Are You In Love Or In Limerence?

Are you constantly in love with unavailable people? You might be in limerence. If you're nodding to the criteria below, count yourself a limerent fool. Limerence looks and talks like love, but lives more in fantasy and imagination than reality and interaction.

1. You are in a constant hope and uncertainty cycle.

Do you find that you like people who are hard to get, but not TOO hard to imagine they could come around? When someone rejects you, do you find that you want their reciprocation all the more? Have you ever lost interest in someone as soon as you realized you had them?

2. You intrepret neutrality as hidden interest.

If someone sits next to you, you might conclude that they don't like you. But if someone doesn't sit next to you, you could also conclude that they DO like you but don't want to be too forward, obvious, bold, etc. Perhaps someone liked a Facebook picture of you and that could mean they like you, but then you see they also like pictures of platonic friends as well. A limerent person likes to assume that neutral and even negative signs are secret signs of reciprocation.

3. You're embarrassed at admitting it.

People like to talk about people they're seeing, dating, and banging, but they do NOT like to talk about people they're in limerence with (nor do they even identify it as such) because the conversation would go something like this: "Well there's this girl. I don't really know her very well, but what I do know I like. We've talked a lot and every time we talk she LOOKS at me like she likes me, but I just don't know. Ask her out? Oh no, I can't make a move until I KNOW she likes me the same way. Right, I mean, there are some signs, like how she sat by me in class and told me what she did over the weekend--I mean you don't tell people you went to a concert with girlfriends and didn't go on dates unless you're interested, right? Oh, no? Yeah, this is stupid; it's nothing; I don't know why I can't stop thinking about her. I'm not even WITH her; you know? Let's talk about your Tinder date."

4. The person you like is on a Mount Olympus pedestal.

Do you exaggerate the attractive qualities and pay little or no attention to unattractive ones? Do you find a way to turn the vices into virtues? Do you extol strengths and rationalize weaknesses? Love is blind, but limerence wears a blindfold.

5. You get uncharacteristically nervous.

People get nervous in love too, you might say. But some people flirt quite effortlessly in love too. If you have limerence, you will be excessively nervous around the person you like and rarely is there a breezy, carefree person in limerence. They are defined by delusion AND fear. A limerent person is a nervous person. To a degree that stupefies you AND the person you like. You are simply so concentrated on whether they reciprocate your feeling and the fear that they won't and the pressure to be attractive, perfect, wanted that you freeze. Think of Gatsby. He's a smooth guy in business and at parties, but falls apart at the anticipation of meeting a woman he has idealized, fantasized about, and even moved across the LAKE from her HOUSE, for YEARS before making a move.

6. It's NOT about the thrill of the chase.

There are people obsessed with the challenge and then once they've had sex with that person, they're over it. This is only true if a limerent person believes that sex=reciprocation. But if there is still uncertainty and hope after sex, it will live on. People in limerence never quite believe their love interest is theirs, and yet never quite believe their love interest is apathetic. They have a strange mix of intense fear with optimistic delusion and swing between both on a pendulum of imaginary perfection. It's not just a conquest/sex; it's about reciprocation foremost.

7. You spend more time looking at their Facebook than their face.

Dorothy Tennov said that "Limerence, not love increases when lovers are able to meet only infrequently or when there is anger between them." Limerence relies on obstacles in order to create the uncertainty, so often that obstacle IS lack of spent time. As for the anger, I think that refers to the feeling of wanting someone to reciprocate just so you can turn them down. THAT TOO is limerence because it's still WANTING them to reciprocate and limerence centers on intense need for reciprocation. Moreover, that vengeful "I want you to want me so bad so I can reject you" is a way for someone who cares more to pretend like they care less and in limerence, there's always someone who cares less in order for the person in limerence to care more. The uncertainty-and-hope cycle drives limerence.

8. You go over and over every encounter in excruciating detail.

You recall with vividness what the person you like said and did, how they looked at you, and the topic of conversation exactly. The reason why limerence is closer to love than lust and thus a tricky fraternal twin is that someone in limerence genuinely listens and fully absorbs what their love interest says and does. They do not have lines or a playbook or a short attention span when it comes to listening to their limerent interest. They are not saying the right things to get laid. They intently care and then refer to such conversations, knowing looks, and affection during their bouts of uncertainty and worry. Interestingly, people in limerence do objectify people they like in that they put them on a pedestal, but they do not objectify them in the sexual way we traditionally associate that term.

9. You are insatiable.

Remember how Gatsby kept pressing Daisy to say she's never loved her husband Tom and always loved Gatsby? This is limerence in action. Even when Daisy's having an affair with Gatsby and telling him she loves him, he needs to know that she reciprocates as intensely as he does. Even if she were to say what he wanted her to say, he would still not believe it. Granted, that's because Daisy really doesn't care as intensely as he does, but that's precisely why she remains enthralling to him.

10. You hide your feelings.

You hide your feelings from the person you like AND your friends. Then, because YOU hide your feelings, you think maybe the person you like is as well, which brings us back to "interpreting neutral actions as signs of reciprocation." We've been here before; I recognize that tree. The reason why people in limerence hide their feelings is fear of rejection and also because they are self-aware enough to know that their feelings are intense for having barely known, spent time, and idealized this person.