What is Lovesickness: Signs and Symptoms?

Oxford Dictionary defines love sickness as an inability to think clearly or behave in a sensible way because you are in love with someone, especially someone who is not in love with you.

On the other hand, Collins dictionary describes lovesick as someone who is in love with someone who doesn’t love them back, and they are behaving a strange way.

Nonetheless, though, the blurry lines between love-struck and lovesickness are really small, but they do exist. Literally, love-struck means falling in love with someone with great speed and intensity, while lovesickness is the intense emotional consequences of falling in love.

To understand what lovesickness is, symptomatically, analysts suggest lovesickness makes the patient disempowered and devastated, coupled with hopelessness for not experiencing the love the victim expects to be getting.

The novel Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen, is a good portrayal of lovesickness. In the novel, John Willoughby, a handsome young man with a small estate and heir of her auntie’s assets, madly falls in love with Marianne Dashwood, who is emotionally attached to her lover’s “sensibility”. When Marriane is betrayed by Willoughby, her body becomes weak with severe illness and symptoms of fever and delirium, a mental disease that is characterized by confusion and lack of awareness of one’s surroundings.

Another sign of lovesickness is that a person who is struck by love is going to develop stalkerish behaviour, excessively checking their phones to find if their crush texts or respond to them back.

Contemporary studies have found that malaise can only be understood by applying the medical model that inseparably credits the soulful disease as part of the body.

“The lovesickness serves as the basis for the lovesickness paradigm conceived of an interrelationship between the mind and body,” PhD thesis by Jane Shmidt, Diagnosing the Will to Suffer: Lovesickness in the Medical and Literary Traditions released in 2018 noted.

According to research, there are no official treatments for lovesickness but only ways to soothe and cope with the feeling of lovesickness that may bring relief.

Also, according to Robert Vallerand, a professor of psychology at the University of Quebec at Montreal, experiencing lovesickness can trigger “obsessive passion”, which is more damaging to a relationship than having no passion at all.

Research suggests that love obsession can last for a period of six to 12 weeks; however, according to Vallerie, as per Psychology Today, if lovesickness and obsession can last for more than months and years, these may be signs of the obsession rather than real love.

Have you ever been struck by lovesickness? Then how does it feel? With a complicated lovesickness context, it is possible that someone might get confused about understanding whether they are sick or not, but with a closer look at these details, you can be able to trace the disease.

You fantasize about them

Experts say one way of knowing if you are lovesick is to look at whether you are thinking about your crush or lover routinely, and thus if you find yourself daydreaming about the person or experiencing an imaginary conversation about them, it may be a sign of lovesickness.

You idolize them

When you are lovesick about someone, you are going to consciously or unconsciously positively think about your crush in the first stages, but if this persists, it can turn into lovesickness. Patients can even end up crying from time to time, fantasizing about the person who doesn’t return the feelings.

You overthink about them

It’s normal to have your crush on your mind, especially when you first gauge the feelings for them, but if you can’t erase them, even if you are into other things, you may be experiencing lovesickness. Experts argue that lovesickness is wracked with obsessive thoughts about your crush.

You experience an emotional rush when they message back. Euphoria is a sign that your body has released high levels of dopamine to the body and you are going feel exaggerated excitement in your nerves every time you are going to think about them.

You become obsessed with their worlds

Once you realize that you are obsessed with the mentally addicted to their worlds and whatever they do, then it is a clear sign indicating that you are lovesick about them. For instance, paying attention to details in their body language instead of their generic actions is a sign of lovesickness.

And the fact is, you might be suffering lovesickness if you are always feeling happier every time you get reminded about your crush.

You feel like you can’t do anything at all. You are annoyed, and eventually, you are burdened by the person’s affection. It irritates you even if family and friends advise you to move on; you can’t.

Nervousness when you are around them

When you are around them, you are going to experience abnormal feelings such as shaking and sweating aroused by hyper anxiety and fear of rejection. With this nervousness, people experiencing lovesickness are pushed away to be near their crushes.

If you see crush feelings persist for a long time, it is better to find a relationship expert to help find a solution on the professional ground level.