Love Or Limerence? 11 Signs You’re In A Fantasy Relationship
You idealize them and put them on a pedestal.
By Shahida Arabi
Lovesick. Longing. Limerent. In 1979, psychologist Dorothy Tennov first coined the term “limerence” in her book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being In Love to describe an involuntary state of deep obsession and infatuation with another person. She interviewed 500 people in the throes of an obsessive love, sometimes on an unhealthy level. Limerence includes a sense of being emotionally dependent on the object of your affections, devastation if these feelings are not reciprocated, and fantasies about the other person which can border on extreme and elaborate.
The Symptoms of Limerence: An Overview
Although there is an overlap between the experience of love and limerence, limerence is different in that a person in limerence isn’t as concerned with caring for the other person so much as it is about securing that person’s affection. Limerence isn’t so much about commitment and intimacy as it is about obsession. A person in the state of limerence exaggerates the positive attributes of the object of his or her affection and downplays their flaws. A limerent person can suffer from such a hyperfocus on the other person that they begin to lose focus on…
