Limerence Vs Love. Can You Spot The Difference?

Ironically, when we meet someone new, we tend to say we’re in love. We use the word “love” to describe the butterflies in our stomach and the love hormones our brain drugs us with.

Because we’re on cloud 9, we completely disregard the possibility that our perception of love may be clouded by our immense desire to be wanted, valued, and respected. That’s why we often ignore the early warning signs of a bad relationship and continue getting closer to our romantic partner despite people telling us that we need to be careful.

Oftentimes, we refuse to listen simply because we put a higher importance on our desires (emotions) than rational thinking. We believe that because we feel so strongly about someone that we must have chemistry, compatibility, and heck, that even the universe is trying to set us up with our new dating candidate.

Little do we know that the universe plays no favorites. It merely matches us with people who find our external qualities attractive. I say external because when we meet someone and find that person attractive, we know absolutely nothing about his or her life.

We don’t know how that person deals with difficult situations (which defines the success of relationships) and how he or she treats others and himself/herself.

All we know is that the things our new favorite person allows us to see attract us and that we want him or her to feel the same way about us. This is how limerence is born. It starts with a little crush – a tiny obsession and soon develops into a full-on addiction, which is a longing for reciprocation.

Before we know it, we put our partner high up on a pedestal and discover that his or her value is very, very high. It may even be higher than ours, which is why we start to crave what we want (or lack) and try to fulfill ourselves.

When we’re limerent, we invest in others with the intention to receive something from them. Whether it be adoration, validation, a boost of ego/self-esteem, help with children, a more diverse lifestyle, or simple companionship, we aim to add value and importance to our life so we can improve the quality of our life.

Limerence and love, therefore, don’t have much in common. Limerence occurs before love and is an intense, short-lived desire that is often just an illusion – a fantasy we’ve created in our minds to enjoy and improve the parts of our lives or well-being that need improving.

Love, on the other hand, goes much deeper than that. It doesn’t necessarily make you feel butterflies because butterflies occur mainly when you immensely crave someone’s affection, but it does feel reassuring and calming. It feels that a person not only understands you but also empathizes with you and supports you through thick and thin.

It makes you feel that your partner wants to spend time with you, plan things with you, grow with you, and build something meaningful with you.

A limerent person doesn’t make you feel that way. Limerence may cause him or her to want all these things and even express them, but that’s only because he or she feels excited and wants to keep feeling excited. Once excitement wanes (and it always does), a person’s promises may disappear with it.

In its stead, remain relationship skills, willpower, commitment, maturity, and the ability to make the relationship work. This normally happens about 3-4 months into the relationship as that’s when a person drops his or her guard around you and shows you his or her true personality.

There are two simple reasons why people hide their true selves.

1. They want to make a good impression on their partner.
2. They’re so infatuated with their partner that they don’t even have to try very hard. They’re on their best behavior because they’re happy. And as you know, happy people don’t look for problems. They ignore them until they run out of happiness and have no choice but to act the way their personality and the work they’ve done on themselves allow them to act.

So if you’re trying to learn the difference between limerence and love, keep in mind that limerence occurs early on—soon after meeting a person and is stronger than love (hence why people cheat so often). Love, on the other hand, is a long-term set of thoughts and feelings that is made of reciprocal core values, beliefs, agreements, attraction, support, affection, plans, understanding, and gratitude.

Love takes months to develop whereas limerence can be instantaneous (superficial) and requires no understanding of a person’s mentality, behavior, attitude, integrity, and view of the world.

There’s a lot more to discuss. Stick around if you want to learn more about limerence vs love. We’ll help you figure out whether someone you date/dated was limerent to you.

Limerence vs love

Most relationships go through a phase of infatuation. Infatuation contributes to the development of a strong emotional bond that can later (with proper care and nurturing) develop into love. It’s necessary for couples to have an emotional bond otherwise they don’t feel like partners.

They feel like friends or friends with benefits who merely want to benefit from each other without giving much in return.

That’s why we shouldn’t think that limerence is a bad thing. Limerence is a very good thing as it demonstrates to couples how their relationship can feel if they’re emotionally ready for a relationship and have the skills to maintain it.

Limerence is bad only when a person has no intention of developing the relationship further and only wants to take what he or she can from it. Such a person isn’t ready for intimacy and the responsibility that comes with it because the man or woman just wants to fulfill his or her sexual or financial needs.

You see, when relationships are off to a great start, it’s evident that couples are emotionally compatible. They wouldn’t have a great time together if they didn’t find each other attractive and weren’t on the same page. The problem though is that there’s much more to a relationship than emotional compatibility.

Sometimes couples bond very well, but soon destroy their bond due to negligence, immaturity, a lack of self-awareness, childhood issues, traumas, and poor emotional health. This is because they rush into a romantic relationship too soon. They don’t take the time to fix the problems that prevent them from committing to long-term relationships.

Everyone has problems and flaws; including you and me. But people who neglect their biggest issues and blame others for them tend to break up. They can’t make a relationship work because they lack the tools to maintain it when the limerence runs out of gas and happiness subsides.

All they can do when they become unhappy is to give up and distance themselves from the problem even though they are the real cause of the problem.

I’m telling you this so you understand that limerence is a beautiful thing when mature and healthy couples get together—as it can make their faces glow. It makes them feel beyond elated and allows them to grow closer to each other.

It’s unhealthy and often a waste of time only when a person knows or doesn’t know that he or she isn’t ready for a serious commitment and just wants to get what he or she can without giving anything in return.

Sadly, we can find many people who aren’t ready to date on dating apps. Some are broken-hearted, miserable, and depressed, whereas others are lonely, married/in a relationship, or have anger/trust issues and shouldn’t be using the apps at all.

They should be focusing on themselves and learning how to improve their shortcomings.

Such people tend to enter our lives like a wrecking ball as they love bomb us and make us feel special until they get out of the limerence phase and see that their problems haven’t been resolved. That’s when they show who they really are and disappear on us (oftentimes ghost us) and make us wonder what we did wrong.

With that said, here’s the difference between love and limerence.

How to spot limerence?

As you know, most couples feel infatuated – limerent, so limerence is actually very easy to spot. You just have to watch for couples’ giggly, lovey-dovey behavior and you can tell they’re fresh in love. Their attraction is like out of the movie, so it’ll be hard to miss.

But if you want to pick up on the kind of limerence where couples are not with each other for the right reasons, then you’ll have to be a bit more observant.

First and foremost, you’ll have to pay attention to the pace of the relationship. If someone is rushing by trying to spend every waking moment with you, proposing to you, talking about marriage right off the bat, and complimenting you like you’re the last person on Earth, consider this person a walking red flag.

Something about him or her is not right as his/her actions stem from anxiety, fear, or desperation. You need to figure out what’s making this person want to be in a committed relationship so badly. If it’s a recent breakup/divorce or a loss of job/home, this person is trying to rely heavily on you for love and support.

He/she sees you as someone who can be of assistance rather than someone he or she can invest in and have a balanced give-take relationship with.

To spot limerence, you have to look out for:

• love-bombing
• rushing the relationship (wanting a label, planning a wedding, talking about kids right away)
• asking for reassurance
• displaying anxiety, pain, and deepest insecurities
• asking for lots of favors
• spending lots of time with you from the beginning
• or conversely, not spending much time with you but wanting to sleep with you

If you can’t tell if you and your partner are in limerence or love, don’t worry about it. Just give it a few months for the infatuation to end. Once it does, your relationship skills and commitment will be put to the test, forcing you to take your rose-tinted glasses off and see if what you have is love or something short-lived.

What makes limerence worse?

Now that we know what limerence is and how to spot it, we need to discuss what makes limerence end in disappointment. Let’s start with the obvious.

The number one reason why limerence doesn’t develop into love is that people aren’t ready for love. They don’t take the time to get to know themselves and/or heal from their past relationships. They think that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, so they do just that and fail.

They fail not only themselves but also their partner who genuinely believes they’re moving in the same direction together. Little does their partner know that their relationship feels so perfect because it’s so imperfect. It’s heightened by the wounded person’s longing to connect and procure reassurance.

This makes the other person feel wanted and desired. It makes him or her think that the relationship is special otherwise his or her partner wouldn’t stick to him/her like a tick. The man or woman would spend more time alone and display less affection.

Some people are good at hiding their pain and desperation; especially men because they’re generally bad at expressing how they feel. That’s why they easily fool their new naive partner into thinking that they’re in love with her when they’re just limerent and afraid of being alone.

You should know that negative experiences and emotions such as loneliness, depression, trauma-bonding, and longing for a romantic partner over a long period of time make a person more limerent. These things aren’t necessarily deal-breakers, but they do change the way a person perceives romantic attraction and responds to it.

For example, divorcees, people who rebound, and those who badly want to settle down and have kids tend to come on stronger than those who are in a happy place. It doesn’t help that society often looks down on them, but the point is that they pin their hopes on being with someone they like and as a result, often appear desperate and try to be with someone for the wrong reasons – to receive a helping hand rather than give what they have to offer.

There is no such thing as selfless love as we enter into a relationship to feel complete and get the most out of life, but this doesn’t mean we’re selfish either. We choose a life partner so we can progress in life and experience all the beauty life has to offer.

Anyway, people who get together with someone when their self-esteem is extremely low and their purpose in life under par tend to be at great risk of clinging to their partner and suffocating him or her. This is because they often show the person they like that they need him or her for happiness and survival and that they feel miserable on their own.

The same goes for widows. Many (not all) want the kind of relationship they had with their ex-spouse, so they stay hopeful that someone will enter their lives and give them what they deserve. This makes them easy targets for love scammers and people who are only after their goodies.

The world can be cruel. But it’s especially cruel to those who refuse to invest in themselves and change things that have been begging them for a change.

Should you stop limerence?

As we’ve already mentioned, limerence on its own is harmless. It’s a completely healthy phase people go through when they find someone they like and want to be liked by. There’s no need to resist limerence emotions unless those emotions don’t come from excitement, but rather desperation.

Another time when you should not indulge in limerence is when you’re already in a committed relationship and started to emotionally cheat on your partner. In that case, you should definitely do something about it. You should distance yourself from the new person so you can focus on the person you’re with.

Some people say you can’t choose who you love, but that’s the biggest load of dung on the planet. You can choose who you love and don’t love. You just have to make the right decisions. Decisions that are right, not decisions that feel right.

Anyway, if you’re desperate for love, there’s a chance you’ll use the relationship as a means of relying on your partner for solving your personal problems. You could over-depend on your significant other for love and recognition and make him or her think that you’re in the relationship for the right reasons – because you love him or her that much when the truth is that you don’t love yourself.

In that case, it may be better to stop the limerence and dating altogether. Figuring out your issues and working on them should be a priority so you can recover in ways that you need to and open your heart to healthy relationships in which you can strive for a healthy balance.

If you’re emotionally ready for a relationship, however, then there’s no need to block out your excitement. You can just embrace it as it’s a part of the attraction process.

You don’t have to fear that you’ll come on too strong and suffocate the other person. If your partner is ready to be with you and likes who you are, there’s no need to play push-pull games and pretend you’re less interested than he or she is.

That would be manipulative and a big waste of time and emotions. Just be yourself and things will either work out or not. Pretending not to care won’t make any difference.

Did you learn the difference between limerence and love? How would you describe limerence vs love? Let us know below the post.

And if you’d like to talk to us about this subject, get in touch with us through our 1-on-1 coaching.