Limerence

Psychologist Dorothy Tennov coined the term "limerence" as an alteration of "amorance" without other etymologies[1] to describe a concept that had grown out of her work in the 1960s, when she interviewed over 500 people on the topic of love.

[31][32] Nicky Hayes describes it as "a kind of infatuated, all-absorbing passion", the type of love Dante felt towards Beatrice or that of Romeo and Juliet.

[35] A central feature of limerence for Tennov was the fact that her participants really saw the object of their affection's personal flaws, but simply overlooked them or found them attractive.

[42][43] Tennov observes that limerence is therefore frequently unrequited[44][33] and argues that some type of situational uncertainty is required for the intense mental preoccupation to occur.

[50] Limerence can be difficult to understand for those who have never experienced it, and it is thus often derided and dismissed as undesirable, some kind of pathology, ridiculous fantasy or a construct of romantic fiction.

[51] According to Tennov, limerence is not a mental illness, although it can be "highly disruptive and extremely painful", "irrational, silly, embarrassing, and abnormal" or sometimes "the greatest happiness" depending on who is asked.

[61][62][1] This term has a complicated history with an evolving definition, but the sense in which Tennov uses it originates from a literary tradition of stories depicting tragic or unfulfilled love.

[63] Some examples of romantic love stories in this vein are Layla and Majnun, Tristan and Iseult, Dante and Beatrice (from La Vita Nuova), Romeo and Juliet and The Sorrows of Young Werther.

[68] Tennov credits the cleric Andreas Capellanus as describing the state of limerence "very accurately" in The Art of Courtly Love, a book of statutes for the "proper" conduct of lovers.

[121] According to Dorothy Tennov, a person experiencing limerence might misinterpret signals and falsely believe that their LO reciprocates the feeling when they do not, but they are receptive to negative cues, especially when receiving a clear rejection.

[...] The most consistent result of limerence is mating, not merely sexual interaction but also commitment, the establishment of a shared domicile in the form of a cozy nest built for the enjoyment of ecstasy, for reproduction, and for the rearing of children.

[140] Fisher's fMRI scans of rejected lovers showed activation in brain areas associated with physical pain, craving and assessing one's gains and losses.

[19][143] Bioethicist Brian Earp and colleagues have argued that the voluntary use of anti-love biotechnology (for example, a drug made to cause the person who uses it to fall out of love) could be ethical.

[145] Although limerence was not intended to denote an abnormal state and lovesickness is no longer recognized as a medical condition, symptoms still bear a resemblance to many entries in the DSM.

[125] Tallis argues that love evolved to override rationality so that one finds a lover and reproduces regardless of the personal costs of bearing and raising a child.

[152] However, shortly thereafter Darwin unexpectedly fell in love, suddenly becoming preoccupied with cozy images of married life and thus quickly converting from bachelor to husband.

[153] Tallis writes:[154]At first sight, it seems extraordinary that evolutionary forces might conspire to shape something that looks like a mental illness to ensure reproductive success.

"[156][26] Tennov borrows the term from the French writer Stendhal from his 1821 treatise on love, De l'Amour, in which he describes an analogy where a tree branch is tossed into a salt mine.

I know it's crazy, that my list of 'positives' sounds silly, but those are the things I think of, remember, and, yes, want back again!This kind of "misperception" or "love is blind" bias[14][37] is more often referred to as "idealization",[159] which modern research considers to be a form of positive illusions.

"[160] However, Tennov argues against the term "idealization", because she says that it implies that the image seen by the person experiencing romantic passion "is molded to fit a preformed, externally derived, or emotionally needed conception".

[23][48] Tennov notes that the bias can be an impediment to a limerent person wishing to recover from the condition, as another of her interviewees says:[161]I decided to make a list in block letters of everything about Elsie that I found unpleasant or annoying.

"[12] At the height of obsessive fantasy, people experiencing limerence may spend 85 to nearly 100% of their days and nights doting on the LO, lose ability to focus on other tasks and become easily distracted.

[173] Tennov wondered if fear of rejection even serves an evolutionary purpose, by drawing out the courtship process to ensure a greater chance of finding a compatible partner.

[29] In the early stages of romantic love, individuals may start out hypervigilant (hyperaware and sensitive to cues) due to uncertainty and novelty, but become synchronized over time as a relationship progresses.

[180] Then, when elements of doubt and uncertainty are added to the situation, the time spent preoccupied can soar to even 100% of waking hours, provided there is always some hope the LO might return the feelings.

Psychologists Ellen Bersheid and Elaine Walster discussed this common observation made, they note, by Socrates, Ovid, the Kama Sutra, and "Dear Abby," that the presentation of a hard-to-get as opposed to an immediately yielding exterior is a help in eliciting passion.The presence of barriers was crucial to the mutual limerence of Romeo and Juliet, hence this is often called "the Romeo and Juliet effect.

Tennov's (1979) analysis suggests that limerence can survive only under conditions in which full development and consummation of love is withheld and in which titillation of one kind or another continues over time.

They presented work to an American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences conference, but suggested that much more research is needed before it could be proposed to the APA that limerence be included in the DSM.

"[12] Fisher is one of the original authors to compare limerence to OCD, and has proposed that romantic love is a "natural addiction" which can be either positive or negative depending on the situation.

[123] Tennov found many cases of nonlimerent people who described their limerent partners being "stricken with a kind of insatiability" in this way, and that "no degree of attentiveness was ever sufficient".