I'm gonna answer specific people here, because I am closely acquainted with some people on this discussion board - but really - everyone should read it, lest they misunderstand me Also, I should say at this juncture, I do not know why, but in the past six months or so, I have both figured out the reasons for my own limerance, (and limerant tendencies) and have also figured out - that is, gained as some would say, "profound knowledge" of what my fears are. Having found those fears, I have been able to address them, and put them behind me. So, in some ways, I don't belong here. I am no longer a card-carrying member of the Limerant Community. But, like the person who has overcomne an addiction, I have to admit I can still be lured back under the limerant spell. " Hi, everybody. My name is David/Lizzie, and I am a Limerant."



Aleph - Don't be so negative. Not everything everyone says is supposed to be a personal assault. But perhaps a little introspection might not hurt. Have you been running away, or using your own limerance as a way to avoid asking yourself the hard questions? If not, (long pause here) then good for you; you are on what I suspect is the right track for personal mental health happiness. But if you have been running away, then you have to ask yourself why, and to what end, and wouldn't it be better to stop fighting imaginary dragons, and face the personal searching head on? (You will note I didn't say running away from what - that is because it really does not matter, and because, if you can answer why, the what will become self-evident.)


Andrew - I think real love and respect go hand in fisk, as Popeye might have said. Love without respect, it seems to me, leads to some sort of self-absorbed infatuation - possibly a kind of limerance - Are there sub-folders within the folder labeled "Limerance" ? - probably - --------------------a-a-anyway, that's a whole 'nother discussion. ------ So, yes, I think I agree with you on a couplela points - first, "Love" is so ill-defined. The word encompasses so many feelings - we love our siblings, and our parents, and our more distant relatives - but we don't - unless we are strangely twisted, -- normally want to love them the same way we want to be with our LO - and we love friends - but here, again, not like with the LO. So maybe love isn't the right word ----Isn't it interesting? The English language has a larger vocabulary than any other, yet we still use the same word for all kinds of different love ........But back to the original discussion: Do we respect our LO? That might be heading toward the crux of the matter. Our thoughts about our LO are centered around how we WANT (or think we want) the LO to feel towards us. But that really doesn't leave room for what the LO wants, does it? So where is the respect in that? Hmmmm ...Interesting questions. And, I suspect, the answers are fraught with growing pains.

I don't know. I haven't met someone to whom I want to commit. And, for me, commitment to a person means giving up my commitment to music performance. So there is all that approach/avoidance stuff, rearing it's ugly head once more.

I refuse to believe David/Lizzie is an EX-limerent. ;-)

Sophia, you wrote that you do not see love and limerence as interchangeable at all.

It's true, they are not anymore. Limerence was coined to describe the concepts of falling in love and being in love in order to describe the process of loving someone romantically. But it appears that Tribe members have expanded the definition to include emotions gone awry during that process. I suspect that happened because Tennov's book uses complex vernacular, having been written for fellow researchers in the study of love, which has led to confusion among us regular people.

Just my 2 cents.

Friends probably call my Dizzie behind my nack. - and perhaps, to mis-appropriate President Lincoln, " ... it is mete and right that ... [they ] ...should do so ..." :-)

Hi Sofia,

I am so curious about your process and how you worked through your mutual limerence. Did your LO remain limerent for you? I would imagine so if you resisted.

I am also wondering what about it felt "not real" to you as you stated: "It was immediate and magnetic for both of us - we obviously filled a need for each other at the time. It was powerful stuff, but it wasn't real."

Especially if it is mutual it's hard for me to see that it hasn't been 'real' despite not forging into a complete intimacy. Even if there is fantasy involved, isn't that how all love starts out? It sounds like you had an amazing connection and I'm curious how/why you didn't decide to go there and find out more, especially if your LO made himself available.

Thanks-still working through my own (at one point reciprocated) limerence. Curious for me, mine started out with the joyous, expansive, heart opening stuff-which I didn't call limerence at the time- when it went awry was after confirmation of reciprocation fueled by obstacles, magnetic physical attraction that couldn't be consummated, doubt, worry, obsessive thinking, filling in the blanks with fantasy. Still with all of that I am not yet able to conclude for myself it was in fact not real (love or at least falling in love).

Sela