shiverypeaks

This is a general overview of how limerence and anxious attachment are sometimes conflated (starting from Tennov’s material, but continued throughout various academic literature). On the outset, I should say that anxious attachment clearly seems to make limerence worse for people, and it's possible that anxious attachment increases how often people experience it.  There are also a number of studies showing a correlation between anxious attachment and different obsession measures ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ). They're just different things. However, there are some people (academics, even) who actually seem to think that limerence and anxious attachment   are the same thing and don't understand that there's actually a whole other thing which Tennov is trying to describe. One paper even outright says this, and several others refer to that paper or allude to the theory by referring to a concept called desperate love (which is related to anxious attachment). Brief overview of Tennov’s...

Explanation of why romantic love outside of a relationship feels worse than inside. Excerpt from Adam Bode : [T]hroughout a period in which an individual is experiencing romantic love, the attraction, attachment, and obsessive thinking systems are active. All three systems appear to have been co-opted in romantic love. Dopamine-oxytocin interactions serve to instigate and promote attraction, attachment, and pair bonding (i.e., pair bond formation). In circumstances of reciprocated romantic love and well-functioning relationships (i.e., when regular interaction, proximity, physical touch, and verbal exchange are common), mechanisms of romantic love ramp up activity of the attachment system. In circumstances where such stimuli are not present (i.e., in some cases of unrequited love), this process is still occurring (possibly facilitated by obsessive thoughts), but does not progress to the formation of attachment, full activation of the attachment system, and transition to pai...

 In many places, Dorothy Tennov considers "romantic love" to be a synonym for limerence. Limerence has been called “romantic love” as opposed to “real love” because to a vocal and often very articulate segment of the population it is unreal. But even when limerence is not believed in, or believed in only secretly, it still makes a good tale. ( Love and Limerence , p. 161) Writers have been philosophizing, moralizing, and eulogizing on the subject of “erotic,” “passionate,” “romantic” love ( i.e. , limerence) since Plato (and surely long before that). ( Love and Limerence , p. 172) Also, for example, from the title of her collected works: "A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence" . So in what sense does she mean "romantic love"? (And what does "romantic love" have to do with being "unreal"?) Below is an abridged version (edited down) of a chapter in Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness by Frank Tallis, who explains this...