There are always signs and as I call it in research, antecedents or factors that determine if someone is little more pre-disposed to something, in this case, limerence, compared to others.
Let’s look at the 10 signs and symptoms I tend to see in my work with limerent individuals over the years. Some people experience just a few of these, whilst others experience the whole gamut of it.
#1 Attraction to emotionally unavailable people
This includes everyone from celebs to married people to people who are really far away geographically, living in another country or state. This also includes people who have outright told you that they are not interested in you or who have actually rejected you.
Basically, the person cannot or will not be in a physical relationship with you presently.
But why does anyone get attracted to unavailable people, it doesn’t make sense? Well, there’s usually a psychological mechanism underlying this, which I go into more detail in this workshop here.
The key thing is that you’d like to be protected from being hurt. Relationships with real people right where you are, people who are available and have needs and wants and demands and desires that could be different from yours or complicated, stirs up alot of pain and anxiety and other not-so-great feelings for you.
So relationships with people you know you cannot be with is safer. They can’t hurt you. And even if they do, your subconscious kind of already knows that.
#2 A tendency to have one-sided crushes in relationships on people
This is linked to sign 1. If you have a pattern like this in your life, it means you constantly like people whom you can’t have for some reason. You may be involved in unrequited love situations.
There are also situations where you possibly can’t express yourself very well to the person you like or you may feel overly shy. You filter your speech, behaviours and even your personality. You may freeze up in front of your crushes too. You are not really yourself.
There are also cases where you may like someone a lot, and they could actually have been reciprocating at some point, but you are at some sort of emotional roadblock, struggling to proceed.
Perhaps, you are overly fearful of them knowing about your feelings. So you start to get cold towards them or push them away .
It’s totally normal to have crushes, we’ve all had that, but most people grow out of it at some point. Limerent people tend not to. They can continue building up fantasies of the person that can go on for decades.
Unfortunately, with one-sided crushes, there is little to no reciprocation from your crush. This can prolong limerence because when you don’t see any reciprocation and also may be too shy to act on your feelings, your mind starts building up stories about the person. Playing out scenarios that you wished would happen in person.
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#3 An avoidant attachment style
Attachment style theory was coined by John Bowlby, a psychologist in the 1960s and has been taught and spoken about in psychology circles. It has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in a lot of mainstream media recently.
Essentially there are 4 to 5 different types, depending on who you ask: secure, anxious, anxious-avoidant, dismissive-avoidant. Not everyone has a secure attachment style, but for people who are limerent, they usually identify with an avoidant attachment style.
Attachment styles actually stems from our childhood, and it depends on how our caregivers actually took care of us, interacted with us and showed us love and affection. With an avoidant attachment style, there could have been cold or inconsistent shows of affection from caregivers.
So the child does not have the consistency, reliability and predictability from their caregiver. It is sometimes present and at other times, not. Hence you found the unpredictability painful and what the brain usually does in these kinds of situations is, it turns off that emotional mechanism to protect yourself from feeling hurt.
With that “protection” mechanism, you no longer can feel hurt. In the future, you just avoid it altogether and not even make yourself feel affection for someone.
Attachment styles tend to manifest in different areas of our lives and not just in romance, but also friendships. Anything that brings the person pain will be avoided.
#4 Deep-rooted fears about love and romance
Having deep-rooted fears – of rejection, abandonment – can stem from several sources:
- Your childhood
- Prior negative experiences in dating, that really, really deeply hurt you, and you have not been able to kind of go past that.
- Having dysfunctional models of love in your environment. Perhaps, the adults or peers around you do not have happy relationships or marriages, perhaps one person is giving more, it’s very one-sided and so on.
- Beliefs that have been passed down that can skew your perception a certain way
Our experiences, beliefs and what we have been told about love can shape our thinking and behaviour in relationships. And when you have alot of fears, it will naturally impact how you move forward in love.
#5 An obsessive quality to your character
This point is slightly more interesting, you could already have been a pretty intense person prior to your limerence episodes. Perhaps you are easily obsessed with and possessive of people close to you or whom you like.
Personally, I was pretty obsessive with my crushes and possessive of my friends. I felt incredibly sad and abandoned when they did not hang out with me.
This obsessiveness can make it hard to let go of thinking about your crush/limerent object (LO) when you are trying to get over them.
#6 Being prone to fantasies and maladaptive daydreaming
The biggest thing about limerence is that it is a very mental activity – it all exists in your head, the fantasies, the daydreaming about the person – it’s all in your head. That’s where limerents are the happiest – when they are thinking about their crushes/LOs, forming scenarios in their minds.
Other behaviours I’ve observed are, being very into fanfics (Especially for those limerent for celebs) as well as social media stalking. Following the person on their page, trying to piece together information about them and their lives, replaying videos, staring at photos.
This is actually a form of escapism. Limerence is an escape from your life, the happenings in it, the unhappiness, the pain. It usually happens when there are things in your life you have yet to unpack and heal from. Certain situations you are trying to run away from, unhealed trauma and pain.
So it feels good to temporarily escape all of that and just be where your fantasies are, it feels good and incredibly pleasant. And this is one of the biggest things about limerence, which makes it different from just regular crushing, the element of constant fantasy thinking.
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#7 Intense anxiety and emotional highs and lows
The emotions you feel are completely dependent on how your limerent object treats you. If you guys know each other, they smile at you or looked your way, or you simply saw them around, it sends you into an euphoric high.
If they didn’t interact with you or if you found that there was some interview, they didn’t smile at you, etc, you go into a very depressive, low.
If you are limerent for a celebrity, this can differ slightly. So when you receive positive information about them, like you find out they are no longer with their partner, you experience an incredible high. When there’s negative information, like perhaps they are getting married, then you sink to a low.
It’s common in limerence to oscillate between euphoria and chest tightening anxiety or lows. There’s also an element of uncertainty baked into limerence that can make you feel very anxious as well.
Another characteristic about limerence is that experiencing the lows doesn’t really make the person more likely to let go of their limerent object. In fact, it intensifies their feelings and obsessiveness. There is a certain “determination” to stay loyal to the limerent object/crush. Hoping that their crush would be “available” for their fantasies again (if the LO is attached).
This is how limerence can be a very toxic painful cycle. Your brain is constantly chasing this euphoric high which feeds into your obsessions. This makes the habits and thought patterns very difficult to break as the brain constantly seeks new stimulants to get the dopamine going – new fanfics, new photos, videos, new interactions.
This is what makes the cycle of limerence so addictive.
#8 Deep-seated loneliness
Deep down, limerent individuals are pretty lonely people. They crave true affection, intimacy and connection with someone else, but aren’t getting it.
They feel this way even if they have loads of friends and surrounded by a lot of loved ones. There is also a deep feeling of boredom and emptiness. These feelings are usually linked to several things:
- A lack of purpose in life
- A lack of intimacy, or true affection within the relationships you have. You may be married or with someone or surrounded by people, but because you aren’t connected with them, you’d still feel alone.
- Not being connected to your inner self, your feelings and experiences, not very connected with how you are wanting to live your life
The thing about feelings like loneliness, emptiness and boredom is that it can keep you feeling pretty low and pretty sad most of the time. Combined with the fact that you know you are not able to “get” your limerent object can also bring about a sense of hopelessness.
All these are pretty “low-vibe” feelings and staying too long in this emotional space can sometimes make you feel like it’s hard to get out of.
#9 Sparse relationship life or relationships with not-very-deep intimacy
The pattern that I’ve observed in singles who are limerent is that there is usually a string of not very deep relationships that don’t last long, or the dating life is quite sparse, with long gaps (years) of not dating.
Many of my clients are actually married or in long-term relationships whilst being limerent, and that usually happens because there is an unfulfillment in the relationship, they don’t feel very connected with their partners or themselves.
They could have gotten together with their partner for a very different reason, are perhaps regretting it and the crush/limerent object is a novelty for them, or a kind of love they feel they always wanted but don’t have.
It is difficult to be mentally and emotionally present for dates and relationship partners, when you are constantly pining away for someone else, living in your fantasies.
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#10 Lack of purpose in your life
When my clients come to me for a session on healing limerence, it usually never is ALL about limerence itself. There’s alot about your life to explore that can all affect your limerent state.
Some areas that we will discuss include what is going on with your life, what sort of person you’d like to be, what would you like to achieve, what is your purpose in this lifetime.
Purpose is so important because it gives intention and meaning to our everyday. When you are focused on your purpose, you are less likely to feel lost and less likely to fill your days with activities that aren’t aligned with that purpose.
Life is long and also very short, we don’t have as much time as we like to think we have on this earth. So it’s best to spend your time focusing on who you want to be, what you actually want to do, and building strong relationships with those around you and yourself.
Limerence begins with you. It doesn’t start because you have a crush or a limerent object. It began with you – your experiences, your tendencies, your habits, your perspectives. These different factors over time combined to lead you to a limerent state.
Limerence happens when you put others as the center of your thoughts instead of prioritising yourself.
The question to ask yourself is – are you ready to let go of living like that? Or do you still want to continue doing so and let true love and life get further away from you?