How to Beat Limerence

Are you completely head over heels for someone you’ve only just met? Do you find yourself daydreaming about your future together? Are you caught in a situationship, hoping they’ll finally commit?

You might think it’s love – but it could be limerence.

Limerence is an intense, obsessive infatuation that can feel euphoric at first but often leads to emotional turmoil, anxiety, and unfulfilled longing. Unlike healthy and genuine love, limerence is built on fantasy rather than reality.

Learning the acute signs, understanding its downsides, knowing how to stop it, and recognizing the signs that limerence is ending is crucial for forming healthy and loving relationships.

If you’re ready to regain control and move forward, this guide will help you overcome limerence for good.

In this guide, we will cover:

• What is Limerence?
• Types of Attachment Styles Affected by Limerence
• Why is Limerence So Hard to Get Over?
• What are the Signs of Limerence?
• What are the Downsides of Limerence?
• How to Beat Limerence
• Signs Limerence is Ending
• The Key Takeaways

What is Limerence?

Limerence is extreme infatuation: a state of being obsessed with another person with an intense desire to reciprocate feelings.

These powerful feelings are triggered in a person's fantasy, as reality does not meet their emotional needs.

The difference between true or romantic love and limerence was coined by psychologist Dorothy Tennov in the 1970s.

She summarized that those who had encountered trauma in childhood were more likely to experience limerent thoughts and feelings later in life.

Limerence comes from early childhood, especially if the person has a harsh, negative, and unsupportive upbringing. Unmet connection, emotional support, and validation cause the person to develop patterns of fear of abandonment and intimacy.

This leads to patterns where the person projects their insecurities and unmet needs onto potential love interests, as there is a belief that the person will fulfill those needs and solve all problems.

This unconscious response is the core root of limerence.

Limerence is more common in individuals with insecure attachment styles because it is characterized by obsessive thoughts, emotional dependency, and a strong need for reciprocation. Therefore, people with insecure attachments are more vulnerable to developing limerence.

How Attachment Styles Influence Limerence

Anxious Preoccupied

Due to their fear of abandonment, low self-belief and self-esteem, and their desire to be "loved", individuals with an anxious preoccupied style (or anxiously attached) struggle with limerence more than most.

They tend to read into all types of "signals" and put the person on a pedestal. Worse, anxious individuals can get caught in a cycle of longing, obsession, and temporary relief, only to fall back into distress when their feelings aren’t returned as expected.

Here’s why anxious preoccupied people struggle with limerence:

• Fear of Rejection: The more unavailable or unpredictable their love interest is, the stronger their obsession becomes.
• Need for Reassurance: They seek validation from their limerent person, hoping that reciprocation will finally provide them with emotional security. In a way, they become “clingy”.
• Idealization: They may overlook red flags and put the person on a pedestal, believing that love from this person will "fix" them or make them feel whole.

Dismissive Avoidants

Dismissive avoidants might not experience limerence in the same way as anxiously attached individuals, but they can still develop obsessive thoughts and behaviors when they feel emotionally disconnected or struggle with vulnerability.

A specific example is after a breakup or a missed opportunity when the dismissive avoidant starts to ruminate on what could have been rather been.

Some notable limerence traits include:

• Fear of Intimacy: They may idealize a love interest from a distance, romanticizing the idea of a relationship while avoiding actually connecting with the person.
• Push-Pull Dynamic: They might feel attraction but withdraw when emotional intensity rises, leading to a cycle of pursuit and avoidance.
• Suppressing Emotions: Dismissive avoidants tend to experience silent limerence – where they secretly fixate on someone but refuse to acknowledge or act on their feelings.

Fearful Avoidant

Fearful Avoidants (also known as the disorganized attachment style) are known for having both anxious preoccupied and dismissive avoidant traits. Therefore, they can experience a combination of limerence that is both intense and confusing.

Coupled with the fearful avoidant tendency of insecurity and self-sabotaging behaviors, limerence can be extremely emotionally exhausting for them. The impact makes them struggle to build secure and stable relationships.

Here’s how fearful avoidants experience limerence:

• Extreme Highs and Lows: Fearful avoidants tend to jump between desperately craving connection and pushing people away due to fear of rejection – similar to the "push and pull" of dismissive avoidants.
• Self-Sabotaging Actions: Unlike purely anxious preoccupied individuals who chase closeness, fearful avoidants often sabotage their own chances at connection due to deep-seated trust issues.
• Hot & Cold Behavior: They may idealize their love interest one moment and emotionally detach the next, leading to an unpredictable cycle of infatuation and withdrawal.

Why Insecure Attachment Styles Are More Prone to Limerence

Since limerence is built on fantasy, obsession, and unreciprocated desire, it reinforces the fears and insecurities that insecurely attached individuals already struggle with.

Breaking free from limerence requires understanding core wounds – ingrained beliefs about yourself and love – and working toward a secure attachment style, where love is based on trust, emotional stability, and mutual respect.

The problem resides in that limerence might take longer than expected to recover from.

Taking our free attachment style quiz is the first step to discovering your attachment style, so you know how and if you’ll ever be impacted by limerence.

Take Our Free Attachment Quiz
Discover your attachment style, so you know how and if you’ll ever be impacted by limerence.

Why Is Limerence So Hard to Get Over?

Limerence can be challenging to move past because it is deeply rooted in emotional and psychological patterns – very similar to unmet childhood needs.

That's why it can be extremely difficult to know how long it lasts or why some people struggle to beat it more than others.

How Long Does Limerence Last?

The duration of limerence varies from person to person. Research (from Dr. Tennov's 1979 book, Love and Limerence) suggests that the average duration is around 18 months to three years. However, factors such as external stressors or emotional instability can prolong it.

Why Do Some People Struggle More Than Others?

People's brains reinforce the emotional highs and obsessive tendencies associated with limerence without them realizing it is a recurring pattern.

For many people, it may take multiple episodes of limerence before they recognize it as a repeating cycle.

Initially, they may believe each episode is unique and a sign of genuine love. However, over time, they may notice common patterns – such as intense feelings, obsessive thoughts, and putting people on a pedestal.

Plus, touching on "external stressors or emotional instability" factors; when a person is struggling with significant life changes or high levels of anxiety (stress or depression), they may become more susceptible to these episodes because it offers a temporary escape and fills an emotional void.

Until the person becomes fully aware of the pattern and its triggers, they may continue to experience limerence repeatedly, reinforcing the emotional highs and lows that come with it.

Recognizing the signs of it is the first step to learning how to beat limerence for good.

What are the Signs of Limerence?

There are four stages of limerence – Stage 1: Infatuation, Stage 2: Crystallization, Stage 3: Deterioration, and Stage 4: Resolution – each with its own signs that appear.

Within these stages, being able to tell the difference between true love and limerence is essential.

1. Obsessive thinking of the person.

A common trait for limerent obsession. This doesn’t just include thinking about them all day but also making life choices around their needs or wants (such as choosing their favorite music or what to wear around them).

2. Extreme longing.

You might experience a deep sense of sadness and frustration that you can’t be with the person, whether that's a trusted friend, colleague, or another partner. It gets to the point that you might feel actual pain as you’re in an intense emotional state.

3. Extreme fear of rejection or disconnection from this person.

The underlying feeling is that you fear being rejected by this person if you do something wrong around them. You wouldn't be doing that if you're in love with someone as they would accept mistakes from you.

4. Fantasizing the reciprocation.

Do you daydream about your future, marriage, children, holidays, and all these fantasies of where this relationship can go – despite not forming a proper relationship with this person? This is when you fantasize about the emotional reciprocation, and it can lead to overwhelming desire and strong emotions.

5. Putting the person on a pedestal.

This is when you believe the person is untouchable and can do no wrong. You crave their affection and intimacy. But it's not them that's amazing; it’s a reflection of your lack of self-belief and confidence.

6. Obsessive behaviors.

Over time, you begin to take more "controlling" obsessive actions, including always calling, clinging to them, and trying to control the person and your life. In some cases, this relates to compulsive disorders, such as OCD.

What are the Downsides of Limerence?

The issue with limerence is that there are two sides to the coin: feeling euphoria and excitement around forming this fantasy relationship can be great. The other side is that it can destabilize relationships with ourselves and our lives.

Here's how limerence can negatively impact you:

Self-abandonment. When you constantly think about the other person, you’re not present in your own life. Due to a lack of self-awareness, you tend to put yourself second, lowering your self-worth and self-love. This can lead to anxiety, depression, lower self-esteem, and hopelessness.

Obsessiveness. You become so obsessed that it destabilizes your social life, social groups, family relationships, marriage (through infidelity or affairs thanks to feeling “romantic love”), and career.

They don’t work out long-term. This intense feeling makes you become obsessive and controlling, so you end up pushing the other person away.

Destructive actions follow. As mentioned above, your obsessive behaviors make you do things you don’t normally do, causing issues within the relationship – and leading to it not working out. Which, in turn, impacts your emotional well-being and mental health.

How to Beat Limerence

Address and meet your subconscious needs.

When you’re in a limerent state, it’s because your emotional needs are not being met in your reality. The person you've obsessing over is highlighting traits that you want for yourself. Ultimately, they can't give it to you.

You have to identify those needs yourself and work to build healthy habits to meet them. These strategies include setting up a time to check your feelings and needs, encouraging and complimenting yourself more often, and reassuring yourself you can do it.

Express our repressed traits.

You must acknowledge and practice the repressed traits you love from the person. It’s an essential part of the healing process.

For example, suppose the other person is assertive and strong. In that case, you now have to express and practice those traits in a consistent manner (as mentioned in the advice above) to help get your needs met.

Developing a subconscious comfort zone.

You have to find a comfort zone in how you treat your feelings and needs.

This will take to develop. You'll have to find your own mental zone where you can express your needs comfortably to yourself and others.

Developing a secure attachment to yourself will help you find this comfort zone naturally.

Setting boundaries.

Setting healthy boundaries when limerence arises with a person is extremely useful. You have to put a pause and think about your intrusive thoughts and actions when around this person.

Set up physical boundaries (so you don’t bump into them), thought boundaries (think alternative thoughts on the person), and emotional boundaries (don’t attach your feelings towards them). The more often you do this, the stronger your boundaries will become, helping you focus on yourself, not them.

Challenge the equilibrium.

When you have limerence, you only see the good in that person.

But you really have to consider the traits you were attached to and the downsides to those traits; it’s about gaining valuable insights into the real individual. It’s almost like grieving the situationship.

Find out the person's flaws to see who the person really is. An example could be financial instability. Do they spend money without considering your future? That might clash with your beliefs and approach to finances, challenging your positive perception of them.

Then, look at the benefits of letting this person go. See how better your life could be without them being around you. It might feel painful at first, but as time passes, you'll focus on how great your life could be without them.

Signs Limerence is Ending

Recognizing the signs that limerence is fading is important since you know you're taking the right steps in finding emotional balance and moving on.

Here are some key signs that limerence is ending:

• Reduced Obsessive Thoughts: You find yourself thinking about the person less frequently, and they no longer dominate your thoughts.
• Emotional Detachment: The intense emotional highs and lows associated with a person start to diminish, and you feel more neutral about the person.
• Realistic Perception: You begin to see them as they truly are, recognizing their flaws and imperfections.
• Decreased Anxiety: The fear of losing their attention or affection no longer impacts your self-worth or value.
• Focused on Other Interests: Your focus shifts back to personal goals, hobbies, and relationships that bring you joy and hope for the future.
• End of the Fantasy: You stop fantasizing about them and start embracing the present moment without unrealistic expectations.
• Inner Peace and Clarity: There is a sense of emotional closure, and you feel more at peace with yourself, no longer chasing the euphoric highs of limerence.

Key Takeaways of Limerence

• Limerence is an intense obsession with another person, driven by fantasy rather than reality due to unmet emotional needs.
• Limerence can be difficult to overcome due to it being rooted in deep emotional and psychological patterns, often tied to childhood experiences. A cycle of emotional highs and lows reinforces obsessive tendencies.
• Insecure attached people are more prone to limerence and struggle more than others due to the brain reinforcing obsessive patterns.
• The average duration is 18 months to 3 years. Factors like emotional reinforcement and stress impact its duration.
• Signs can include obsessive thinking, extreme longing, fear of rejection and putting them on a pedestal.
• To beat limerence requires you to address unmet needs, express repressed traits, and set boundaries, among other things.
• You can tell limerence is ending when you think about the person less frequently, are feeling emotionally detached, and are regaining interest in personal goals and hobbies.

The best place to start is by searching and signing up for our Overcome Limerence and Extreme Infatuation to Increase Your Self-Esteem course. We can support you through it so that you can find love with yourself.

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