Transcription
Hi. Hello. Uh, today we're going to talk about limerence. And I'm sorry if I hurt any of your feelings in the process. Any feelings hurt are for your best good. So, let's get into it, shall we?
Do you ever get stuck on someone who doesn't love you? I'm not talking about a crush. I'm not talking about butterflies and flirtation and fun. I'm talking about the spiral, the all-consuming obsession, the "I hope they text back" checking your phone every two seconds feeling. That mental loop where they say one nice thing and it lives rent-free in your head for the next six months. That's not love. It's limerence. And limerence is both desperately wanting to be loved and feeling like you do not deserve to be. That contradiction, that psychological split that keeps the addiction going. Because that's what limerence really is. It's an addiction, not to a person, but to a possibility. The possibility that if someone just loved you enough, fought for you hard enough, saw you deeply enough, maybe you could finally stop hating yourself.
Because that's what hurts the most, isn't it? It's not just that they don't love you back. It's the meaning that we make from that absence that maybe it confirms what you've always feared to be true. That love was never meant for you. That connection, safety, and reciprocation were luxuries that you don't qualify for.
Now, now let's get into some psychology of limerence here for a moment. In psychology, I have it on my computer here. In psychology, limerence is often tied to attachment trauma, especially anxious attachment. When love was unpredictable, inconsistent or conditional. As a child, we learned to chase it. That love was not something given unconditionally. We believed we had to earn love by being enough, pretty enough, smart enough, low-maintenance enough, quiet enough. So when someone shows us breadcrumbs, our brains light up like we've hit the jackpot. Intermittent reinforcement is what it's called. The same system slot machines use to hook people is exactly what is going on in your brain during limerence. It's one of the strongest psychological forces and limerence thrives on it. The push and the pull, the almost, the mixed signals. It hijacks your nervous system and calls itself love. It's not love. It's a compulsion to complete a narrative that was never yours to carry in the first place. That person, this person that you claim that you are in love with, that you want to love you back, is filling a hole in you. It's also taking the place in continuing the cycle of begging for love and never receiving it from a parent as a kid. It's the same cycle. It's a compulsion to carry a narrative that was never yours to carry in the first place. It's taking the place and continuing the cycle of begging for love and never receiving it from a parent as a kid. We are repeating the cycle of what is, say it with me now, comfortable, not healthy. Because our nervous system gets used to what we feed it. And if we are fed the cycle of begging and wishing and hoping that we will receive what we need from a parent, the love we desperately crave from a parent that should be given to us unconditionally just by being born. We look for that because it's what we've always known. And what we always know is not always what is healthy because we think deep down we have been taught that love is a game of endurance. That if we just hold on long enough, someone will finally give us what we have always been missing.
But true love isn't earned through suffering. You think that what you're craving is them, but what you are craving is healing. If you really wanted love, you would be in a relationship with someone who loves you, who texts you back, who shows up, who is consistent. But instead, you are obsessing over someone that gives you nothing and that tells you something about yourself. You choose subconsciously to stay in this headspace because if you wanted to leave, you'd say, "I deserve a love that loves me back and leave." But you don't because deep down you don't believe love is safe. You don't believe you're worthy of it. So you seek people out that confirm that belief. Limerence tells you that the absence of love is the only love you deserve. So you wait, you fantasize, you write, you write mental stories about a version of them that will never exist. And here's the thing, you're looking for water in a dry well. And that doesn't make this other person a bad person. It means they're exercising their free will and aren't interested in you. Interest isn't cut and dry. And there's so many reasons why a person might not be romantically attracted to you. Someone not being attracted to you doesn't say anything about your worth. Let's say it again and say it with me now this time. Someone not being attracted to you doesn't say anything about your worth.
And limerence has so much more to do with you than it ever does with that other person. Because when someone doesn't like you back, it's your duty to walk away and find someone that does, but you stay. Why? Because limerence doesn't care about truth. It wants hope. It wants to keep spinning the wheel just in case today is the day that they finally see you. The day you are finally heard, seen, expressed, loved, carried, chosen. Treat it like an obsession because psychologically it is. And believe me, I've been there. There's always been someone in the back of my mind where I'm like, "Oh, I can't go off and date because what if this person finally decides to love me today?" I didn't want him to love me. I wanted him to notice how lovable I was. I wanted him to give me the permission and the evidence that I was lovable. I wanted him to make me lovable by choosing me. I've always been lovable and it doesn't matter who chooses me. I was lovable from the day I was born.
Philosopher Erich Fromm warned against this in The Art of Loving that most people mistake the feeling of falling for love as actual love. But real love is an act of will, of maturity, of presence. It's not obsession. It's not chaos. It's calm. It's grounded. It's mutual. It's a decision that you make. And if you have made the decision to be in a relationship with someone, but someone else has not made that same decision, well, honey, you are living in delusion, not reality. Because you would both make a mutual decision to be in that space together. Love does not thrive only on feeling, but action. You have to feel those feelings for each other, but you also have to make the conscious action to be in that relationship. And here's the thing. When you and another person decide that you are in love, it is a decision. It is a mutual agreement that both of you choose to stay there. And with limerence, you have the feeling of love, but not the action. And the other person does not have the feeling or the action. It is a single-sided interaction. And it's not that you are actually in love with them or feeling in love with them. You are in love with the idea that someone could love you so hard that maybe you could love yourself. That maybe they could give you evidence that you can finally stop hating all the pieces of you that you do not know how to love. That you can be seen in your entirety by a person and be chosen anyway. But no one can do that for you. You have to do that for yourself. But do not worry. The fact that you can love someone as deeply as this person who did not love you back is proof that you can love yourself. Write yourself the poems that you write them. Dye your hair for yourself, not for them. Yearn and pine for your own self-acceptance, not their acceptance.
So, my friends, how do you get out of limerence? This is the question that's probably been on your mind since this video started. You stop romanticizing starvation. You stop confusing neglect with mystery and inconsistency with fate. You remind yourself that the person you're addicted to is not real. Not in the way you imagine. Real and true love is simple and easy and calm. It is a mutual decision. It is the same as ordering a cup of coffee. You walk up to the counter, you make the decision that you are going to get that coffee, and then you go and pick up that coffee. It's the same feeling as falling in love with a person. You have decided that you are going to be each other's person for life. You have decided that you are going to be there for the other person for whatever they might need. You are now their person. And that is an agreement that you could sign on paper if you wanted to. Love is not earned through suffering. And this person that you think that you are in love with, they're a character you wrote to solve a story that started long before they entered your life. And you need to stop asking "Why don't they love me?" And you need to start asking "Why do I believe that love must be earned through suffering?" Love is not supposed to feel like obsession. It's not supposed to feel like pain. It's not supposed to feel like a million questions in your head.
And here's what you're going to do about that person that you have built up in your head. You're going to grieve. And grieving sucks, but I want you to do it anyway. You're going to cry and rage and let the fantasy collapse. Stop protecting it and let it fall apart. This is never going to happen. And you know what you're going to do? You're going to start choosing people who choose you back, who would move mountains for you. You begin the terrifying, liberating work of becoming your own mirror, of seeing yourself not as a problem that has to be fixed, but as a soul to be loved. You take the energy you spent chasing them and redirect it into creating a life that feels like home. One where you don't have to perform. One where you are safe even if you are not chosen. And the holes you're trying to fill, they don't vanish, but they just stop controlling you. It becomes a scar instead of an open wound.
Because truly, philosophically, limerence is existential. We're terrified of the void. Terrified of the silence within ourselves. So we fill it with dreams, projections, imagined futures. We build shrines in our head to unavailable people because it gives us structure, something to orbit around. It gives us a sense of meaning. Like maybe I was made to love this person and that's why I'm here instead of admitting to yourself that you feel meaningless on this planet. Because to admit that there's nothing there would be to face the abyss. But what if the abyss isn't empty? What if it's the space where you live? What if it's home? What if it's where your real self is waiting? You learn to sit with the loneliness instead of escaping it. And eventually, quietly, without announcement, you realize you never needed them to love you. You just needed to come back to yourself.