself first.
The first step toward stopping limerence is to recognize when you’re experiencing limerence. Use the examples given in this article to analyze your relationships and take notice if you see limerence coming up often.
If you find that you are experiencing limerence instead of developing healthy, loving relationships with others, it might be time to trace your wounds back to their source with a therapist’s support. Look for therapists who specialize in working with those who have an EIP, insecure attachment styles, or EMDR therapy.
Know that healing is possible and you are worthy just as you are! You deserve to feel loved and supported from the inside out in a genuine, loving relationship with yourself first and others (if you wish).
