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Hi there, this is Jillian on Love, and I am on a mission to teach people how to transform their romantic relationships by first transforming the relationship they have with themselves. So whether you are in a relationship, you're single, or you're heartbroken, I've got you covered. I'm Jillian Trecky, Certified Relationship Coach and teacher with over 20 years experience helping people transform their relationship with themselves through their bodies, breaths, and minds.
I have now coached and taught thousands of people to become better versions of themselves and change the way they show up for and within their love lives. In today's episode, I am finally... addressing a topic that has been requested of me for years now to address either here or on Instagram. And it is this concept of limerence. The definition of limerence in psychology today is, quote, a state of involuntary obsession with another person, end quote.
of limerence is just sort of a fancy psychology word to describe the intoxicating, crazy making, mania producing stage of getting to know someone. which is infatuation, which could be seen as or is often seen as and what feels like the beginning of falling in love. I want to normalize limerence because the way that it's been used a lot or the way that people refer to it on social media or whenever there's a term that is.
used in the psychology world that is used to describe something. It always has such a heavy connotation. And yet limerence is actually just a stage. of getting to know someone who we really like it's the stage it's a stage of falling for someone and it has been around for centuries across all cultures But it's not really seen as a pleasant experience because it's not in many ways, because it will feel like we get hijacked by these.
this obsession over another person. And the Greeks saw it as mental illness in fact. And I think that's part of what people refer to it as though it's a mental illness. And it can feel that way, but it's not. Most importantly, limerence is, or most specifically, I should say, is that limerence is all based in feeling. It's like having a crush. And a crush is called a crush because it crushes our ability to see clearly, to see the other person clearly. And it can crush our sanity.
When our feelings cloud our ability to see someone clearly, then we put them on a pedestal. And in our minds, when they're in the pedestal, we see them as someone better than us. Someone who's incredibly scarce and someone deep down on a subconscious level we don't feel worthy of.
It can also describe the person who refers to himself as falling in love easily or falling in love too easily, only to find themselves hurt. I've had many people call in to say, you know, I don't know what to do. I just fall in love so easily. You're not falling in love easily. You're experiencing limerence intensely and maybe inappropriately and too often. You see, we all have a blueprint or a template.
of what a relationship should feel like or look like. And it is strongly influenced by our family of origin, but is also strongly influenced by culture and society. And it influences... What our ideal is when we think of ideal man, ideal woman, ideal person, ideal partner, ideal spouse. And we get seduced by. the ideal. And then you throw in romanticism and the role of romanticism. And romanticism I touched upon in last week's episode.
The romanticism tells us that love should be incredibly dramatic, that there should be a chase, that love is only this intense feeling. of euphoria. Euphoria and then a rollercoaster of emotions where you feel euphoria when you are with the person and then when you don't have the person. You're in a state of complete crisis emotionally. And this is what romanticism, which is very rooted in modern society, in rom-coms, in all sorts of literature.
And film and television, you know, hence why we as a culture, and this is not just American culture, many cultures, we are seduced by the romantic comedy because it shows... the whole struggle of trying to get someone and then finally them choosing each other and the euphoria that comes with that. And there's no examples of what happens afterwards. Or I wouldn't say that we're seduced, but we're very interested, almost like watching a car wreck in the movies that depict...
a long term relationship that is dysfunctional. So if you observe carefully, you will notice that movies around relationships are either glorifying romanticism or showing us just a brutal reality of highly dysfunctional relationships. AG1 is a foundational nutrition supplement that delivers daily nutrients and gut health support and is backed by multiple research studies so you can trust what you're putting in your body. And I am a busy person.
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There is the myth of the one, which is, and I've done an episode on this, which is, you know, this idea that there's just this one person for us, like the one, the soulmate. This one person who's going to come into our life and complete us. And this myth of the one is really a subconscious desire to be rescued by someone or for our worthiness to be validated.
and rescued from our voids, rescued from our problems, rescued from ourselves. Honestly, the one is going to come into our lives and protect us. from our own insanity in a way, from our own depression, our own anxiety, the ways that we get in our own way, all of the above. The myth of the one, romanticism. is a need to escape ourselves through love. And we all have a subconscious desire to escape ourselves because love also does in many ways save the day.
Let me backtrack. Love has many different manifestations. And let's shelve romantic love for a moment. The love from a friend can save the day. The love from a pet can save our day. The love from a child can save the day. Our love, our loving feelings towards these people can save the day. The power of love is immense. But we have this construct of this template, this blueprint of who this ideal person is. And then you mix in romanticism.
And then we get a very skewed perspective of what love is. And then we start to think that infatuation is love when really it's not. It's a state of feeling. As though we can escape ourselves through this feeling. Or that this ideal person will come and rescue us, like I said. It's all imagination and fantasy. And even though limerence is something that everyone will experience, oftentimes in more than one occasion, and I want to, you know, I put this in big air quotes, normalize it.
It often, like I said, gets confused with love. And this is where we get ourselves into big trouble. We think, because I feel this way. then it must be true. Then this must really be love. Then this must really be the person for me. Or this person must be perfect. And the irony of the crush is that... The person who we have a crush on is usually tragically wrong for us. It crushes our vision. We don't see the person. They are a metaphor for...
are ideal. And they're also a metaphor for hope. They're a metaphor for the escape that we long to have from ourselves. from the monotony of life. So limerence is having unrealistic expectations of someone who you're not looking at clearly. Limerence also happens with incredible sex. So a lot of people think that they're in love with someone when really what's happening is that they might be having the best sex of their life.
And so they become infatuated with that person and think this must be love. And it's not true. This is why there will be people who will... stay in relationships with abusers. This is also a reason why some people will fall in love with prostitutes or fall in love with just very much the wrong people. This is what can happen with sex. And, you know, it's chemistry, right? It's feeling so immensely attracted to someone and having this immense sexual connection with them.
that we lose our marbles. This happens a lot to people. And I in no way, by the way, undermine the importance of traction. Certainly I would not be with anyone who I was not attracted to. And... In many ways, physical attraction is very much a mystery. I mean, people mistakenly think that they are going to get the person with the perfect body.
and the perfect bank account. And look, these things can obviously help. But it's so much more mysterious than that. It's so much more mysterious than someone's abs or their bank account. And it really has to do with again, a projection of the ideal. It's also the way the person could be familiar to us from childhood. Again, I went through this in last week's episode.
You know, the mystery of attraction is really a conglomerate of influences that include our childhood, includes film, literature, pheromones, hormones, neurotransmitters.
And I personally don't know many people who haven't at least once completely lost their minds. And what I mean by completely lost their minds... went into a strong state of limerence because i will explain in a moment but there is a spectrum they really got hijacked by limerence over someone who they barely knew or someone who was completely wrong for them because they were intoxicated by the rush of physiological chemicals.
And then they can become obsessed to the point where they put them on a pedestal. That person becomes the center of their universe. And then they start to tolerate crumbs of attention and consistency, or like I said, even abuse. This is just the role that I'm just... outlining the role that sexual chemistry can play in a state of limerence. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.
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In the very beginning, it can kind of be fun and exciting, but it becomes destabilizing very quickly and can lead us into a chaotic roller coaster of emotions. with anxiety and despair being the centerpieces of those emotions. And then what we're feeling is just a deep desire for someone. And if you've ever been the object of someone's limerence... it's very important to be able to distinguish between being desired versus being valued.
Because when we're in a state of limerence, we're not valuing anyone. It's actually all about us. If someone is in a state of limerence over you, it's really not so much about you. Because it's really more about them. So as normal as it is, if one has a pattern of always falling really intensely into deep limerence for people... who are just not good for them or they barely know, it's definitely a clue that something needs to be addressed and healed, which I will get to in a moment.
And we also have to learn how to experience strong, healthy chemistry with people who are good for us. So how do we get over this emotional state of limerence so that it doesn't actually screw us over? so that we can get more rooted in reality well limerence does have a spectrum you know we all i think when we start seeing someone who we're really excited about The infatuation stage, limerence stage, is part of the process. But what we want is for it not to be so intense.
And we don't want it to be so overpowering and so habitual that we are experiencing this over and over again without ever getting past that stage. to the more realistic stage of love and falling in love and getting to know someone. and into a state of deeper emotional intimacy. Where it becomes deeply problematic is when people are always getting to these states and they never tend to get it to the other side.
Or they're having that state of limerence for someone who barely knows that they exist or who actually don't really care to know that they exist or care to be with them, where it's not reciprocal. And so when it's a mild case, you know, when it's like sort of like, oh, I have a little crush and I'm kind of like thinking about this person. They're in my head a lot and I'm kind of in la la land and I'm allowing my daydreaming to become.
very prominent. What I want to say, if that's something that you've experienced, you can control it. Most don't want to control that mild state of limerence and daydreaming. Because to indulge in it gives one a sense of aliveness.
And it might be a feeling of aliveness that they have not felt in a long time because one of the things that leads to limerence is boredom. So there's two main things that actually lead to... constant states of limerence where it feels like it's actually getting out of control where it's not so mild and it's really out of control and doesn't really make it to the next level there's two things so one is feeling very bored
with our lives, which usually comes from a loss of purpose or a lack of purpose. So feeling like your life doesn't have a whole lot of direction. There aren't things in your life that are distracting you, that are pulling your attention to it. And so you're feeling bored or you're feeling maybe unfulfilled. And remember I said earlier that limerence in many ways is an attempt to escape ourselves through these feelings.
And so when we're feeling a loss of purpose or a lack of purpose and boredom, you know, we're not really feeling connected to ourselves or connected to life in any real meaningful way, meaning we don't. Like we're wanting our lives to feel more meaningful and or we have a habit of getting bored easily because.
We have an addiction to drama. We really value that. Again, last week's episode, I go deep into the addiction of drama, so you can definitely tie it into this episode, especially this part. That's a main reason why people fall into these. perpetual daydreams is because it is how we escape our boredom and loss of purpose. And it gives us that manic sense of aliveness. And so we're kind of indulging the daydream.
The second thing, when limerence is more intense, more frequent, feels much more like out of our control, is that there's some sort of trauma. It's a transference of feelings. Oftentimes when I've worked with people who are really under the spell of limerence in a way that it's becoming out of control is there is an experience, a trauma, a difficult thing. that they have not processed. And this is their subconscious attempt to distract themselves from addressing a deeper wound.
So that's what I mean by a transference of feeling. And so if you are someone who has experienced this a lot to the point where it's feeling... deeply overwhelming, then one thing that you can consider is, are you feeling like there's a loss of purpose? Are you feeling disconnected from your life? And or. Is there a trauma, a difficult thing that's been happening in your life that you haven't dealt with, where you are transferring your feelings onto this other person?
Instead of feeling the deeper pain of something that you haven't felt. And then, like I said, if it's just like, oh, you know. I'm a romantic. I'm also a little bored. Maybe I haven't liked someone in a long time. And, you know, if you were to... really bring some self-awareness to this, and you could admit, you know what, I'm kind of indulging this, I'm kind of enjoying the drama of this, then it would behoove you to...
Take some control of your energy and ground yourself. Because, again, the danger of this is that we can so easily just not see the person who's in front of us. And then we get ourselves into, we stop being discerning. And we start thinking that this person is like perfect in some way. And then we get ourselves very entangled and attached. And then that can be very difficult to disentangle and to detach.
Once we discover who this person really is, and then we might discover they're just not right for us, which is often the case. You know, there's a saying like, don't get married during your honeymoon phase. Don't move in together. Like, don't make big decisions where you're in the honeymoon phase stage of a relationship because there's usually a lot of limerence there.
And that is not when you want to make huge declarations to yourself or to others, to the other person. I mean, that's certainly what... teenagers will do and young people will do in the early 20s but we as adults we don't want to do that because we only end up breaking our own hearts and maybe breaking the other person's heart and then we get into these things that are just sort of dramatic
And this is why it's very important that when we do feel enthusiastic about someone, of course, you know, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade. You want to feel like excited and fun, but you also want to...
process that like you can it's also just saying yeah i'm feeling these feelings like this feels really exciting like i haven't felt this in a long time and it feels really good and you can process those by saying, you know, I'm going to take it slow and I'm going to really get to know this person. This episode is brought to you by Honeylove. I love Honeylove. It's just so incredibly comfortable.
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limerence is actually a stage that's inherent in all of falling in love so it's not something that needs to be healed unless it's something that happens often very much to your detriment so the healing is Not necessarily the limerence. The healing is what's leading to the limerence. But one of the things that we have to do is challenge and explore. our understanding of love. Because limerence is not love, it's obsession. And so...
What are some of our beliefs? You can say, like, what are some of my beliefs about love? Do I believe in the soulmate? Have I sold into the lie that there's just this one person who's going to come into my life and all my problems are going to disappear? Because, look, I'm a romantic at heart, but I have to remind myself to stay very grounded. So you want to explore your beliefs. You want to explore if there's in what ways you're trying to escape yourself.
How is being in this state distracting you from having a deeper purpose in life? And like I said, where else are you experiencing love? So aside from romantic love, sexual love, all of that, where else are you experiencing love? What is the quality of your relationships, your family relationships and your friendships? maybe even your work relationships at the moment. Because like anything else, this is just truly about addressing the relationship, as always, with ourselves.
and trying to understand ourselves better so that ultimately we can feel better and we can feel more grounded in ourselves. So just to recap. When you're trying to get more of a sense of this and trying to understand it, what are you trying to escape? Are you feeling a loss or a lack of purpose? And, you know, I will do another episode on how to feel more connected to self and purpose. But at first it's really just about identifying what's really at the core of this.
because we think it's the other person. And really, like I said, in a mild form of limerence, It's lovely in many ways, but when it becomes the kind of thing that people refer to in the psychology world as sort of like a pathology or an issue where you feel like you're going crazy. then it's really about exploring like what's missing. And then perhaps maybe there is something deeper going on, maybe a trauma that has happened that...
you have suppressed and repressed, so you don't have to deal with it. And maybe it's something that happened recently. Maybe it's something from childhood that... The habitual states of limerence is giving you, again, a distraction, a transference of feelings. And so there might be a very interesting... and big self-exploration that might have to happen as a result of this. But at the end of the day, what I want to emphasize is that it is illusory. It's not real.
When we idealize another person and have a habit of doing that, it does lead to pretty profound struggles. in romantic relationships, because what happens is if you were even to get the person who you're experiencing this with, they will disappoint you. and I've seen this happen before, then you start to get resentful because that person is not who you projected them to be.
And then you no longer feel that obsession. And then you think, I must not love them. And so that's just an example of where these cycles can get very tricky. And that's why I feel so dedicated to bringing a reality to this about what it really is to love and to... really just see these states such as limerence and the honeymoon phase as part of the process but isn't really.
what a long-term relationship committed relationship is all about and to stay grounded in that so anyway i hope this helps like i said this is something that People have been asking me to do an episode on for a very long time, and I've had people message me for years, like, can you talk about limerence? And just... a little too difficult for me to address on social media. And I really wanted to go deeper into this. So I hope that this helps. I definitely want to hear from you.
So let me know how this episode landed for you. Let me know how last any episode has landed for you. Me and my team, we read them all at hello at JillianOnLove.com. And if you have any requests, please know that this podcast is for you. So I really base these episodes on the requests that I get. And... I thank you for being here. And you know, what I will say is if you know anyone who think that this could help, please do not hesitate to share. It helps the podcast, but much more importantly,
One thing that I know to be true is that you just never know whose life you could be changing for the better. Until next time, thanks for listening. Jillian on Love is a Q-Code production. Executive produced by David Henning and Steve Wilson. Produced by Shin Yin Hu. Editing and music by Will Tendi.