Limerance: How to know when you're too fixated on a crush

Dr Caroline West is a sex educator and host of the Glow West podcast, which focuses on sex, sexuality, and the body. Here, she writes about how to know if your crush has strayed into obsessive territory.

Hollywood's version of love is often full of dramatic cycles of breakups and makeups. While it makes for box office success, in real life this whirlwind of feelings can feel more distressing than romantic.

Faced with these somewhat toxic portrayals of love on screen, how can we make sense of what we are experiencing when we start catching feelings for a new potential love interest? How do you know what's normal?

It's natural to have periods, especially in the early days of a relationship, where your whole world is wrapped up in the excitement of a new romance; you're giddy and maybe a little neglectful of friends and other aspects of your life.

However, when it gets to the point of only thinking about this one person and passing hours waiting for them to text back, it's time to pause and reassess. This stage, when healthy lust and infatuation turn into fixation, is called limerence.

Psychologist Dr Dorothy Tennov invented the term in 1979, describing it as a situation that arises when a person's thoughts and feelings about someone else shift from an appropriate amount to an obsessive or harmful level.

Intense crushes can feel like they have the intoxicating potential to become an all-consuming great love affair. However, it can be hard to distinguish the lines between love, lust, infatuation, co-dependency, and obsession. So, how can you tell if your love is genuine or something to reflect on?

Part of your world, not your whole world

In a healthy relationship, each person has their independence, their own sets of friends, alone time, their job, time for hobbies, and the freedom to enjoy these without guilt or pressure. A relationship is just one part of a person's world, alongside all the other wonderful parts of life that make us who we are.

Healthy relationships add to our lives, not take away from them, so be vigilant about the things you've potentially started to ignore in favour of a relationship. If your texts with your friends have changed from making plans to 'I miss you’, or you’ve put the group chats on mute, it could be a sign that the object of your affections is taking up too much time and energy.

This leads to neglect of friends and feelings of isolation, which in turns makes the intensity of limerence even stronger as the person seeks connection and to soothe that loneliness. It's a vicious cycle that can be interrupted through reconnecting with the rest of your world and learning how to manage your expectations and boundaries in future, mutually desired relationships that nourish us.

It’s not perfect

In a limerent situation, a person can cling to the imagined idea of the relationship at the cost of recognising the reality of their situation. The other person is built up to be so incredible in every way that would be impossible to live up to in reality.

Additionally, the time spent thinking about them is excessively disproportionate with the reality of spending time in real life interacting with them. Daydreaming about the potential of a shared future with this shiny new person is usually a positive experience as couples build their bond together.

In a healthy relationship, the reality of who the person really is takes over and emotional intimacy and authenticity begins to develop.

Instead, in an unhealthy situation limerence keeps that idealised stage going longer than it should, and this means red flags are ignored in favour of the person you think they are, rather than who they really are. A healthy relationship might not be perfect, but it shouldn't feel irrational or unreciprocated.

Healthy relationships are calm and certain. Love is not a rollercoaster that rushes from high to low; love is soft, supportive, nurturing, and clear about boundaries and shared goals.

Humans are messy, and will hurt us, sometimes on purpose and sometimes by accident. If the relationship is over idealised, this hurt can be crushing as they have become the sole focus of attention to the detriment of other areas of their lives.

It's mutual

The magic of an infatuation stage is created through all parties enjoying that shared experience. You might be experiencing limerence if the feelings are one sided or disproportionate to the actual relationship with the person. In order to keep the fantasy going, rejection is not considered an option because the person insists that they will live happily ever after with their loved one, soon.

This is where limerence turns toxic and dangerous as it can lead to stalking. The components of stalking are F.O.U.R.: Fixated, Obsessive, Unwanted, Repeated. This also sums up limerence that continues despite unmatched feelings or requests to stop.

If this sounds familiar, there are ways to get back to feeling calm and comfortable with your feelings towards love interests in ways that are balanced and sustainable. This starts with understanding what lies beneath the obsession, since limerence can be a response to previous traumatic experiences, attachment issues, or a symptom of neurodivergence conditions such as OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), which can make it hard to manage feelings of uncertainty.

Dr Louise Taylor is a therapist who specialises in working with people with neurodivergence and is neurodivergent herself. She notes a gender difference in how limerence and obsessive thoughts can differ between genders, with neurodivergent women more likely to be vulnerable to limerence than neurodivergent males.

When this vulnerability combines with social norms about what love is and the risk of experiencing sexual violence, feelings of limerence can be devastating and isolating.

In an ideal world, sex education would include information on healthy and unhealthy relationships, learning how to implement and respect boundaries, and how to communicate and respect each other's needs and wants, which in turn helps to refocus limerent feelings and thoughts.

If you have been affected by issues raised in this story, please visit: www.rte.ie/helplines.