I Never Loved You, It Was Just Limerence

Why you only think you’ve been in love

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

Confession: I’ve never truly been in love. I’ve definitely thought I was in love. I’ve even said those three little words. But the people I’ve felt love for didn’t actually exist. None of them were real people. They were idealized versions of what stood before me. A fantasy, loosely based on reality.

You see, to love someone is to see them and accept them for who they are — flaws and all.

And honestly, I’ve never been great at either.

Yet I know I’m not alone in this regard. I think a lot of you are bluffing. In fact, I’d even go as far as to say that most people (married couples included) just think they’re in love.

In reality, most of us are experiencing varying degrees of limerence that prevent us from forming genuine connections.

Hear me out.

Love or limerence?

On the surface, experiencing limerence sounds like falling in love. You meet someone, you feel attraction and desire towards them. You start thinking about them all the time, even when they’re not around. You fantasize about when you two will meet again.

You become slightly obsessed, overanalyzing their every move. You start spinning a narrative in your head about who this person is and why they are significant to you.

We all do it to varying degrees. It’s completely normal.

However, once you get through the initial stages of dating, you might start to notice that you feel almost disappointed after seeing this person. In limerence, we often feel this ‘let down’ as we start to realize there’s a discrepancy between reality and our fantasy about this person.

They didn’t quite measure up to the character we’ve bestowed upon them. They didn’t behave exactly how we wanted them to. They deviated from the plot line of our imagined romance novel.

If this were rational attraction, we would take the interaction at face value. Our feeling of disappointment would effectively lessen our attraction towards this person. However, in limerence, the disconnect only serves to make us more obsessed.