Greetings, fellas!
‘Limerence’ is perhaps the most underused terms in day to day life, when in fact, it is the most appropriate word to use. Often people reckon it’s synonymous to a ‘crush’, but it’s no where near. It’s not so uncommon to use ‘limerence’ and love interchangeably. The fact that both start and end with the same letters is one of the few similarities between the two terms. Let’s try to understand the three terms:
- Crush: Modest magnitude of adoration for a person.
- Limerence: Addiction/obsession over a person you’re just acquainted to.
- Love: When other person’s happiness means the world to you and you put it forward before yours.
Since the definitions of the two is more or less clear, let’s focus on limerence. We’ll juxtapose love with limerence later in the article.
NOTE: Since I’m a heterosexual male, I’ll write this from the perspective that my LO is a female, ergo I’ll be using ‘she’ as the quintessential pronoun. In case you’re a heterosexual female reading it, just omit the ‘s’.
Limerent object: Abbreviated ‘LO’, the limerent object is that person towards whom you’re limerent to.
Reciprocation: When you’re limerent towards a person, you expect them to reciprocate the same feelings as you’ve towards them to you. i.e. feel limerent and care ’bout you. This is a pretty common symptom shown by limerents. Let’s take a look at some more signs and symptoms of limerence:
- Obsession: She is on your mind 24*7, there’s nothing much you can do ’bout it. You picture yourself with her in every situation possible. Right from the morning boner (for which she’s the reason, more on that later) to the night blanket tucking, she’s the one ’bout whom you’ve been thinking. Though the notion she isn’t doing the same tends to prick right in the heart, but over time you learn to live with that. You tend to stay up all night, or manage to take out time from your frantic lifestyle just for her and for the feeling you’re likely to get when you spend some quality time together.
- Irregular sleep routine: Often it’s insomnia (lack of sleep), but in a few rare occasion, hypersomnia is also observable. Primarily, insomnia ’cause her thoughts keep you awake, obstructing you from sleeping. Albeit, another perspective to look at it, (especially by one sided limerents), could be, when you’re sleeping you turn unconscious which means you don’t feel the agony and can’t dwell upon the fact that your LO doesn’t reciprocate. Let’s call it the many perks of sleeping. A downside of sleeping could be, that phase when you get flashbacks of your tragic day before you actually get unconscious.
- Anxiety: This is a vast symptom. Anxiety could be displayed in various forms. It could be either double/triple/quadruple/multiple texting, being all gawky when you see her, rehearsing what you’re going to say to ’em in person, and when the moment finally arrives, you stutter, being too self conscious.
- Over thinking: As mentioned above, you get the yips.
You (try to) know each and every minute details ’bout her, and cyber stalking is a customary characteristic; often limerents analyse a particular even more than a normie. For example, if you say something to her, and she doesn’t revert, you think to yourself whether what you said disappointed her, does she now hate me (more)?, will I ever get to hear back?, whereas a normie would simply contemplate the fact that she was just busy, or forgot to reply. Overthinking can lead to a sick state of mind, eventually leaving you in the abyss of nihilism.
- Fantasies: Could be either sexual (mostly it is), or simple day dreaming. You just can’t resist yourself from picturing both of you doing stuff together.
- Jealousy: Can be really hurtful. It could vary and be placed at different strata, stratum 1 where she’s just hanging out with her alpha and extroverted male friends, or stratum 9992912921 where she’s making out with her boyfriend. You get jealous even by the fact that she likes a supposedly hot male celebrity despite knowing the fact he’s no actual harm.
Inability to see their flaws: Consider this, she has the most beautiful smile in the world, in the world, but her body is covered with boils, when you’re limerent, you are definitely bound to notice the former and ignore the latter.
Love vs. Limerence
As we got to know at the starting, love and limerence aren’t the same. Limerence is a bit selfish. You might have come across people saying, “OMG, the other day I saw a guy at the coffee house and I’m so in love with him!” Well, for starters, you’re not. It’s a crush. You might have also heard people saying, “Damn, that new girl at work is astounding, I’m so in love with her!” Again, you’re not, this time it’s (most probably) limerence. Since we’re entangled in this subject, I feel obligated to mention the term ‘lust’. It usually deals with physical attraction, and physical attraction only. No emotions involved whatsoever. Limerence is towards a person with whom you’re faintly acquainted to. You may not have spent much time with ’em, or know all ’bout ’em, but you’re still better than strangers. Love is when you each and every detail ’bout the other and you care ’bout the other person more than you do for yourself. Let’s try to understand the difference between the two with the help of an example:
Situation: There’s this girl who has a boyfriend, and with whom she is perfectly happy, everything is hunky dory.
Case 1 of limerence: When you’re limerent, you would be willing to ask her to break up with her present boyfriend, so that she could be with you, despite being aware that she’s pretty felicitous at the moment.
Case 2 of love: When you’re in love with her, you’d be willing to let her be happy as she is now, and sacrifice your feelings (Dammit!).
If you google ‘limerence’, you might see it’s synonymous-ly used with love, but it’s not exactly same. The above example may not be the most apt, as it describes only an ideal situation. “Limerence is being high on love”, if you may say.
Internet Human welcomes thou! 