Is It Love — or Limerence? Why Intense Chemistry Can Be Misleading
This story is part of Inside Love, our series exploring what it means to love through science and curious conversation.
The butterflies. The constant thoughts. The rush when the object of your affection texts – and the crash when they don’t. We often read that intensity as a sign we’re falling deeply in love. Neuroscientist Tom Bellamy says it may be something else: limerence, an obsessive form of romantic infatuation that feels and behaves like an addiction.
“You’re just completely captured by it,” he says. We talk to Bellamy about what happens in the brain when desire becomes fixation and why the people who give us the biggest romantic highs aren’t necessarily the best partners for us.
Guest:
- Tom Bellamy, neuroscientist; author, Smitten: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last.
Lesley McClurg: When you fall in love, it’s always intoxicating. But when that person is really all you can think about — you can’t concentrate, you’ve fallen into a black hole of attraction — that’s limerence, an intense, romantic craving, almost like an addiction. Tom, what would you add to that definition? How would you flesh that out?
Tom Bellamy: I generally describe limerence as an altered mental state. It really feels like your brain is operating in a different mode. It feels like you have literally been transformed by the experience of becoming infatuated with another person. It’s a very intense infatuation. It goes beyond the happy vibes and the butterflies and the excitement of early love into a complete mental capture. It takes over your internal world. It’s largely about the intensity of the experience and the fact that it can become involuntary. It feels like you’re not able to regulate your own emotions and own mood to the same extent that you used to be able to. And it generally takes a bit of time for that to happen. So early on, limerence just feels wonderful, euphoric, exhilarating, intoxicating. Limerence is such a powerful natural high that it can become addictive. You can go into that state where it feels much more obsessive, and it feels like your mood is dependent on the behavior of the other person, the person that you’re infatuated with. You have these big swings of mood from exhilaration and excitement down to depression and anxiety if it seems like there might be barriers in the way of that love connection that you want so much.
Lesley McClurg: And those highs and lows are based on the uncertainty of whether or not the incredible feeling is returned or the love could be returned, the infatuation is returned?
Tom Bellamy: Uncertainty is a really big driver in limerence. If you get into that state of excitement and exhilaration in the early stage of love and the other person is romantically attracted to you as well, and a relationship starts, it will be wonderful. You’ll get all the fireworks, but it won’t necessarily progress into a state that feels much more addictive and much more obsessive, because you have secured what you hoped for. It’s not inevitable that limerence will progress into this slightly unregulated psychological state. But if there is uncertainty, that can be a major factor for driving it forward. That uncertainty could either come from your own indecision that you don’t feel confident about declaring yourself or you don’t feel confident starting a relationship and so you hesitate. Or it could be the other person provides the uncertainty that you’re not sure how they feel about you, maybe they give you mixed messages and sometimes they seem very interested but then other times they seem cold and you’re not quite sure what’s going on or where you are or how serious it is. Those sorts of things can push the feelings from that exhilaration and the euphoria into a fixation and a dependency where they become a source of obsession for you.
Lesley McClurg: And you’ve experienced this; what did it look like? What did it feel like?
Tom Bellamy: About half the population experiences limerence at some point in their life. For many of us, you just assume that this is what love feels like — the early phase of love just feels like this completely overwhelming, infatuated state where they seem wonderful and everything about them is perfect and you could never imagine that you could meet somebody that good, that wonderful, that exhilarating. There’s plenty of poetry and films and literature in the world that describe that agony of ecstasy, that strange mixture of exhilaration and anxiety. So I just assumed the first time that I experienced this state, well, that’s just love. That’s just what love feels like.
But I really first confronted the idea of limerence and the reality of it being an altered mental state when I developed it despite being in a happy marriage. I developed limerence for somebody else outside of marriage. In my case, it was a coworker. I did not want to form a romantic relationship with her, and she wasn’t available to have a romantic relationship anyway. It was the first time in my life that I experienced that emotional overwhelm without wanting it to go anywhere, without it feeling like the beginning of something meaningful. I then had to confront the fact that despite being happily in love and in a stable relationship that was very positive, that I was infatuated with somebody else. Because I am a neuroscientist, I looked at it from the perspective of, well, what’s going on in the brain to cause this? I could recognize that the driving force and the underlying experience and the symptoms of limerence could be explained in the context of behavioral addiction, that a natural reward can be so powerful that it can become addictive.
Lesley McClurg: Give us a layman’s version of what is going on in the brain. What’s happening there in the addiction pathways?
Tom Bellamy: Obviously, falling in love is a wonderful thing; it’s a very positive thing, it’s a very beneficial thing. So, it’s not a surprise that we have circuits within the brain that are tuned to recognizing desirable mates who we could potentially form a romantic pair bond with. And that thrill of excitement and exhilaration is hugely rewarding. It’s also hugely arousing so you get all the butterflies in the tummy and the racing hearts and all the symptoms of arousal. There’s an erotic component as well. So you’ve got all the sexual arousal elements too. And then there’s a third element to limerence within the brain, which is about oxytocin, which is the bonding hormone that helps us connect rewards to social cues.
So what happens in the initiation of limerence is you get a powerful reward, and you learn the connection to that reward, and so you seek the reward, and you get a very powerful motivation to want that person. Oxytocin and dopamine in the reward system working together can imprint that person as the primary source of reward in the world. They become what could be called a super normal stimulus. They become an extremely powerful source of rewards. That wanting drive driven by dopamine gets stronger and stronger, and your ability to self-regulate because of feedback from the executive parts of the brain, so the prefrontal cortex, gets weaker and weaker. You end up in a state where you feel that you’ve got a desire that’s just insatiable, and you can’t resist it, and you don’t even want to resist it. You’re just completely captured by it.
Unwittingly, you’ve trained your brain into fixating on one particular person, and you’ve weakened your willpower and your ability to self-regulate and think, “No, this isn’t good for me. This is destructive. This is disrupting my life. This is taking me away from the other things that I care about, and I can’t concentrate on other things.” You get all of those symptoms that are like an addiction. You have intrusive thoughts that are hard to control, and you feel like you’re helplessly caught in a mental trap.
Lesley McClurg: How did you break out of that addictive state? Once you had this knowledge and you knew what was going on, how did you break it?
Tom Bellamy: Essentially, it’s trying to undo that training, try to reverse it. You have to try and reduce the reward that’s associated with the other person. You try to wake up your executive brain and get it to pay attention a little bit and break the habit loops and recognize, “Oh, that was a limerent instinct; I need to pay attention to this. I shouldn’t just follow it on autopilot as a habit.” The other thing, if you think of it in terms of an addiction, is you really need to break contact with the person that you’re infatuated with. You need to cut off the supply so that you’re not constantly reinforcing that attachment.
Lesley McClurg: And if you don’t do that, it seems like this could lead to some pretty bad antisocial behaviors, stalking, that kind of thing. Does it lead people to do things they wouldn’t normally do?
Tom Bellamy: Not really. Limerence is a runaway reward system. About half of us have it; about half of us experience it. It doesn’t predict for other antisocial behaviors. The people that stalk have other problems, other issues, often other psychiatric problems. The motivations for stalking are often a sense of entitlement to the attention of the other person, a desire to hurt the other person. Stalking is linked to ex-partners and that they feel, “I’ve been hurt so I should be allowed to hurt you.” The psychology and psychiatry behind stalking is quite distinct from limerence. I could imagine if somebody did have a predisposition to stalking behavior and they became limerent, then yes, their limerant objects, the person that they’re infatuated with, could become the target for the stalking. But I think if people are going through limerence but are otherwise psychologically healthy, there’s no reason to think that they would violate boundaries or do any of this almost criminal behavior.
Lesley McClurg: It makes me think that maybe a lot of people who are in Love AA, that might be room full of people who are more inclined toward limerence.
Tom Bellamy: Yes, because it’s so intoxicating and because it is addictive, you can see people who chase limerence, but when the limerence does begin to resolve, they immediately look for somebody new. They’re chasing that thrill of early love, and they are not wanting it to mature into a stable attachment-style bond. They just want the thrills. They want the tingles, the excitement, the fireworks. And so, yes, you can get a situation where people almost become addicted to limerence, that they’re chasing the limerent thrills again and again. And the healthy, happy love of a stable attachment isn’t what appeals to them.
Lesley McClurg: As one who has had both, you’ve had the long-term marriage, you’ve had these limerent states, you’ve stayed with your wife, how would you sell it to someone who’s on that addictive high that it’s worth sticking around for the love bonding and the lower intoxicating state down the road in a relationship?
Tom Bellamy: I’m an advocate for stable, healthy, long-term love. It’s very different in character from limerence. One simple way of separating it would be the difference between pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is excitement, thrills, momentary, and it passes. Happiness is a longer-term state of contentedness. Limerence doesn’t last. Even if you get reciprocation and you form a relationship, and you get all those thrills, it’s probably going to last maybe a couple of years, and then it will fade. You are going to get caught in this cycle of constantly chasing it. One of the very common mistakes that people who experience limerence make about love is that they think the strength of their limerence is a measure of how good the other person is as a partner. And it’s really not connected. What makes somebody compatible for you for a long-term relationship and what excites your limerent brain can be completely unrelated, and often they run against each other. You get the thrills and the excitement for one class of person, but unfortunately they are not a good prospect for a long-term mate.
Lesley McClurg: But that’s so confusing, right? Because if all the butterflies tell you that you must move towards them, how do you pay attention to compatibility when that’s going on?
Tom Bellamy: It’s really hard. If you do find yourself drawn towards people who are disordered in some way, or they’re unreliable, or they’re withholding, that would suggest they’re not going to be reliable for a long-term relationship, because they’re not going to reciprocate genuine care. So it can be hard. If you do recognize that the glimmer of limerent excitement is connected to people that tend to break your heart and that that’s a pattern that happens again and again in your life, unfortunately, it means that limerence is a warning sign for you. So rather than it being a sign of attraction, it’s a sign of potential danger.
Lesley McClurg: We were talking offline, and I mentioned that I’m not quite sure if I fall into limerent states. But now I realize I have a total pattern of dating narcissistic personality disorder folks. That high that they take you on, all that attention is so intoxicating, and then they pull it away, and I would fall on my face.
Tom Bellamy: It’s important to recognize that some people are very powerful limerent objects. They behave in a way that will attract and trap lots of people. As I said at the outset, if they’re behaving in a way that’s very unpredictable, so, they start with the love bombing, and it feels wonderful and exciting and fun and fantastic, but then withdraw emotionally, you don’t rationally go, “Oh, it turns out they’re unreliable. All my feelings for them have gone away.” You get the panic of thinking, “Oh, this thing that I thought was wonderful is slipping away now.” And so it motivates you to try and bond harder, try and reconnect and get back that early phase that was so pleasant, that was pleasurable, enjoyable. People will vary in whether or not they experience limerence as a tendency, but there are also people out there — and narcissists would be a great example — that can generate limerence in others.
Lesley McClurg: Does it always happen in the context of romantic love, or can you enter a limerent state even for a friend?
Tom Bellamy: This is kind of an open question. Dorothy Tenhoff, when she first coined the term, she meant it in a romantic context. But I have heard from lots of people over the years who say, “I recognize everything that you say about these symptoms, but I don’t feel romantic or sexual desire for this other person.” The commonest scenario that I’ve come across is a younger woman becoming limerent for an older female mentor, and they’ve not experienced same-sex attraction before in their life. It’s confusing because it feels platonic, but it also feels so addictive and compulsive and wanting and needy that it’s like a romantic connection. Also, I have heard from asexual people who say they experience limerence, but don’t feel any sexual desire. They want the closeness, they want intimacy, the emotional intimacy, and they do feel that same sense of special connection that’s extraordinary.
Lesley McClurg: If someone’s listening and they’re like, “Oh God, this is 100% resonating,” what is your advice? What’s the first thing that they should do?
Tom Bellamy: Try to understand, as a first step, what it is about the other person that you’re responding to. If you’ve had several romantic adventures or experiences in your life, look back over it and think, “Is there some sort of pattern here that can help me understand what it is that I’m responding to in this other person?” That can help put the whole experience into context. As you said, you recognize a pattern with narcissists being particularly attractive. For me, it’s damsels in distress as a stereotype and archetype. And so that can be very helpful. If you’re going through this, it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, it doesn’t mean you’ve got a mental illness, it doesn’t mean you need therapy or treatment. It is the way that many of us experience love in the early stages. To be able to have a healthy love relationship, understanding your own limerent sensitivities and vulnerabilities is gonna be a very important first step.
Lesley McClurg: And I imagine, if you have this tendency, you might have to cut the connection cold turkey rather than feed it just a little. Do you recommend for those who are more inclined, and let’s say it’s clearly taking over their life, that the hard cut is what is necessary?
Tom Bellamy: No, actually. If you think of it like a drug addiction, as an analogy, generally going cold turkey, it can work for some people and it is the right strategy for some people, but it’s better usually to taper off and to reduce it. If you are really deep in limerence and it’s advanced to the stage where it does feel like you’re addicted to this other person, if you try and cut off cold turkey, you’ll get a lot of emotional resistance. It’s very likely to cause a relapse because the idea of being separated from them is so aversive; you feel like you’ve been deprived of the greatest reward in the world. It is actually better in that situation to step it down and to start trying to exercise your executive brain and say, okay, we’ll go from constantly looking at her Facebook page or constantly being on his Instagram or constantly texting her to reducing the amount of contact step by step. A lot of getting out of limerence is almost playing mental tricks on yourself. The limerent part of your brain is like a child. They don’t understand why constantly wanting sweets isn’t good for them, and they need to be parented.
Lesley McClurg: Gentle parenting, shall we say?
Tom Bellamy: Yeah, and the negotiation with yourself, not tyrannizing yourself, “Why am I so weak? Why do I have no willpower?” If you try to suppress the intrusive thoughts, it backfires, it gets worse, because you’re still making it central, and you’re loading in negative associations with it. Thought suppression doesn’t work as a strategy. You do need to ride out the emotions more, and that becomes easier if you reduce in stages.
Lesley McClurg: I so wish I could have had this conversation in my 20s before I went down all those painful relationships. Tom, thank you so much.
Tom Bellamy: You’re very welcome.
Lesley McClurg: Tom Bellamy is a neuroscientist and author of Smitten: Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence, and How to Make Love Last. Inside Love is a production of KQED. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Our email is [email protected]. Our engineer is Jim Bennett. Our producers are Susie Britton and Emiko Oda. I’m Lesley McClurg. Thanks so much for listening.