Love and Limerence Quotes

“Love is a human religion in which another person is believed in. —Robert Seidenberg”
― Dorothy Tennov, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

“the amorous relation is “a system of infinite reflections, a deceiving mirror game which carries within itself its own frustration,”
― Dorothy Tennov, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

“The eyes, as we shall see again and again, are so important in limerence that they, not the genitals or even the heart, may be called the organs of love.”
― Dorothy Tennov, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

“Despite ideals and philosophy, you find yourself a player in a process that bears unquestionable similarity to a game. The prize is not trifling; reciprocation produces ecstasy. Whether it will be won, whether it will be shared, and what the final outcome may be, depend on the effectiveness of your moves and those of your LO; indeed on skill.”
― Dorothy Tennov, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

“But I don’t direct this thing, this attraction, to Emily. It directs me. I try desperately to argue with it, to limit its influence, to channel it (into sex, for example), to deny it, to enjoy it and, yes, dammit, to make her respond! Even though I know that Emily and I have absolutely no chance of making a life together, the thought of her is an obsession. I am in the position of passionately wanting someone I don’t want at all and could find no use for if I had her.”
― Dorothy Tennov, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

“The relationship between limerence and sex remains extremely complicated. Despite virtually unanimous agreement among interviewees that sex with LO under the best circumstances provides the “greatest pleasure” knowable in human existence, it appears that the very nature of limerence and the very nature of sex conspire to undermine the happiness except under the luckiest and most extraordinary of circumstances.”
― Dorothy Tennov, Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

“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