Limerence: a longing for love
Limerence can be understood as the feeling of first falling in love; the butterflies, the fantasies; the shared looks across crowded ballrooms usually seen in Romeo and Juliet. Or as one respondent calls it ‘uncommon potent eye contact’ [1].
The concept was pioneered by Tennov [2] to refer to a cognitive and emotional state of being emotionally attached to another person. Limerence is generally experienced involuntarily and has been described as a near-obsessive form of romantic love, featuring intrusive and obsessive thoughts [1].
Tennov’s work involved interviewing over 500 people on the topic of limerence. Limerent components involve: intrusive thinking about the limerent object (LO); acute longing for emotional reciprocation; fear of rejection, and; unsettling shyness in the LO’s presence [2].
Building on Tennov’s research, psychologists Wakin and Vo [3] are working toward categorising limerence as a mental illness [4], describing limerence as a necessarily negative, problematic and impairing state with clinical implications [3].
Willmott and Bentley [1] provide the most recent research into the lived-experience of limerence, linking key limerent themes to ‘an inclination to reintegrate unresolved past life(s) experiences and to progress to a state of greater authenticity’.
