"Turns out, I am mentally ill. Aspects of my current brain chemistry resemble that of a person with obsessive-compulsive disorder. I havent started turning the light switches on and off or urgently avoiding sidewalk cracks. But I have been shopping for beauty products and underwear in a fever. I read cookbooks now. I spend an embarrassing amount of time looking at myself naked. My classic symptoms—involuntary preoccupation, mood swings, emotional sensitivity, enhanced sensual awareness—are what tip the diagnosis. I am limerent."
Limerence is the mental state of being madly in love or intensely infatuated when reciprocation of the feeling is uncertain. This state is characterized by intrusive thoughts and idealization of the loved one, typically with a desire for reciprocation to form a relationship. This is accompanied by feelings of ecstasy or despair, depending on whether one's feelings seem to be reciprocated or not. R
"Limerence is also fairly common to see in media geared toward young adults. Both Snape, who has an unhealthy lifelong fixation on Lily Potter in the Harry Potter franchise, and Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, who become obsessed with each other before they’ve even spoken to one another in Twilight, are struggling with limerence."
Limerence"Data collection largely began with the now classic dissection of this madness, found in Love and Limerence, by Dorothy Tennov. Tennov devised approximately two hundred statements about romantic love and asked four hundred men and women at and around the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to respond with "true" or "false" reactions. Hundreds of additional individuals answered subsequent versions of her questionnaire. From their responses, as well as their diaries and other personal accounts, Tennov identified a constellation of characteristics common to this condition of "being in love," a state she called "limerence."
Limerence"For most people, crushes come and go. But for others, the longing can last years and become addictive. A spark of interest turns into obsessive rumination sustained by a pernicious cocktail of hope and doubt. This is not a crush. This is limerence."
Limerence"I coined the word "limerence." It was pronounceable and seemed to me and to two students to have a "fitting" sound. To be in the state of limerence is to feel what is usually termed "being in love."
Limerence"The English language lacked a noun singular for the state of being love smitten, or having fallen in love, until Dorothy Tennov (1979) coined the term, limerence, to fill the void. It is formally defined as follows: limerence (adjective, limerent): the personal experience of having fallen in love and of being irrationally and fixatedly love stricken or love smitten, irrespective of the degree to which one’s love is requited or unrequited."
Limerence"Tennov (1979) used the term limerence to refer to a kind of infatuated, all-absorbing passion — the kind of love that Dante felt for Beatrice, or that Juliet and Romeo felt for each other. Tennov argued that an important feature of limerence is that it should be unrequited, or at least unfulfilled. It consists of a state of intense longing for the other person, in which the individual becomes more or less obsessed by that person and spends much of their time fantasising about them."
Limerence