‘Desire in one of its rawest forms’: what do we know about limerence?

For months after her relationship ended, Anna* couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Each morning she’d wake with a jolt of grief; an intense, almost physical feeling that morphed into thoughts of him that consumed nearly every waking hour.

Most nights she fell asleep playing mental reruns of conversations and imagined reconciliations in her mind.

For many people, longing like this sits within the broad terrain of ordinary romantic yearning. The kind often lamented in poetry, music and film. But for Anna, what began as familiar ache slowly intensified, becoming almost unbearable.

“It felt invasive,” she says. “Like my own mind was stalking me.”

At first Anna thought she was simply struggling to move on from her ex-partner. But when the obsessive thoughts escalated, she sought help from her therapist. This wasn’t just ordinary longing, the therapist told her. This was limerence.

The term was coined in the 1970s by the psychologist Dorothy Tennov, who documented people experiencing overwhelming, involuntary infatuation. Half a century later, the concept is resurfacing, amplified by technology, loneliness and the therapeutic language now embedded in everyday culture. Limerence is not a clinical diagnosis, nor is it recognised in the DSM-5, the main reference guide for mental health and brain conditions; it’s a descriptive concept rather than a disorder.

Orly Miller, a psychologist and the author of Limerence: The Psychopathology of Loving Too Much, to be published next month,describes it as “an intense psychological state of obsessive longing for another person”.

“It’s characterised by intrusive thoughts, emotional dependency and a powerful desire for reciprocation,” she explains. “Unlike ordinary attraction or infatuation, limerence involves obsession, emotional volatility and disruption to daily life.”

She adds: “In today’s digital world, uncertainty and intermittent contact – the very conditions that feed limerence – are everywhere. Social media keeps people hovering on the edge of connection, sustaining fantasy and emotional ambiguity.”

The cycle can look like compulsion: constantly checking phones, replaying memories, idealising moments and imagining future encounters. “It’s not just in the head,” Miller says. “It’s a full-body stress response. The nervous system becomes dysregulated, swinging between excitement and panic.”

Associate Prof Sam Shpall, who teaches moral philosophy at the University of Sydney, cautions against seeing limerence only as pathology.

“Tennov rejected the view that limerence is inherently unhealthy,” he says. “It’s a distinctive form of human longing, transformative and sometimes destabilising, yes, but not necessarily bad …

“It’s a perennial theme in literature and art – the ecstasy and agony of this special form of desire for someone who may or may not want you.”

Limerence overlaps with what researchers call passionate love, a normal, often intense stage of early romantic development that is often likened to addiction.

Dr Emma Marshall, the deputy director of Deakin University’s Science of Adult Relationships Lab, says passionate love is a common and intense experience.

“Passionate love should be adaptive and beneficial for relationships – passionate love should facilitate the forming of a secure attachment.”

Marshall notes that while Tennov’s limerence theory has not been frequently studied, related concepts in relationship science, such as obsessive romantic love or “mania love”, shows that passionate love becomes concerning when it “becomes an obsession that disrupts daily functioning, wellbeing and occurs within unsatisfying and unhealthy relationships”.

In moderate forms, limerence can be benign, even creative, Miller says. But when fantasy replaces reality, it can cause profound disconnection.

“Fantasy offers comfort,” she argues, “but it distances you from reality and from yourself. The limerent object becomes a screen on to which we project everything we long for …

“People may believe they’ve found a soulmate or twin flame. Yet what they’re really encountering are disowned parts of themselves.”

The clinical research is still lacking but Marshall says limerence is thought to be fuelled by uncertainty, andis believed to be different from other feelings because “the experience is uncontrollable”.

“If the passionate love is not reciprocated, it of course brings strong and intense negative feelings, but these should dissipate over time, especially when new people are found to meet relationship needs.”

Phoebe Rogers, a clinical psychologist, says some people may be more vulnerable to these experiences. “Those who have experienced trauma, a one-sided, unrequited love was often modelled to them early in life; or unsafe, unhealthy forms of love,” she says. “Those with a more insecure attachment style are thought to be more at risk.”

Limerence becomes unhealthy when it interferes with work, relationships or self-esteem.

“If thoughts of the other dominate your life, if you’re in distress and can’t stop despite trying, that’s when help is needed,” Miller says.

Therapy can help individuals regulate emotions, recognise idealisation and understand the attachment wounds that fuel obsession.

The romance of the chase

“Art and popular music routinely frame persistence as virtue,” Shpall says. “In reality, persistence against stated boundaries is a reliable marker of harm. Limerence doesn’t excuse it.”

Miller agrees: “We’ve been taught that the highest form of love is intensity. Films, music and even self-help culture romanticise the chase, the longing, the pain. But true intimacy is about safety and reciprocity, not emotional chaos.”

For some, the forces that heighten connection, such as proximity, technology, and emotional uncertainty, can blur boundaries. What begins as longing can, under stress or rejection, slip into repeated contact or attempts to re-establish closeness in ways that cross lines, such as stalking.

Miller stresses that limerence is not the same as stalking or erotomania, a psychological condition associated with some types of stalking.

“In erotomania, a person holds a fixed delusion that the other loves them,” she says. “Limerent people usually know their feelings may not be reciprocated. Their behaviour, like repeatedly checking someone’s social media, is driven by anxiety, not by control or malice.”

Recognising limerence for what it is can be liberating, Miller says. “When people realise this isn’t love, this is limerence, they start to reclaim their energy.”

“They can ask what is this longing really about? Often it points to neglected parts of the self – unmet needs for validation, safety or excitement.”

Rogers agrees that limerence often reflects unmet needs. “We all have a desire, longing for love, connection, closeness, security with another,” she says. “Often it’s meeting a deeper, core need.”

Where popular psychology tends to pathologise limerence, philosophers like Shpall see in it clues about human meaning. “To experience limerence is to confront desire in one of its rawest forms,” he says.

“The experience reveals something about the shape of our vulnerability and our yearning to be seen. It is too common and too commonly valued to be conceptualised as merely a problem.

“Maybe the goal isn’t to eliminate limerence but to cultivate it wisely – to appreciate the intensity of human feeling without being consumed by it.”

* Name has been changed