How does Dorothy Tennov define limerence?

People often misread her. Some common misconceptions are that Dorothy Tennov doesn't clearly define limerence in her material, or that she defines it as a simple synonym for being in love (including crushes, and so on). A careful examination of her material shows that she does clearly define it.

The reason for the confusion has to do with the way that Tennov defines limerence through descriptions and comparisons, rather than semantics. She does this because she doesn't want to compare limerence directly to other terms, which she thinks could lead people to misunderstand her.

By my definition, limerence is distinct. It is involuntary and its course depends largely on external circumstances (social barriers to a relationship and the behavior of LO). Limerent attraction is always for a potential sexual partner although its primary goal is reciprocation, not the sexual act, which is often more symbolic of mutuality than an end in itself.

Please freely request additional information. A letter writer predicted in 1980 that the word would find its way into the [Oxford English Dictionary] in ten years. If it is included, I would hope that the definition is clear, that it is not seen merely as a synonym for infatuation or for being in love. That may be the way it is used by those who don’t understand, but it is not the technical definition. People who have never undergone the experience find it difficult to conceive of it. ("Response to Oxford English Dictionary", in A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence, p. 28)

(As a side note, platonic limerence is covered as an addendum at the bottom of this article, so just ignore the fact that she defines limerence as always being for a potential sexual partner. It's arguably just a mistake in her theory.)

As Tennov states in her original work, people use terms like "being in love" and "romantic love" to refer to other things.

Limerence's most reliable attribute, the characteristic that more than any other differentiates it from other states of attraction and affection that are also described by the phrase "being in love," is the intrusiveness of the preoccupation with LO. (Love and Limerence, p. 42)

Indeed, many writers define passionate or romantic love as "love between members of the opposite sex," or they use the terms "romantic love," "sexual love," and "erotic love" interchangeably. But the relationship is by no means a clear one. (Love and Limerence, p. 72)

Tennov does state that "To be in the state of limerence is to feel what is usually termed 'being in love.'" (p. 16), but she does not consider these terms to have the same definition. Rather, she states that some people use terms like "being in love" to refer to limerence.

While reading the scientific literature, Tennov thought it problematic that academics also did not properly distinguish between limerence and nonlimerence in their studies (e.g. p. 181), even calling the reactions to romantic love in the scientific literature "confused and contradictory" (p. 168).

There is one specific definition of the term "romantic love" which might be a close synonym for the way Tennov defines limerence, but this term has a complicated and beleaguered history. There are at least five major definitions of "romantic love" that I can think of, in frequent use in different contexts (academic or colloquial). Tennov has considered limerence synonymous with "romantic love" in many instances (examples at word histories), but does not explicitly specify which definition she means. It can, however, often be understood from context that she means "romantic love" with a connotation of being "tragic love". Other authors (for example, Nicky Hayes and Frank Tallis) have understood this.

Nicky Hayes:

One of the problems which emerges quite quickly whenever we begin to talk about love is that we often mean a great many different things by the same word. The type of love which is shared by two people in a long-lasting, stable marriage is very different from the type of love in which two people have just met and are totally infatuated with each other. And that again is different from the love that a young couple who have been together for maybe three or four years may share. Tennov (1979) used the term limerence to refer to a kind of infatuated, all-absorbing passion — the kind of love that Dante felt for Beatrice, or that Juliet and Romeo felt for each other.

Tennov argued that an important feature of limerence is that it should be unrequited, or at least unfulfilled. It consists of a state of intense longing for the other person, in which the individual becomes more or less obsessed by that person and spends much of their time fantasising about them. The state of limerence also often involves the use of tokens, like photographs or small gifts, as a focus for the person's thoughts about the other. Tennov suggests that limerence can only really last if external conditions are such that it remains unfulfilled: it is not uncommon for people to maintain a state of limerence about someone who is unreachable for some years; but if the desired person should actually come within reach, so that the desired relationship begins, then the limerence becomes extinguished and the attraction sometimes disappears very quickly.

In a sense, according to Tennov, limerence can only survive with occasional or intermittent reinforcement. It is the unobtainable nature of the goal which makes the feeling so powerful. (Foundations of Psychology 3rd Ed., p. 457)

This is by far the most accurate description of limerence from a secondary author I have ever encountered, and from a psychology textbook no less. In this article, we will look at quotes from Tennov's material which demonstrate that this is the correct definition.

Romeo and Juliet of course both die, and Dante's story is another depiction of "romantic love" with tragic elements. Dante spent most of his life in unrequited love with Beatrice, whom he fell in love with when they met as children (and hardly knew). Beatrice later married somebody else and then died at 24, but Dante spent most of his life as a devotee to her. In one story recalled by Dante, Beatrice refused to speak to him when they passed by on the street, an event which left him so overcome with sorrow that he cried himself to sleep. In another story, Dante recalls a fictionalized account of having lurid hallucinations after pondering the thought of Beatrice dying.

Sometimes "romantic love" stories involve reciprocated love, but they tend to still involve tragic elements. A contemporary example of this would be Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala from Star Wars, who can be understood as having mutual limerence for each other. (George Lucas would likely not have been aware of the concept of "limerence", but would have been aware of the narrative tradition depicting what he refers to as "forbidden love", i.e. Romeo and Juliet, and so on.)

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). ... Limerent persons, sufferers of an unallowable condition, find themselves speechless save for the ambiguity of "poetic" expression. (Love and Limerence, p. 172)

Limerence has been called "romantic love" as opposed to "real love" because to a vocal and often very articulate segment of the population is 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)

When I described to Ben the details of the limerent state, he was wide-eyed. No, he had never felt that way. But he recognized the validity of the description through the behavior of others. Limerence still made no sense to him, but now, at least, it had a name and it happened to a lot of people. They weren't making it up in all those songs and all those movies. (Love and Limerence, p. 118)

Note that Nicky Hayes also understands that there's a distinction between limerence and the infatuation (or honeymoon) period of a relationship. Hayes also understands that the concept is not necessarily unrequited love, but rather unconsummated or unfulfilled love.

In modern academic psychology and biology, it's most common for "romantic love" to refer to a mental state of being attached or infatuated, but it's clear from context that Dorothy Tennov often refers to the literary idea as a comparison. (Again, this sense of "romantic love" is like tragic, unfulfilled love. This is obviously a real phenomenon, but the cultural conversation about it really got started with fictional stories.) When the literary idea is extended into real life courtship practices, the idea of "romantic love" basically refers to people seeking relationships for the sake of falling in love and a passionate experience over genuine companionship. Many of the cultural critics whom Tennov refers to in Chapter 5 would be using "romantic love" in a sense like this. This sense of "romantic love" was more common among academics in the early and mid-20th century than it is today.

Dorothy Tennov's motivation for studying limerence

One initial indicator of what Dorothy Tennov meant to study is her very clear explanations of why she wanted to study this.

In an interview after her talk, she said that she became professionally interested in romantic love about 10 years ago when two young men, visiting her office, started to complain of the perils of romantic love. One had lost a semester's work at the university and the other had taken to drink.

She recalled her own experience with love and decided that a force that can cause bliss, alcoholism and murder was worthy of scientific research. ("Love and Limerence", The New York Times, 1977)

From [the] day of Marilyn’s visit and my examination of the psychology textbooks, I wanted to know what causes people to fall in love, whether some people are more likely than others to fall in love, what is the incidence of unhappy love, and how can we help people who are unhappy because of love. Two points of view guided the course of my work. The first was that I would look for aspects common to the romantic experience, particularly those aspects of what was termed "love" that produced distress. ... The second orientation was that this "thing" I aimed to study was a normal condition, not a pathological state, or sign of a weak or "neurotic" personality. (Love and Limerence, pp. 6–7)

By her own account, Dorothy Tennov was inspired by people who experienced tragedies, and she set out to study unhappy "romantic" love which produced distress.

This is again reiterated later in the book, as "why we distinguish love from limerence".

But love and limerence are clearly distinguishable. Your feeling for LO is inordinate relative to that person's actual value in your life (apart, of course, from the value as LO). As one woman wrote on the back of a questionnaire form:

"I recently reread my diary of 10 years ago, when I was in love with Brad, someone for whom I have no feelings at all anymore. It was very painful to read, not because of Brad, but because he was occupying so much of me at a time when there were other things in my life that I no longer have, but didn't appreciate at the time because of my total focus on Brad. My father was still living then, and my children were adorable babies who needed their mother’s attention."

. . . which is why we distinguish love from limerence, this "love" from other loves. (Love and Limerence, p. 120)

Tennov (2005, p. 28) also states that "It is probably significant that my research has always focused on individuals, not on relationships."

Limerence as an attraction pattern or a love style

Dorothy Tennov sometimes refers to limerence as an attraction.

A relationship that includes no limerence may be a far more important one in your life, when all is said and done, than any relationship in which you experienced the strivings of limerent passion. Limerence is not in any way preeminent among types of human attractions or interactions; but when limerence is in full force, it eclipses other relationships. (Love and Limerence, p. 16)

Most statements in the love literature could be interpreted as applying either to limerence or to affectional bonding. These as well as other types of attractions were not clearly distinguishable from one another but instead were fused and merged by being called by the same term, "love." (Love and Limerence, pp. 171–172)

It occasionally occurred, although rarely, that an attraction was described to me which seemed to fit the limerent pattern in all ways except that the informant felt no initial inclination toward physical union. (Love and Limerence, p. 24)

She considered her study of limerence to fall under "ethology", or the study of animal behavioral patterns.

Limerence can be seen as a normal and usual feature of the human species, and my approach is basically that of the ethologist who observes and analyes the behavior of animals in natural settings from an evolutionary perspective (Bateson and Hinde 1976). ... Any pattern observed, whether it be salmon migration, the retrieval of pups that stray from the maternal rat's nest, courtship displays by certain birds, or limerence in humans, can be considered in the light of how the specific behavior is adaptive. Evolution is not an ever-upward drive toward perfection. ("Love Madness", in Romantic Love and Sexual Behavior: Perspectives from the Social Sciences, p. 80)

Tennov does not rigorously define the attraction pattern of limerence in Love and Limerence, but she does in her later works.

Limerence theory holds the following: (1) The underlying mechanism is universal. (2) The state of limerence comes into being automatically when barriers to receptivity are down and a likely person appears. As limerence takes hold, certain laws of operation apply. What happens thereafter depends on how strongly it seems that the hoped-for reciprocation will indeed occur. This is largely, though perhaps not entirely, a matter of LO's actions. Small doses of attention from LO increase the intensity of the limerence experience. (3) Reciprocation leads to euphoria, followed by a union that might be stable or unstable, and that might or might not endure.

... A hallmark of limerence is that if it is limerence, there is only one LO (at a time). When that one person fails to reciprocate, the result may be long hours of sustained lovesickness that is relieved, and then only slightly, by achieving the limerence goal in imagination. There may come a time when the sufferer has had enough and wants to end the painful prepossession, when all bases for hope have been exhausted and it is time to abandon ship, only to find—and this is the madness of it—that these thoughts cannot be turned off and on at will as can most thoughts. ("Love Madness", in Romantic Love and Sexual Behavior: Perspectives from the Social Sciences, pp. 78–79)

Note that she seems to have explicitly defined limerence here as starting before a relationship (limerence takes hold ➪ reciprocation ➪ followed by a union; or when reciprocation does not occur ➪ lovesickness).

A different book chapter defines the process this way.

The basic pattern is this: When a person, A, is in a state of receptivity and an attractive member of A's sexually preferred category, person B (hereafter referred to as 'LO' for limerence object), is presumed by A to have exhibited, or can be expected to exhibit, amorous interest in A, then A enters a state of limerence with LO as its object. One criterion of readiness is that A is not limerent toward someone other than LO. ... The reaction is automatic.

Once the transition into the limerence state occurs, intensity of desire for reciprocation from LO and the amount of involuntary thinking about LO, are controlled by LO's expression of interest in A. If LO's actions are interpreted as indicating possible reciprocation, A responds with elation, even euphoria, but, paradoxically, as A receives enduring reciprocation from LO, prepossession diminishes. The limerence state, can persist indefinitely depending on a delicate balance between hope and uncertainty concerning LO's response.

A's condition continues to be controlled by perception of LO's behavior until one of three conditions occurs:

All hope for reciprocation by LO ends (e.g., through LO's mating with another person). But to be effective, rejection must be unalloyed and sustained.
LO reciprocates and enters into a committed and monogamous relationship with A. However, not even marriage necessarily satisfies this condition if LO, as spouse, continues to emit behaviors interpreted by A as nonlimerence. Only if the reciprocation is sustained and believable will limerence intensity diminish. In the ideal situation, it will be replaced by another type of love.
Limerence is transferred to a third person. A remains limerent, but a new person has become its object. This alternative appears to be more frequent in an environment that contains many possibly available persons, and appears to occur only if there has already been a substantial reduction in intensity as the result of either of the two preceding conditions.

The 'selection' of the person who becomes LO marks the transition into the limerent state, but the particular person is a matter of happenstance. It is only necessary that LO meet certain gross criteria of status and attractiveness. In other words, the person who becomes a given A's LO is selected from a possibly very large set of persons that could have released the reaction. Incidentally, that the particular person is a matter of chance and circumstance is contrary to the notion that permeates folklore and ancient philosophy that there is a one and only with whom one is 'meant' to unite. The considerable information on and conjectures concerning mate selection during the past decade are no doubt relevant to determining attractiveness (Buss, 1994). ("Conceptions of Limerence", in Sexual Appetite, Desire, and Motivation: Energetics of the Sexual System, pp. 112–113)

Again, limerence is defined as beginning before reciprocation and a relationship occurs. Limerence is defined as an attraction pattern of falling in love (note: not just any way—only one specific way) with somebody that you don't have a relationship with yet.

Tom Bellamy also has an understanding that limerence is defined this way, in his video "The five phases of limerence".

In Dorothy Tennov's material, limerence is primarily (but not exclusively) contrasted with what she calls "affectional bonding".

The first [alternative to mutual limerence] is an affectional and sexual relationship between two people in the absence of limerence on either person’s part, either for each other or for anyone outside the partnership. It is a primary relationship, described frequently enough in the interviews to warrant clear recognition. Informants who described what I came to call "affectional bonding" usually replied affirmatively to my initial question about whether they felt themselves to be in love. But unlike those whose relationship was based on limerence, they did not report continuous and unwanted intrusive thinking, feel intense need for exclusivity, describe their goals in terms of reciprocity, or speak of ecstasy. Instead, they emphasized compatibility of interests, mutual preferences in leisure activities, ability to work together, pleasurable sexual experiences, and, in some cases, a degree of relative contentment that was rare (even impossible) among persons experiencing limerence.

Some of these relationships had begun with limerence; others seemed to have been affectional bonding from the outset.

Affectional bonding, not limerence, often represents the cultural idea. It is rational by comparison with limerence, and loving in what many feel is the "true sense of the term," i.e., having concern about, or caring. It is what is described as the hoped-for relationship between limerents after the honeymoon when the serious business of charting a common and compatible life course begins. (Love and Limerence, p. 130)

Tennov does not explicitly ascribe a psychological state to affectional bonding like she does with limerence. It should be stated, however, that these people probably do actually experience love feelings, just not of the type she calls limerence. It's known that there's variation in the intensity of love feelings, with differences in obsessive thinking (Bode & Kavanaugh). According to Tennov, these nonlimerent people said they were "in love" (p. 130) and some even stated they were "obsessed" (p. 114). There are several specific qualities which Tennov uses to distinguish limerence from other ways to be in love.

Another nonlimerent mentioned by Tennov is Don Juan (p. 270), who embodies the love style called ludus (game-playing, non-committal love and juggling multiple partners). This would be a third style, distinct from limerence or affectional bonding.

Love and limerence

Dorothy Tennov defines love as caring or concern (pp. 15, 71, 130).

According to Tennov, limerence is distinguished from love in a very basic way. Love involves concern for the loved one's welfare and feelings, with little or no expectation of gain in return. In contrast, limerence demands reciprocation. ("Chemistry of a relationship can sometimes be confusing", The Gadsden Times, 2007)

Tennov obviously has a philosophical idea that "love" ought to be (largely) unconditional. Limerence is conditional because it requires something from the limerent object (i.e. reciprocation) to be satisfied.

Note that "limerence" versus "love" is not a comparison between "passionate" versus "companionate" love, but rather an apples to oranges comparison between one specific state of being "in love" versus love defined as caring (see p. 15).

Another question though: doesn't it seem that this type of definition would make limerence a synonym for being "in love" in general (which is always painful to some extent when unrequited, or when after a breakup)? There's definitely one clarifying quote to this, where she implies that nonlimerent breakups involve "emotional trauma".

Quantitative information about romantic love is not totally absent in the scientific literature. For example, an attempt to obtain systematic data was reported in 1945 by University of Minnesota sociologists Clifford Kirkpatrick and Theodore Caplow. About 400 college students either selected, prepared graphs, or drew their own graphs to describe the course of approximately 900 love affairs (2.2 per student). Unfortunately, the results of the study do not differentiate between old and new relationships, and certainly not between limerent and nonlimerent relationships. It is therefore difficult to assess the authors' conclusion that "at least half of the students' love affairs do not involve serious emotional traumas." The statement also implies that almost half of them did involve serious emotional traumas, and it permits the speculation that all breakups involve emotional trauma, a "trauma" later termed "not serious" in almost half of the cases. (Love and Limerence, p. 181)

So limerence is not defined in terms of being "in love" in just any way which could be reciprocated or not.

Tennov's main clarifying quote about this is on page 70, where she specifies that the all-consuming obsessional state which "demands" reciprocation is the state which she's interested in distinguishing in particular.

What is natural? The ploys of lovers are described in ancient writings; those whose modern philosophy dictates openness do so in a fear that sometimes proves to be justified by the turn of events. The limerent aim of return of feeling is an obsession that so overrides all other considerations that, as Ovid warned in the famous Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), written almost 2,000 years ago, the lover and beloved are "shy predator and wily prey" and the nature of their love is "conquest."

Is this deplorable state of affairs a necessary aspect of love? It does seem essential to limerence; hence the need for a new term. It appears, sadly enough, that limerent demands are contrary by nature when a limerent response in the other person can be killed by too early or blatant a display of affection. "Love," in most of its meanings, involves concern for the other person's welfare and feelings. Affection and fondness have no "objective"; they simply exist as feelings in which you are disposed toward actions to which the recipient might or might not respond. In contrast, limerence demands return. Other aspects of your life, including love, are sacrificed in behalf of this all-consuming need. While limerence has been called love, it is not love. Although the limerent feels a kind of love for LO at the time, from LO's point of view limerence and love are quite different from each other.

It is limerence, not love, that increases when lovers are able to meet only infrequently or when there is anger between them. No wonder those who view limerence from an external vantage are baffled by what seems more a form of insanity than a form of love. Jean-Paul Sartre calls it a project with a "contradictory ideal." He notes that each of the lovers seek the love of the other without realizing that what they want is to be loved. (Love and Limerence, pp. 70–71)

It can be understood then, that while "love" is concern, "limerence" is a kind of madness with a dire or urgent need for reciprocation.

It's unstated from Tennov's material what she thinks of other (lesser) ways of being "in love" (mental states), whether they fall under "loving" or not. I suppose that her comments about affectional bonding are some indicator: "Informants who described ... 'affectional bonding' usually replied affirmatively [that] they felt themselves to be in love ... loving in what many feel is the "true sense of the term," i.e., having concern about, or caring" (p. 130).

Required features according to Tennov

Limerence is not synonymous with "being in love", rather only being in love in a specific way. According to Tennov and some other authors, this may be compared to "love madness".

A 750-word magazine article about limerence research using the term "love madness" rather than "limerence" brought a response of several hundred letters from people who wrote much the same kinds of things as did readers of Love and Limerence. And several of those said they didn't even wait to finish the book. The implication? That the condition is well known. ("Love Madness", in Romantic Love and Sexual Behavior: Perspectives from the Social Sciences, p. 86)

Limerence (also called love madness by the folk) is inherently irrational, so much so as not to be believed in by the uninitiated unless it is viewed as a personality fault or temporary insanity. It resembles insanity in some ways. It can wreak a family or a career; it may influence affairs of state. It is a serious matter. (A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence, p. 406)

Limerence has also been interpreted this way by Joe Beam, a marriage counselor and sexologist who writes about limerence and has experienced it himself. Limerence ruined his life in the 1980s, but he later recovered.

Limerence. Have you ever heard of it? Don't worry; it is a new term even to some who study human behavior. Dorothy Tennov, a psychology professor, coined the word in 1977. She was interested in what happened when two people fell intensely in love. Was there a pattern? Was it a romantic delusion inspired by sentimental pop culture? Would we find the same love experience, say, across the world in China?

Most of Tennov's research came from thousands of personal accounts of those who had fallen in love. She discovered that many who considered themselves "madly in love" had similar descriptions of their emotions and actions. She chose the label limerence to describe an intense longing and desire for another person that is much stronger than a simple infatuation, but not the same as a long-lived love that could last a life-time. Limerence is often overpowering, and in intense cases will cause a person to be obsessed with the one they've fallen for. (The Art of Falling in Love, p. 72)

Again, however, it needs to be emphasized that limerence is not a synonym for "love madness". Rather, "love madness" is one term which people use to refer to limerence. "Love madness" may be used to refer to other things. One example is Acevedo et al., who found people that said they were "madly in love" after being in relationships for 10 years or more, but reported low levels of obsession.

Tennov (pp. x, 180–181) and many contemporary authors have also compared limerence to addiction.

Intrusive thoughts

Intrusive thoughts are a necessary component to limerence. That is, if you don't have them, then you are nonlimerent.

Nonlimerent lovers interviewed also used the word "obsession" to describe their reaction to a new lover, particularly during the early "courting" phase of a relationship. But this obsession seemed more like the kind of intense interest a person might have for a new hobby or possession rather than like true limerent obsession. Nonlimerent lovers do not report intrusive preoccupation, but rather that thoughts of the person are frequent and pleasurable. The only disadvantage to this "obsession" is that they might get carried away in conversation with others (much as might he owner of a new racing car). (Love and Limerence, pp. 114–115)

Furthermore, in some places Dorothy Tennov describes the intrusive thoughts as "not entirely pleasant" (p. 34) or even "unwanted" (pp. 38, 130).

Crystallization

Crystallization is a necessary component to limerence, maybe an effect of falling in love. According to Tennov, crystallization is "a remarkable ability to emphasize what is truly admirable in LO and to avoid dwelling on the negative, even to respond with a compassion for the negative and render it, emotionally if not perceptually, into another positive attribute" (p. 24).

Those of you who have been an object of limerence, especially if you were unable to return the feeling, and those of you who have "recovered" from limerence only to find that the former objects of your passion had acquired previously underappreciated imperfections, realize that the limerent reaction may miss by a wide mark the truly important features of LO.

In the beginning I expected a degree of understandable resistance to referring to a person as an "object," although "love object" seems far less objectionable than does "sex object." I once mentioned my concern about using the word "object" in presenting limerence theory to a workshop group. One of the participants said that if ever the word "object" was appropriate it was here, because to the degree that your reaction to a person is limerence, you respond to your construction of LO's qualities. (Love and Limerence, p. 33)

"To the degree that your reaction to a person is limerence, you respond to your construction of LO's qualities."

Modern research regards it as positive illusions.

Dorothy Tennov denies that crystallization entails projecting a fantasy on to the loved one, but other authors have certainly interpreted it this way. John Alan Lee:

There is something imperious and momentous in the initial ecstatic shock of eros which, fiction has assured us, often causes the lover to assume that the partner is indeed his ideal image. Stendhal called this process crystallization. He believed that we begin very early in a relationship to project onto the partner all sorts of desirable qualities we want in an ideal lover, whether or not the situation warrants it. I did not find this process typical of the eros type of love, but rather, typical of mania.

Of course, an erotic lover is always in danger of slipping into mania (see Chapter 11, manic eros), but the respondents who succeeded in eros did not blindly glamourize the partner; nor did they ignore early warning signs of shortcomings in the partner. Manic lovers tend to ignore the beloved's flaws (that is, they "crystallize" the beloved), but my most typical erotic respondents were always conscious of both the assets and liabilities of their partners, and ignored neither. Fiction has confused two apparently similar, but in fact quite different, types of loving. The manic lover allows his obsessive preoccupation with the partner to blind him, though he is not happy in his blindness. He knows he is making a fool of himself, but as manic respondent after manic respondent told me, "I just couldn't help myself." (Colours of Love: An Exploration of the Ways of Loving, p. 43)

(Compare: eros and mania.)

Mania is named after the Greek theia mania, the madness from the gods. In many ways, limerence and mania are two different authors describing the same phenomenon. Both authors refer to "love madness" and "addiction" in their comparisons. Both concepts are compared to "courtly love" (explained below). The main difference is that mania is more of an "obsessive love" concept which includes people in toxic relationships, while limerence is more like "lovesickness". Lee also states that a typical manic lover is jealous, while Tennov states that a limerent person is not necessarily jealous. Lee developed his theory with a study of about 200 people, so he would have encountered the people Tennov refers to as limerents, and must have classified them as manic or manic-erotic lovers. "Manic eros" is like limerence that begins with a strong physical attraction (e.g. love at first sight), while more stereotypical mania doesn't involve a strong preference for the physical appearance of the beloved. A manic lover may not even necessarily "like" their beloved at all outside of crystallization, and wouldn't normally choose them as a friend.

Uncertainty

A period of uncertainty over reciprocation is a necessary component to limerence.

For the process to develop fully, some form of uncertainty or doubt, or even some threat to reciprocation appears necessary. There is considerable evidence that an externally imposed obstacle, such as Romeo and Juliet met in the resistance of family and society, may also serve. (Love and Limerence, p. 26)

The recognition that some uncertainty must exist has been commented on and complained about by virtually everyone who has undertaken a serious study of the phenomenon of romantic love. (Love and Limerence, p. 56)

Of course, the uncertainty necessary to limerence may indeed be the result of external obstacles visible to the disinterested observer, such as those stemming from parental objections, spouses, or social customs. The barriers faced by Romeo and Juliet were so crucial to their mutual limerence that psychologists speak of "the Romeo and Juliet effect," in which parents who attempt to interfere in the romance of their children may in fact intensify it. Another traditional barrier that often plays a role in limerence is the deceived spouse who, according to Suzane Brøgger in Deliver Us from Love, can keep things at a boiling point. (Love and Limerence, pp. 56–57)

Uncertainty about LO's true reaction is an essential aspect of your own limerence. (Love and Limerence, p. 57)

Tennov even believes that obstacles and a period of uncertainty are necessary for mutual limerence.

[O]f course, there is the relationship between two mutually limerent individuals, the reciprocal relationship. Although there may, indeed must be obstacles along the way, this is the relationship of the limerent’s fervent desires and of the dramatist’s happy ending. We have already seen that its intensity depends, for each individual, on the intensity produced by the particular combination of circumstances during its development. Excessive fear on both persons' parts can prevent the establishment of reciprocity, even when each is limerent toward the other. Furthermore, although limerence increases with uncertainty, we have seen that externally imposed obstacles of sufficient magnitude, including those imposed by parents or by society, can delay or prevent limerent consummation.

Even when reciprocity has occurred and commitment to a formal relationship (such as marriage) has been established, reciprocity is usually followed by a decline in limerence, and a blissful period may be followed by later dissension. (Love and Limerence, p. 129)

Again, as stated above, limerence is not defined as synonymous with "being in love". Mutual limerence isn't the same as having an infatuation period in a relationship. It's made clear (to me, fairly explicitly on p. 129) that when Tennov speaks of people who had relationships that began with limerence, she meant to be referring to people who fell in love before they had a relationship at all, before they were even aware that the feelings were mutual.

Uncertainty is only a matter of perception (pp. 56, 57), however. Only what matters is that the limerent person is not sure if they will have a committed relationship or not, based on how they perceive the situation.

According to her descriptions in 1979, she believed that limerence perpetuates as long as the limerent person both believes in some possibility of eventual reciprocation (hope) and there exists some uncertainty over whether this will happen. In her 1998 book chapter ("Love Madness", p. 79, quoted earlier), she does also acknowledge a possibility that all hope is extinguished, but the limerent person is still unable to escape the intrusive thoughts.

Some people in limerence communities believe that on receiving a rejection from an LO, the state should no longer be labelled as limerence, but rather it becomes unrequited love. Tennov has never stated this. Uncertainty and hope should be taken as her general theory of when limerence occurs, or what she believes amplifies the obsession.

Uncertainty has been interpreted as intermittent reinforcement, or a situation similar to a slot machine. In short, surprise and random reward patterns are said to keep people addicts.

Passionate or infatuated love—deriving primarily from the passion component—seems to operate primarily under variable-ratio and variable-interval reinforcement In essence, it thrives under intermittent reinforcement. The available evidence suggests that such love may survive only under conditions of intermittent reinforcement, when uncertainty reduction plays a key role in one's feelings for another (cf. Livingston, 1980). Tennov's (1979) analysis suggests that limerence can survive only under conditions in which full development and consummation of love is withheld and in which titillation of one kind or another continues over time. Once the relationship is allowed to develop or once the relationship becomes an utter impossibility, extinction seems to take place. (Robert Sternberg, Liking versus loving: A comparative evaluation of theories, 1987)

Something that's worthwhile to point out here is that uncertainty theory is not something Dorothy Tennov invented out of thin air, but rather something which also incorporated ideas from earlier authors. This is acknowledged on page 56.

In 1940, the cultural critic Denis de Rougemont wrote scathingly of "romantic love", using the myth of Tristan and Iseult as his illustration. According to de Rougemont (p. 52), "Happy love has no history—in European literature." In the myth, Tristan and Iseult drink a love potion which is served to them by mistake, when Iseult is actually arranged to be married to Tristan's uncle, a king. The two lovers share a lengthy affair (the potion is said to last 3 years), although they profess not to even "love" each other apart from the effects of the potion. Ostensibly, Iseult doesn't even like Tristan at all, because he kills a relative of hers earlier in the story. When they drink the love potion, Iseult exclaims "You know that you are my lord and my master, and I your slave." Eventually their affair is discovered and Tristan is exiled. The story goes through several episodes where they're separated or promise not to meet anymore, but they remain addicts and end up reconnecting. After some time, they both die at the end of the story.

De Rougemont observes that Tristan and Iseult seem to actually instill barriers (almost artificially, created by the authors of the myth) to prolong their own suffering. While the story depicts them as mutually "in love", the love does not make them happy.

Tristan and Iseult do not love one another. They say they don't and everything goes to prove it. What they love is love and being in love. They behave as if aware that whatever obstructs love must ensure and consolidate it in the heart of each and intensify it infinitely in the moment they reach the absolute obstacle, which is death. Tristan loves the awareness that he is loving far more than he loves Iseult the Fair. And Iseult does nothing to hold Tristan. All she needs is her passionate dream. Their need of one another is in order to be aflame, and they do not need another as they are. What they need is not one another's presence, but one another's absence. Thus the partings of the lovers are dictated by their passion itself, and by the love they bestow on their passion rather on its satisfaction or on its living object. That is why the Romance abounds in obstructions, why when mutually encouraging their joint dream in which each remains solitary they show such astounding indifference, and why events work up in a romantic climax to a fatal apotheosis. (Love in the Western World, pp. 41–42)

While it's not explicitly stated, Tennov seems to interpret de Rougemont as a critic of limerence (pp. 175 & 292). De Rougemont has inspired other authors, like the psychoanalyst Robert Johnson (1983).

In our culture people use this phrase, "romantic love," indiscriminately to refer to almost any attraction between man and woman. If a couple is having a sexual affair, people will say they are "romantically involved." If a man and a woman love each other and plan to marry, people will say it is a "romance," but in fact, their relationship may not be based on "romance" at all. It may be based simply on love, which is completely different from romance! Or a woman will say, "I wish my husband would be more romantic." But what she actually means is that her husband should be more attentive, more thoughtful, and show her more feeling. We are all so caught up in the belief that romantic love is "true love" that we use the term for many things that are not romantic love at all. We assume that if it is love, it must be "romance," and if it is romance, it must be "love."

The fact that we say "romance" when we mean "love" shows us that underneath our language there is a psychological muddle. Our confusion in language is the symptom that tells us we have lost the consciousness of what love is, what romance is, and what the differences are between them. We are confusing two great psychological systems within us, and this has a devastating effect on our lives and our relationships. (We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, 43–44)

Tristan and Iseult have not only thrown out sexual faithfulness, they have given up all loyalty, all commitment, all duty, save one—their dedication to passion.

But a commitment to passion is not a substitute for commitment to a human being. In our culture we have these two feelings completely confused. We are all committed to being eternally "in love"; and we imagine that this is the same thing as being committed to a person. But the passion fades; the passion migrates to someone else we feel attracted to. If we are committed only to follow where passion leads, then there can be no true loyalty to an individual person.

Almost everyone is looking for "committed relationship." Most people sense that this is what they need, and people talk and read about "relationship" incessantly. But for all our talk about "commitment," we are sabotaged by our assumptions before we begin. We assume that the single ingredient that we need for "relationship," the one thing it cannot do without, is romance. But in fact, the essential ingredients for relationship are affection and commitment. If we look clearly, we begin to see that romance is a completely different energy system, a completely distinct set of values, from love and commitment. If it is romance that we seek, it is romance that we shall have—but not commitment and not relationship. (We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, 102–103)

There is much to be learned by looking at the poetry and the romances of our ancestors, for they had the grace to state bluntly the truths that we are unwilling to face. If we can open our minds and learn from them to say what is, then we can begin to understand what forces are at work in us. It is no coincidence that all romantic literature, from Tristan and Iseult to Romeo and Juliet and up to the present, is filled with suffering and death. The very nature of romance seems to require that it be lived in the face of impossible odds, terrible obstacles, and inhuman adversities. Finding their their romance impossible in this physical world, many of the archetypal lovers, like Romeo and Juliet, choose to die together. (We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love, 147–148)

Note that Johnson's distinction between "romance" (passion and obstacles) and "love" (affection and commitment) resembles Tennov's distinction between limerence and affectional bonding. Johnson is a Jungian psychoanalyst, so his way of doing psychology in the rest of his book comes across as very obscure, but the book is meant as a similar commentary.

This type of distinction resembles "passionate and companionate love", but passionate and companionate love are often taken as mental states by contemporary authors, not love styles or attraction patterns.

Courtly love

On page 174 of Love and Limerence, Dorothy Tennov compares limerence to a concept called "courtly love".

What is it, and why does it matter?

Courtly love is the progenitor of the "romantic love" literary concept. Historical descriptions of love passion existed before that, but courtly love (in the Middle Ages) is where a body of work emerged with a concept similar to limerence: love for an unavailable person.

The term romantic love was originally coined by nineteenth-century literary critic Gaston Paris to denote a particular constellation of attitudes and patterns of behavior that characterized a body of literature arising in Provence in the twelfth century (Paris 1883). Amour courtois (Courtly love), as a precedent of romantic love, had the following general attributes: an elevation of the status of the woman, a suffering caused by passionate attraction to and separation from the beloved, and a transformation of the lovers which elevates them onto a separate plane of existence, the world of lovers, in which life is experienced more intensely (Paris 1883). (Victor Karandashev, Romantic Love in Cultural Contexts, p. 7)

The word "romance" itself actually has a historical origin in Old French referring to poetry from this tradition. Poets who wrote this poetry were called "troubadours".

In some sense, "romance" and "romantic love" originally referred to a concept similar to (or perhaps the same as) limerence. Courtly love has several relevant aspects here.

Medieval knights were said to practice "courtly love" with a maiden, which was seen as respectable and a form of chivalry in their time.

Courtly love described a specific type of platonic, or at the very least non sexual love between a knight and a lady, who was usually unavailable, either by being already married, or being from a higher social class. Think Lancelot and Gwenevier from the Arthurian legends. Guinevere was already married to King Arthur, but Lancelot fell deeply in love with her. At first it is just pining, and Lancelot had no plans to act on his feelings, but once Gwenevier returned his affections, they started a sordid love affair.

Of course, in the ideal courtly love relationship, no affair would take place. It was seen to be beneficial for a young knight to have a lady to have his eye on. It would civilize him, and make him an even more effective knight, as he would try to impress her. Ladies would sometimes give knights objects, like a handkerchief as a show of favor before the knight went off to battle. This was meant to encourage the knight to fight his best.

As you can see, this sort of culture really only applied to high class women. Also, there is less respect and more admiration. The knights put these women on a pedestal, one that was impossible to live up to. (YouTube)

It's unclear to what extent this was practiced by knights in reality, or whether the practice was a literary idea, but the resemblance to limerence ought to be clear. "Romance" stories later came out of this tradition. Tristan and Iseult was of the same period and genre as Arthurian tradition (Tristan being a knight), but did not involve the Arthurian cast.

Courtly love also refers to The Art of Courtly Love, the book by Andreas Capellanus (also Andrew Capelanus) which came out of this era.

The theme of inaccessibility was also explored in another way: the introduction of a female character, immensely desirable, but unavailable through marriage.

Even at this very early stage, the authenticity of love was being judged according to its difficulty (with respect to obstacles and impediments) and its irrationality. In troubadour poetry, we can recognize the cultural ancestry of modern concepts such as Lee's mania or Tennov's limerence: love that does not need liking — love that may even thrive in response to rejection or contempt. The troubadour's cruel mistress reappears again and again in literature in different guises: the enchantress, the femme fatale, the Belle Dame sans Merci. Long before psychologists began to study love in a systematic way, literature required a particular female type who would represent unhappy love.

The doctrine of romantic love (also known as courtezia or amour courtois) would have spread across Europe irrespective of royal patronage; however, the process was certainly accelerated by events at the court of Poitiers, where William IX is reputed to have been 'the first troubadour' (on account of having written the earliest surviving examples of courtly verse in the Provencal language). It was also at Poitiers that William's granddaughter, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and her daughter, Marie de Champagne, encouraged celebrated poets such as Bernard de Ventadour and Chretien de Troyes to compose works that exemplified courtly ideals. A narrative vehicle that was popular among the poets of Poitiers was Arthurian legend, which delivered a cast of characters whose relationships could be fully exploited to dramatize the frustrating dynamics of romantic love. ... In the poetry of Chretien de Troyes, love — always complicated, but even more complicated by courtly conventions — is once again described as an illness: 'My illness is what I want. And my pain is my health . . . I suffer agreeably . . . I am sick with delight.'

When Andrew Capelanus came to write his own work - The Art of Courtly Love - he did so by borrowing from Ovid. Thus, Ovid's cynical observations were used to shore up the romantic ideal. Love sickness - merely another weapon in Ovid's armamentarium - became fully established as a crucial sign of love's authenticity.

Capelanus described love as 'a certain inborn suffering' and suggested thirty-one rules of love. They include the following:

Rule 2. He who is not jealous cannot love.
Rule 9. No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love.
Rule 12. When made public love rarely endures.
Rule 14. The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
Rule 15. Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
Rule 16. When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.
Rule 20. A man in love is always fearful.
Rule 21. Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
Rule 22. Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved.
Rule 30. A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thoughts of his beloved.

Love and mental illness were closely linked according to the principles of Hippocratic medicine; however, Capelanus's principles seem to do much the same thing. At Poitiers it was decided that love - if true - must be disturbed and slightly perverse; it must be obsessive, compulsive, agitated, anxious, jealous, suspicious, clandestine, and frustrating.

There is still some debate concerning to what extent Capelanus meant his rules to be taken seriously. It is possible that The Art of Courtly Love was meant to be satirical - but if so, its satirical content was lost on contemporary and subsequent generations. The Art of Courtly Love was never viewed as a critique. It was always viewed as a manifesto. (Frank Tallis, Love Sick: Love as a Mental Illness, pp. 93–96)

According to Dorothy Tennov (p. 174), Capellanus described the state of limerence "very accurately". She interprets him as a critic, similar to how Tallis interprets him in the above excerpt.

As a side note, according to many authors, courtly love is the historical origin of modern Western "romantic" courtship practices (that is, the social phenomenon). Before this, Western courtship practices were controlled by the Catholic Church. In other words, according to many accounts, limerents are responsible for the cultural force which led to modern romance culture.

How did the notion of romantic love become so widely accepted in Western society as a legitimate basis of mate selection? This notion was not an important element of marriage in the European society of ancient and medieval times. It has not been important to marriage in traditional oriental society (Mace 1959:128; Blood 1967:26). It is "diametrically opposed, point by point" to the definition of loving relationship taught by the Christian religion. (Aubert 1965:454) "Courtly love" or the lovestyle I call mania, replaced the medieval Christian doctrine of parental control over marriage, because mania has all the persuasive power of a religion, and this new religion was more favorable to the interests of a new and ambitious social class than the traditional love ideology of Christianity, which was supported by the ruling elites (compare Protestantism and capitalism in Weber).

I can only summarize my arguments here (see Lee 1975). The troubadours of twelfth-century Provence are the "starting point for all subsequent manifestations of romantic love" (Henriques 1959:84). In the troubadour poetry, the ideology of love I call "mania" ceased to be a misfortune and became defined instead as the ultimate life experience to be sought after (rather than Christian "salvation"). As a modern song puts the troubadour message. "You're nobody until somebody loves you" and the somebody had to be another human, not a deity.

Mania had enormous appeal as an ideology for a newly emerging social class in late medieval Europe: the knights of the courtly society (castle or feudal society), which developed to defend Europe against invaders. ... The new doctrines of mania (courtly love as defined especially by Andreas, chaplain of Marie de Champagne) gave the knights a legitimate opening for class advancement: secret courtship with daughters of the nobility. Mania legitimated love and sexual trysts which ignored social considerations of family, class, and state and instead legitimated acts of individual attraction. This quality of mania and its quasi-religious power to overcome social norms is still true today (Dion and Dion 1996:8; Lee 1973).

The state and the upper classes fought this new doctrine, as did the Catholic Church. That battle is immortalized in the great love tragedies, of which Romeo and Juliet is probably more familiar to most than, say, Tristan and Iseult. (John Alan Lee, "Ideologies of Lovestyle and Sexstyle", in Romantic Love and Sexual Behavior: Perspectives from the Social Sciences, pp. 54–55)

Tennov acknowledges this on page 175, with her only contention being that limerence itself isn't a cultural invention. The idea she objects to, "that you must hear of love in order to experience it", comes from the 1600s, not a scientific source.

The most consistent result of limerence?

It should be fairly clear at this point how Dorothy Tennov defines limerence. It's a kind of attraction pattern of falling madly in love based on the idealization of a person which you don't have a relationship with, often (or even necessarily) somebody unavailable, then becoming lovesick without reciprocation.

It's plainly stated by her, but not in one central place.

The one major issue with her material which confuses people (other than people just misunderstanding these comparisons to terms like "being in love" and "romantic love"), as far as I can tell, is actually one single paragraph where she seems to imply that it was her impression that limerence often leads to relationships. Below are some excerpts from the preceding pages for context. The preceding context shows that in that section she's actually wondering how limerence evolved, since it kind of seems maladaptive, even making a comparison to motion sickness and vomiting.

Evolution is not an ever continuing drive toward perfection, but an often bungling and inefficient (as well as cruel) series of essentially random accidents. ... The issue here is the possible usefulness of evolutionary concepts to the understanding of limerence. If a behavior or a state is genetically programmed, it is one which enhanced the "fitness" of organisms carrying its controlling gene or genes. Evolutionary theorizing wonders why. What is behind the irrationality that seizes otherwise reasonable human beings, forcing them to set aside other goals and strivings and to focus on a single other individual, who may be of little interest prior to limerence and also of little interest afterward? (Love and Limerence, p. 245)

[V]omiting and the malaise are part of an early defense and warning system inappropriate in the case of motion, but lifesaving in the case of toxin ingestion. Treisman's evolutionary hypothesis is that motion sickness is an accidental by-product of the organism's response to certain head and eye movements that occur in the case of food poisoning but unfortunately also in the case of certain types of motion. Thus evolutionary thinking assists the scientific process of theorizing, and it may become far more complex than simply conjecturing about the "survival value" of the phenomenon observed. (Love and Limerence, p. 246)

To explain why limerence occurs we might consider the behavior it induces. Some limerence-inspired actions, as we have already noted, are generally judged socially undesirable, even socially disruptive. It is often noted that limerence causes couples to remove themselves from the presence of other persons. It deflects interest from affairs of business, state, even family, and turns them instead toward LO. Limerence intrudes. In the midst of battle, the soldier's despair over the morning's letter of rejection from his LO back home is not forgotten. A king gives up his crown. An artist lets her career languish while she spends a year overseas accompanying him on a new assignment. But such visible disadvantages should not constitute the sole basis of judgment.

The most consistent result of limerence is mating, not merely sexual interaction but commitment, the establishment of a shared domicile, a cozy nest built for the enjoyment of ecstasy, for reproduction, and, usually, for the rearing of children. (Love and Limerence, p. 247)

At first glance, this seems to contradict her other impressions that limerence is usually unrequited.

The third, and probably most prevalent, sort of relationship between two people, at least during some stages of their interaction, occurs between a limerent person and an LO who does not reciprocate with limerence. The bulk of those interviewed, whose stories are related in these pages, fall into this category. In a sense, there is some lack of reciprocation in all limerent relationships, since limerence intensity continually wavers.

Relationships between two people who are committed to one another but in which only one of them is experiencing limerence should be differentiated from the fully unrequited condition in which no commitment exists (Fred and Laura, for example). (Love and Limerence, p. 133)

How to explain this? One issue is that in her impression that unrequited limerence was common (p. 133), she seems to lump together the truly unrequited limerence with relationships which were actually committed, but where only one partner was in limerence.

One possibility then is that limerence really did lead to relationships more often in the 1960s and 1970s, due to cultural differences. On page 175, she argues that "Surely the culture influences the phenomenon. ... [T]he culture may exert some influence on the LO, especially the nonlimerent LO, who, not under the limerent spell, is more amenable to such influence. ... If ... the culture is hostile to limerence, there will be an increased tendency to deny it." LOs may have also been more likely to reciprocate back then because society would have been less interconnected before modern infrastructure (i.e. the internet), so that it was more difficult to meet people. Everyone had fewer alternative options.

Another possibility is that she overestimated based on her interview methods. As she explains, first she would describe the state of limerence and then ask people if they experienced it.

[I]t was not possible to ask people whether or not they were limerent until the state had been clearly defined. Such synonyms as "being in love," "romantic love," "passionate love," and "erotic love" were all used in descriptions of sexual companionate relationships by people who were later recognized as nonlimerents through their responses to key questions that referred, for example, to intrusiveness of thought. ... As one aspect of an altered interview strategy, I began to ask several general questions at the start to give an overall picture of what I was interested in hearing about. ... Once I discovered the state of limerence and its absence and began to describe these specific conditions to my interviewees, most readily applied one label or the other to themselves. (Love and Limerence, p. 116)

In that case, maybe she would ask people if their relationship began with limerence, and some people would say "yes" who really just had an intense infatuation period.

A 2025 study of currently in-love people classified 29% of their study as "intense" lovers, with high levels of obsessive thinking. However, only 28% of the intense lovers actually fell in love before they had a relationship (which would resemble limerence). On average, the intense lovers fell in love one month after their relationship started.

It's kind of a problem for her theory that people actually fall "madly" in love after getting into a relationship sometimes, but she's pretty clear that limerence is supposed to refer to the mental state associated with a particular attraction pattern (a type of situation), not a mental state in the abstract.

It's possible that Tennov encountered such people (by asking about mental states), who actually fell "madly" in love after their relationship started, and misclassified this as limerence leading to relationships.

This is not an issue with her definition, but I think it confuses people who interpret page 247 as her argument that limerence is healthy. I think it's not clear if she meant to argue that or not. In context, she is clearly meaning to argue that lovesickness evolved as a by-product of a particular mating strategy. It's only her estimation of how often this turns into a healthy relationship which seems to be inconsistent with her overall concept.

Platonic limerence

Finally, as an addendum, while Dorothy Tennov believes that limerence is always sexual, this is arguably just a mistake in her material. She argues this because she wants to argue that limerence is for mating, but actually, she encountered platonic limerence (pp. 24, 216) and simply discards it as evidence because it doesn't fit her theory.

An explanation of why platonic limerence is possible is given in the Wikipedia article on the biology of romantic love, a theory originally developed by the psychologist Lisa Diamond.

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