Talk:Limerence

Limerence - Definition issue with regards to relative importance of reciprocation, uncertainty and hope

In particular this section of the definition: "overwhelming, obsessive need to have one's feelings reciprocated." does not seem to represent the limerant state but instead a form of an "Obsessive Love" which is a different category of romantic attachment and has its own variety of manifestations (which are often likely to co-exist with limerence). One may be obsessed with experiencing and expressing the love while in a limerant state, but the intent can be varied and the progression of the relationship towards its natural conclusion may be desired, whether that is reciprocation or not.

I also think it's important to mention the underlying context in which the limerant state arises, a certain mixture of uncertainty and hope. From my understanding the crucial elements of limerance are uncertainty about relationship progression, hope for reciprocation (which may or may not be obsession - but often manifests as intrusive thoughts, fantasy or projections), and actual emotional feelings of love/attachment.

There is no signature applied to the above. Why?--68.160.162.43 (talk) 02:39, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

The section was created and then immediately defaced in 2015 by this IP user.

ShiveryPeaks (talk) 23:57, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Origin of the word - request for someone to write up a summary of the references below (or more)

The article states who coined the word and why, but not from what. I thought that it was related to liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold"), a concept first developed by anthropologists in the early 20th century, but it's not.

I'm going to add cross-references ("not to be confused with") at the top of both Limerence & Liminality, but my chronic illness is acting up so I can't take the energy and therefore the time to make this post smaller (apologies to Blaise Pascal & WP:TLDR), much less concisely add the info below to the article. I suggest a brief Etymology section quoting the coiner's purposeful attempt at lack of...uh...etymology. I would still call the section Etymology to be parallel with other articles' and because it answers the question of etymology that readers pose, as seen below.

http://www.gramps.org/limerence/ (about halfway down, apparently from the publisher of her ebook)

The Linguistics of Limerence—Professional Article

Dr. Tennov writes, “It is rare that an artificial term, invented, and chosen deliberately to be without cognates, that originates at a known date and place, expands tractably during a quarter-century, across disciplines and continents, sometimes arriving at meanings different from that intended by its inventor.”

(By the way, if you “Google” on the word “limerence” today, you'll discover over 120,000 references, from rock music groups to neurology articles. People have adopted the word in literature, poetry, as the name of a consulting business, and even pornography.)

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001708.php

What's particularly interesting about limerence is its etymology, or lack thereof, as explained in this quote from Dorothy Tennov, the word's inventor: 1977 Observer 11 Sept. 3/9, I first used the term ‘amorance’ then changed it back to ‘limerence’... It has no roots whatsoever. It looks nice. It works well in French. Take it from me it has no etymology whatsoever.

Thanks in advance, even if all you could do is read all this. :) --Geekdiva (talk) 04:14, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Fixed minor mistakes. Also, the previous poster from 2011 had some good points, too. --Geekdiva (talk) 04:18, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

SPELLING? MORPHING? All words morph, of course, but I was surprised to see this word take on such a technical meaning (not a bad thing) over the years. I distinctly remember attending a conference, about 1981, where I learned this word from a speaker who said something to this effect: "I don't like the word infatuation, so in my book I created the word 'limerance,' as it just has a better ring to it than infatuation." I don't remember the speaker at all, not even her gender, but it must have been Tennov. I remembered the word and have used it many times since. I've always spelled the word "limerance" (looks more lyrical than limerence, as in the word "dance"), and I see that spelling used all over the web. I don't have her book, but I assume it says "limerence," since that is what most are using here. Yet many, even on this page, are spelling it limerance. I like the notion that a "limerent object" is the object of limerance—but I'm not trying to change anything here, just noting the widespread use of both spellings and that we should aim for consistency. ChicagoLarry (talk) 14:10, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Devotion to Celestial Qualities

"Attendant to stress on the celestial qualities perceived, and devotion to them, there is abundant doubt of reciprocal amity: rejection."

What? Is there meaning here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:37E7:9D70:9489:5A4F:D09:AC18 (talk) 17:53, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

A product of Asperger's Autism?

There is some indication that limerence is the product of a person with Asperger's Syndrome fixating on a person, instead of an object.GESICC (talk) 10:53, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Can you link to some reliable sources supporting that statement? Permstrump (talk) 10:52, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

Are you saying that it is always the product? Wikkrockiana (talk) 10:08, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Pathological? Distinguished from other kinds of love?

Is limerence pathological? Always pathological? How do we distinguish limerence from exciting love? The article should make this clear. Wikkrockiana (talk) 10:20, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

The french wikipedia says "Le concept de « limerence » est présenté par Tennov comme une façon de concevoir l'amour de manière scientifique", "the concept of limerence is presented by Tennov as a scientific way of conceving love". So, indeed, it IS romantic love, but conceptualized in a way that make it "measurable" by tests. At the worst, it is the suffered way of loving of a insicure, shy, undeclared lover. So, it's not pathological (but its obsessive characteristics could become pathological). The article shows great confusion because in Tennov's work "limerance" was not necessarily a negative mental state, quite the contrary (she says that it's potentially inspirant, and offers a definition that it's nothing more than the mainstream description of a general passion), but the term "limerance" was successively "pathologized" by Wakin Vo, who thought of a pretty specific condition in which a person is both pathologically affected by OCD and in love. - Brocabruno — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.82.16.176 (talk) 17:23, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

Wakin & Vo have actually never attempted to make any distinction between their ill-defined idea and what Tennov describes. What happened is they spread misinformation about this and now there is a pervasive confusion among a growing group of people (mostly therapists) who think that a normal fairly garden variety lovesickness or intense infatuation (the subject of Tennov's book) is a mental disorder.

Albert Wakin has mentioned certain edge cases on occasions, but has never stated that he uses the term to only refer to those types of cases. Instead, he projects those cases onto others (with no understanding of why they actually happen), claiming things like that limerence never goes away if you get into a relationship.

It's all a contention over what the original book is about. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 15:27, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

I should also add (as I've said elsewhere here and in the article), the entire problem is that a garden variety infatuation (or lovesickness) can resemble a mental illness, even with clinically significant levels of symptoms. This might even be quite common, and it's what essentially everyone is saying in the mainstream literature on love. People talking about limerence now avoid confronting this issue (if limerence is different from "typical" infatuation - how?) by just listing incorrect definitions of terms like "infatuation" and "romantic love", or spreading misinformation, like that "uncertainty" is somehow not a feature of relationships which are (or become) healthy.

A lot of articles I've seen are just giving a passionate and companionate love distinction when they offer definitions of "limerence vs. love". This is one just posted (probably AI-generated), for example. The features listed of "Genuine Love" (e.g. "consistency, clear communication, shared time, gradual, grounded, calmness, security, warmth") are just features of companionate love or secure attachment. People writing about this are never able to describe what "being in love" is actually like, because none of them know anything about it. It's basically a bunch of people who think passionate love is a mental disorder, but they say they aren't saying this, but none of them can actually explain why. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 15:46, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

In popular culture

A word being mentioned two times in a book is still a trivial mention which doesn't belong in the article. Even if it were a novel devoted to the concept of limerence, it is still red-linked and relies on a primary source. And besides the point, trivia sections are discouraged in Wikipedia as they often introduce irrelevant material and detract from the flow of the article (see WP:TRIVIA). I don't think that the idea of limerence has received such coverage in popular culture that we need to discuss it in the article. Daß Wölf 17:34, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Here are several examples of similar articles with "popular culture" sections:

• Erotomania#Prominent_examples
• Infatuation#Literary_analogues
• Love_addiction#Cultural_examples
• Love_at_first_sight#Occurrence_in_literature_and_the_arts
• Monomania#Examples
• Propinquity#In_popular_culture
• Unrequited_love#In_popular_culture

The article Wikipedia:"In_popular_culture"_content says that such sections "can positively distinguish Wikipedia from more traditional encyclopedias" as long they are "verifiable" and "contain facts of genuine interest to the reader." I am a reader, and the fact that limerence is specifically mentioned in a popular recent novel is of interest to me, so I am trying to make a contribution to this article in an accepted manner so other readers can be aware of this. Rather than allow one user Wölf arbitrate what may be of interest or of use to everyone else, why not include the "in popular culture" section and allow users to edit it for improvements if needed? User:Sqrlntz1999 18:23, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:"In popular culture" content is an essay, while WP:TRIVIA is a guideline. Nevertheless, the essay mentions that, "When poorly written or poorly maintained, however, these sections can devolve into indiscriminate collections of trivia or cruft. They should be carefully maintained, as they may attract trivial entries, especially if they are in list format." While these sections seem to be commonplace in similar articles as you pointed out, most of these examples are poorly written TV Tropes-style lists which would have to go if these articles were nominated for a good or a featured article.

There are some popular culture sections here that are better written than others (e.g. the one in Love addiction, which could benefit from some copyediting and commentary on more modern portrayals of love addiction, but otherwise gives interesting information sourced to secondary sources), but none of them would do good to include another paragraph that basically boils down to: "On page __ of book ____ the word __ was mentioned in the sentence that goes: ________". I get stuck on TV Tropes regularly, and even I don't see how this could be of any interest to the average reader. Daß Wölf 23:41, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Trivia: What this guideline is not says, "This guideline does not suggest removing trivia sections, or moving them to the talk page. If information is otherwise suitable, it is better that it be poorly presented than not presented at all." Trivia: "In popular culture" also says, "This material is not categorically trivial. Media coverage of a topic is generally encyclopedic information, helps establish the topic's notability, and helps readers understand the subject's influence on the public (and often vice versa)." The several examples from the other Wikipedia articles above show that the "average reader" probably would be more interested to know how limerence is presented in current fiction than, say, whether the Wikipedia article was nominated for an award. This is "suitable information" because it uses familiar context to help increase awareness and understanding. That's the intention of my contribution, anyway. If it's poorly written or presented, please improve and build upon it, instead of dismissing as trivia and deleting. User:Sqrlntz1999 15:58, 17 June 2017 (UTC)

There is nothing to improve here. This is a citation of a brand new book, which thus has yet to enter popular culture (if it ever will), so it can hardly help the reader connect to something familiar to better understand the concept of limerence. Also, the book seems to touch on the article subject so marginally that it cannot teach the reader anything beyond what he has already learned before reaching the "In popular culture" section. This is supported by a lack of any secondary sources discussing this book in connection with limerence. There is no familiar context here, hence, it doesn't aid the reader's understanding. The only thing it could possibly do is increase their awareness of the novel, which is not this article's job. Daß Wölf 00:21, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

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ought to be better

While I defend limerence as being a much more rigorously examined concept than the newer/trendier new relationship energy, Limerence isn't really substantially better than New relationship energy.

As can be seen from browsing the Talk history of both articles, NRE has repeatedly been put forward as all the rainbows-and-unicorns happy-fuzzy feelings of "falling in love" (with no downside except maybe sacrificing your career or skipping out on your spouse and children), while all the bipolar obsessive stalkerish stuff has been damned as "limerence," when actually (leaving off the propaganda of mindless Romance) they are pretty much the same thing.

So it is with reluctance that I might be trimming the most questionable claims made in Limerence. I could use some assistance, namely the citations made to "Tennov, 1998" when the only Tennov piece clearly cited is the 1999 edition of her book (originally 1979). Similarly, there are citations to "Morris" and "Moore" and "Agmo" and "Leggett & Malm" that do not offer an actual book or paper, so it's well into W.T.F. range here; if I didn't have a bias, I might delete these assertions, and then remove the passages that had claimed them as support.
Weeb Dingle (talk) 19:04, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

Magic Potion

Romance is the conspiracy of the hormones, and starts with the delusion that romance is the same as love. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.78.144.132 (talk) 20:20, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

More should be said about the role of hormones in limerence. There is a significant amount of study of hormones related to limerence (and more that could be done). We might say that it's an addiction to an LO, but at the end of the day it's a chemical addiction that requires an LO for the body to produce the chemicals that it's addicted to. ~2025-36658-38 (talk) 05:08, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Why this article?

Since "limerence" is basically a synonym for infatuation, it does not merit its own article.

Especially since far more people are familiar with the word "infatuation".50.205.142.35 (talk) 14:34, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Limerence, as characterized in the article, is of such duration as to qualify as a different phenomenon. Infatuation is frequently taken to be short-lived. The two share many features though. Spirarel (talk) 00:27, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

to build on the above, infatuation typically implies some greater level of rationality and control over the desires, while 'limerence' is just a made-up term for lovesickness so the good esteemed late Dr. Tennov, PhD could sell her book 136.35.170.50 (talk) 17:29, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

is passionately desired actually to take place

this, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of an infinitive that begs to be split. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:FD24:46CE:76AF:D0B5 (talk) 11:39, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Lynn Willmott's self-published book

I'm going to be removing references to Willmott & Bentley's book Love and Limerence: Harness the Limbicbrain. This book was self-published by Lynn Willmott using CreateSpace, and it's also no longer in print so it's not possible for anyone to obtain a copy of it.

A careful reading of policies such as WP:RELY, WP:SCHOLARSHIP and WP:SELFPUB would lead one to conclude that it's not appropriate as a Wikipedia source, because it's a self-published primary source by an author who is not an established subject-matter expert in the relevant field.

Willmott & Bentley have otherwise one single article published on the topic , published in a minor journal with a permissive editorial policy:

The hallmark of The Qualitative Report will not be built upon rejection rates; rather, we want to distinguish ourselves by assisting authors to improve themselves and their texts. We strongly believe all authors and their research have merit. Sometimes, that quality is not readily apparent in the text. The goal of this approach is to help authors to develop their ideas and to work collaboratively with their mentors to help them to bring out the best in their work.

Lynn Willmott's ideas are also not that well supported by the literature on this. She and her graduate student are basically the only academic authors I can find that are advancing an idea that limerence has to do with attachment issues. Everything else I can find on this topic relates it to dopamine and serotonin systems in the brain.

Furthermore, I found that references to this book seem to have been originally added by Lynn Willmott herself. The username "Lathbury1" clearly refers to "Lathbury House", which is Lynn Willmott's self-publishing company.

See e.g. WP:UNDUE. From what I can tell, she is just a fringe author who tried to advertise her self-published material by citing herself as a source. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 16:54, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, there is some real research on the childhood trauma stuff, but it mostly comes from John Alan Lee's work on love styles. Here are some internet articles by Victor Karandashev. There are more sources in the Limerence#Love styles section because I have some sources relating limerence to mania. I recommend purchasing The Psychology of Love (1988) for anyone interested in learning about love styles. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 01:50, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Here are scans of Lynn Willmott's self-published book showing she's aware this is just lovesickness/unrequited love.

She's even citing Baumeister [unrequited love, which 90% had experienced] as a source on limerence, which I avoided citing in the Wikipedia article myself.

She's just a scammer, like Albert Wakin. She knows what it is, but people who read her paper won't understand there is a real literature on it because that's only reviewed in her book which is out of print so nobody can read it. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 01:33, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Research on dopamine and serotonin

I've added reference to these 2 studies in the lead: .

Neither of these papers specifically use the word "limerence", but if you read them it's clear what they are talking about. Fisher's fMRI paper repeatedly uses Love and Limerence as a citation, for example. Fisher also does use the word "limerence" to refer to this in another paper which also talks about the fMRI study before the results were published: .

It should be obvious why the 2 studies are relevant to the article, but I was careful with the wording to try to avoid synthesis.

Looking at Wikipedia's guidelines though, I think it may not even technically be synthesis to say these 2 studies are about limerence, because Fisher's 2002 paper connects all the ideas together using the word. WP:SYNTH says '"A and B, therefore, C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument concerning the topic of the article.'

Anyway, it should be fine.

There's actually a pretty large amount of research on this, they just rarely use Tennov's word specifically. Fisher, for example, seems to be a fan of the idea that "limerence is love" which may explain why she refers to Tennov quite a bit but avoids the word except occasionally. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 01:28, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

In this paper they more clearly relate their brain scan experiments to 'limerence'.

Romantic love is also associated, particularly in early stages, with specific physiological, psychological and behavioral indices that have been described and quantified by psychologists and others [...]. These include emotional responses such as euphoria, intense focused attention on a preferred individual, obsessive thinking about him or her, emotional dependency on and craving for emotional union with this beloved, and increased energy. Tennov (1979) coined the term “limerance” for this special state, and Hatfield et al. (1986) developed a questionnaire scale to measure it.

But again, in Fisher's earlier papers (1, 2) and other publications she has related this. In her 1998 paper, she clearly states e.g. that her components of 'attraction' are derived from Tennov's components of limerence. Judging by her citation counts, her team's papers should be considered authoritative. See WP:RELY and my talk discussion below on reliable sources.

ShiveryPeaks (talk) 18:59, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

It turns out that the theory that obsessive thinking is related to serotonin is no longer taken seriously. See , and . ShiveryPeaks (talk) 02:05, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

This paper has a discussion of the addiction theory of obsessive thinking. (Compare with .) Note that real experts on romantic love unanimously consider limerence to be a synonym for early-stage romantic love or "being in love". Zou et al. is a paper about limerence according to reliable sources. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 21:10, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Reliable sources

Editors editing this page should read the WP:RELY article carefully. Many internet sources mentioning "limerence" are not reliable sources per Wikipedia's standards.

• Reliable scholarship – Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses.
• Citation counts – One may be able to confirm that discussion of the source has entered mainstream academic discourse by checking what scholarly citations it has received in citation indexes or lists such as DOAJ.
• Isolated studies – Isolated studies are usually considered tentative and may change in the light of further academic research. If the isolated study is a primary source, it should generally not be used if there are secondary sources that cover the same content. The reliability of a single study depends on the field. Avoid undue weight when using single studies in such fields.

Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (invited op-eds and letters to the editor from notable figures) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact. Human interest reporting is generally not as reliable as news reporting, and may not be subject to the same rigorous standards of fact-checking and accuracy (see junk food news).

• When taking information from opinion content, the identity of the author may help determine reliability. The opinions of specialists and recognized experts are more likely to be reliable and to reflect a significant viewpoint. (Please keep in mind that any exceptional claim would require exceptional sources, and this is policy.) If the statement is not authoritative, attribute the opinion to the author in the text of the article and do not represent it as fact.
• Scholarly sources and high-quality non-scholarly sources are generally better than news reports for academic topics.
• The reporting of rumors has a limited encyclopedic value, although in some instances verifiable information about rumors may be appropriate (i.e. if the rumors themselves are noteworthy, regardless of whether or not they are true).

Albert Wakin's paper, for example, is not a reliable source, because it's not published in an actual peer-reviewed journal. It was just published by a university. Most internet articles about this are not reliable sources, because they're opinion pieces written by non-experts. Many internet articles e.g. claim that Albert Wakin is an expert, but he has little to no publications, so these articles can only be taken as the opinions of those authors, who are not authoritative sources in and of themselves.

The only authoritative sources on this topic are Dorothy Tennov herself, and probably Helen Fisher who is a domain expert that has written about Tennov and limerence.

The claim, for example, that "being in love" is a mental disorder would be an exceptional claim requiring exceptional evidence.

A number of internet articles, for example, claim that "limerence" affects "5%" of the population, but this does not come from any published study, nor are the articles clear about what they mean by "limerence". Several articles attribute this "estimate" to Wakin himself, who, again, can not be said to be an expert per Wikipedia's guidelines. Similarly, it cannot be said that "limerence" is actually being evaluated for inclusion to the DSM, because there is no proposal for that and the APA has not made a statement.

These are just low-quality opinion articles expressing the ill-defined opinions of non-experts. These articles also contain numerous provably false statements. For example, this article lists "Tennov's components" of limerence, but they are different from the ones in Tennov's publications. That article also says "limerence" is different from romantic love, but according to reliable sources they are the same. The article also says "In most relationships where limerence is an issue, one partner is limerent and the other is not, according to Tennov.", but Tennov did not say this. (What Tennov actually said is just that most relationships are limerent-nonlimerent, and she also included unrequited love in this grouping of people.) And so on. Again, these are provably false statements.

With respect to this 5% "estimate", Wakin's statement about his own study (which he has never published) suggest he found 25%. (Also note Helen Fisher's comments in that article.) For what it's worth, there is also a blogger who has done a survey finding more like 50% (although that's not a reliable source for Wikipedia), as well as a 1990 study that found limerence was common ('considerable overlap of distributions'), although they do not list a specific percentage.

So again, please read Wikipedia's sourcing guidelines carefully and do not add unreliable information to the article. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 18:33, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Another example: this article says "limerence" is related to love addiction, this article says they are different. Both are in HuffPost and both refer to this Albert Wakin guy. None of these articles even agree with each other. Also according to Wakin, he is referring to Tennov's limerence, which, again, is romantic love. From what I can tell he is just a fringe author who thinks being 'madly in love' should be in the DSM. (In his paper, his "symptoms" include e.g. euphoria.)

These people like Fisher, Hatfield, etc. are the real experts being quoted in these articles. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 20:02, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

See WP:UNDUE. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 20:03, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Quotes from academic sources

I've compiled a list of sources (currently 20), most of them peer-reviewed papers which demonstrate what reliable sources consider limerence to be. https://limerence.fandom.com/wiki/Quotes_from_Academic_Texts

Notable examples:

• Passionate love, “a state of intense longing for union with another” (Hatfield & Rapson, 1993, p. 5), also referred to as “being in love” (Meyers & Berscheid, 1997), “infatuation” (Fisher, 1998), and “limerence” (Tennov, 1979), includes an obsessive element, characterized by intrusive thinking, uncertainty, and mood swings.

• The attraction system is characterized by increased energy and focused attention on a preferred mating partner. In humans, the attraction system (standardly called romantic love, obsessive love, passionate love, being in love, infatuation, or limerence) is also characterized by feelings of exhilaration, “intrusive thinking” about the love object, and a craving for emotional union with this partner or potential partner.

• Numerous researchers accord with a basic distinction between infatuation (also known as passionate love, falling in love, or limerence) and attachment (also known as companionate love; Hatfield, 1987; Sternberg, 1986; Zeifman & Hazan, 1997). In a self-report study of over 1,000 individuals, Tennov (1979) found that infatuation was characterized by intense desires for proximity and physical contact, resistance to separation, feelings of excitement and euphoria when receiving attention and affection from the partner, fascination with the partner’s behavior and appearance, extreme sensitivity to his or her moods and signs of interest, and intrusive thoughts of the partner.

• Falling in love is an experience that involves very intense affective and cognitive changes including euphoria and overwhelming joy, increased arousal and energy, emotional dependency on the partner, craving for emotional union with the beloved, and obsessional thoughts about and focused attention on the special other (Fisher 1998; Hatfield and Sprecher 1986). Several theorists have proposed that passionate love—also referred to as infatuation or limerence (Tennov 1979)—should be distinguished from another important type of love, usually referred to as companionate love (Berscheid and Walster 1978; Hatfield and Sprecher 1986; Rubin 1970 cf. Sternberg 1986).

• Despite [the] attempts to define and describe romantic love, no single term or definition has been universally adopted in the literature. The psychological literature often uses the terms “romantic love,” “love,” and “passionate love” (e.g., Sternberg and Sternberg, 2019). Seminal work called it “limerence” (Tennov, 1979). The biological literature generally uses the term “romantic love” and has investigated “early stage intense romantic love” (e.g., Xu et al., 2011), “long-term intense romantic love” (e.g., Acevedo et al., 2012), or being “in love” (e.g., Marazziti and Canale, 2004). In this review, what we term “romantic love” encompasses all of these definitions, descriptions, and terms.

So there is a broad academic consensus that limerence is the type of love most often called romantic love, passionate love or infatuation. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 00:22, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Refuting Noah Wolf

As far as I can tell so far, Noah Wolf is the only author who has ever explicitly attempted to argue that limerence is not passionate love. Wolf's paper is a master's thesis which can not be "shown to have had significant scholarly influence" (see WP:SCHOLARSHIP), so it is not a reliable source for Wikipedia; however, I'm going to refute his arguments anyway to demonstrate why his arguments are incorrect.

Out of all the varieties of love, passionate love has been given the most attention in the sciences (Regan, 2009). Limerence, on the other hand, has been largely ignored. This may be due to the fact that some view limerence to be a synonymous, and therefore redundant, term for passionate love (Aron & Acevedo, 2009; Fisher, Aron, Mashek, Li, & Brown, 2002). Although, on the surface, passionate love and limerence may seem to be equivalent, there are aspects of limerence that render it distinct from passionate love. For instance, limerent individuals are inordinately fearful of being viewed as an unsuitable relationship partner. Fear of rejection is not mentioned as being an aspect of passionate love, and it is not included in Hatfield and Sprecher’s (1986) listing of passionate love components. Also absent from Hatfield and Sprecher’s listing are any components dealing with apprehension in the romantic interest’s presence, which is commonly experienced when limerent, at least to some degree. These differences may reflect an uncertainty about reciprocation that characterizes limerence but not passionate love. Limerence is primarily an obsession with determining the degree to which romantic desire is reciprocated by LO. Uncertainty is what drives the limerent reaction; when certainty is reached, limerence ends. Nowhere is uncertainty discussed as an aspect of passionate love. (Wolf, pp. 6-7)

• Limerence was not largely ignored. Love and Limerence cited 1,157 times. "Limerence" referenced 1,890 times. Tennov's is simply not the preferred terminology.

• Note that Wolf acknowledges the mainstream academic consensus that limerence is passionate love. There are also mainstream papers criticizing the PLS.

• Some of the items on the PLS actually do ask about fear of losing a relationship: "An existence without my partner would be dark and dismal," and "I get extremely depressed when things don’t go right in my relationship with my partner." (See Passionate and companionate love#Romantic obsession)

• In one of the papers he cites, fear and shyness is discussed by Fisher et al., with a possible neurochemical explanation:

  Many also report feeling anxiety, panic and/or fear in the presence of the beloved. [...] Increased concentrations of dopamine in the brain are associated with euphoria, loss of appetite, hyperactivity, increased mental activity, a delay of the onset of fatigue, and a decreased need for sleep, as well as with anxiety, panic and a fearlike state. Hence, elevated levels of dopamine are a likely agent for the ecstasy, increased energy, sleeplessness, reduced appetite, fear, and anxiety associated with romantic attraction.

• In one of the papers he cites, fear and shyness are items on Langeslag et al.'s Infatuation Scale (intended as an improved measure of early-stage romantic love i.e. passionate love or limerence): "I get shaky knees when I am near ...", "I am afraid that I will say something wrong when I talk to ...", "I become tense when I am close to ...", I search for alternative meanings to ...’s words", I am shy in the presence of ..."

• In one of the papers he cites, uncertainty is mentioned by Acevedo & Aron as a component of passionate love (with a reference to Tennov):

  Passionate love, “a state of intense longing for union with another” (Hatfield & Rapson, 1993, p. 5), also referred to as “being in love” (Meyers & Berscheid, 1997), “infatuation” (Fisher, 1998), and “limerence” (Tennov, 1979), includes an obsessive element, characterized by intrusive thinking, uncertainty, and mood swings.

• Sternberg relates uncertainty to intermittent reinforcement in a 1987 paper (compare with ). He also references a book chapter (Livingston, 1980) here which is called "Love as a process of reducing uncertainty", which I haven't read yet but I've ordered a copy since I am curious about it.

  Passionate or infatuated love—deriving primarily from the passion component—seems to operate primarily under variable-ratio and variable-interval reinforcement. In essence, it thrives under intermittent reinforcement. The available evidence suggests that such love may survive only under conditions of intermittent reinforcement, when uncertainty reduction plays a key role in one's feelings for another (cf. Livingston, 1980). Tennov's (1979) analysis suggests that limerence can survive only under conditions in which full development and consummation of love is withheld and in which titillation of one kind or another continues over time. Once the relationship is allowed to develop or once the relationship becomes an utter impossibility, extinction seems to take place.

• Berscheid (who does not refer to limerence in this paper, but can be seen on the rear cover of Love and Limerence) talks about uncertainty in a 2010 paper:

  The word “passion” denotes excitement and physiological arousal, known to be causally associated with the experience of the intense emotions that are often observed in people experiencing the thrall of Romantic Love. Excitement and arousal, in turn, usually are generated by surprise and uncertainty. Surprise and uncertainty tend to be characteristic of any new relationship. Because the partner is not well known, expectancies about the partner's attributes and behaviors are often violated.

• This paper relates to the neurobiological basis of this (somewhat—Tennov's concept of uncertainty was complicated and involves many other parts than tension and stress):

  During the initial stages of romantic love, increases in cortisol may support approach to novel individuals and indicate a state of hypervigilance due to the uncertainty and novelty during this transient stage (Loving, Crockett, & Paxson, 2009; Marazziti & Canale, 2004; Weisman et al., 2015). [...] The display of synchronous behavioral interactions that involve reciprocity in positive affect and affectionate touch are thought to be critical to the success of pair bonds, both parent–child and romantic (e.g., Schoebi, 2008).

Fear, shyness & uncertainty are also mentioned in other writings. Those are just some notable ones.

Wolf's arguments are based on misunderstandings about what Tennov is talking about, and are largely criticisms of the PLS which the mainstream academic community is aware of. (Again, see .)

Fear & shyness is a component of infatuation, and uncertainty is essentially just a property of any new relationship (or non-relationship). Limerence (passionate love) is a motivational state similar to hunger or thirst (not an emotion—see ) for securing a pair-bond (see ), therefore much of the mental energy is focused on determining reciprocation and resolving security. When Tennov says that "removing uncertainty" is the goal of limerence, she may have meant something similar to "obtaining secure attachment", but the language of insecure vs. secure attachment did not exist yet in this context. (This is different from a personal attachment style. I am referring to how couples start out insecurely attached to each other and become secure over time. Also see above for the fear & shyness items on Langeslag's Infatuaton Scale which are designed to measure something similar, but outside an attachment theory context.) Infatuation can be conceptualized as similar to (but not the same as) insecure attachment.

Consider this quote from Tennov :

A's condition continues to be controlled by perception of LO'S behavior until [...]: [...] LO reciprocates and enters into a committed and monogamous relationship with A. However, not even marriage necessarily satisfies this condition if LO, as spouse, continues to emit behaviors interpreted by A as nonlimerence. Only if the reciprocation is sustained and believable will limerence intensity diminish. In the ideal situation, it will be replaced by another type of love.

She's basically just saying limerence (probably referring to obsessive thinking here, as she often is) goes away when the limerent person perceives secure attachment, but secure attachment is interpreted by the limerent person (according to Tennov) as mutual limerence. (Remember that limerence for Tennov is the state of "being in love". A nonlimerent is a person who does not "fall in love". When she says "LO, as spouse, continues to emit behaviors interpreted by A as nonlimerence," she appears to simply be talking about the limerent person determining whether or not the spouse loves them back or not.) She's just a difficult author to understand because she invents her own terminology and she can write in a very pretentious way sometimes (overly "clever" and not spelling things out nicely for the reader).

That is what fear, shyness & uncertainty is generally about. This can even involve something like hypervigilance, according to Tennov on p. 62. (I think some of this can't quite be said so clearly in the article with the sources available, but what I have said in the article is acceptable per WP:SYNTHNOTJUXTAPOSITION.)

Anyway. Limerence is passionate love according to reliable sources (see quotes from academic sources listing above). This one source, Wolf's paper (which is not reliable), makes arguments which are strictly incorrect and contradicted by reliable sources, even contradicted by his own citations. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 15:34, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

Livingston 1980 (Love as a Process of Reducing Uncertainty, from this book) is about this. Essentially Livingston had the same (or extremely similar) theory as Tennov around the same time, that preoccupation during romantic love is related to uncertainty, and that uncertainty reduction is a motivator.

The crucial hypothesis, in any case, is that it is the eventual loss of the experience of uncertainty reduction that produces the decline of passionate feeling with its associated pleasurable arousal, focused attention, and the like, and the necessity for a change in the definition of the relationship. ... Passion gives way to companionate love in Walster and Walster's (1978) language, or to the search for a new passion. (p. 146)

Livingston's chapter is not about love madness, just uncertainty. With the modern research, we also know there is more to limerence than just uncertainty. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 00:54, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Just leaving a few other resources on this topic if any other editors see this and are interested. There are a few papers by a psychologist named Joshua Poore tying uncertainty to the concept of reward prediction error. See for an introduction to RPE, or this video . Poore's theory of what uncertainty refers to is similar to how Tom Bellamy is conceptualizing it. RPE and incentive salience are both components of the function of dopamine signaling. RPE is a form of reinforcement learning (how e.g. limerence starts and is maintained), and incentive salience is a motivational output (feelings of desire).

Berridge & Robinson actually discuss uncertainty here in the context of addiction and incentive salience.

This paper also connects uncertainty to attachment anxiety, but the authors of that paper don't seem to understand the material well. Uncertainty (limerence theory) and habituation (Sternberg) are essentially the same theory. This is explained in Tom's new book, and Sternberg has talked about limerence this way before himself (see above; "such love may survive only under ... intermittent reinforcement ... Once the relationship is allowed to develop ... extinction seems to take place"). There is some connection between uncertainty and attachment anxiety, but Poore and Bellamy are the only other people I've seen so far who understand this to be related to RPE mechanics. Anxious attachment could e.g. involve impaired mentalization which could have an effect on the expectation and perception of reciprocity.

Hope that helps, if somebody else out there is trying to figure this out. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 17:22, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Other unreliable sources

David Sack's article

This article is a blog post written by a psychiatrist. I believe this would fall under WP:NEWSBLOG. This person is not a love researcher or any sort of domain expert, therefore the article can not be considered a reliable source on the subject of romantic love. I can't fill this talk page with refutations of every article out there, but this one was cited in the Wikipedia article, and it's also cited by Lynn Willmott in her paper. I'll therefore refute some of this author's points to show that the information is unreliable and why.

This article contains largely incorrect information which contradicts reliable sources (peer-reviewed papers, and Tennov herself). For example:

Limerence lasts longer than romantic love, but not usually as long as a healthy, committed partnerships. By Tennov's estimates, limerence can last a few weeks to several decades, with the average being 18 months to three years.

It's not correct that limerence has a different duration from romantic love, as Tennov's estimate is used as the normal duration of romantic love in peer-reviewed papers:

... the altered mental state associated with falling in love seems to have a precise time course, with an average duration of between 18 months and 3 years (Tennov, 1979; Marazziti et al., 1999) ...

The psychological features of romantic love are said to normally last between 18 months to 3 years (Tennov, 1979) ...

The second of those papers also explicitly names limerence as a synonym for romantic love. The reason that Tennov's estimate might be a bit long is that she probably included people who had limerence that was unrequited or uncertain which lasts longer than limerence in a relationship, for a number of reasons (see and , also Limerence#Uncertainty and hope and Limerence#Duration). Tennov also used self-reports. It's unclear what Sack's definition of "romantic love" even is there, or what sort of evidence he is appealing to.

Another example of misinformation from Sack's article would be this:

In most relationships where limerence is an issue, one partner is limerent and the other is not, according to Tennov.

This is a false statement about Tennov, as she did not say this. All she says is that most relationships are limerent-nonlimerent (and she included fully-unrequited love situations in this category):

“probably [the] most prevalent sort of relationship between two people, at least during some stages of their interaction, occurs between a limerent person and an LO who does not reciprocate with limerence.” (p. 133)

On p. 135, she also has a discussion of whether any category of relationship is "preferable, most likely to be stable, or in danger of erupting into clearly undesirable states", but does not say limerent-nonlimerent relationships are an issue, only that they probably last longer than mutually limerent relationships.

This author (Sack) also lists a fake component in his component listing ("core characteristics"):

Arranging your schedule to maximize possible encounters with the other person

This is something Tennov described a couple people doing (for example, Fred on p. 95), but is not one of her basic components ("core characteristics") on pp. 23-24. However, believe it or not, this is among the components of romantic love according to Helen Fisher, but she talks about it in a somewhat roundabout way:

a reordering of daily priorities to be available to the loved person coupled with the impulse to make a certain impression on the loved person, including changing one's clothing, mannerisms, habits, or values

Sack is obviously trying to associate limerence with stalking, but there is no technical difference between limerence and romantic love. According to stalking literature, people generally stalk because they are delusional or have a personality disorder. There is no "limerence" thing which makes people do this as opposed to being in love where they don't do this. If romantic love escalates to actual stalking, it's because there is some other issue. (This is what Tennov says, and also what the stalking literature says.)

Much of Sack's article is also just, like, snyde remarks ("affection deficit disorder") and saber rattling about the DSM (which, as far as I can tell, there is absolutely no impetus behind whatsoever—there is a real academic discussion, mostly led by Brian Earp , which has nothing to do with limerence or these fringe people like Albert Wakin). ShiveryPeaks (talk) 22:17, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

Brandy Wyant's paper

Brandy Wyant is a therapist, not a researcher of any sort, so she is not a reliable source on her own, and her paper makes claims which contradict reliable sources. Wyant does not make any explicit argument that limerence and passionate love are different constructs, but she does make arguments which can be considered and refuted.

Uncertainty is the driving force behind the development and maintenance of limerence (2). The individual experiencing limerence feels an attraction towards a particular “limerent object” (LO) whose willingness to reciprocate is uncertain. The greater the degree of uncertainty, the more intensely the individual ruminates about the LO, and the greater the desire for reciprocation. This pattern of uncertainty about the LO's feelings and availability may distinguish limerence from the early stages of a typical romantic relationship, in which both partners often experience infatuation or obsession with each other.

I refuted this argument under the section on Noah Wolf. Uncertainty is essentially just a property of being in love with a person that you don't know very well. Brandy Wyant doesn't understand what infatuation is.

Limerence is distinct from the romantic or sexual attraction typically experienced by most individuals. Willmott and Bentley refuted Tennov's claim that the LO must be a potential sexual partner, noting that many limerent individuals deny sexual attraction to their LOs and experience sexual attraction to the opposite gender of the LO (6).

Willmott & Bentley are not reliable sources, and this reference to them is a reference to their self-published book which is not a reliable source and is no longer in print (see above Talk:Limerence#Lynn Willmott's self-published book). Lisa Diamond has an entire paper about platonic limerence (which she calls infatuation). (Cited >500 times . Diamond's paper can be considered the most reliable source on this topic.) Diamond's definition of "infatuation" is given in reference to Tennov:

Numerous researchers accord with a basic distinction between infatuation (also known as passionate love, falling in love, or limerence) and attachment (also known as companionate love; Hatfield, 1987; Sternberg, 1986; Zeifman & Hazan, 1997). In a self-report study of over 1,000 individuals, Tennov (1979) found that infatuation was characterized by intense desires for proximity and physical contact, resistance to separation, feelings of excitement and euphoria when receiving attention and affection from the partner, fascination with the partner’s behavior and appearance, extreme sensitivity to his or her moods and signs of interest, and intrusive thoughts of the partner.

Academics simply do not have a consistent preferred terminology, and Diamond simply uses the word "infatuation" to refer to limerence. "Despite ... attempts to define and describe romantic love, no single term or definition has been universally adopted in the literature. ... Seminal work called it “limerence” (Tennov, 1979)." (Bode & Kushnick)

Academics have not believed that romantic attraction and sexual attraction are the same since the late 90s.

Brandy Wyant is simply a random therapist with no credentials as any sort of expert or researcher at all, describing a single case report (herself). (See WP:SCHOLARSHIP "citation counts"/"isolated studies" and WP:UNDUE.)

Per the reliable sources policy on Wikipedia, basically all her paper could be used to say is something like "Brandy Wyant, a therapist, thinks that blah blah blah" and her opinion is not even worth including in the article. The key thing is that her paper does not describe a different phenomenon from what the mainstream love research literature is describing. (Again, see Diamond above: "intense desires for proximity and physical contact, resistance to separation, feelings of excitement and euphoria when receiving attention and affection from the partner", and Diamond argues this can be platonic based on various cases and an evolutionary argument.) Wyant simply doesn't understand how the case described in her paper relates to mainstream research, nor is she able to distinguish the phenomenon in a way which is discernible for us to report as Wikipedia editors. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 16:22, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Robin Banker's thesis

This paper was cited in the article before I rewrote it. The same as Noah Wolf, Banker's paper is a master's thesis which cannot be "shown to have had significant scholarly influence" (WP:SCHOLARSHIP), so it's not a reliable source for Wikipedia. Banker does not make explicit arguments that can be addressed for how limerence is different from what the mainstream academic consensus agrees on, so her paper cannot be used as evidence for anything in particular, even if it was reliable. Her paper (2010) is written in reference to Tennov's material (which is passionate love, romantic love, being in love, infatuation, etc., according to reliable sources).

Banker's paper is more like a screed or a hate manifesto. Socially prescribed perfectionism is associated with fragile narcissism (see and Perfectionism (psychology)#Narcissism) so this paper appears to just be an elaborate way to call limerent people narcissists. These are real quotes from her paper:

"The notion that their partner does not desire them in the same manner is devastating to both the socially prescribed perfectionist and limerent individual, suggesting that they are unable to understand that others are separate entities with a set of personal needs and goals." (p. 64)

"Both socially prescribed perfectionists and limerent individuals tend to regard themselves as having little or no personal worth. Any sense of self-satisfaction is contingent on others, resulting in an external locus of control." (p. 58)

"Thus, the limerent individual also lacks the ability to produce intrinsic motivation and is driven by the approval and acceptance of others (Tennov, 1999). Thus, it can be suggested that both socially prescribed perfectionists and limerent individuals strive to protect their brittle self-concept by attempting to avoid negative social interactions that could result in criticism and embarrassment ..." (p. 59)

"Fearful of evaluation, such individuals are extremely unwilling to admit or own any possibility of weakness. To do so would shake the individual to the core, threatening their already brittle self-concept." (p. 64)

What she says isn't real. Banker doesn't present any sort of evidence in her paper. She just makes things up and draws loose analogies. The University of New Hampshire should be embarrassed for giving somebody a degree for this piece of garbage. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 16:50, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

2024 Study

Preliminary results of a 2024 study by Sandra Langeslag have been shared at an online symposium run by Adam Bode (another researcher).

Key results: limerence correlated with infatuation and attachment (measured by the IAS) and the cognitive reappraisal task worked.

Please note that while this study has not been through peer-review yet, Dr. Langeslag is a subject-matter expert (see e.g. WP:SPS), and in some sense this study is a trivial result only confirming what other (actual) subject-matter experts and reliable sources state (that limerence is romantic love). See WP:SCHOLARSHIP. It is not an isolated study (the result is in accordance with basically every real academic paper ever published on this), and Dr. Langeslag even meets criteria for self-published sources. There are peer-reviewed studies showing e.g. love regulation works, and peer-reviewed papers stating that limerence and infatuation denote the same psychological state. There are also reliable sources (such as McCracken's NY Times article) already recommending negative reappraisal for limerence. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 19:24, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

How Dorothy Tennov defines limerence

I've created an article with a compilation of quotes and sources, properly explaining how Dorothy Tennov defines the term. Something difficult about this is that many sources actually misinterpret her. Fortunately, however, the psychology textbook by Nicky Hayes is one of the sources which interprets Tennov's writings correctly.

How does Dorothy Tennov define limerence? ShiveryPeaks (talk) 02:14, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

Albert Wakin's shrinking estimates

In 2008, Albert Wakin reported to multiple outlets that he conducted a survey to estimate the prevalence of limerence.

Reported by Elm City Express, he can be seen estimating that 50% of his survey (100/200) experienced limerence.

Wakin and Vo are studying Tennov’s case studies and have screened several hundred subjects, finding about 100 with limerent tendencies.

Just one week later (not enough time to conduct a new survey), reported by USA Today, he can be seen estimating that 25% or 30% of his survey (50-60/200) experienced limerence.

Of about 200 who have agreed to participate in the study, the researchers suspect 50 or 60 have at one time experienced a limerent relationship.

It's only in 2011 that his survey has been abandoned altogether (never published ), and he is reporting 5%. He has admitted in a Zoom call with a researcher named Adam Bode that his 5% "estimate" did not come from a study.

25-30% is reported in the Wikipedia article because USA Today is a reliable source, it comes from his actual survey (purportedly), and the estimate is relatively in line with some others.

• Dorothy Tennov (Love and Limerence, pp. 209-210, 212) estimated 50% (women) and 35% (men).
• Tennov (p. 149) also reports rates of depression which are in line with other estimates: depressed (50%), severely depressed (42%), suicidal (17%), attempted suicide (11%).
• Tom Bellamy found 64% had experienced it, and 32% had it interfere with their lives.
• An Iranian study found the prevalence of "obsessive love" (which they defined as scoring very highly on a Passionate Love Scale) to be 17.9%.
• Frank Tallis (Love Sick, pp. 43, 215) reports survey results by Shere Hite which he says involved "clearly limerent" relationships, with answers 17-69% to different questions.
• Feeney & Noller found that the 15% of their study who were anxiously attached scored the most highly on limerence measures, but found "considerable overlap of distributions" between limerence and attachment styles, which can be used to intuit that limerence is more common than 15%.
• Bode & Kavanaugh found that 29.42% of currently in-love people could be classified as "intense" romantic lovers, exhibiting high obsessive thinking and passion.
• Bringle et al. found that 63% of a sample of high school and university students endorsed having "A huge crush on someone you know, but for one reason or another you have not let that person know of your feelings for him or her." in the past 2 years.
• Baumeister & Stillwell found that 92.8% of participants reported at least one "powerful or moderate" experience of unrequited love in the past 5 years.
• Finally, 37% of a Reddit poll on /r/crushes said they think about a crush "Almost all the time, even when I'm engaged in other activities."

ShiveryPeaks (talk) 13:32, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Note also that while the Elm City Express article states that:

"No one knows about limerence" ... Wakin said a predisposition for limerence is probably hard-wired into the brain, and has been with humans for millenniums, who have called it love sickness, love madness, puppy love and many other names.

In fact, "madly in love" brain scans had already been done several years prior, by Helen Fisher, Art Aron and Lucy Brown. See Limerence#Addiction and Biology of romantic love#Brain imaging. Fisher & Aron can also be seen commenting on Wakin & Vo in the USA Today article.

Joe Beam has also remarked on the brain scans in his writings. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 14:17, 13 September 2025 (UTC)

Controversy?

There does not appear to be any public or interpersonal controversy in the Controversy section. Did it use to have a different name? I am not sure what the function of it is. If it is just about obsession, there are sections on addiction and love addiction. Maybe it would be better off named "Mental health" or "Psychology"? Catboy69 (talk) 18:53, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

It's basically a discussion of the claims made by this Albert Wakin character. I'm not sure what the section should be called, to be honest.

It's supposed to be a section covering this issue of whether limerence is a mental disorder (which it isn't—strictly speaking), but it's difficult for us to write about with the sources available. There is no actual discourse in reality yet about limerence being put in the DSM (no actual proposal, for example). This one guy just went around claiming it should be considered a disorder based on his personal opinion (and a theory he essentially made up), but he is not an author that Wikipedia guidelines would respect. Wakin's idea spread into many internet articles because people did not fact-check him, but few (if any) of those sources would be considered reliable by Wikipedia.

The section used to be called "Continuing research", which isn't a good title because the disorder idea isn't based on research, nor is it a continuation of Tennov's idea. Albert Wakin isn't actually a researcher of anything, and nobody has published any scientific studies supporting him. People have written some papers saying stuff, but have not produced any studies. As far as I can tell, after reading a very large amount about this, Tennov's ideas about this are generally correct. Her idea is basically that limerence is normal, although it can be debilitating, and that limerence is in fact a way to be "in love", but that confusingly there are other ways to be "in love" (experiencing salience) which don't feel exactly like limerence.

(In my reading, I've been trying to figure out what the other ways actually are, and I have found that what Tennov says seems to be true. Some other ways are the eros love style which involves sex and intimacy, and also self-expansion or affectional bonding, although these modes of attraction are not mutually exclusive with falling into limerence if there is uncertainty. Limerence might be a common way to experience falling in love outside of a relationship, but it doesn't always turn into a love addiction.)

The "Controversy" section can't be called something like "Proposed mental disorder" because nobody actually proposed anything. Albert Wakin just talked to some people who wrote articles about him.

The subject of the section is basically whether limerence is normal or whether it's a mental disorder, but I've never really been sure what the title should be. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 19:59, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

The section should be titled something like "False statements by Albert Wakin", "Modern scandal" or "Fraud controversy", but nobody is willing to break the story about it yet. We only have Fisher and Bellamy's comments at this point. The "literature" talking about it as if it's a disorder is all just people making stuff up, even though their citations often say the opposite. (Also see Albert Wakin's shrinking estimates.)

I showed in this article that limerence might even be adaptive in a certain culture. (Tennov seemed to think so.) Tennov was doing her research at the end of the baby boom, when people were marrying absurdly young, and then there was a spike in divorce rates (possibly because of the spike in limerent relationships). I have even been thinking about writing a comment about that in the article, because Tennov comments specifically on this in her book so it might not be WP:OR to mention.

The 'controversy' is the insane people arguing that it's a mental disorder. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 02:40, 29 October 2025 (UTC)

Why there is research

I wrote an article on Medium, giving a much better introduction to a lot of what I've written about on this talk page over the last couple of years: "Why there is research on limerence". The main thing that there really isn't research on (in terms of an actual study) is the trajectory of long-term limerence absent a relationship, but there is actually a published theory of that.

The claims about there not being research are at best very pedantic.

The series of papers which came out just make a variety of false and misleading claims about this, although I don't think any of them are actually considered reliable sources here. None of them are written by credible people, so their claims about this would fall under WP:FRINGE. (Some of the newer papers are peer reviewed now, but that doesn't matter here, because we also consider who the author is and what journal they publish in. They are fringe unless real romantic love experts approve of what they say.)

Sandra Langeslag recently commented that limerence is passionate love, in an article by Amanda McCracken who has written about this before. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 03:00, 22 February 2026 (UTC)

Suggested addition to references — Miller (2025)

I would like to suggest adding the following reference to this article: Miller, Orly (2025). Limerence: The Psychopathology of Loving Too Much. Routledge. This is a clinical and cultural study of limerence published by Routledge in 2025, which may be relevant to the sections on limerence as a clinical condition and its psychopathological dimensions. I have a conflict of interest as I am associated with this work, so I am raising it here rather than editing directly. PsychReader22 (talk) 23:23, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

It's a terrible book. She did hardly any research and says a lot of ridiculous stuff. I did more research writing this Wikipedia article than she did writing her book. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 04:21, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

I just want to document a little bit here for other people watching this page.

I mean, I was just looking through her book again, and I think she cites at most around 10 papers on romantic love. She basically knows almost nothing about it. She also misuses basic terminology, like not understanding what "romantic love" means.

She has a recent Psychology Today blog that I want to pick out some issues with.

In her material, she repeatedly claims that limerence is somehow different from being in love, but then she's unable to actually explain how.

No one is suggesting that love, attraction, longing, or romantic infatuation are mental disorders. [...]

Limerence is not defined by butterflies, infatuation, or the excitement of falling in love. It is characterized by persistent intrusive thoughts, emotional volatility, significant distress, and disruption to important areas of functioning. (Miller)

But these are just usual features of unrequited love, e.g.:

Unrequited love, erotic frustration and the craving for the beloved object manifest themselves in what is commonly referred to as lovesickness (see Tennov, 1998). This often depressive and melancholic state of mind is characterized by intrusive thinking and also has an addictive component. (Leonti & Casu)

Frank Tallis compares it to bipolar disorder. (See Limerence#Lovesickness for page numbers.) Unrequited love is also so severe that suicide is a concern.

There are some ways that you could define a 'limerence disorder' without pathologizing being in love a usual way (focusing on extreme duration of 3+ years, or specifically unwanted thoughts), but these people never do this. They always just pathologize normal unrequited love while claiming they aren't, like Orly Miller does here.

This is also not how Tennov wanted the word to be used. It wasn't supposed to be a diagnosis; limerence is supposed to be normal.

Tallis of course argued that clinical psychologists should take this more seriously, but he doesn't also spew nonsense like Orly Miller. Tallis basically just argues that lovesickness should make a return to the clinical lexicon. (I don't think he explicitly argued that it should be added to the DSM, but that's the implication.) Tallis also actually gives a correct account of what limerence is, or how it's defined, in his book.

Miller has also repeatedly claimed that limerence is different from love (or incompatible with a relationship, also) supposedly because it involves uncertainty, but this kind of argument is nonsense. At best, it's based on misunderstandings. I also talked about this in my Medium article.

Intermittent reinforcement requires reward, so the LO person has to be rewarding. It doesn't have to be literally alternating reciprocation and rejection (which would be kind of like trauma bonding). The reward theory of attraction article lists a bunch of ways that 'attraction' constitutes reward; an LO can just be unusually attractive and seen around randomly (example story).

A number of romantic love authors have actually written that all infatuation works like this. This is spelled out in articles here (Uncertainty and hope/Ecstatic union). Orly Miller just didn't read any of this stuff, so she doesn't understand any of the actual theories about how falling in love works.

Limerence also does in fact turn into healthy relationships sometimes. Tennov says this. Tom Bellamy of course claims to have married his LO, and they are still married. I have also seen stories on Reddit of people reporting this. As far as I can tell, people like Orly Miller and Albert Wakin are just the ones who are confused about this.

There's a small crowd of people now, like Orly Miller, and I think what happens is they discover Albert Wakin's nonsense about this, and basically become psychotic and fixated on the idea that they are going to be a part of the new thing. They just can't understand why this stuff is actually wrong, and they go on repeating it forever.

I've documented here and some other places (as in the Medium article) how Albert Wakin seems to have just lied about his prevalence estimate, and just makes stuff up - like about how limerence never goes away even in a relationship, and so on. But Orly Miller is just repeating this same kind of nonsense.

Her book has a lot of information that could be useful, if she didn't also constantly spew nonsense and pseudoscience. However, like a lot of these people, her materials also doesn't really say anything novel that you can't find outside of literature on romantic love. The misinformation and nonsense is what is novel about her material.

I've cited Tom Bellamy in the Wikipedia article, and one of the reasons why is that his material rarely contains outright misinformation, aside from occasional semantic errors. What he says in his book about this is largely congruent with what mainstream (reliable) sources say. His account of how reward works is correct (it should be - he is a real neuroscientist), for example, unlike Orly Miller's really confused claims about uncertainty. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 07:05, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

We also basically can't talk about any of Orly Miller's "clinical" ideas here because of WP:MEDRS. As soon as something is considered medical, MEDRS requires a lot more rigor.

The section on love regulation here, for example, is kind of skirting this issue, because limerence is not a mental disorder or diagnosis, and love regulation is not a "treatment".

Orly Miller has a diagnostic construct, and talks about "treating" it, and so on, so her assertions fall under MEDRS.

Outside of that, I don't think she has said anything original which isn't already stated in the article. The article already has a number of people (Frank Tallis, Stanton Peele) saying that it's of a clinical concern, plus the section with a discussion of Albert Wakin. (Again, what's novel about Miller's material is the misinformation and outrageous claims she makes, like that it's different from being in love.)

If somebody became fixated on the idea that Orly Miller must be mentioned in this article here, I will just debunk her claims using juxtapositions like I did with Albert Wakin, and make her look foolish. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 07:56, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I was working on rewriting the lovesickness article and came across a few quotes the are relevant here (re-reading Love Sick, and perusing Google Scholar searches).

Clearly, a 'clinically significant' amount of distress and general impairment are an almost inevitable consequence of falling in love. (Love Sick, p. 53)

— Frank Tallis

...using the term lovesickness for emotions and behaviour arising from love related difficulties is proposed. This reduces stigma, because lovesickness is normal.

— Susanne Vosmer

Both Tallis and Vosmer are clinical psychologists who are more credentialed than Orly Miller (older, more experienced, and more education, with teaching appointments). I really just don't know what Orly Miller is smoking with the claims that she makes about this - thinking that proclaiming that limerence is not being in love (for some reason - she can't explain it), and putting it in the DSM will somehow destigmatize it. Clearly taken in by Albert Wakin's false claims about this (that it's e.g. rare), or something.

Tennov's book was meant to address the various psychologists in her day who were making claims about this. Her conclusion is that limerence is normal; I guess that she wanted to say something like what Tallis says there. I don't know if the language even existed in Tennov's era for her to say this, about "clinical significance".

It just seems that everyone in the real literature on this takes it for granted that being in love normally exceeds a threshold that would be considered "clinical", at least for a subset of the population which seems to be quite large. That's the entire issue about it.

This particular ring of people talking about limerence (like Wakin, Marshall, or now Miller) just try to corral their readers off by making it look like they are talking about something different, to hide alternate (actually mainstream) viewpoints or something. It's really very annoying and obnoxious. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 04:46, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

I don't think I've ever explained this here also, but there are several things being conflated under the label of limerence right now.

There's like a garden variety lovesickness (which according to people like Tallis and Tennov involves a level of clinically significant distress and impairment, but it's normal).

One study indicates that it might be common for this to only last a couple of months, so it seems to encompass some kinds of crushes .

Then there is the issue of people who have this go on for some years ; longer than around 2 or 3 years is unusual.

Then there is an issue of people who get into relationships and limerence doesn't quiet down (instead of an "ecstatic union"), probably because the relationship has an issue. I think this is probably uncommon actually, because studies which have estimated the prevalence of love addiction in relationships make that extremely rare.

Then finally there is an issue of edge cases like Brandy Wyant, although there is an explanation of that (explained in the Wikipedia article here). Tennov met some people like Wyant, and Diamond's paper refers to the cases Tennov mentions. (Whether Diamond understood what they were really about actually doesn't really matter here, because her theory does explain it. And Diamond does talk about some "unrequited platonic infatuation" cases among schoolgirls, only Wyant's limerence was for an older person. However, for example, John Money has given the definition of a crush as "an intense infatuation usually in early adolescence and often focused on an older person".)

In any case, these authors like Wakin, Marshall, or Miller conflate these kinds of things in a way which is incoherent, referring to anecdotes and edge-cases to claim limerence is somehow different from a normal infatuation. But then any time they offer a definition or description of the phenomenon, the garden variety normal lovesickness is what is being specified, or it's included. It's all a type of fallacy called motte-and-bailey or equivocation.

If you do a large amount of reading, then you will understand how all of these things are actually related, but clearly none of these people have actually done that. Or they are crazy. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 06:38, 2 September 2026 (UTC)