Limerence (Mad Love) Phase 2: Infatuation
Falling in love is something we do to ourselves when the other person is not around
Tom Cruise in limerent mania for Katie Holmes
In 2005, Oprah did an interview with Tom Cruise where he was acting like he never has before after becoming limerent for Katie Holmes. He said that he’s never felt this way about anyone before. After he jumped on the couch, Oprah said, “The boy is gone.” The interview went viral, creating one of the very first celebrity memes. It was parodied on Family Guy, Scary Movie 4 and even The Muppets! The most popular meme was one where he “force lightnings” Oprah.
When the gears of limerence start turning and the feelings are reciprocated, limerents are on Cloud 9! It may not manifest like Tom Cruise’s extreme extroverted charisma, but that same giddy feeling is what’s going on on the inside for people who are limerent. Read about all of the things Tom Cruise did to impress Katie Holmes. A true fairytale romance? We say, “isn’t this true love?” If it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, is it a duck? What distinguishes infatuation from love here? The difference between love and infatuation is that people who are infatuated are doing these things because they subconsciously want to secure the person’s affection in order to feel more secure. Do they also want to make the other person happy? Yes, but there’s a deeper subconscious need that overrides that. It drives the limerent to love bomb which is never sustainable. The limerent sufferer is also operating under a false presupposition because it is actually impossible to “secure” love. Real love will always remain a choice that has to be made daily and thus can never be secured once and for all.
Katie was sucked into Tom’s madness when she was just a naive 26 year old girl. She was seduced into quite literally her teenage dream by a 43 year old narcissist. This interview with W magazine is telling of her state of mind during that time, just a few months after meeting Tom Cruise, she also was in the delusion of limerence:
Katie: “From the moment I met him, it just felt like I'd known him forever.”
…
Katie: “I’ve never met anyone like Tom,”
Interviewer: “Do you ever wonder whether this is just a honeymoon phase?”
Katie: “Tom and I will always be in our honeymoon phase.”
Limerence causes you to extrapolate way too far into the future way too quickly. She converted to Scientology just 3 days after meeting Tom Cruise and moved in with him just 1 month after their first date. Limerents fall into the fallacy that their intense feelings are going to last a lifetime because it feels like they will. Their story ended in terrible drama, trauma, and a messy divorce. Like I said in the intro to this series, “limerence does a superb job of bringing people together, but it is not what keeps people together.”
A limerent episode usually begins in one of five ways:
A rapid onset “love-at-first-sight”
A gradual increase of feelings through pleasant or exciting interactions
A significant moment or conversation that triggers a “Wow I feel something for this person that I never felt before,” usually due to deep connection
Physical intimacy/a sexual encounter
Someone reminds us of one of our caregivers/parents, typically subconsciously
With limerence:
Without limerence:
Some people are prone to falling into limerence extremely fast because they are starving for love. Like someone who hasn’t had water in 3 days, these people can’t stop themselves from over-drinking once they reach the oasis of love, or even a mirage of love. The absolute best depiction of a limerent onset is WALL-E’s first encounter with EVE after wandering the earth alone for 700 years. WALL-E is an INFP and I believe he represents the most archetypal form of pure limerence.
WALL-E mesmerized by EVE
The closest analogy to what limerence feels like is imprinting from the Twilight saga.
“It's not like love at first sight, really. It's more like… gravity moves… suddenly. It's not the earth holding you here anymore, she does… You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that's a protector, or a lover, or a friend.” – Jacob Black
“I don't wanna look at anything else now that I saw you. I can never look away.
I don't wanna think of anything else now that I thought of you. Things will never be the same.”
– Daylight, Taylor Swift
Why infatuation initiates relationships
People need activation energy to pursue relationships which are a lot of work
People want excitement in their lives
People want meaning in their lives
People want to feel special
People need hope in something greater than themselves as individuals
People want what has been framed as true happiness by media and culture
Why infatuation ruins relationships
People want to be known and loved for who they are, not objectified or put on a pedestal. Infatuation causes you to avoid actually getting to know the person.
People are disappointed when the infatuation ends and the excessive affirmations and excitement stops
People’s inhibitions, rationale and sensibility are diminished when infatuated, blinding them to red flags and compatibility issues and causing them to make poor decisions and say stupid things
People’s emotions are heightened which leads to self-absorption
People eventually experience negative emotions, such as fear, anxiety, sadness and grief which leads to self-consciousness and desperation and desperation = bad news
It’s uncommon for both people to be infatuated at the same time or with the same intensity which leads to imbalance and one-sided relationships
People are flooded with dopamine, and thus neglect their regular responsibilities which eventually leads to chaos
People who are infatuated don’t act like their true self, but their true self will inevitably come out
Infatuation leads to simping for validation and reassurance which overwhelms the other person
People who are infatuated want to rush things too quickly
People who are infatuated are living in a fantasy bubble which detracts from talking about less interesting things such as daily routines, work, problems, responsibility, etc.
Infatuation begets unrealistic expectations that are unsustainable
People who are infatuated become complacent after the infatuation ends, which is typically 6 months - 3 years later
People who are infatuated place too much weight on future dreams.
If one person is more infatuated than the other, this will breed distrust because the infatuated person will feel that the other is less committed or less “in love”
People who are infatuated are vulnerable to AND complicit in toxic or abusive relationships
Why do we do this?
Part of it is natural and biological. Infatuation brings people together to procreate and that’s obvious. The less obvious truth is that people who experience intense infatuation often feel unworthy, undeserving, or not good enough for real love. We have deep-seated insecurity, shame and guilt which is why we prefer idealized fantasies over real intimacy. Out of a fear of being vulnerable, we prefer the comfort and control of fantasies and abstract ideas over the chaos and messiness of real intimacy. This creates a chicken and the egg problem because without real love and intimacy, it’s nearly impossible to heal and without the courage to be vulnerable, it’s impossible to experience real love. ¡Ay caramba! Going through extended periods of time without vulnerability in the context of a safe relationship perpetuates the pain of feeling unknown, misunderstood, alone, and unloved which may increase reliance on limerence to self-regulate. Moreover, even when there is reciprocation, we may prematurely sabotage the relationship due to subconscious rejection of self, especially if we’ve put the other person on a pedestal.
Solutions
Mindfulness to be fully present without judging yourself or your situation
Positive self-talk and affirmations to remind you that you deserve real love, even if it can only ever be self-love
“You are good enough to be loved just as you are today.”
“You don’t need to earn love”
“Love cannot be earned, it can only be freely given”
“God is love and God is a god of grace not merit”
Self-respect to only accept what you actually deserve
Peace by reminding yourself that you are safe where you are in the present moment
Patience to know that things will be okay in the long run
Faith to believe that what has happened in the past won’t necessarily repeat
Humility to let go of the pain of the past in order to “reset” the narrative of your life and your current perceived identity
Humility to love someone else not for what they can give you but what you can gift to them
Humility to admit that you are the one that needs to change
Humility in accepting that most things in life are out of your control
Humility to accept that healing necessarily means pain and suffering in the short-term for the delayed gratification of a healthier life in the long-term
Courage to open yourself up to inevitable pain by trusting others
Validating your feelings/emotions, but then promptly letting them go
Taking life less seriously. The greatest danger of limerence is that you make your life about “winning x’s heart”. If you look at life this way, you cannot truly love anyone. Why? Trying to win, obtain, or possess hearts comes from narcissism not love. Our goal in life needs to be healing hearts, not winning hearts.
What do you do if someone is limerent for you and you want to dispel it?
Use the Robert Pattinson method. The fastest way to dispel limerence is to be so entirely different from the model that the limerent person has built up of you in their mind that it would be absolutely impossible for their mind to bridge the gap. In love, you learn to love the person for who they are. In limerence, you want a person to conform to a particular model in order to make you feel more secure. In this instance, that model was most likely built around the character of Edward Cullen. She wanted what Bella had and thought Robert Pattinson was like the character of Edward Cullen.
Infatuation is about loving the concept of people and what they could add to your life and not actually about loving these people themselves for who they are in the present. This is why it is the intuitive types, not the sensing types, that are prone to limerence. They think of everything, include people, in terms of models and patterns. Any person they meet is sorted into a model and if this model is what they’ve been so desperately craving, any perceived connection with this person will feed into the confirmation bias of “this could be the one”. This is why Dorothy Tennov aptly coined the term “limerent object”. In limerence, we are not objectifying people sexually, but rather conceptually.
What we are often doing when we are limerent is projecting our idealized view of the opposite sex onto the person whom we are attracted to. In the age of social media, this problem is even worse, since there is a plethora of data to cherry-pick from to supply our confirmation bias.
What can intuitive types do to combat limerence?
They will have to let go of the way they are used to navigating the world which is by gathering data, recognizing patterns, categorizing, extrapolating, and then strategizing based on extrapolations. One benefit of extrapolating is that intuitives can prune branches early, e.g. “I can already see after one date that this is not going to work out in the long run,” which ends up saving the intuitives’ potentially wasted time. The downside happens when intuitives are overconfident in their ability to project and infer. The world is incredibly complex and moreover, constantly changing, so overly relying on intuition means that you will do less exploring and therefore will get less concrete learned experience and data points in the long-run. The result of this is often a life lived more in the head than in the real world. People with limerent tendencies may “wake up” later in life and realize that much of life has passed them by.
Instead of relying on intuition, they need to balance practicing the way that sensors navigate the world which is by using the concrete data coming in real-time and taking an action based on that with minimal abstraction and minimal extrapolation. Instead of relying on their intuition and gut feelings, they need to not presume that patterns will necessarily repeat themselves. Instead of thinking about implications, they should just focus on the evidence at hand that is relevant for the immediate next step. They need to fall in love with things in their lives that are tangible and not theoretical. This translates to loving people and life in the present. In a practical sense, it’s also important for people experiencing limerence to focus on the needs of the day instead of spending time thinking about theoretical possibilities or how to obtain idealistic dreams. The practices of mindfulness, meditation, or prayer will help with this.
For people who had tougher childhoods, this is hard because thinking about theoretical possibilities serves as a form of escapism. Similarly to how people escape into a different world when they read a book or watch a movie, someone who is experiencing limerence is typically escaping into a movie, except in this case, they are the main character in a romance. In this romance, they are being saved from their boring and/or difficult life.
When limerence becomes toxic
In The Notebook (2004), Noah Calhoun experiences love-at-first-sight limerence for Allie. She rejects him on two separate attempts and he asks her why both times and she replies, “Because I don’t want to,” which is a completely sufficient answer. His response is to coerce her with, “Go out with me or I’ll kill myself,” as he hangs off the ferris wheel. He does this mostly as a ruse, but obviously this would be absurd and toxic in real life. For people who experience limerence, winning the heart of their crush can feel like life and death—the stakes become infinitely high because all they have ever wanted is to love and be loved. It’s anxiety-inducing and causes irrational behavior. The person will not be acting like their typical self.
So why does she eventually go out with him?
1. It’s a movie.
2. He’s Ryan effin’ Gosling
She thinks that this is just part of his pick-up game, but this is legitimately how limerence feels. Limerence makes you want to “become anything” and “do whatever it takes” just to “be next to” your LO. The problem is that if the feelings aren’t mutual, the extreme craziness would just be creepy. If you don’t have that Ryan Gosling rizz, you’re most likely going on that first date by yourself.
Her (2013)
Someone who is at peak limerence will essentially do anything to secure a relationship with their LO, whether that be compromising on their religious beliefs, switching their religious beliefs or putting out. In Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011), Jessica (17) is babysitting for Cal and Emily, friends of her parents. She becomes limerent for Cal who is a dad in his forties. In a last-ditch effort to try to get Cal to notice her, she tries sending him nudes.
Women who are limerent for guys are often taken advantage of for sex. Men who are limerent for women are often taken advantage of for money. Our mind has an amazing ability to filter out data that we don’t want to believe is true. The heart wants what it wants and when you are limerent for someone, you see the flaws and incompatibilities or the fact that the other party is not interested, but none of this matters. You will do anything to be with them anyway. If you look at people’s checklists of the kind of people they claim they want to be with and compare them to the people they actually date, there is often a huge discrepancy. Love chemicals are powerful enough to change one’s entire worldview in the blink of an eye. This is why it’s important to take relationships very slow, especially if you have complex PTSD. Limerence can lead to marriage, but it often leads to toxic relationships or relationships that just aren’t sustainable for more than a few years. When you hear people say at weddings, “I knew from the moment I saw her that she was the one” or “I knew from the moment we met that we were going to be together,” that person is likely predisposed to limerence. It sounds like destiny, but you just don’t hear about the majority of times that it didn’t work out for that person or all the people who thought that would be true for them, but it wasn’t, and you especially don’t think about the 40% that ended in divorces after the fact. In most cases, infatuation is unrequited and no relationship will ever be established, which is why it’s important to move on from unrequited infatuation quickly to find something reciprocal.
Conclusion
Infatuation is great at bringing people together into high energy, exciting new relationships, but it is not a predictor of long-term relationship health. In addition, it leaves you susceptible to toxic relationships and self-sabotage. When we are infatuated, we are not engaging in real-time intimacy, but rather escaping into fantasies based on an abstract conceptualization of a person which is not fair to them or us. While infatuation can be the catalyst for the foundation of a new relationship, it is important to promptly move past infatuation to a more mature form of love which is messier and more chaotic than infatuation and also a lot more work. Even though real love is a lot more work, it’s worth it, because it leads to healing, meaning, responsibility and fulfillment.
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