Limerence Quotes

“Have you considered extreme, desperate measures like talking to her again?"

"Yeah, but, well..."

"You've yeah-but your way to this point," said Jean. "You're going to yeah-but this mess until it's time to go home, and I don't doubt you'll yeah-but her out of your life. Quit circling at a distance. Go talk to her, for Preva's sake.”
― Scott Lynch, The Republic of Thieves

“Limerence is an obsessive, unrequited love. It is actually a disorder. A disease if you will.”
― Elizabeth Cohen, The Hypothetical Girl: Stories

“I had no technique for dealing with him: only an overpowering, unnerving, irrational, chemical desire to be with him.”
― Elaine Dundy, The Dud Avocado

“In a dazzling vote of confidence for form over substance, our culture fawns over the fleetingness of being “in love” while discounting the importance of loving.”
― Thomas Lewis, A General Theory of Love

“She could have rambled with all the fervor of a woman who had loved one entity for longer than most races live, and with the inviolable, unquestioned certainty found in dementia. There were references dated and sealed with meticulous care which she would have enthusiastically opened with the mirth of one proclaiming a lifetime of honors and awards. But that singular event was freshly disturbed; its pores still drifted on the faint zephyr of remembrance.”
― Darrell Drake, Everautumn

“It was possible she might not have the right feeling after all, that she wasn't in love, wasn't in limerence, but was in some unnamed place alone.”
― Catherine Lacey, The Answers

“I feel like an addict. Like if you leave, I'll go into withdrawal.”
― Lindsay Ellis, Axiom's End

“I had mixed feelings about it: a queasy combination of flattery and discomfort, but sometimes mixed feelings are the hardest to resist indulging in. They can make us feel alive again.”
― Gilly Macmillan, To Tell You the Truth

“I don't know how the average person survives the period of limerence, that chemical insanity of early love, in the age of text messaging. How we avoid crashing our cars, walking into walls or out of open windows.”
― Nina Renata Aron, Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls: A Memoir of Women, Addiction, and Love

“The last thing that I want you to do is to think that you need to become someone more 'conventional', emotionally-flat and unreactive, because this is a). impossible (suppression never equals healing) and b). entirely unnecessary. Serial limerents are normally quick-witted, verbally-expressive, perceptive, emotionally-astute, analytical lovers of life; I am yet to help someone suffering from limerence who has not had a beautiful command of their first language, someone unusual hobbies and a great degree of interest in affairs of the humand mind. This curious essence does not need to be tampered with in any way, and this is why I treat limerence the way that I do; the wonderful thing about considering the pathology from a psychological-touching-on-spiritual perspective is that it allows you to spot-treat your psyche, only altering elements that do not serve you.”
― Lucy Bain, The Limerent Mind: How to Permanently Beat Limerence and Shine

“What had people done for me that had truly made me fell loved? she had asked me at the next session. I thought about the time K, with a beatific, postcoital smile, wrote I LOVE U in my menstrual blood on his bedroom wall, just above his bed, dipping his middle finger lingeringly into me like a quill into an inkpot as I watched and laughed and my eyes went wide as teacups. Was that gesture a doing or merely a saying? Was it an action verb? Was it empty or was it a promise? Watching him do it gave me the feeling I'd always understood to be love--something low, rumbling, a little bit evil, a little revolting. Some sick and special secret wizardry that fouls you up with its unexpectedness, its brazenness.”
― Nina Renata Aron, Good Morning, Destroyer of Men's Souls: A Memoir of Women, Addiction, and Love

“Den mand der vendte tilbage den aften, er ikke længere den samme som ham jeg gik rundt med indeni gennem det år hvor han var her, og derefter mens jeg skrev. Den mand kommer jeg aldrig til at se igen.

Ikke desto mindre er det denne uvirkelige, næsten ikke eksisterende tilbagevenden der giver min lidenskab den sande mening. Som er at være uden mening - og i to år at have været den mest voldsomme og mest uforklarlige virkelighed.”
― Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

“Emory Scott hated me, but she hated nearly everyone. So, she was making me work for it. So
what? I’d be disappointed if she didn’t. She didn’t respect Michael, Kai, or Damon, either. It
shouldn’t hurt.
But it did.
I always liked her. I always looked for her.
And over the years, passing her in the halls and feeling her in the classroom next to me, she got
hot as fuck in ways no one else seemed to notice but me.
God, she had a mouth on her. I loved her attitude and her anger, because I was always too warm
and I needed the ice.
It made me smile.”
― Penelope Doulgas

“Those without personal knowledge of limerence explained the strange actions of limerents as the results of romantic, imaginative, fantasy. They called it storybook-like, unreal, romantic, the product of artistic imagination, poetic hyperbole, or vagueness. Sometimes the writing better fit the non-limerent perspective, sometimes they described limerence. It is not hard to see why a taboo has surrounded the study and analysis of love. No one feels entirely comfortable with the subject, both limerents and non-limerents among my interviewees suspected there was something going on they didn’t know about, something they took as a personal failing. The limerent interpreted non-limerent external behaviour as self-composure. Self-confidence, individuality, independence, and mind over irrational desire. The non-limerent was not viewed as a person who does not desire, but as one whose moral fiber does not allow passion to rule over reason. When non-limerents told limerents to stop being silly and forget a love interest who is not worth it, and not interested – the limerents tried to obey. They couldn’t; but couldn’t believe that they couldn’t.”
― Dorothy Tennov, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

“One non-limerent, on learning of limerence theory, felt that the pain of limerence may be great but that it should not be forgotten that non-limerents hurt, too. He expressed his feelings in a poem about his sadness over having to end a relationship that was dear to him because his lover had begun to demand the impossible in her limerence. ‘We hurt too you know, its not easy to give up a good friend. To see someone change before your very eyes from someone you feel knows and loves you, to someone who is suddenly demanding the impossible. As if you were not you at all.’ This poem tells how strongly I felt the sadness of having to part. I was allowed to keep a copy of the poem to show others. I did. I explained the circumstances of its being written before reading it to a few interviewees. A limerent who was suffering from the pain of non-mutuality gave the following reaction, ‘Okay, I understand what the poem is saying, and I can see that the writer really didn’t like the relationship to break up and all. But frankly, almost from the first line my feelings were for the person addressed in the poem. The person being told to leave by a lover when the crime has only been that of loving.”
― Dorothy Tennov, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

“You're a wave and a particle simultaneously everywhere and nowhere in my thoughts, collapsing into form only when I try to measure your feelings”
― Asha Walker, Limerence