I didn’t know the word limerence for most of my life.
But I knew the feeling.

Limerence is an intense emotional state marked by longing, idealization, and a deep desire for reciprocation—often from someone emotionally unavailable or inconsistent. It thrives on uncertainty. It feeds on hope. It confuses chemistry with connection and attachment with intimacy. And it can feel intoxicating… until it doesn’t.

When I finally encountered the word, it felt like someone had turned on a light in a room I’d been living in for decades.

Limerence explained why I could feel so alive around certain people—and so hollow when they pulled away. Why a text could lift my mood and silence could undo me. Why I sometimes confused being chosen intermittently with being deeply loved. It wasn’t that I loved too much. It was that I loved from a place of hunger.

Limerence, I’ve learned, is not about romance as much as it is about attachment. About unresolved longing. About the parts of us still waiting to be seen, affirmed, and chosen without conditions.

For much of my life, I navigated relationships led by hope instead of safety. I was drawn to emotional mystery. To warmth followed by distance. To people who felt familiar in their inconsistency. Limerence flourished there—because my nervous system mistook unpredictability for passion and effort for intimacy.

I wasn’t weak.
I was wired for connection.
And I didn’t yet know how to rest in it.

Limerence made me vigilant—always reading between the lines, always wondering where I stood. It invited me to abandon my own needs in exchange for proximity. To minimize myself to remain close. To linger longer than was healthy because maybe this time would be different.

But limerence is exhausting. It keeps you suspended in possibility instead of grounded in reality. It asks you to live on emotional breadcrumbs while calling it hope.

What I know now is this: limerence is often born where secure love was absent or inconsistent, where affection had to be earned, or where safety was conditional. It isn’t a character flaw—it’s a survival strategy. One that once made sense. One that helped me endure. One that no longer gets to lead.

Healing, for me, has meant learning to recognize the difference between intensity and intimacy. Between longing and love. Between fantasy and faithfulness.

Love—real love—does not keep me guessing.
It does not require me to perform.
It does not punish me with silence or reward me with scraps.

Love is steady.
Love is mutual.
Love makes room for my nervous system to exhale.

I still feel deeply. I still attach. I still hope.
But I am learning to let peace be the measure—not chemistry alone.

Limerence may explain how I’ve navigated parts of my life—but it does not define how I will love moving forward. That path is marked by presence, reciprocity, and the quiet assurance that I no longer need to chase what is meant to stay.