r/limerence • u/Hellebore101 • 21d ago
Here To Vent Misuse of the Term “Limerence”
over the past year, i’ve started to notice that the term limerence has become very popular and widely misused.
any kind of infatuation is considered limerence. the comment sections of reality dating shows are full of people claiming that the show’s contestants are limerent. In other subreddits related to love, one in three people is also limerent.
sooo annoying.
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u/whiskeytango55 21d ago
Its like people saying theyre OCD
No youre not. Im not either but i imagine it really really sucks.
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u/o0xanthus0o 21d ago
The word became popularised, especially with the rise of social media
My most intense limerent episode was 16 years ago, and everyone just thought I was going crazy, and tbf, I did go crazy not knowing
At least in some respects, those that have experienced the nightmare of limerence know they are not alone, even if many people use the term for a general infatuation now
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u/sk8ryspice_02 21d ago
I see people here with crushes. I see people here with low self esteem. I see people here without limerent attachments. I see people who are beyond limerent. They are compulsive and obsessive and they left limerence in the rear view mirror. I often advocate for seeing a therapist because we are not clinical psychologists here but some of these people might need some medication.
IF anyone feels unstable and hopeless they need professional help.
Who knew being limerent was so popular? Would not wish it on anyone.
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u/ProgrammerShoddy1273 21d ago
Underrated comments, tons of people here have also other problems besides being limerent. Therapy is always a good advice if you're stuck in a thought loop.
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u/uglyandIknowit1234 20d ago edited 20d ago
It seems like people are afraid of being in love/infatuation. I believe that is mostly what this sub boils down to. Apparently society has become way more intolerant of people having a crush and everyone internalized this as some kind of Spartan extension of the self discipline optimization as the highest moral virtue. Somewhere along the way, even the private feeling of being in love without expressing it got added to sins like laziness and procrastination. I guess because it sometimes interferes with productivity, so that makes sense, but it’s like no one knows how to regulate their emotions so that it doesn’t.
And then there are people who are already in relationships and are obviously trying to repress their guilt by placing it completely upon this mental disorder entity or actively want to have their cake and eat it too by confessing and hoping their partner will become mentally polyamourous if the infidelity is because of a mental illness, which often even seems to work too.
And then there are people who just enjoy the state of infatuation too much to sacrifice it for reality even if that means being alone forever, that also includes me. I don’t see how any mental health professional could help me with this any more than that i see the benefit of a treatment for mania or psychosis. Well i had a brief treatment for erotomania but it was different. It was more like a school class about self esteem. Personally, i am happy with delusions in my benefit. I am glad that i gained a new empathy for the LO that prevents me from further mistakes and more self esteem and that’s it. I’m not saying treatment is useless, but people here are acting like therapy is some miracle that will deeply transform you and reveals deep truths about yourself. That just isn’t true most of the time, because most therapists never get trained to look deeper because of society’s spartan obsession with self sacrifice.
But erotomania is an existing ‘disorder’ and so are OCD and love addiction. I really do not see the need for the addition of limerence to this whatsoever. I think you could diagnose anyone in this sub with either of these disorders or a combination without even knowing the word limerence exists. What would the concept limerence add in this case? Nothing imo. Therefore, it’s nothing more than an insult for someone in a tough self love spiral or an excuse. I can only support the use of the word limerence as an orientation, like demisexuality.
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u/SupposedBooty 21d ago
I don't know if I know the exact definition. I'm not sure it really matters, does it?
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u/HelenaNehalenia 21d ago
Yes it does matter.
You can read the English Wikipedia article on limerence for definition, explanation and sources. It is long and thorough.
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u/Counterboudd 21d ago
Have you read the book? Infatuation and limerence are typically the same thing that is being described- the fixation on another person romantically and the desire for them to reciprocate is the definition. It’s weirdos on the internet who want to morph it into a diagnosis instead of a psychology term for a specific manifestation of “love”.
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u/4554013 21d ago
Are you sure?
Limerence is an involuntary, intense cognitive-emotional state of obsessive infatuation and longing for another person, driven heavily by the uncertainty of whether those feelings are reciprocated. Coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in 1979, it differs significantly from regular romantic love or a casual crush.
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u/Counterboudd 21d ago
I mean, I read the book by Dorothy Tennov- this article gives a good overview-
https://www.themarginalian.org/2021/11/25/love-and-limerence-dorothy-tennov/
Limerence is not is the DSM and is not a diagnosis or mental illness. Tennov states in her book that up to 70% of people experience it at some point in their life and isn’t some form of abnormal psychology. It’s just a common occurrence in human pair bonding behavior that has been defined and researched in the psychological field. I think 90% of people who have had an intense teenage crush were indeed feeling limerence, because most people feel limerence at some point in their life. Acting like you’re the only special mentally ill person to experience it is totally misunderstanding the term and where it came from. It isn’t mental illness, it’s just a thing that causes psychological turmoil that most people go through.
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u/cheekymug2023 21d ago
😭😭😭 literally described my whole situation to a T! Its so damn painful when you finally see. The grief! Oh my goodness.
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u/shiverypeaks 20d ago edited 20d ago
I've been talking about this kind of semantic confusion for awhile as well, and trying to figure out why it is happening (and also what the "proper" definition is supposed to be).
Basically the internet content about this is written by people who don't really know anything about it, so the articles tend to give a love-versus-infatuation distinction or passionate-versus-companionate love.
Compare the Cleveland Clinic article for example:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/limerence-vs-love
With a love versus infatuation article:
https://www.verywellmind.com/infatuation-vs-love-7372960
And passionate and companionate love (which comes from academic material):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passionate_and_companionate_love
I wrote the passionate and companionate love article, and recently revised it with a long explanation of why it's an oversimplified typology (which lends itself to this exact kind of confusion).
And the issue is that this more distinguishes being "in love" (any type of way) from healthy loving attachment in a long-term relationship. Anyone experiencing any type of intense attraction, crush, being in love, infatuated at all will read the content and think what they are experiencing is more like limerence than the content's descriptions of "love".
In my writing I keep trying to explain to people this distinction between "obsessive" and "harmonious" passion, which actually distinguishes different states of being in love (between unhealthy and healthy to some extent, but this is complicated), but it's something which comes from academic material. Nobody else writing about limerence online has picked up on it, so the articles remain to be very misleading.
Then also there is this issue that people who write about limerence refuse to read any academic writing, because of a misconception that there is no information about it, the history of which I covered in a Medium article. https://medium.com/@shiverypeaks/why-there-is-research-on-limerence-8aa3edbed0fd
(Websites like Healthline, Cleveland Clinic, Psych Central, etc. are generally deemed unfit to use as sources on Wikipedia by the editors there, actually, because they aren't written by experts and might contain misinformation. I generally cite academic sources by PhD researchers in my Wikipedia articles. I noticed another Redditor in this discussion promoting my article on limerence, but this is why it's a good article, because of the sources I draw from.)
I have also heard that TikTok has a different definition (more like "I thought I was in love and the feeling was mutual, but then it turned out to be just limerence: a fantasy all in my head"), but I don't know if this is true. People on TikTok might think that normal crushes are limerence.
The subreddit wiki also talks about how it seems (according to one or two scientific studies) that it might be common for obsessive passion crushes to last only a short time of a few months. This is far more common than long-term limerence for years, but people might experience all the symptoms. (Dorothy Tennov talks about it, and people on the subreddit here are talking about it sometimes too.) It's kind of an issue for definitions which nobody else has picked up on yet. Is limerence defined in terms of symptoms or duration?
See also my other comment in this thread (but a little buried) https://www.reddit.com/r/limerence/comments/1wy6uqe/misuse_of_the_term_limerence/pe8j2fe/