Limerence refers to all the symptoms associated with obsession in love. This word was introduced in the 1970s by the American psychologist Dorothy Tennov in her book “Love and limerence, the experience of being in love.” The theses defended by her author were based on hundreds of interviews over the years.
The process of falling in love has been praised in literature and in the cinema and somehow we have an idealized image of love. However, this feeling sometimes presents some unpleasant ingredients: the unhealthy obsession with the desired person, the madness of love, the distortion of reality and a whole string of confused feelings caused by the chemical cocktail that is produced in the brain in the stage of falling in love.
main features
– The mental state of limerence is not voluntary, since the attraction towards the other is not a deliberate action.
– In popular language we do not use this denomination, but we use some equivalent expressions: being madly in love, blinded by love and other similar statements.
– The loved one becomes the central axis of the lover and any other feeling or concern goes to the background.
– In the psychological order, a series of symptoms occur: lack of appetite, obsessive ideas about the loved one, irrepressible desire to satisfy their needs, fear of possible rejection and distorted perception of the desired person.
– The individual who is in the phase of obsessive infatuation lives his own fantasy world (it is not strange that people talk about “butterflies in the stomach” and all kinds of metaphors are used to describe this state of confusion).
– From the cerebral point of view, limerence presents some significant alterations: dopamine, phenylethylamine, serotonin or norepinephrine are neurotransmitters that are altered in the stage of falling in love. The activation of these substances makes it possible to explain the tremors, sweating and nervousness of the lover.
For some experts in human behavior, limerence is a disease
The emotional instability described above is now considered a version of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The OCD of love is opposed to the idyllic image of platonic love.
Although in our culture we have accepted the normality of love follies, from the point of view of psychology and psychiatry, obsessive behaviors express a mental disorder.
Photos Fotolia: lalilele13 / nuvolanevicata