There is a particular confusion that comes with limerence.
Not just the intensity itself, but the way it appears to say something important and yet refuses to explain what.
The experience is often misread as falling in love, though it behaves quite differently. Limerence is typically marked by strong longing, mental preoccupation, and an idealisation that persists even in the absence of real closeness (Tennov, 1979). It thrives on distance, ambiguity, and limited information—conditions that allow imagination to do much of the work.
This is why the object of limerence is so often someone we barely know, cannot fully have, or do not actually live with. Reality has not yet had the chance to complicate the image.
The usual interpretations that follow are not especially helpful.
That you are immature.
That something is wrong with your relationship.
That you are “escaping,” or secretly want to leave your life behind.
These explanations flatten an experience that is, in fact, quite precise.
One way of understanding limerence is not as a verdict on character or commitment, but as a psychological state organised around an unmet need. The intensity does not arise because the other person is extraordinary, but because they appear to embody—sometimes faintly, sometimes vividly—something that is currently scarce in one’s inner or relational life.
For many people, especially those who learned early to adapt, endure, or self-contain, needs are not always experienced directly. They are noticed sideways, through attraction. Desire borrows faces and personalities to carry messages that were never spoken aloud.
Limerence, then, is not random. It is selective.
It tends to fasten onto people who seem to hold a missing quality with ease: emotional steadiness, assertiveness, attunement, confidence, permission to rest, or freedom from responsibility. Where that quality feels inaccessible or quietly forbidden, longing may organise itself around whoever appears to represent it.
This is not a moral failure. Nor is it evidence that the feeling should be acted upon.
But it may be evidence that something important is asking for recognition.
In my own life, limerence has appeared at three very different moments, each time with a different face. And each time, it loosened its grip not through suppression or self-discipline, but when the need it was carrying was finally met—elsewhere, and more honestly.
Borrowed Adulthood: Longing for Stability and Structure
The first time I recognised this pattern, I was drawn to an older man I barely knew.
We had little real contact. There was no emotional intimacy, no shared history, not even much conversation. What was there was space—enough space for imagination to move in and furnish the place.
In my mind, he became calm, grounded, steady.
At the time, I was in a relationship with a man my own age, and if I am honest, neither of us felt particularly anchored. We were both still improvising adulthood—financially, emotionally, practically. Life felt precarious, and I carried that precarity in my body as a low-grade tension I had not yet learned to name.
The limerence was not loud or dramatic. Just a steady orientation toward someone who seemed to have already arrived where I was still trying to get.
What I did not want was an affair.
What I did not even particularly want was him. Although I did assume that for several years.
What I later understood I wanted—though I did not yet have the language for it—was psychological adulthood: steadiness, reliability, a sense that someone could hold the weight of life without flinching.
Psychodynamic research has long noted that attraction is not directed only toward people, but toward functions—qualities such as emotional regulation, containment, or stability that may not yet be fully established within the self or one’s primary relationships (Kernberg, 1974). When these functions are missing, they are often experienced as especially compelling in others.
The shift came quietly.
I entered a new relationship, this time with a man who was genuinely mature and responsible—not idealised, not perfect, but consistent. He showed up. He followed through. Decisions felt shared rather than precarious.
And almost without ceremony, the limerence dissolved.
There was no dramatic disillusionment. No moral victory. No effortful letting go. The figure who had once seemed so compelling simply lost his relevance, like scaffolding removed once a building can stand on its own.
In hindsight, the longing had been accurate—but misdirected. It was not pointing toward a particular person. It was pointing toward a need for structure and stability that my life, at that moment, did not yet provide.
Once that need was met in reality, fantasy had nothing left to do.
Borrowed Intimacy: Longing to Be Met and Seen
The second time limerence appeared, it was directed toward someone I knew well.
He was available, attentive, emotionally present. He listened carefully. He remembered what I said. When we spoke, his attention felt undivided, almost spacious.
At the same time, my marriage was moving through a difficult period. We were living alongside one another more than with one another. Conversations had become logistical. Emotional exchange felt strained, easily postponed, quietly rationed.
Against that backdrop, the pull toward my friend began to grow.
Again, the feeling was not primarily sexual, nor was it fuelled by fantasy in the usual sense. What felt intoxicating was the experience of being received—of having my inner life matter in real time. I found myself replaying our conversations, anticipating the next one.
What I did not want was to leave my marriage.
What I wanted—though I could only see it clearly in retrospect—was emotional attunement.
Developmental and attachment research has consistently shown that sustained emotional responsiveness—being listened to, mirrored, and taken in—is not a luxury, but a regulatory need (Stern, 1985). When this form of attunement is missing in a primary relationship, the psyche often seeks it wherever it is most readily available.
In this case, it had found a willing and caring human being.
The change did not come through avoidance or self-policing. It came through repair.
My husband and I began talking again—slowly at first, then with more openness. We returned to shared meaning, to mutual curiosity. Emotional closeness, once restored, began to do its quiet work.
And once again, the limerence faded.
Not because my friend changed. He is still, to this day, someone I love to share my inner world with. But I don’t feel desire for him as I used to.
Not because I forced distance.
But because the need he had been carrying was no longer unmet.
Here, limerence revealed itself as a signal of relational hunger. Once that hunger was fed where it belonged, the signal quieted.
Borrowed Ease: Longing for Beauty, Rest, and a Carefree Life
The third experience of limerence arrived during a period of exhaustion.
I was caring for young children, carrying a heavy load of responsibility, and living under significant financial constraint. Time was scarce. Pleasure felt postponed. Even small indulgences required calculation.
Around that time, I found myself drawn to a man whose life appeared radically different from mine. He was well off and lived alone. He travelled, ate out, moved through the world with visible ease. His life seemed organised around pleasure rather than obligation.
The pull was strong. There I was, again, questioning my life choices.
The fantasy, however, was not primarily about being with him. It was about being like him—unburdened, unhurried, free from constant caretaking. In my imagination, life with him represented an escape from responsibility itself.
What I wanted—though it took time to admit—was not another relationship, but relief.
Research on chronic stress and caregiver burden shows that sustained responsibility without adequate restoration narrows perception and intensifies longing for imagined alternatives (McEwen, 1998). When the nervous system is depleted, the mind becomes especially sensitive to images of ease, beauty, and freedom.
The shift, once again, came through recognition.
I began to name what I had been missing: unstructured time alone, sensory pleasure, beauty that asked nothing of me. Slowly, in small and realistic ways, I began to offer these things to myself—an afternoon alone, a meal chosen for pleasure rather than efficiency, long walks, moments of care that were not earned through productivity.
Nothing about my circumstances changed overnight. I remained the primary caregiver. My days did revolve around cooking, cleaning and managing tantrums.
But I also allowed myself some pleasure. Some evenings, I would go to a cosy restaurant on my own. Sit in silence and let my thoughts wander. Savour my food. Feel the warmth of my tea. And the longing softened.
The man who had once seemed magnetic receded into ordinariness. The fantasy lost its urgency because it was no longer the sole carrier of relief.
Here, limerence was not pointing toward romance or intimacy. It was pointing toward a nervous system that had been living without enough ease.
Once ease was reintroduced—even imperfectly—the signal was no longer needed.
What the Pattern Reveals
Seen side by side, these three experiences are less about romance than about regulation.
Each time, limerence organised itself around a different absence:
- steadiness when life felt structurally precarious
- emotional attunement when connection had thinned
- ease when responsibility crowded out pleasure
The figures themselves mattered less than what they appeared to carry. Each functioned as a symbolic stand-in—holding a quality that felt scarce or inaccessible at the time.
What is striking is how consistently the intensity dissolved once the underlying need was met in reality. Not through suppression or moral resolve, but through repair, provision, or permission.
Rather than asking, Why do I want this person?
A more useful question may be: What quality has become organised around them?
When that question is taken seriously, limerence begins to look less like a threat and more like a transitional signal—one that grows loud when something essential is missing, and fades when it is restored.
A Journal Invitation: Identifying the Need Beneath the Longing
If you recognise yourself in any part of this pattern, I’ve created a free journaling guide to help you explore what your own experiences of limerence may be pointing toward.
This is not a tool to suppress desire, but to listen to it more accurately.
The journal includes prompts such as:
- What quality does this person seem to embody effortlessly?
- What was happening in my life when this longing appeared?
- What feels scarce, forbidden, or chronically postponed right now?
- How might this need be met—partially, imperfectly—in reality?
The guide offers multiple pathways so you can identify your unmet need, not replicate mine.
This journal is freely available — download it immediately, no email required.
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When Desire Is Treated With Respect
Limerence has a way of making people feel untrustworthy to themselves.
It can cast doubt on relationships, on choices already made, even on one’s own integrity. But when we look more carefully, it often turns out not to be pulling us away from our lives, but trying—clumsily—to bring us back into them.
What loosens its grip is rarely self-criticism.
It is contact.
Contact with what has been missing.
Contact with needs that learned early to stay quiet.
Contact with permission: to lean, to be met, to rest.
When those needs find a place to land, limerence no longer has to shout.
And something else becomes possible in its place: a steadier self-trust and a form of desire that no longer needs fantasy in order to be heard.
References
Kernberg, O. F. (1974). Further contributions to the treatment of narcissistic personalities. International Universities Press.
McEwen, B. S. (1998). Protective and damaging effects of stress mediators. New England Journal of Medicine, 338(3), 171–179.
Stern, D. N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant: A view from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. Basic Books.
Tennov, D. (1979). Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love. Scarborough House.
- Get on Bookshop US | Bookshop UK
Explore Further:
Friendship, Desire, and the Art of Not Knowing
What We Borrow From Films: Longing and Meaning When Life Leaves Little Room (+Free Resource)
When Safety Feels Like Love: Childhood Emotional Neglect and the Pull Toward Older Partners
When Marriage Enters Autumn: Finding Our Way Back to Each Other (+Free Journal)
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