Limerence: When Obsession Masquerades as Love
Welcome to PsyberSpace. I'm your host, Leslie Poston. Do you know someone, and maybe that someone is you, who's refreshed a potential love interest Instagram seven times in an hour? They knew what time they posted. They had theories about who they were with based on background details in their stories.
Leslie Poston:They could tell someone what songs that person listened to three months ago, and that person didn't even know their middle name. The example you just heard is something called limerence the intense, often obsessive longing that people sometimes mistake for love. It's replaying a text message a 100 times, reading signs in every silence, building entire futures in your head around someone who barely knows you, or maybe who knows you but just doesn't feel the same way. Limerence isn't the same as love it's not even always romantic. But it can completely hijack your brain.
Leslie Poston:And if you're neurodivergent, it can hit you even harder. Today, we're unpacking limerence from a psychological and neurological perspective. We're talking about how it shows up differently for people who are autistic, or who have ADHD, OCD, and trauma. We'll look at how modern tech and social media intensify it. And we'll explore what actually helps, especially when your brain is wired for emotional intensity.
Leslie Poston:Let's start with the experience itself. Limerence is involuntary you don't choose it. It's an emotional loop, full of intrusive thoughts, fantasizing, idealizing, craving reciprocity, and fearing rejection. You might also analyze everything someone says, build entire conversations in your head, or feel crushed when they don't text back fast enough. The key feature here is uncertainty.
Leslie Poston:If you knew for sure that they didn't want you back, the feeling would eventually fade. If you knew they did want you, you could potentially move into an actual relationship. But limerence thrives in the grey zone of maybe. For neurodivergent folks, especially people with ADHD or Autistics, limerence can get amplified. ADHD brains often hyperfocus.
Leslie Poston:When your attention locks onto something, it locks hard. Autistic brains may seek clarity and predictability in relationships, and when someone gives just enough attention to trigger hope, but not enough to provide certainty, it can create a loop that feels impossible to exit. Some people experience limerence for weeks, and others for years, And the intensity doesn't always match how well you actually know the person. You can be limerent for someone you've barely spoken to, and that's part of what makes it so disorienting. Term limerence was coined by psychologist Dorothy Tenove in the 1970s.
Leslie Poston:She interviewed hundreds of people about their romantic experiences, and noticed a distinct pattern. Not everyone who fell in love went through this particular kind of obsessive longing, but for those who did, the symptoms were remarkably consistent. Tenev saw limerence as a distinct state. Not love, not lust, but something in between, driven by uncertainty and longing. Neurologically, limerence activates the brain's reward system.
Leslie Poston:Dopamine floods in when you anticipate reciprocation. That uncertainty keeps you hooked. It's like pulling a slot machine handle sometimes you win, sometimes you don't, but the variable reward schedule keeps you coming back. For people with ADHD, who often have differences in how their brains regulate dopamine, that maybe hits extra hard. The novelty, the unpredictability, and the emotional intensity can feel more compelling than almost anything else in life, for however long it lasts.
Leslie Poston:For autistics, limerence can take a different shape. Social experiences may include a history of confusion or rejection. The imagined connection where you can control the narrative and predict the responses can sometimes feel safer than the real one. You can build an entire relationship in your mind, where you know exactly what the other person thinks and feels, even if it's not based in reality. So how is limerence different from love or lust?
Leslie Poston:Love is usually mutual, it's stable, and it grows over time as you actually get to know someone, flaws and all. There is reciprocity and reality testing. You can see the person clearly and choose them anyway. Lust is more straightforward. It's all about physical desire, attraction, and chemistry.
Leslie Poston:It can be intense, but it's not usually accompanied by intrusive thoughts or anxiety about whether the other person feels the same way. Limerence is high stakes fantasy, about possibilities and not reality. You fall in love with who you think the person could be and not who they are. You're projecting qualities onto them that they likely don't have. You interpret ambiguous signals as signs of interest.
Leslie Poston:You may know intellectually that you're building castles in the air, but emotionally it just feels absolutely real. This can get especially tricky when someone has trouble distinguishing emotional signals. Neurodivergent folks might struggle with interoception, which is reading internal cues about what you're feeling and why. Or with social pragmatics, the unspoken rules of how people signal interest or disinterest. And that gets even more confusing when you consider how men and women see these cues differently.
Leslie Poston:For example, some men may feel like a woman being polite to them while doing a job that requires it, like bartending or being a cashier, is signaling interest when it decidedly is not. That can make it harder to tell if what you're feeling is romantic or platonic. Harder to gauge whether the other person is even interested. Some autistic people report struggling to distinguish between a deep fascination with someone's brain or ideas and romantic feelings, especially in a culture that often pathologizes or misinterprets how autistics express emotion. And if you live with complex trauma, you might confuse emotional chaos with connection.
Leslie Poston:If your early relationships were inconsistent, traumatic, or conditional, longing might feel like love, and traumatic chaos might feel, well, comfortable because that's all you know. The fantasy of being chosen, seen, and rescued can be powerful, especially when reality hasn't been kind. Social media and texting are limerence's playground. Notifications that messages have been seen but left unread, disappearing messages, story views these features thrive on ambiguity, and ambiguity is what limerence feeds on. Algorithms show you someone's posts just often enough to reignite hope.
Leslie Poston:Dating apps gamify your attention. You get little hits of dopamine when someone likes your profile or responds to a message, and sometimes crushing disappointment when they don't. The whole system is designed to keep you checking, wondering, and hoping. And this triggers the same exact reward system that limerence lights up. And if you already live with rejection sensitivity, which is common in ADHD and complex PTSD, digital interactions can feel overwhelming.
Leslie Poston:Every silence feels loaded and every emoji feels like a test. A thumbs up instead of a heart? Well, could send you spiraling. If your brain is wired for pattern seeking or obsessive thought, the result is constant overanalysis. You're screenshotting conversations to study later, noticing when someone's active status changes.
Leslie Poston:You're developing elaborate theories about what it means when they post a song lyric or a cryptic quote. A single like on your post can feel like a lifeline and proof that they're thinking about you. Then if they don't interact, you become convinced that they're pulling away, even though they might just be busy or offline or thinking about literally anything else. The digital realm removes context. You can't see body language, and you can't hear tone of voice.
Leslie Poston:And if they're using video, the body language and tone of voice may be a character they're playing. So you fill in the gaps with your hopes and fears, and limerence grows in the space. Limerence doesn't just happen in dating. It can also happen with celebrities, influencers, streamers, even podcast hosts. These are called parasocial relationships.
Leslie Poston:I talked more in-depth about this in the episode on TikTok last year. The term comes from researchers Horton and Wall way back in 1956. They described one-sided emotional connections with media figures. They observed this with television personalities, but it's intensified dramatically in the age of social media. Parasocial relationships can absolutely trigger limerence.
Leslie Poston:You feel like you know someone because you watch their content, read their posts, and hear their voice regularly. They share personal details and speak directly to the camera, seemingly directly to you, but they don't actually know you exist. For some neurodivergent people, especially those who find in person interaction exhausting or overwhelming, parasocial connections may feel safer and more manageable. You get the emotional engagement without the sensory overload, and without the unpredictability of real time social interaction. Online, you can pause, rewatch, and totally control the pace.
Leslie Poston:But parasocial limerence can still hurt. You can spend hours thinking about someone who will never think about you, or feel jealous when they interact with other people in their comments. You can build fantasies about meeting them, becoming friends, or more. And that can keep someone stuck in longing instead of seeking real reciprocal connection. Limerence isn't just awkward crushes or embarrassing stories that you'll laugh about later.
Leslie Poston:It can be genuinely painful. It can disrupt people's sleep, work, relationships, and mental health. The intrusive thoughts can feel like a kind of torture, especially when you know the feelings aren't returned, or when you're trying to move on. For some people, limerence leads to depression or anxiety. The constant emotional highs and lows can be exhausting.
Leslie Poston:There is also a bit of shame about not being able to just stop feeling this way, and that compounds the pain. For others, limerence can escalate into unhealthy behaviours. Obsessive checking of social media, driving by someone's actual house, manipulating situations to manufacture contact. In extreme cases, stalking. These behaviours often don't come from malice, they come from unmanaged distress, from a brain that's become locked into a pattern that it can't break.
Leslie Poston:But that doesn't erase the impact on the other person, who may feel violated, unsafe, or harassed, regardless of your intent. People with trauma, especially complex PTSD, may confuse limerence with love because emotional chaos feels familiar. If your nervous system was shaped by relationships that were inconsistent, or where love was conditional or came with danger, your brain might now interpret the anxiety of limerence as a sign that the connection is deep or meaningful. And that longing feels like home even when home wasn't safe. And then there's isolation.
Leslie Poston:Limerence is often a secret obsession. You might feel too ashamed to tell anyone how much mental space this person is occupying in your brain. Or you may worry that if you talk about it, the spell will break. That leaves you alone with thoughts that won't stop, and that loneliness makes everything worse. So how do you break the limerick loop?
Leslie Poston:First, you name it. Understanding that what you're feeling is limerence and not love gives you power. It's not a moral failing, and it's not proof that this person is your soul mate. It's a psychological state with known features and a known exit. Second, you ground yourself in reality.
Leslie Poston:This can be harder than it sounds, because your brain will resist. One practical exercise you can try tonight if you're experiencing limerence is to write down three things this person actually said and actually did. Not what you think they meant, and not what you hoped they felt. Just three observable facts. When you strip away the interpretation, you can start to realize how little concrete evidence you have for the story you've been telling yourself.
Leslie Poston:That's the first step in the right direction. Third, you can try to redirect your focus. This is where any neurodivergence might matter, because generic advice like distract yourself or stop thinking about them absolutely does not work when your brain doesn't function that way. For example, with ADHD, channel your hyperfocus elsewhere. Pick a new creative project, a new hobby or a new goal that's stimulating enough to compete for your attention.
Leslie Poston:Your brain craves novelty and reward, so give it a different source. If you're autistic, create scripts or routines that re center your thinking. When you notice yourself spiraling into a fantasy, have a specific phrase or action that redirects you. Structure can be protective when your emotions feel chaotic. For OCD sufferers, where intrusive thoughts are a core feature, you may need exposure and response prevention therapy with a licensed therapist.
Leslie Poston:This is a specific type of treatment where you can learn to sit with the uncomfortable thoughts without engaging in the compulsive behaviours, like checking their social media. It's a little bit hard work, but it can be effective. For someone experiencing trauma, grounding techniques that connect you to the present moment can help separate past patterns from present choices. Somatic practices, working with a trauma informed therapist, learning to recognize when your nervous system is activated versus when you're actually responding to what's in front of you. Some people can benefit from limiting contact, including digital contact.
Leslie Poston:Unfollow, mute, and block if you need to. This isn't about punishment it's about giving your brain a chance to detach when every interaction resets the clock. And if you're struggling with this alone, consider reaching out for support. A therapist who understands attachment, obsessive thought patterns, or neurodivergence can make a significant difference. Limerence isn't random.
Leslie Poston:Certain factors make us more susceptible. Those factors can include low self esteem, loneliness, a history of insecure attachment, unmet needs for validation or connection. When your life feels empty or unsatisfying, limerence can fill that void, at least temporarily. It's also more likely to strike when the object of limerance has qualities that you idealize or wish you had yourself, like confidence, creativity, status, or stability. You're not just attracted to the person, you're attracted to who you imagined you could become in proximity to that person.
Leslie Poston:And then there's the cultural piece. We romanticize this kind of obsessive longing in our songs, movies, books. So many celebrate the idea of loving someone so much that you can't think straight. We label it passion, we label it true love, but we rarely call it what it often is, which is a destabilizing psychological state that needs support, not celebration. If this episode resonated with you, if you've ever felt trapped in longing or wondered why your brain gets stuck, just know that you're not alone.
Leslie Poston:Limerence is much more common than most people admit, and it's something you can move through. You're not too much, you're not broken, your capacity for deep feeling, for imagination, and for connection, those are not flaws. But you deserve tools and clarity. You deserve relationships where the other person is present, not just a projection screen for your hopes. Real, reciprocal, grounding connection is possible.
Leslie Poston:It may not have the same intensity as limerence, but has something better mutuality and reality. It has the chance to grow into something sustainable. As always, I'll drop some resources in the show notes for anyone who wants to know more about this topic. Thanks for joining me on PsyberSpace this week. Until next time, I'm your host, Leslie Poston, signing off and reminding you to stay curious.
Leslie Poston:And also, don't forget to subscribe so that you never miss an episode, and send it to a friend if you think they'd like it. You can also rate this five stars on your favorite podcast listening station. Thank you so much. See you next week.
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