Note: this is a draft, and an excerpt of a larger article that I'm currently writing.

Actual descriptions of limerence

Following are descriptions of limerence from actual scholars and professionals who do in fact understand what the term is supposed to mean: a kind of intense romantic love which can be debilitating, but is in fact normal.

"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 [nb. who both die] 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." (Hayes, 2000, p. 457)

"[Tennov] 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." (Beam, 2012, p. 72)

"Tennov (1979) presented an extensive collection of subjects' interview descriptions of an intense romantic love she labeled "limerence." Limerence involves constant, overwhelming, and even debilitating absorption in the unrequited desire for reciprocation of equally intense feelings from a love object." (Aron & Aron, 1986, p. 59)

"limerence (adjective, limerent): the personal experience of having fallen in love and of being irrationally and fixatedly love stricken or love smitten, irrespective of the degree to which one’s love is requited or unrequited. ... [T]he all consuming preoccupation with unrequited limerence persists, at the expense of scholastic achievement or job performance." (Money, 1997, pp. 119, 133)

"Tennov called it limerence — to distinguish it from other concepts of love — and it corresponds with mental states conventionally described as 'being in love' or 'falling in love'. The principal features of limerence are obsession, irrational idealisation, emotional dependency and a deep longing for reciprocation. ... Moreover ..., they are often compulsively attracted to partners who are objectively unsuitable. ... Consequently, limerence is characterised by significant emotional distress and a sense of futility. Again, it should be noted that ... limerence is not supposed to be viewed as an abnormal state. It is merely a more precise description of what many people experience when they 'fall in love'." (Tallis, 2005, pp. 42–43)

Resources to understand limerence

I recommend reading the following articles before reading this article (at least the Wikipedia article on limerence), as some concepts are used in this article (e.g. incentive salience, "wanting" versus "liking") without them being defined here.

Limerence (Wikipedia): The most comprehensive review of how limerence is supposed to be defined, actual research and theory. This article is based on actual academic references talking about limerence. I will also show (below) that the hoax literature is citing into this same literature.

Biology of romantic love (Wikipedia): Overview of current scientific research on romantic love (using a definition that "romantic love" means "being in love" generally any way). Much of this is relevant to understanding limerence (evolutionary theory, love addictions, "OCD" theory, and so on) and love feelings in general. Although there are academic papers reviewing this research, I have provided an overview which I think is useful.

Obsessive love (Wikipedia): Another useful article distinguishing limerence from some similar or related concepts.

"How does Dorothy Tennov define limerence?" Actual citations into Tennov's material and other academic references for how limerence is supposed to be defined. Tennov is very clear in her own material what it is and how it's supposed to be defined; she only has a difficult time supplying the reader with supporting information to understand the terms she refers to, and which concepts it's supposed to be distinguished from.

Elephant in the room

In her 2005 collected works, Tennov seems to be telling us she's neurodivergent, although she does not say the word "autism".

... I am the victim of a disorder that adversely influences social interactions. (Tennov, 2005, p. 12)

Social Consequences of a Hidden Handicap

It should always be remembered that in every face-to-face interaction I was handicapped by a disability hidden from all, including myself. When finally, at the age of fifty, I was supplied with the piece of the puzzle I had called “horns” that led people to reject and misunderstand me. Or, as I now believe, in some cases at least, too great understanding was what repelled them. Change came as I struggled to do what I thought I wanted to do and as I recognized how I truly was an alien to those to those around me and with whom I had to deal. As I found pieces of the puzzle, life would change. Some explanations were so simple that it took a bit of cognitive doing to keep me from seeing them. It has taken me a long life to understand, if, indeed, I have come to final understanding.

What I accomplished was always against a background of pain and fear of pain. My undiagnosed condition made me an outcast from the beginning. I always knew I was “different” but only in retrospect did I understand why. If I had given in and admitted the truth about my abnormality, I could never have done the things in life that I am now enjoying the fruits of their having been done – my children, my degrees, employment, publishing and becoming increasingly educated to seeing whole pictures. Until I was on my own, teaching, I was imprisoned (by the type of reading I was doing – psychology journals) within a subfield of a subfield in academia – experimental psychology, behaviorism.

Ferality

Furthermore, there was no one to teach me the social skills that might have enabled me to deal more effectively with others, despite my undisclosed handicap. I have many memories of being in important places – a palace in London, a social the home of the university president – unable to recall a word that was said, only the pain of standing.

There was no way that I could admit to myself or anyone else the severity of my physical handicap. When I finally did, my world fell completely apart, and I was helpless. I don’t know if a solution could have been reached, but I’m inclined to doubt it. Today I do not do things that bring pain. Yet I communicate with more people, more intimately (meaning saying what I really think) through the Internet that never was possible before.

There was another problem, or maybe part of the same problem: the antipathy I so easily evoked in others – with, of course, a few life-saving exceptions. They competed with me and resented me when I won. They wouldn’t believe it, but self-assertion is not the same as competing. Typically I was unaware of the race. I was only doing my thing, forming my own Basic Conceptions, which invariably turned out to be unacceptable because they conflicted with their Basic Conceptions. (Tennov, 2005, pp. 384–385)

She's calling it a "physical handicap" (seemingly euphemistically) in one place, while referring to "undiagnosed" social difficulties, being "different", an "outcast", or even "alien". (Note that there is nothing wrong with being autistic; this is just how autistic people sometimes describe their experiences.) People familiar with this will understand what Tennov is trying to tell us.

I personally have the impression that Tennov is extremely intelligent, a good psychologist, and one of the greatest love researchers to have ever lived. I also appreciate that Tennov actually studied philosophy, not just psychology, which gives her superior analytic skills.

Yet, one of the issues with her material is that she seems to have a difficulty predicting what information the reader needs to understand her. The most stark example which I already mentioned here is her repeatedly considering limerence to be a synonym for "romantic love", but never actually explaining which definition she means.

The phenomenon that provides the subject of much romantic poetry and fiction has been called an addiction, an indication of low self-esteem, irrational, neurotic, erotomanic, and delusional. (Tennov, 1999, p. x)

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. (Tennov, 1999, p. 172)

[Limerence] is featured in roughly 90% of all drama, song and biography. (Tennov, 2005, p. 374)

If you are familiar with what she refers to—the literary idea of romantic love, for tragic or unfulfilled love—then it becomes obvious this is the one she means. She refers to this all the time, but she never actually explains in her own material that "romantic love" refers to this. (As already mentioned, chapter 4 of Love Sick by Tallis is meant to explain this idea.)

So please keep this in mind, that Tennov writes in a very careful, pedantic manner, yet sometimes she's also just a bad communicator. The result is that people tend to misunderstand her (in multiple ways: some have e.g. misunderstood her to mean "limerence" is just a synonym for "being in love", while others have e.g. misunderstood her to mean "limerence" is supposed to be something other than "being in love").

Another issue with Tennov is that she's simply an unreliable narrator about her own theories:

Love, or not love: A) "Surely limerence is love at its highest and most glorious peak." (Tennov, 1999, p. 120) but also B) "While limerence has been called love, it is not love." (Tennov, 1999, p. 71).
Universal, or non-universal: A) "Limerence theory holds, first, that the underlying mechanism of limerence is universal." (Tennov, 2005, p. 337) and "...automatic mechanisms that cause animals to respond to circumstances with a complex yet distinct reaction is likely to be a species universal. This idea is consistent with the idea that limerence is a human universal..." (Tennov, 2005, p. 343) or is it B) "Occurrence is non-universal. Not all members of the population experience it." (Tennov, 2005, p. 19). Tennov may also be misspeaking here, using "universal" to mean different things.
Usually unrequited, or consistently for mating: A) "The ... probably most prevalent, sort of relationship between two people ... occurs between a limerent person and an LO who does not reciprocate with limerence." (Tennov, 1999, p. 133) and yet also B) "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." (Tennov, 1999, p. 247).
Leads to marriage, and not a mental illness, but a delusion; a love madness, but does not imply strong emotion: A) "...marriage is usually what the limerent individual most intensely desires. Limerence leads to marriage." (Tennov, 2005, p. 20) and B) "Limerence is not a mental illness in a clinical sense." (Tennov, 2005, p. 20), then in the next paragraph C) "Nature of Limerence: A kind of love madness. A glorious, glamorous delusion." (Tennov, 2005, p. 20) and finally D) "The term “limerence” does not necessarily imply strong emotion, although many people may mistakenly believe that it does. A specific algorithm is operative." (Tennov, 2005, p. 313).

I will actually explain later what I think Tennov is trying to get at with this idea of a love madness which operates by a specific algorithm (yet, not necessarily implying strong emotion), when I introduce the concepts of limerence as a love style and a mechanistic property cluster. Tennov seems to me to just be unaware of the right words to properly articulate her idea to people.

Another issue is that she simply discards evidence sometimes if it doesn't fit her theory. One example is on page 56 (Tennov, 1999): "Psychologists Ellen Bersheid and Elaine Walster discussed this common observation made ... that the presentation of a hard-to-get as opposed to an immediately yielding exterior is a help in eliciting passion." But actually, Berscheid & Walster (1974, pp. 365–366) report study results to the opposite in the book chapter Tennov is referencing: "Walster et al. (1973) report several experiments designed to demonstrate that a challenging girl will be a more dazzling conquest than a readily available girl. All experiments secured negative results."

An example more pertinent to this article is the issue of platonic limerence, which Tennov (1999, pp. 24, 216) actually encountered in her research, but simply discards as evidence because it doesn't fit with her theory that limerence is sexual. I will cover this more later, because there is a researcher (Lisa Diamond) who has fashioned a good theory of this in reference to Tennov's material.

Helen Fisher, a love researcher who knew Dorothy Tennov at one point, has commented in a 2024 podcast, having the impression that Tennov "was sick":

"I don't think there is any difference [between romantic love and limerence]. I used to know [Dorothy Tennov] and I guess she wanted to invent a new term, and that was fine. I don't mind that, but I actually like the term of romantic love. Her concept of limerence was a rather sad one. It had a sad component to it. Anyway, she created a new term. It's a perfectly fine term. I could have used it myself. I decided not to because I felt that the term romantic love had meaning in society and I didn't see the need for a new term. But I certainly liked her work. I certainly read her book. I certainly knew her. I admired her. And I didn't happen to adopt the term limerence, but if people want to use it, fine with me. ... My memory of [limerence]—and this is—she wrote that book in 1979, so I—and then she died pretty recently—and she was sick, and even the day that I met her at a conference, she was with her son who she really needed for, I don't know, for emotional or physical support. From my reading of it, she sort of felt that limerence was a somewhat unhealthy experience, that it so overtook you and could lead to some disaster." (Holmes, 2024)

I would concur that Tennov seems like a neurotic person who perhaps changes her opinions from day to day, like this issue that limerence is both love "at its highest and most glorious peak" but also not love.

My overall point bringing this up is that while I personally hold Tennov in high regard, she's also the kind of person who goes back and forth on things quite a bit and can't always explain herself to people. Readers need to be aware of this when trying to interpret her material. Dorothy Tennov just doesn't always make sense and some of what she says simply should not be taken seriously.

Note that Fisher forgets Tennov's name briefly in that podcast, but Fisher is almost as old as Joe Biden, and she was dying of cancer (Sandomir, 2022). Fisher and Tennov have appeared together in magazine articles (Oprah, 2002; The Gadsden Times, 2007). They did obviously know each other.

Fisher and Tennov had been corresponding in the 1990s (Fisher, 1998, p. 32: "personal communication 1997"; Tennov, 2005, p. 28), which they have both separately commented on. Fisher considers "limerence" to be synonymous with her idea of "romantic love" or "passionate love" (according to her theory—see Fisher, 1998; Fisher et al. 2002), but Tennov thinks Fisher is misunderstanding her.

In Fisher's writing, not only does she say she's talking about limerence (e.g. Fisher, 1998; Fisher, 2016, pp. 20–23, 35), but it's also often plainly obvious that she is based on her writing alone:

Romantic love begins as an individual starts to regard another individual as special and unique. The lover then focuses his/her attention on the beloved, aggrandizing the beloved's worthy traits and overlooking or minimizing his/her flaws. The lover expresses increased energy, ecstasy when the love affair is going well and mood swings into despair during times of adversity. Adversity and barriers heighten romantic passion, what has been referred to as ‘frustration attraction’ (Fisher 2004). The lover suffers ‘separation anxiety’ when apart from the beloved and a host of sympathetic nervous system reactions when with the beloved, including sweating and a pounding heart. Lovers are emotionally dependent; they change their priorities and daily habits to remain in contact with and/or impress the beloved. Smitten humans also exhibit empathy for the beloved; many are willing to sacrifice, even die for this ‘special’ other. The lover expresses sexual desire for the beloved, as well as intense sexual possessiveness, mate guarding. Yet the lover's craving for emotional union supersedes his/her craving for sexual union with the beloved. Most characteristic, the lover thinks obsessively about the beloved, ‘intrusive thinking’. Rejected lovers first experience a phase of protest, during which they try to win back the beloved and often feel abandonment rage; then they move into the second stage of rejection, associated with resignation and despair. Romantic love is also involuntary, difficult to control and generally impermanent. (Fisher et al., 2006)

Fisher believes limerence is a brain system for mate choice, an aspect of sexual selection, for focusing energy on a potential mating partner (Fisher et al., 2002; Fisher et al., 2006). In Anatomy of Love (pp. 20–23), Fisher credits Tennov's research as the beginning of research on the phenomenon she means to study.

I also talked to Fisher about this in an email in 2024: "Yes, limerence is just another term for romantic love. That’s why I never used that term. Damn, I wish I could get involved. O my. Thanks again for alerting me to this. cheers, H". Fisher could not help me with my work on limerence because she was dying and wanted to finish her last book.

I honestly believe that Fisher did understand Tennov and just thought she was being overly pedantic. In this article I will address whether or not "limerence" is really supposed to be a synonym for "passionate" or "romantic" love. We will see that Fisher and Tennov are both kind of correct here. Tennov seems to be correct that there are actually multiple ways to experience love feelings (e.g. Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Acevedo et al., 2011), but Fisher's viewpoint is also valid here that limerence is in fact passionate love. If there's really a difference between limerence and passionate love, it's very pedantic.

Note that in this article I try not to use the term "romantic love" because of its many connotations (Tallis, 2005; Karandashev, 2017). Fisher considers "romantic" and "passionate" love synonymous (in her theory) and I tend to use the term "passionate love" to refer to this construct in this article. There is an extended discussion of this later.

Limerence is actually adaptive?

Bellamy (2025, pp. 94–97; also Pinker, 2009, pp. 414–419, 500–501, 641, using "romantic love") argues that limerence can be explained using the handicap principle. This principle states that a real signal can only evolve if it's too expensive to fake. If a signal is too easy to fake, then fakers become so common that the real signal becomes worthless. In this view, limerence leaves a person so "insanely besotted", "like handcuffing oneself to railroad tracks" to prove one's love is truly real, signaling true commitment.

Fisher (2016, pp. 19–20, 33, 35, 41, 131–133, 138, 151, 236) believes that limerence evolved so that fathers would stay with mothers to provide them resources while pregnant and caring for an infant.

Why does limerence seem maladaptive today? Because extreme early commitment is only desirable in a certain kind of culture. Tennov was doing her research at the end of the baby boom, when marriage rates were high, when the average age of marriage was extremely low, and consequently there was a corresponding rise in divorce:

By the 1960s marriage had become nearly universal in North America and Western Europe, with 95% of all persons marrying, as people married younger, life spans lengthened, and divorce rates fell or held steady. This was a unique period in Western history when marriage provided the context for every piece of most people's lives. The norm of youthful marriage was so predominant during the 1950s that an unmarried woman as young as twenty-one might worry that she would end up an "old maid." Many men and women enjoyed the experience of courting their own mates, getting married at will, and setting up their own households; married couples were independent of extended family ties and community groups. This was even true for different socioeconomic and ethnic groups (Coontz 2005, pp. 226–228). So when instability of the love-based marriage reasserted itself in the 1970s, people were surprised.

The age of marriage rose, yet divorce rates accelerated and doubled between 1966 and 1979. (Karandashev, 2017, pp. 167–168)

This is echoed by Tennov, who attributes this to a possible rise in limerent relationships:

The nineteenth century saw a romantic revolt against marriages arranged by families, in which the talented or beautiful could be matched with the wealthy, or adjacent lands could be joined by family ties. Indeed, many of the practices which separated the sexes and thus facilitated arranged marriages could be interpreted as aids to the prevention of limerence and, especially, to the prevention of limerence-inspired decisions that disrupt the social order. That divorce should increase, as it has in this century, may be an inevitable consequence of the selection of marriage partners by limerence—not merely because the limerent eye overfocuses on the attractive features of LO, but also because the same logic that says marry where your heart leads also says divorce and remarry where your heart leads. (Tennov, 1999, p. 143)

We can imagine that as there's more and more selection pressure to pair bond as early and as desperately as possible, limerence becomes more and more valuable. (By the way, is this why limerence might be associated with an unhappy childhood?)

Based on the idea that limerence occurs when reciprocation is uncertain (Tennov, 1999, p. 44–47, 56–57; Bellamy, 2025) limerence might be adaptive when falling in love with a person who is on the fence (they might or might not reciprocate) would motivate the limerent person to engage in the legitimate courtship behaviors necessary to further pursue that potential relationship (Tennov, 1999, p. 123; Fisher et al., 2002; Fisher et al., 2006).

However, this type of commitment is not valuable in modern dating culture, where the early stage of a relationship is supposed to be as non-committal is possible, and people are marrying later and later.

Platonic limerence

"Platonic limerence" is a somewhat colloquial term for limerence which is felt without sexual desire. Tennov (1999, pp. 24, 216) describes what seems to be the most common variant of the phenomenon:

There was also on occasional tale of a limerent-like reaction toward an older woman by a younger woman who otherwise considered herself heterosexual. ... It may be that these instances of "hero worship" differed from limerence in important respects that I could not then identify. (Tennov, 1999, p. 216)

This is possible because romantic love co-opted the brain systems for mother-infant bonding (Bode, 2023; Diamond, 2003). Lisa Diamond (2003, 2004) has argued this makes sense because a parent must be able to bond with a child of either sex, so romantic love must have evolved independent of sexual orientation. Diamond (2008, 2012) has also argued that sexual orientation works differently for men and women so this is more common in women.

Another similar phenomenon has been called a "smash" (Diamond, 2003):

. . . an extraordinary habit which [schoolgirls] have of falling violently in love with each other, and suffering all the pangs of unrequited attachment, desperate jealousy etc. etc., with as much energy as if one of them were a man. . . . If the “smash” is mutual, they monopolize each other & “spoon” continually, & sleep together & lie awake all night talking instead of going to sleep. (Sahli, 1979, p. 22)

Diamond's theory of romantic love without sexual desire was developed in reference to Tennov's research:

[M]ost researchers acknowledge a distinction between the earlier "passionate" stage of love, sometimes called "limerence" (Tennov, 1979), and the later-developing "companionate" stage of love ... Although it may be easy to imagine sexual desire without romantic love, the notion of "pure," "platonic," or "nonsexual" romantic love is somewhat more controversial. Yet empirical evidence indicates that sexual desire is not a prerequisite for romantic love, even in its earliest, passionate stages. Many men and women report having experienced romantic passion in the absence of sexual desire (Tennov, 1979) ... (Diamond, 2004)

Tennov (1979) found that infatuation was characterized by intense desires for proximity and physical contact, resistance to separation, feelings of excitement and euphoria when receiving attention and affection from the partner, fascination with the partner's behavior and appearance, extreme sensitivity to his or her moods and signs of interest, and intrusive thoughts of the partner. ... Tennov's (1979) exhaustive study of infatuation found that 61% of women and 35% of men reported experiencing infatuation without feeling "any need for sex" (p. 74). (Diamond, 2003)

From the perspective of Diamond's theory, a case like Wyant (2021) who reports this "hero worship" phenomenon (love addiction or love madness for an older woman, as if they are an attachment figure) is no different from typical "romantic" limerence, because Wyant is a woman. Or, at least, it requires no additional explanation. Diamond believes women can more easily become infatuated with other women.

As mentioned earlier, Tennov (1999) simply discards the evidence of platonic limerence because it doesn't fit her theory, stating that "Despite those few exceptions, I am inclined toward the generalization that sexual attraction is an essential component of limerence." (p. 24) and also "limerence is sexual because the limerent object is always desired as a sex partner" (p. x). The theory by Bode (2023) is a more modern revision of how this may actually work. Sexual desire is considered "causally linked adjunct", a system which interacts with core romantic love components but which has a separate evolutionary history.

How is a "limerence disorder" supposed to be defined?

As mentioned by several authors above (Aron & Aron, Money, Tallis), limerence can become distracting and debilitating over time. Langeslag (2025, unpublished study) found that 93% of a survey of internet communities wished they experienced less limerence, and that participants "were bothered by this frequent thinking about the limerence object".

Money (1998, pp. 132–133) uses the term "lovesickness", which he defines as a result of unrequited limerence:

In the case of a college student, he/she can't get out of bed on time, can't keep on schedule for class instruction, can't concentrate on studying, can't finish assignments, and can't halt failing grades, but mopes around alone, too often unable to socialize, and falls into tears if trying to account for what has gone wrong. Among college and university students, lovesickness of this incapacitating type is a good candidate for the syndrome that most frequently escapes diagnosis. It has no officially recognized name, and is not listed in textbooks or diagnostic manuals. Without a diagnosis, it has no recognized prognosis or form of treatment. It is subject to misdiagnosis, for example, as depression. (Money, 1998, p. 133)

"Lovesickness" is also a term used by Tennov:

When that one person [LO] 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. (Tennov, 1998, p. 79)

From these authors (Tennov, Money, Langeslag), we can identify the general symptoms:

Thoughts cannot be turned off and on at will as can most thoughts.
Wishing to experience less limerence.
Being bothered by frequent thinking about an LO.
Inability to concentrate or attend to life duties.

One central issue here is how this syndrome relates to a concept like "passionate love" or "infatuation", or even how it relates to Tennov's component listing on pages 23–24 of Love and Limerence.

Some (e.g. Wakin & Vo, 2008) have argued that limerence is not love, but rather "like OCD". I have also seen many Reddit commenters who believe limerence is OCD. However, Langeslag (2025) found that self-report limerence ratings in fact correlated with ratings on the Infatuation and Attachment Scales (Langeslag et al., 2012), demonstrating that people experiencing unwanted limerence are in fact experiencing romantic love for their LO. This refutes the idea that limerence is "OCD", or unrelated to being in love.

Bellamy (2025) argues this is not OCD, but rather a result of reward system over-sensitization. Reactions and behavioral habits can become essentially automatic after a transition to addiction. The egodystonic aspect may be explained by the phenomenon of "wanting" versus "liking" (Bellamy, 2025, Fisher et al., 2016) and also incentive salience "wanting" versus more cognitive wanting (Berridge et al., 2009).

In the rest of this article, I am going to refer to this syndrome as "OCD lovesickness" as a short-hand recognizing it as an egodystonic obsession and distinguishing it from other concepts, but being aware that this is not actually a type of OCD. It's a kind of love addiction, but it ought to be distinguished from other kinds of love addictions (explained later—particularly stalking addiction).

Note that I do not believe it would be very useful for "limerence" to appear in the DSM. Rather, this is covered by proposed concepts like lovesickness (Tallis, 2005) or love addiction (Bellamy, 2025; Reynaud et al., 2010). There is already an academic discussion of whether love addiction is a disorder; the issue is that ethicists and other academics do not have an agreement on definitions and surrounding philosophy (Reynaud et al., 2010; Earp et al., 2017). This is why there is no DSM entry which OCD lovesickness would properly fall under, not because limerence is being ignored by academics. The reasons that there is little research on OCD lovesickness are that there is limited research on unrequited love (Bringle et al., 2013) and that research has not investigated all the mechanisms of love addictions (Bode & Kushnick, 2021; Earp et al., 2017).

The comparison between limerence and OCD comes from mainstream love research (Fisher, 1998; Fisher et al., 2002; Leckman & Mayes, 1999). It is not something Wakin & Vo invented. If you check their bibliography, you can see them citing the paper by Leckman & Mayes (1999), as well as a paper by Dixie Meyer (2007) on SSRIs which cites Helen Fisher's material. Fisher is one of the actual progenitors of this theory, as well as the serotonin and SSRI theory of obsessive thinking (Fisher & Thomson, 2006, but see Bode et al., 2025, who do not think the serotonin theory is true anymore, based on an SSRI study). Tennov & Fisher can be seen together, comparing limerence to OCD in magazine articles in 2002 & 2007.

Leckman & Mayes (1999) and Meyer (2007) in Wakin & Vo (2008) bibliography

Also to clarify, because there's confusion over the meaning of "love addiction", some of these mainstream authors are talking about love passion as addiction or a "passionate" love addiction (Fisher et al., 2016; Bolshakova et al., 2020; Reynaud et al., 2010), and also consider limerence among their synonyms for passionate, infatuated or romantic love (Fisher et al., 2002; also see Fisher's comment on Wakin & Vo in USA Today).

Limerence is included in that discussion! There is already an academic discussion of whether limerence can be considered a disorder, or ought to be included in the DSM.

Limerence as a love style

Tennov (1998, 2001, 2005) defines limerence in terms of an "algorithm" or set of "laws". Limerence starts before a relationship, and may take one of four pathways, largely depending on the LO's behavior:

all hope of reciprocation is ended, so that limerence ends.
the limerent person enters a relationship with the LO, and limerence ends if reciprocation is adequate.
limerence is "transferred" to a different LO.
unrequited limerence turns into OCD lovesickness, probably usually when reinforcement occurs which is spurious and/or intermittent (Bellamy, 2025).

The mechanics of this are explained more in the limerence Wikipedia article.

This definition of limerence may be understood as a "love style" or type of "love story", similar to or the same as John Alan Lee's concept of the mania love style (Lee, 1973; Tallis, 2005, pp. 41–43, 93; Feeney & Noller, 1990).

How limerence compares to other types of love

To be in the state of limerence is to feel what is usually termed "being in love." (Tennov, 1999, p. 16) Experientially, it is a state of being "in love." (Tennov, 2005, p. 311) The condition is commonly referred to as "being in love", "romantic love", or "passionate love". Those terms may also refer to states other than the state identified as "limerence". (Tennov, 2005, p. 14)

Yet, Tennov does not usually attempt to explain what the other ways to be in love actually are, aside from what she identifies as "affectional bonding", but other ways have been identified by other research.

Limerence should not be contrasted with "being in love" (as if "being in limerence" and "being in love" are different things), because there actually seems to be quite a few—at least two or three—other ways to experience love feelings besides limerence. Rather, limerence is one of at least several.

To understand if limerence is different from passionate love, we have to first define "passionate love", which makes it necessary to explain all of this. (We will see that if there is any difference at all between limerence and passionate love, the difference is very pedantic.)

It could be sufficient here to consider limerence the same as Lee's mania and contrast it with Lee's typology (which was based on a scientific study—Lee, 1973; also see Karandashev, 2022 for public article), but instead I'm going to present a slightly modified version of Lee's typology which is more useful, along with some brief arguments for why this is correct.

Limerence: involves falling madly in love or being smitten before you have a relationship, and then having to try to get into one. Limerence turns into a lovesickness or love addiction if it goes on for too long when unrequited. Salience is intensified by intermittent reinforcement from uncertainty of reciprocation (Bellamy, 2025; Sternberg, 1987; Robinson & Berridge, 2025).

Eros: involves falling in love inside a relationship with physical attraction, sex and intimacy, all of which seem to be related to salience from oxytocin activity in reward areas (Lee, 1973; Bode & Kavanaugh, 2023; Love, 2015; Scheele et al., 2013; Acevedo et al., 2020). According to Lee (1973, pp. 35, 43, 45), typical eros lovers are in search of a physical appearance they consider ideal, but they're self-assured not to fall in love until they actually get into a relationship. Lee (1973) associates eros with love at first sight based on recalled self-reports, but research has shown this recollection might be a memory confabulation (Zsok et al., 2017). Oxytocin enhances physical attractiveness of a partner (Scheele et al., 2013).

Self-expansion: is the idea that people have a basic drive to expand their self-concept, and that incorporating the traits of their partner is a source of romantic feelings. Self-expansion has been shown to correlate with love feelings and brain activity (Emery et al., 2025; Acevedo et al., 2011; Sheets, 2013; Tsapelas et al., 2020), so it does seem to actually be another source of attraction and "falling" in love. Falling in love with a person because they're interesting or admirable (rather than physically attractive) would be explained by self-expansion.

Practical friendship: does not involve "falling" in love, but rather a kind of friendship love with low passion. Lee (1973) splits this into two love styles: storge and pragma, but Graham (2010) found these to be the same or related in a factor analysis. Practical friendship involves a committed sexual relationship with somebody that you're not "in love" with, because they meet some other criteria. They might be a good friend, or you think they're a good parent, or they might just have resources you want.

Ludus: game-playing and juggling multiple partners (Lee, 1973). This is different from "hooking up" because a ludic lover has "girlfriends" or "boyfriends", but they just never like to get too close to any one person.

Compassionate love: is love defined as concern or caring for another person (Berscheid, 2010). This is how Tennov (1999, pp. 15, 71, 130) usually defines the word "love".

Note that here I am using "eros" in a way reminiscent of Lee's eros love style. In other contexts, "eros" might refer to other things. For example, de Rougemont (1983) uses "eros" to refer to a kind of ideology of love passion, which he contrasts with "agape" for Christian love. There are few (if any) terms in the literature on love which are not at least a little bit polysemous.

Limerence, eros and self-expansion involve "falling in love" and "being in love", but note that these are not necessarily mutually exclusive either. For example, both eros and self-expansion can turn into limerence. Limerence with a powerful physical attraction is called "manic eros" in Lee's (1973) expanded typology, and self-expansion is believed by Aron & Aron (1986, p. 59) to be one cause for limerence. According to Tennov (1999, 2001), limerence can also occur inside relationships if there is inadequate reciprocation. Two studies (Feeney & Noller, 1990; Wolf, 2017) have also found association between limerence and compassionate love as measured by the agape love attitude (selfless, all-giving love). This accords with Tennov (1999, p. 120) that "In fully developed limerence, you feel additionally what is, in other contexts as well, called love—an extreme degree of feeling that you want LO to be safe, cared for, happy, and all those other positive and noble feelings".

Tennov's descriptions of affectional bonding may actually correspond to any of eros, self-expansion or practical friendship.

One of the issues with trying to define a love taxonomy like this is that the prevalence of love styles in a society are always a moving target due to cultural practices (Tennov, 1999, p. 175; Karandashev, 2017; Lee, 1998). Some of the more friendship-oriented styles seem to have emerged in the 20th century, probably with the advent of modern dating and feminism (Karandashev, 2017; Giddens, 2000). Before this, people were still free to choose marriage partners in recent centuries, but courtship practices were different (Karandashev, 2017). Another example was during the Middle Ages, when eros was suppressed by the church so that marriages tended to be practical or arranged (pragma) while limerence (mania) was idealized in courtly love literature (Lee, 1974) because limerence cannot be suppressed altogether. For this kind of reason, it's even possible that a taxonomy of love styles has changed since Lee's (1973) research, or that Lee's taxonomy was not quite right because he designed his instrument (the Love Story Card Sort) based on historical writings (Lee, 1977). Hendrick & Hendrick (1993) e.g. believed the prevalence of friendship love in their study was recent.

A soft argument for the social construction of love styles (Lee, 1998) is as simple as accepting the proposition that culture restricts behavior, that behavior leads to situations, and situations cause mental states: culture→behavior→situations→mental states. This should be an easy proposition to accept. Tennov (1999, pp. 175, 263–264) clearly accepts a proposition like this. I explained earlier as well how a limerent person might be more or less likely to get into a relationship with an LO based on cultural factors.

There are actually still yet some other types of love styles (or ways to be "in love"), but those listed above are likely the most common nowadays. Hendrick & Hendrick (1993) found that Lee's mania was quite rare in a study of people inside relationships, so this suggests to me that Tennov's limerence (which usually occurs outside relationships) is the more common occurrence than mania—when mania is interpreted as a type of relationship as the Hendricks do. Lee (1975) considered mania the same as courtly love, which is actually like limerence (Tallis, 2005, p. 93). It is also possible that some cases of limerence were (mis)classified as eros by the coders in Hendrick & Hendrick, 1993.

Limerence can be understood as a kind of statistical mode (or most common case) of what falling in love outside of a relationship is like. This is evidenced by Tennov's assertions that limerence is normal and at least relatively common. Tennov (1999, 2005) interviewed 500 people and the pattern emerged as a fairly common one. It's important here that limerence is in fact intended as a love style which turns into a lovesickness that's potentially distressing and debilitating, but it's intended as the "normal" or most common case of this. Another similar (Reis & Sprecher, 2009) romantic love style is that of "obsessive love" or "obsessive love disorder", which Tennov (1999, p. 90, 2005, p. 314) contends is a limerence "augmented and distorted" by other psychiatric conditions if it's limerence at all. Tennov (2005, pp. 314, 371) claims to have no data in her database on whether limerence is related to increased violence and is not sure if a Fatal Attraction case qualifies under the definition of limerence. This will be discussed more later.

I would also further add here the research on brain opioids (Bode, 2023, Machin & Dunbar, 2011) which constitute "liking" or pleasure and seem to be involved with romantic love, but very little is known about this based on the research available. Acevedo et al. (2011) found an area of the brain which they identified as a hedonic hotspot (with opiate receptors) active in fMRI scans of participants who claimed to be "madly" in love but were actually not obsessed with their partners. Brain opioids seem to me to correspond to the concept of "affection", as yet another type of love feeling.

Some people think that limerence is supposed to be distinguished from "falling in love", yet there are many ways to fall in love besides limerence. It's only that one might be preferred over another, but which one is preferred? I do not personally prefer limerence, yet according to Tennov (2005), limerence is in fact preferred by some, even being considered the "greatest happiness". Tom Bellamy claims to have married his LO, and they are still married (Bellamy, 2023).

Is "passionate love" a synonym for limerence?

As already mentioned, Tennov is complaining that "passionate love" is used both to refer to limerence, but also to some other ways of being in love. There are actually two contentions here. One is an issue of whether eros (as defined above) or self-expansion ought to be called "passionate love"; the other is an issue that "passionate love" refers both to limerence (before a relationship) and to the "infatuation" period which might occur inside a committed relationship.

Bode & Kavanaugh (2025) identified a group who seemed to fall intensely in love after their relationship began. Something important to underscore is that an infatuation period like this (which might be described as a "rollercoaster" of emotions) may function identically according to the neuroscience of limerence and uncertainty theory (Tennov, 1999; Bellamy, 2025) as far as anyone knows in this literature. Bajoghli et al. (2014) found people in this stage of their relationship were not always having a good time. Passionate love in this early stage may be related to insecurities in the relationship (Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Dugan et al., 2024; Poore, 2009; Poore et al., 2012; Bellamy, 2025). Livingston (1980) published a theory of uncertainty inside relationships which Sternberg (1987) likened to Tennov's theory of limerence.

Brief history of the modern "passionate love" idea

In 1988 Elaine Hatfield published a book chapter "Passionate and Companionate Love" in which she considers a litany of constructs synonymous under "being in love", and this more general idea became standard in academic love research (Tallis, 2005, pp. 47–48); however, this combining of all love feelings into "passionate love" is called into question by later research (Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Graham, 2010; Acevedo et al., 2011). Passionate-companionate love theory had been described in earlier works (e.g. Hatfield & Walster, 1985), but the 1988 book chapter is the first writing I'm aware of which contains this kind of word vomit of terms being associated based on only theoretical concerns which then became common in later works (e.g. Fisher et al., 2002; Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Berscheid, 2010).

The issue is plainly apparent in the original text of the book chapter, to anyone familiar with this.

In the literature, a recurring distinction is made between two types of love—passionate love (sometimes termed "puppy love," "a crush," "lovesickness," "obsessive love," "infatuation," or "being in love") versus companionate love (sometimes termed "true love") ... Researchers have labeled these two types of love in various ways—passionate versus companionate love (Hatfield & Walster, 1978), romantic versus conjugal love (Burgess, 1926), eros/mania versus storge/pragma (Lee, 1977), unreasonable versus unreasonable love (Lilar, 1965), and deficiency love versus being love (Maslow, 1954).

In this chapter, we will use the terms passionate love and companionate love to designate the two basic types. Hatfield and Walster (1978) define passionate love this way: "A state of intense longing for union with another. Reciprocated love (union with the other) is associated with fulfillment and ecstasy. Unrequited love (separation) with emptiness, anxiety, or despair. A state of profound physiological arousal" (p. 9). Companionate love is defined as "the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined" (p. 9). Companionate love has been described as involving friendship, understanding, and a concern for the welfare of the other (Safilios-Rothschild, 1977).

Tennov (1979) interviewed more than five hundred passionate lovers. Almost all lovers took it for granted that passionate love (which Tennov labels "limerence") is a bittersweet experience. (Hatfield, 1988, pp. 191, 197)

Something to note here is that because storge & pragma do not explicitly involve love feelings (Graham, 2010), the consideration of "eros/mania versus storge/pragma" in this text would make passionate-companionate a distinction of "being in love" versus friendship, not a distinction of infatuation versus attachment. This is a problem in love research taxonomies, because many other authors consider passionate-companionate synonymous with infatuation-attachment (e.g. Langeslag, 2024; Diamond, 2003) which is actually different. Storge/pragma may also not necessarily involve deep affection.

All these different types of love do not actually line up very neatly. Passionate-companionate love can be thought of as more of a general classification, rather than a scientific theory. "The terms passionate and companionate are intentionally broad headings" (Tallis, 2005, p. 47). It can be useful to quickly convey to a layperson a distinction between "being in love" and the kind of friendship love more common in the later stage of a relationship, but it really starts to lose its usefulness once there's a need to understand more explicit mechanics.

Acevedo & Aron (2009) showed that the instrument designed by Elaine Hatfield (the Passionate Love Scale, or PLS) actually measures two distinguishable types of love feelings: obsessive and non-obsessive. Passionate love with obsession is correlated with relationship satisfaction in short-term relationships, but satisfaction decreases over a longer time-period. This obsession which turns sour inside a relationship is believed to be related to anxious attachment (Graham, 2010; Hendrick & Hendrick, 2006, pp. 156–157; Bellamy, 2025). Acevedo & Aron (2009) and Acevedo et al. (2011) also showed that love feelings without obsession can sustain long-term.

PLS Obsession: "Sometimes I feel I can't control my thoughts; they are obsessively on ____."
PLS Obsession: "An existence without ____ would be dark and dismal."
PLS Obsession: "I get extremely depressed when things don't go right in my relationship with ____."
PLS Non-obsession: "I want ____—physically, emotionally, and mentally."
PLS Non-obsession: "For me, ____ is the perfect romantic partner."
PLS Non-obsession: "____ can make me feel effervescent and bubbly."

On pages 209–210 of Love and Limerence, Tennov uses a survey question "I was (am) terrible afraid that ____ would stop loving me." (p. 212) to estimate the prevalence of limerence, which is actually similar to these questions on the PLS obsession factor. Tennov refers to this as "fear of rejection".

Now, one thing that's complicated to understand with love research instruments is that they do not line up neatly with each other. The issues are acknowledged, but I have not seen anyone give a clear explanation, so I will try to give my own as briefly as possible.

In Robert Vallerand's dualistic model of passion (Ratelle et al., 2012; Paquette et al., 2020), a person experiencing "harmonious" passion feels positive and in control, whereas a person experiencing "obsessive" passion feels a loss of control and interference with their life. Ratelle et al. (2012) extended this with a measure of harmonious and obsessive passion in relationships, for example:

Obsessive: "My mood depends on whether I can see my partner."
Obsessive: "I have almost obsessive feelings for my partner."
Obsessive: "I have difficulty imagining my life without my partner."
Harmonious: "My partner allows me to live memorable experiences."
Harmonious: "I’m completely carried away by my relationship with my partner."
Harmonious: "The new things that I discover within our relationship allows me to appreciate my partner even more."

We may observe that the PLS obsession factor resembles obsessive passion, and the PLS non-obsession factor resembles harmonious passion. Another similar distinction (Paquette et al., 2020; Acevedo & Aron, 2009) is between the Love Attitudes Scale subscales for mania (obsessive) and eros (harmonious). So there are several instruments with this type of distinction. Another instrument with a measure of harmonious passion is the Triangular Love Scale (TLS), but the TLS does not measure obsessive passion.

Graham (2010) found that harmonious passion (TLS passion & LAS eros) actually lined up in a factor analysis with TLS intimacy & commitment, suggesting they're all related. Also, the TLS intimacy items seem to measure the same thing as Langeslag et al.'s (2012) attachment items. Graham found LAS mania lined up on a separate obsession factor. (In Graham's study, the entire PLS lined up with harmonious passion, but Graham did not consider PLS obsession and non-obsession separately. If Graham had considered the PLS factors separately, the obsession factor would have obviously aligned with LAS mania.)

Overall, what we know here is that there are at least two things: harmonious love feelings which are related to intimacy/attachment, and obsessive or passionate love feelings which are different. However, this distinction is somewhat different from passionate-companionate love as originally posited by Hatfield (1988), because harmonious love feelings involve actual love feelings (of a particularly positive kind). One interpretation is that harmonious love is neither passionate nor companionate but rather something in between (unidentified by Hatfield in 1988); another interpretation is that harmonious love is companionate love, and companionate love can involve strong love feelings rather than friendship. This is a semantic problem which nobody has resolved yet.

These love feelings without obsession (harmonious, intimacy/attachment) are being regarded as core love feelings. Acevedo & Aron (2009) refer to this as "romantic love", although this is semantic drift because "romantic love" has other very different connotations (read Tallis, 2005, ch. 4). It's just "love" or "attachment", but it's possible that this also involves a bit of some kind of infatuation (see Langeslag et al., 2012). It could be called "harmonious love" according to Vallerand's idea.

However, with a consideration of the history and etymology of "love passion" and "passionate love", the idea of a harmonious "love passion" appears to be a misnomer.

What is "love passion", really?

Berscheid & Walster (1974, p. 359, i.e. Hatfield) say that passion is a "hodgepodge of conflicting emotions", and believe that unpleasant emotional experiences are facilitators of passion. This text (a tentative theory of passionate love) also has a review of the Romeo and Juliet effect, cited by Tennov (1999, p. 56). Hatfield & Walster (1985, pp. 58, 103–105) also believe that suffering and inconsistency intensify passion, with an early theory of intermittent reinforcement and maltreatment (essentially like trauma bonding, before it was given a name). The limerence community is aware of this idea, but unaware that Hatfield is the first one to publish a theory of it, before Tennov. (A New Look at Love is also in Tennov's bibliography.) In other words, this has been around for awhile, and it is part of passionate love theory.

Observers disagree, passionately, about the types of emotional experiences that are most likely to fuel passion. Most insist that passionate love is inexorably intertwined with joy and fulfillment. A few insist that passionate love and agony are virtually synonymous. (Indeed, the original meaning of passion was agony—as in Christ's passion.) Social psychologists would argue that both intense join and intense suffering can contribute to passion. Both intensely joyous and intensely painful experiences are physiologically arousing: reassurance, sexual pleasure, challenge, and excitement are arousing, as are anxiety, fear, frustration, jealousy, anger, and total confusion. Under the right conditions, both joy and anguish should have the potential for deepening passion. (Hatfield & Walster, 1985, p. 58)

This is more formalized by Hatfield (1988) in her component listing (similar to Tennov's) with "positive feelings when things go well"/"negative feelings when things go awry". Later, this is conceptualized as a motivational state which produces different emotions depending on the context (Aron et al., 2005; Bode & Kushnick, 2021; Langeslag, 2024).

Poore (2009) is the first author to relate this (and limerence theory) to reward prediction error (RPE), before Bellamy (2025). Very briefly, RPE is the dopamine signal indicating whether a received reward is either better, equal to, or worse than expected, rather than a reward per se (Schultz, 2000; Schultz, 2022). For reference, Poore (2009, abstract, p. x) considers "romantic passion" as "a.k.a. attachment anxiety", although I think Bellamy's (2025) analysis is more comprehensive.

Poore (2009, 2012) found that attachment security reversals of expectations cause reward prediction error signaling in the brain which is consistent with limerence theory (Bellamy, 2025). The current theory is that these attachment-reciprocal-related events intensify incentive salience ("wanting") via intermittent reinforcement of perceiving either reciprocation or not (Tennov, 1999, pp. 44–47; Tennov, 1998; Tennov, 2001; Bellamy, 2025; Robinson & Berridge, 2025). Poore's participants were not explicitly experiencing passionate love, but the experiment is important because if the result had been negative it would have likely falsified limerence theory.

Other evidence and a comprehensive theory that passionate love involves the attachment system is reviewed by Bode & Kushnick (2021) and Bode (2023). Hazan & Shaver (1987) have been saying this kind of thing for awhile, but without a formalized theory such as those synthesized by Poore (2009) or Bellamy (2025); however, according to Bellamy's (2025, pp. pp. 70–72, 86, back cover) newer analysis, limerence (passionate love) is a unique state which is different from the anxious attachment style. The tendency for anxiously-attached individuals to experience limerence (passionate love) more often (Bellamy, 2025) might be explained by different mentalizing (Fonagy, 2023) which is one possible avenue connecting attachment style to uncertainty theory.

Note that limerence seems to begin, however, for other reasons. Tennov (1999) talks about an initial focus on an LO's "admirable qualities" (p. 44), which may be physical attraction (p. 45). Berscheid & Walster (1974, p. 358) and Hatfield & Walster (1985, p. 58) discuss the importance of a rewarding fantasy, and several authors (Freud, Reik; Hatfield & Walster, 1985, p. 59) believe unhappiness and emotional deprivation is a vulnerability. Aron & Aron (1986, p. 59) believe the potential for self-expansion is a component. According to Tennov (1999, pp. 44–47), uncertain reciprocation goes on to intensify the reaction.

The idea that an "obsessive thinking system" (Bode, 2023) is related to attachment anxiety and addiction (which are related, according to the above arguments) may be a substantial improvement over the older idea of serotonin (ala Fisher et al., 2002). See Bode et al. (2025) for a modern revision of the evidence on serotonin. Bode found that SSRI use had no association with frequency of obsessive thinking. As a different theoretical basis, I would suggest Tallis (2005, p. 79), who wrote that obsessive thinking "ensures that the loved one is not forgotten" (...to prevent separation?), and additionally Tennov (1999, p. 247) wrote that fantasy (based in reality) "can be conceived as intricate strategy planning" (...for reward?).

Historically, "passionate love" has been used to refer to limerence. Stendhal wrote in French, using l'amour-passion (Singer, 2009, p. xxii), translated as "passion-love" (Rougemont, 1983, p. 224) or "passionate love" (Tennov, 1999, p. 29). Stendhal's writing (De l'Amour) was the first substantial work on limerence, according to Tennov (1999, p. 171). Denis de Rougemont (1983; originally 1939) was a Swiss author who wrote in French, and also translated into English as "passionate love". De Rougemont wrote about limerence, essentially with the complaint that it breaks up marriages: "And yet actually passionate love is a misfortune. In this respect manners have undergone no change for centuries, and the community still drives passionate love in nine cases out of ten to take the form of adultery." (p. 16). Passionate love, according to de Rougemont, is a kind of "love of death" requiring obstruction (cf. Tennov, 1999, p. 56): "The most serious obstruction is thus the one preferred above all. It is the one most suited to intensifying passion. At this extreme, furthermore, the wish to part assumes an emotional value greater than that of passion itself. Death, in being the goal of passion, kills it." (p. 44). De Rougemont is quoted in Love and Limerence (p. 15): "being in love ... is a state; the other [love as concern], an act, and an act is chosen, not something merely endured." Arthur Schopenhauer was translated (1958) as "passionate love" discussing suicide (p. 532), "and adultery is committed recklessly when passionate love, in other words the interest of the species, has taken possession of them" (p. 552).

I do not know enough about the history of the term to know how closely it's linked to limerence before Elaine Hatfield's writings, that is, how often it was used to refer to the kind of phenomenon I've described here versus other things. Tennov's complaint (e.g. 2005, p. 14) is that sometimes these terms refer to limerence, but sometimes they don't. What I mean to convey here is what I think is the "true" intended meaning of "love passion". Johnson (2013, pp. 147–148; originally, 1983) states that "Suffering seems to be an inseparable part of romance ... Even our word passion originally meant 'to suffer.' ... 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 romance impossible in the physical world, many of the archetypal lovers, like Romeo and Juliet, choose to die together."

The use of "passionate love" to refer to the infatuation or honeymoon period of a relationship seems to be a recent thing, possibly originating from Elaine Hatfield's passionate-companionate love theory. It seems to me that Hatfield construed passionate love as the only way to be "in love". From her writings, she was obviously writing about something like limerence. Several authors have noted the similarity (Aron & Aron, 1986, pp. 58–59; Tallis, 2005, p. 48). In other words, Hatfield understood what limerence was when she read the book. It was the other ways to be "in love" that she actually didn't know about. Some authors around this period (Fisher as well) seem to have construed limerence as "true love" because of its intensity, probably according to a romantic belief structure (see Tallis, 2005, ch. 4). Because of that, they would have assumed reciprocated love must resemble limerence when it's a "true love". The fact that harmonious love is actually different was only revealed by later research (Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Acevedo et al., 2011).

At first glance, readers might now think to themselves that "if passionate love is the result of an insecure attachment, then it must not be love"; however, consider that all romantic love according to the broadest definition is mother-infant bonding (Bode & Kushnick, 2021; Bode, 2023), and that romantic love is not necessarily dyadic, social, or interpersonal (Langeslag, 2024). A mother ought to love her baby even if it's unrequited; rather, even if a mother is rejected by her baby, perhaps the mother ought to love her baby all the more. This makes it seem that passionate and unrequited love have always been a potential way to be in love, for as long as being in love has existed. According to Pismenny (2020), romantic love is essentially amoral.

Tennov (2005, pp. 327, 337, 339, 343) considers that "Reports of first limerence occurring later in life leads to the speculation that a universal potential (proximate mechanism) exists that is not always triggered into action." and that the Westermarck effect (childhood intimacy with a person prevented adult limerence for that person) "is consistent with the idea that limerence is a human universal rather than the result of a culture 'saturated' with romantic love in its stories and songs." We can also safely assume that unrequited love is a normal human experience. One study found that 92.8% of participants reported at least one "powerful or moderate" experience of unrequited love in the past 5 years (Baumeister et al., 1993) and another study found that unrequited love was four times more frequent than equal love (Bringle et al., 2013). Jankowiak & Fischer (1992) found reports of romantic (passionate) love in 87% of cultures surveyed, and among their conditions were "accounts depicting personal anguish and longing". The authors state that the lack of reports for the remaining 13% of cultures may have been due to ethnographic oversight, rather than genuine absence. These authors refer to Tennov in their paper.

In an earlier section, I reviewed why/when limerence is adaptive according to several arguments by different authors.

For all these reasons, limerence is not an "attachment disorder" (as some confused authors have believed), but rather a natural consequence of human evolution. Limerence (passionate love) is not necessarily good (Pismenny, 2020), but it's a human universal or near-universal (Tennov, 1998, p. 78; Jankowiak & Fischer, 1992; Fisher, 1998; Fisher, 2016, pp. 20, 33–35; Fisher et al., 2016).

Eros and self-expansion: passionate?

Several different authors have compared the eros-mania distinction with a harmonious-obsessive kind of distinction (Paquette et al., 2020; Acevedo & Aron, 2009) and also a secure-anxious attachment kind of distinction (Karandashev, 2022).

Lee (1973) makes a harmonious-obsessive distinction himself, before this terminology was invented:

Both types of lovers were emotionally upset by early encounters with the beloved, but in eros the emotions were hopeful anticipation and delight, while in mania they were emotions of hesitation and self-doubt. Eros and mania also shared intense preoccupation with the beloved, but in eros the thoughts were optimistic, while manic lovers went half way to meet trouble. (Lee, 1973, p. 93)

One of the impediments to understanding this from a scientific perspective is the principle instrument being used to measure Lee's love styles, the Love Attitudes Scale (LAS). The LAS was designed by Susan & Clyde Hendrick and differs from Lee's instrument (Love Story Card Sort) because the LAS uses Likert-type rating scales. Lee originally criticized the LAS as being insufficient to measure love styles, but later conceded this argument to the Hendricks (Hendrick & Hendrick, 2006).

The modern idea of what the LAS measures might lead one to actually side with Lee's original contention in this dispute. In particular, the LAS eros scale seems to measure harmonious love feelings of a kind, rather than Lee's eros love style (Bode & Kowal, 2023; Acevedo et al., 2011; Acevedo et al., 2020). This makes it difficult to assess scientifically whether the eros love style makes for passionate love or not, using the LAS.

Sheets (2013) found that self-expansion correlated the most with LAS eros, but also correlated with LAS mania to a degree. A correlation with just eros would be taken to mean harmonious love, whereas a correlation with both would be taken to mean passionate love according to my reasoning above that passionate love (limerence) involves a degree of what Vallerand calls obsessive passion (Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Hatfield, 1988; Paquette et al., 2020).

Sheets (2013) also found that self-expansion did not correlate with the storge love attitude, which they take to mean that self-expansion is not "companionate love", but this is a semantic confusion in love research literature. "Companionate love" might actually refer either to storge (Sheets, 2013; Hatfield, 1988) or to something like intimacy/commitment in triangular theory (Sternberg, 1986; Graham, 2010; Langeslag et al., 2012). Graham (2010) used a meta-analytic factor analysis to show that storge and intimacy/commitment are different things. Graham also showed that intimacy/commitment aligns with the eros love attitude, making eros seem related to companionate love according to Sternberg's definition. This means that self-expansion also aligns with companionate love according to Sternberg's definition. Again, however, self-expansion also correlated to a degree with LAS mania (Sheets, 2013).

I think it's an open question to what degree eros and self-expansion involve passionate love (the way I've defined it here), but we know from this research that these are primarily harmonious romantic love styles.

I have also sometimes wondered that if the types of rewards are different between these love styles (limerence, eros, self-expansion) then maybe the resultant thoughts and behavioral routines are also different. In other words, people want to repeat that experience which was rewarding (Schultz, 2000; Berridge et al., 2009; Berridge, 2012), so that if the love styles involve different experiences (e.g. perceiving reciprocation, resolving uncertainty, physical attraction, sex, self-expansion, and so on), then they might involve different motivations as well. In that case, it might not make sense to associate them all under one unified definition of a "motivational state" (as in e.g. Aron et al., 2005; Bode & Kushnick, 2021; Langeslag, 2024).

Infatuation stage of a relationship: limerence?

As mentioned before, sometimes people fall intensely in love after their relationship begins (Bode & Kavanaugh, 2025), but this is generally in conflict with Tennov's idea of limerence which according to her most rigorous definitions starts before reciprocation (e.g. Tennov, 1998; Tennov, 2001).

Why does Tennov even define limerence this way at all? By her account, she set out to study lovesickness in individuals, or the aspects of love which produce distress rather than relationships (Tennov, 1999, pp. 6–7; Reed, 1977; Brady, 1990; Tennov, 2005, pp. 28, 370). In other words, she is interested in the causal conditions or behavioral patterns which create this. Principally, this would be falling in love before a relationship. This is the most reasonable explanation for why she's so pedantic about this (e.g. Tennov, 2005, pp. 28, 370). I will get more into why this is actually a useful distinction, but what I want to address here is whether limerence and passionate love are really different mental states or involve different mechanisms. If they are the same, then the difference is a largely semantic distinction between types of situations.

I'm not aware of any studies which can be used to assess directly if the infatuation stage follows the mechanics of limerence theory. Classical limerence theory (e.g. Tennov, 1999, pp. 44–47) involves intensification from uncertain reciprocation. Some relationships do in fact have a component of this (Tennov, 1999, pp. 53–54, 133), and this would be easily explained in terms of the relationship having an anxious attachment style (Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Fraley & Shaver, 2008). Tennov (1999, p. 129) originally believed that mutual limerence required obstacles to a relationship. However, we are especially interested in whether the early period of a healthy (or harmonious) relationship could involve infatuation or love passion which follows the mechanics of limerence theory.

One impediment to point out here is that the measures being used in love research studies make it difficult to understand which studies actually involve people experiencing real passionate love. This issue is known in the love research literature (e.g. Langeslag et al., 2012; Bode & Kowal, 2023; Bode & Kavanaugh, 2025). For example, the PLS is actually not a good measure of passionate love (Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Langeslag et al., 2012). Additionally, although there are many brain scan experiments now of people "in love" (Bode & Kowal, 2023), few have done the rigorous testing necessary to find people really experiencing love passion rather than simply being in the early stage of a relationship and really experiencing some other harmonious or companionate love. Aron et al. (2005) stands out as really having done this type of assessment (described by Fisher et al., 2002) so that we know it's really a passionate love brain scan. We also know from Bianca Acevedo's research (Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Acevedo et al., 2011) that people who are happily in love in the later stage of a relationship are not experiencing passionate love.

It is assumed by authors such as Hatfield (1988) or Fisher et al. (2002) that strong love feelings in the early stage of a relationship are in fact passionate love, but we do not know this for sure. Bode & Kavanaugh (2025) may be the only study which can be used to estimate how common passionate love really is inside a relationship: about 30% or 40% of currently in-love people. Aron et al. (2005) is a passionate love brain scan, but the participants were selected specifically because they were experiencing the state. It would not be assumed based on the assumptions of these authors (Hatfield, 1988; Fisher et al., 2002; Aron et al., 2005) that passionate love is normative. In other words, the idea that passionate love is normative for the early stage of a relationship (and an indicator of "true love") actually comes from a cultural history of idealizing limerence and love passion (Tallis, 2005, ch. 4; Johnson, 2013) rather than a more scientific line of evidence.

A compelling line of scientific evidence here is the number of studies which associate different measures of romantic obsession with attachment anxiety or the anxious attachment style (Feeney & Noller, 1990; Ahmadi et al., 2013; Paquette et al., 2020; Karandashev, 2022; Bellamy, 2025). Other studies have found the early period of a relationship is associated with anxieties (Dugan et al., 2024; Bajoghli et al., 2014). We do know that romantic obsession and attachment anxiety have something to do with each other. This might also involve a type of situation for some people rather than an individual with an anxious style (Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Fraley & Shaver, 2008). People with a secure attachment style can experience limerence (Feeney & Noller, 1990; Bellamy, 2025). Bellamy (2018) also believed (at an early stage of his investigation) that causality can be reversed: "limerence makes us all a little anxious-preoccupied for a specific person for a certain period of time". This makes sense from the perspective of addiction (Bellamy, 2025), if attachment anxiety is interpreted as worry that the "substance" (loved one) will be available.

However, is it possible that infatuation inside a relationship which is ostensibly "secure" (or would develop into a secure relationship over time because the partners are a good match) follows the mechanics of limerence theory? Maybe. If the partners have irregular meetings, for example, this involves intermittent reinforcement (Sternberg, 1987; Bellamy, 2025). If such a meeting falls through, the associated reward prediction error can fuel additional passion (Hatfield & Walster, 1985, pp. 103–105; Poore et al., 2012; Bellamy, 2025).

Sternberg (1987) also compared Tennov's material to a theory developed by Ken Livingston (1980) of how preoccupation in the early period of a relationship corresponds to reducing uncertainty about the future of that relationship:

For example, obtaining the answers to the sorts of questions that arise during the initial phase of a relationship (Does she find me attractive? Would he have dinner with me? and so on) obviously reduces the associated uncertainties and thus, according to the propositions, should change one's experience of the situation, in particular the focus of one's attention upon those initial uncertainties. It is a salient characteristic of such relationships that there are a great many such uncertainties, many of which operate simultaneously. Furthermore, whole subsets of such issues are more or less salient depending up on the success or failure of attempts to resolve prior uncertainties. (Livingston, 1980, p. 140)

To summarize to this point, it is argued that the uncertainties that characterize a relationship of attraction and romantic feeling contribute in major ways to the romantic experience. The general effects of uncertainty are not inconsistent with the components of romantic love discussed earlier, including physiological arousal and relatively greater attention to and conversation with the partner than in other relationships. The latter in particular can be viewed in terms of the exchange of information, especially as it relates to altering subjective probabilities about future outcomes in the relationship. (Livingston, 1980, p. 141)

Livingston's idea is consistent with research I've reviewed previously (e.g. Dugan et al., 2024; Bajoghli et al., 2014; Poore, 2009; Poore et al., 2012). Livingston had no knowledge of the neuroscience, but his theory is comparable to reward prediction error and habituation later laid down in a more technical manner by Bellamy (2025).

Overall, it seems like the research literature on this is consistent with the idea that people who are "madly in love" such as those in Fisher's original brain scan (Fisher et al., 2002; Aron et al., 2005) are experiencing a passionate love comparable to limerence. Fisher and Aron of course believed their brain scans were the same thing as limerence (Fisher et al., 2002; Aron et al., 2005). The profile of an "intense" romantic lover according to Bode & Kavanaugh (2025) makes it sound fairly positive, but this is not necessarily mutually exclusive with the principles of limerence theory. One of the issues with what I've outlined here is that limerence theory (properly understood) is difficult to test scientifically. It cannot be simply assumed that passionate love in the early period of a relationship is necessarily related to the relationship explicitly having an anxious attachment style, although we think this is an intensifier (see e.g. arguments by Bellamy, 2025, pp. 70–72, 86). Some other type of measure has to be proposed to test limerence theory, if something like irregular meetings also intensifies passionate love.

This also makes it seem possible that a relationship which begins with an eros or self-expansion type of attraction can involve a degree of passionate love, but that this love passion is actually related to how the situation plays out, making it kind of incidental. In that case, passionate love would not be construed as an indicator of a "true love", contrary to romantic beliefs (see Tallis, 2005, ch. 4; Reis & Sprecher, 2009). Another possibility is that these other sources of reward and salience (opioids, oxytocin, self-expansion, and so on) are enough to push a person into a kind of obsessive state, but this is actually different from "love passion" the way it was defined earlier. According to Bellamy's (2018) idea that passionate love causes anxious attachment, somebody experiencing an excess of reward (positive reinforcements) might also even begin to experience attachment anxiety afterwards so that they e.g. begin to rate themselves on the PLS obsession factor; however, this causal pathway is somewhat different from what classical limerence theory predicts.

Another issue to acknowledge is the absolute complexity of real situations. Elaine Hatfield's basic idea (Hatfield & Walster, 1985; Hatfield, 1988) was that passionate love is either reciprocated or not, so that if you get into a relationship (reciprocated love) passionate love feels good, and if you don't get into a relationship (unrequited love) passionate love feels bad. This idea is even more formalized in Fisher et al.'s (2016) idea of a "positive addiction" (reciprocated love) versus a "negative addiction" (unrequited, or inappropriate love). Tennov's (1999) research, however, shows this is actually cartoonishly oversimplified, and that people can experience a kind of "reciprocated" love which is distressing. Tennov's (1999, 2001) idea is that a lover can actually reciprocate with a committed relationship, but just not reciprocate in the right way due to a kind of misunderstanding or personality mismatch. This can be further explained in terms of attachment styles which relate to love feelings while not being identical in concept (Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Hendrick & Hendrick, 2006; Bellamy, 2025), but I think that even that is an oversimplification because "attachment style" itself is reductionist. Attachment style can also be a property of the relationship, rather than an individual, and can relate to personality, for example (Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Fraley & Shaver, 2008; Hendrick & Hendrick, 2006).

Therefore, it's worthwhile to consider whether this idea of "reciprocated love" (which in technical terms would be all positive reinforcement) is a kind of fairy-tale idea, and that research should focus on defining and understanding mechanics instead of construing cultural concepts as scientific.

In summary, limerence and passionate love might be closely synonymous; however, the term "limerence" is supposed to refer to falling in love before reciprocation, according to Tennov's interest in studying the causal pathway to lovesickness.

Unrequited love versus unrequited limerence

This is going to seem very pedantic, but it will actually come up later. The fringe authors on limerence advance some very silly arguments about this, but to understand why they are wrong we have to give a correct account of this.

Unrequited love is a synonym for unrequited limerence. It leaves a person vulnerable to an attack of lovesickness. Lovesickness may be transitory or prolonged, and major or minor in degree. It may be brought on by a person's anticipatory uncertainty about getting or not getting a reciprocal response to his/her limerence. Lovesickness may be brought on also by unequal proportions of limerence, for example, 100:70 instead of 100:100. The most unequal match is 100:0, total rejection. (Money, 1998, p. 132)

This is actually not quite right that unrequited love is synonymous with unrequited limerence, but again, going back to Tennov's material, the difference is fairly pedantic. If you're in a relationship for some time and your partner unexpectedly breaks up with you, this is not supposed to be called "limerence" according to the most pedantic definition—because limerence is supposed to occur before a relationship. (Does this matter? Kind of. It will come up later when we are distinguishing between OCD lovesickness and stalking.)

Crushes might actually be limerence, according to Tennov's definitions. In other words, unrequited limerence may not be properly defined in terms of intensity. As mentioned earlier, according to Tennov's writings, limerence does not imply an "extreme reaction" (Tennov, 1998, p. 86) or "strong emotion" (Tennov, 2005, p. 313). Tennov conceives of limerence as a set of "laws" (Tennov, 1998) or an "algorithm" (Tennov, 2005), and crushes do in fact seem to follow Tennov's algorithm. I think that most people actually think that limerence involves strong emotion (e.g. Beam, 2013, p. 72; Bellamy, 2021), but this is definitely not how Tennov defines it.

There's another relevant quote from Tennov's material where it seems clear that she believes there's a difference between unrequited love and unrequited limerence, but she's not clearly explaining herself:

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. (Tennov, 1999, p. 181)

It sounds like to her, unrequited limerence would mean that the person was in limerence before the breakup, according to this differentiation "between limerent and nonlimerent relationships". (As I discussed early on in this article, Tennov says stuff like this so that we know she has some idea in her head about it, but she can't explain it to us in a way we can understand. It's a problem with her writing that she cannot properly put her ideas into our heads.)

A separate issue here is a kind of confusing study by Bringle et al. (2013) which claims to have failed to find evidence for limerence theory as a feature of unrequited love. However, the assumptions tested by Bringle are actually not aspects of limerence theory at all, but rather aspects of other authors' interpretations of limerence theory.

Tennov’s (1979) discussion of limerence identifies several qualities that are not well captured in extant measures of love and that are posited to be components of UL (see also Baumeister et al., 1993; Baumeister & Wotman, 1992). For example, her characterization of limerence details an obsessive quality of intrusive thoughts about the love object. ... Brehm (1992) speculated that obsessiveness will be more likely when a person has little real information about the love object. Thus, UL relationships should possess greater obsessiveness than equal love relationships and less interdependent types of UL should show greater obsessiveness than more interdependent types.

A second characteristic of limerence is idealizing or glorifying the love object. As Money (1980) noted, “the person projects onto the partner an idealized and highly idiosyncratic image that diverges from the image of that partner as perceived by other people” (p. 65). ... this line of reasoning predicts that UL relationships would exhibit greater idealization than equal love relationships, and less interdependent types of UL relationships would exhibit more idealization than more interdependent ones. (Bringle et al., 2013)

But actually in Tennov's material (Tennov, 1999, pp. 29–33), she believed that a person in limerence does not "project" imagined qualities onto a limerent object; rather, her idea was that in limerence the LO is seen for who they really are, but positive qualities are emphasized and negative qualities deemphasized. Those aspects of limerence theory which Bringle believed they did not find evidence for (falsified) are based on some misunderstandings. Tennov herself did not equate crystallization to not knowing a person well. Projection has also been written about by other authors (e.g. Lee, 1973), but this is not a canonical part of limerence theory.

This relates to a distinction I've seen some people in the internet community try to make, which is that in limerence you don't know the person well (or it's based on a fantasy), whereas in unrequited love you "really" know the person. Tennov has never tried to make a distinction like this herself. Tennov seems to think crystallization is some kind of an effect of falling in love. Modern research regards it as positive illusions, but the specific relationship to being in love is somewhat unclear except that it seems to enhance relationship quality (Song et al., 2019; Bode & Kushnick, 2021).

Bringle also report that equal love was more intense than unequal love, but this is likely a problem with the measures being used. Most love research questionnaires are written in a way that subtly (or not so subtly) assume the participant is in a relationship with their loved one (see Langeslag et al., 2012). Langeslag (2012) developed a measure which is supposed to be agnostic about this and found that infatuation was more intense outside of a relationship than inside, which is consistent with actual predictions of limerence theory (e.g. Tennov, 1999, pp. 56, 72, 133; Tennov, 2005 p. 312; Bellamy, 2025, pp. 52–53).

Overall, unrequited love and unrequited limerence seem to be closely synonymous, but Tennov likely meant for unrequited limerence to be defined in terms of whether it fits the behavioral pattern she was interested in: the kind of love that turns into lovesickness.

Again, this all seems very pedantic but it will come up later, particularly in a discussion of whether a typical stalker can be understood as experiencing limerence. Most romantic stalkers who are not delusional are ex-partners of the victim (Mullen et al., 1999). An issue is that people who have been in a relationship might actually be experiencing a love with a different quality compared to people who have never been in a relationship, e.g. more attachment to the partner (Langeslag et al., 2012; Aron et al., 2005; Fisher et al., 2010). Fisher (2010) found different time-related brain activity between the break-up group and the happily in-love group, but there's not a study of people who have never been in a relationship to understand that comparison. An ex-partner's obsessive love may be somewhat different from limerence, and certainly different from OCD lovesickness (cf. Fisher, 2004, p. 164, "Abandonment Rage").

Bringle found that 63% of their study endorsed having "a huge crush on someone you know, but for one reason or another you have not let that person know of your feelings for him or her" in the past 2 years. I do not personally use that as a realistic prevalence estimate of limerence, but it does seem to actually fit Tennov's definitions. It is not a prevalence estimate of OCD lovesickness (or necessarily any lovesickness), but it's one type of estimate. It could be, for example, that anyone who is capable of having a crush is also capable of having it develop into a lovesickness (or love madness) if it was reinforced the right way, while not necessarily having had experienced this development with any regularity (or at all). Note that Bringle's estimate is for within the past 2 years, whereas Bellamy's (2025, p. 80) large estimate of 64% is for within a lifetime.

Distinguishing limerence from other love addictions

According to Tennov's analysis, limerence may follow several different pathways, but it's only the unrequited path to OCD lovesickness which is relevant from here on.

OCD lovesickness likely only occurs in the unrequited path of the limerence love style because in addition to habituation effects from reciprocation (Bellamy, 2025) oxytocin activity that is mainly active inside a relationship (Bode, 2023) also seems to inhibit the effects of addiction (Zou et al., 2016; McGregor et al., 2009).

According to Bellamy (2025, pp. 25–28), the earlier stages of limerence (which he calls "initiation" and "euphoria") may be a more enjoyable period involving fantasizing and positive reinforcements from rewarding time spent with an LO. I am going to call this period "infatuation". This period turns into lovesickness over time (Bellamy, 2025; Tennov, 1999; Tennov, 1998), so we can say there is a causal pathway from infatuation to OCD lovesickness, and that "limerence" refers to this causal pathway.

This transition from infatuation to OCD lovesickness is similar to the transition in addiction from "impulsivity" to "compulsivity":

A definition of impulsivity is “a predisposition toward rapid, unplanned reactions to internal and external stimuli without regard for the negative consequences of these reactions to themselves or others”. A definition of compulsivity is the manifestation of “perseverative, repetitive actions that are excessive and inappropriate”. Impulsive behaviours are often accompanied by feelings of pleasure or gratification, but compulsions in disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder are often performed to reduce tension or anxiety from obsessive thoughts. In this context, individuals move from impulsivity to compulsivity, and the drive for drug-taking behaviour is paralleled by shifts from positive to negative reinforcement. (Koob & Volkow, 2016)

This causal pathway can be more rigorously defined using the concept of a mechanistic property cluster (Kendler et al., 2010; Ylikoski & Pöyhönen, 2015). The mechanistic property cluster (MPC) is a way of classifying kinds of things according to causal forces which reinforce a group of mental states. More simply, the idea of an MPC defines a mental state in terms of its causal pathway. The MPC is contrasted with other ways of defining kinds of things, like socially-constructed kinds (which are classified more arbitrarily by culture), or essentialist kinds (which are classified in terms of an "essence" like a specific gene). It has been argued that the MPC is an appropriate way to define both psychiatric disorders (Kendler et al., 2010) and addictions, already connected to love addictions (Ylikoski & Pöyhönen, 2015).

Because the MPC is an appropriate framework for defining addictions (Ylikoski & Pöyhönen, 2015), the MPC should also be an appropriate framework for falling in love, and for distinguishing between love styles, sources of love feelings (salience), and so on. Limerence can be formally defined in terms of a mechanistic property cluster, with a causal pathway from infatuation to OCD lovesickness and associated mental properties. The causal pathway for limerence involves positive reinforcement in the form of perceived reciprocation, but this tends to be intermittent which intensifies reward sensitization (Bellamy, 2025; Tennov, 1999; Tennov, 1998; Tennov, 2001).

Something to note here is that "being in love" any type of way (as a consolidation of all types of love feelings and mechanics) may be itself considered a mechanistic property cluster according to the way that Kendler et al. (2010) describes it. That would be e.g. analogous to the way Bode (2023) defines "romantic love" as a collection of interacting systems. However, here I'm focusing on distinguishing between more specific states. For this reason I will consider limerence one specific MPC, eros another specific MPC, self-expansion another, and so on, even though it could also be considered that there is just one MPC for "being in love" and the state may take on a character more like one or the other subset depending on the situation and other variables at play. Again, going back to an earlier discussion, if these involve different rewards and motivations, are they the same state? According to one level of analysis, they are different.

Another type of mechanistic property cluster similar to limerence is trauma bonding (Dutton & Painter, 1993; Hatfield & Walster, 1985, pp. 103–105), which involves intermittent maltreatment inside a relationship. This might be actually also described as a "love madness" (e.g. by Susan Forward in Brennan, 1994), but it follows a different causal pathway from limerence and would have different mental states associated with it. It's a different type of love addiction.

Moving on, something to emphasize here is that according to Tennov (1999), the early infatuation period of limerence is actually also a very intense obsession. It's only distinguished from OCD lovesickness by the symptoms enumerated above: that in OCD lovesickness the obsession becomes unwanted and disliked. Tennov (1999, pp. 141–142) reports that limerence can last even just a few weeks (or as short as three days) and then dissipate, so not enough to transition into a long-term addiction, yet still containing "all the elements of limerence as I described them".

This contributes to an ambiguity where "limerence" may refer to more typical intense infatuation, or it may refer to OCD lovesickness. "Limerence" is being used—correctly, in accordance with Tennov's definitions—to refer to anything along this causal pathway, so that it might refer to either thing while many people are actually unaware of what the distinction is. I have seen this in the community where some people identify with "limerence" to refer to their intense infatuation, while being unaware of what people who are experiencing OCD lovesickness are even talking about.

Calling two things by the same name and conflating them is a logical fallacy called "equivocation". (Another similar fallacy is termed "motte-and-bailey".) An example of this fallacy would be if somebody were to argue that obsessive limerent fantasizing (in the early infatuation stage) is a disorder because "limerence" (now referring to OCD lovesickness) is distressing and debilitating. It is also a logical fallacy to associate limerence with stalking, because (I will show that) stalking does not fall along this causal pathway. It is a different phenomenon.

Equivocation is a problem in the fringe literature on limerence, because descriptions which refer to limerence as a kind of "overwhelming" obsession might actually refer either to infatuation or to OCD lovesickness (or to basically any type of love obsession).

Another related type of fallacy is when two different terms actually refer to the same thing, while they are claimed to be different. This is a major issue, that this fringe literature is often simply arguing that being madly in love is a malady, by describing love madness in a kind of obscure-sounding verbiage and calling it "limerence". "Normal" passionate love or infatuation can in fact be an overwhelming obsession. OCD lovesickness (the "limerence disorder") is supposed to be distinguished by being unwanted and disliked, not because it's "overwhelming". As Tallis (2005) points out, all love resembles a mental illness and might benefit from clinical help, simply without being any kind of a mental disorder.

To demonstrate this, as follows are components of passionate or romantic love, according to Fisher (1998), with emphasis hers:

intrusive thinking about the loved person;
crystallization, or the tendency to focus on the loved person's positive qualities and overlook or falsely appraise his/her negative traits;
emotional dependency on the relationship with the loved person, including feelings of hope, apprehension, possessiveness, preoccupation with the beloved, hypersensitivity to cues given by the beloved, inability to concentrate on matters unrelated to the beloved, jealousy, emotional vulnerability, fear of rejection by the beloved, fantasies about the loved person, separation anxiety, and swings in mood associated with the fluctuating state of the relationship, as well as feelings of despair, lack of optimism, listlessness, brooding, and loss of hope during a temporary setback in the relationship or after rejection by the loved person;
the feeling that one's romantic passion is involuntary and uncontrollable.

Fisher's components are of course largely derived from Tennov's, and she is also one of the original authors then who compares this to addiction and OCD (Fisher, 1998; Fisher et al., 2002; Fisher et al., 2016).

I should not have to explain how a synonym works.

Another issue would be the fact that while the incidence of OCD lovesickness might be relatively rare in the population, this is actually not a definition of limerence that anyone is using. Arguing, for example, that "limerence" is a rare disorder because OCD lovesickness is rare would be another instance of the equivocation fallacy.

You cannot simply put the symptoms of "limerence" (as anyone has defined it so far) in the DSM, because they are just symptoms of being in love (Tennov, 1999; Fisher, 1998). It could be possible to ethically put an "unwanted" infatuation in the DSM, but Sandra Langeslag's (2025) study is the only research which has identified and distinguished that syndrome. Nobody else is talking about "unwanted" infatuation.

It is worth mentioning as a side note, as well, that whether being in love constitutes an involuntary condition is a different issue from whether one's behaviors are voluntary (Earp et al., 2017). This distinction is actually acknowledged by Tennov herself (2005) as well, despite that she has repeatedly argued that the limerence state itself is involuntary: "Behavior remains voluntary during the state, although changes in the spectrum of drives and emotion may alter productivity or have adverse effects on important life decisions." (Tennov, 2005, p. 416). Please see Brian Earp and colleagues (Earp et al., 2017) for a summary of that issue by actual philosophers.

Obsessive love

I've defined several terms at this point, and explained when/how they're interrelated: harmonious love, passionate love, and OCD lovesickness.

At this point, I'm introducing another term: obsessive love, to refer to a further concept which ought to be distinguished from these others. "Obsessive love" has sometimes been used to refer to limerence (Lehr, 2016; Bellamy, 2025); however, I am using the term instead to refer to a concept more like "possessive love" (Reis & Sprecher, 2009; Forward & Buck, 2002) which has also been called "obsessive love disorder". I am using "obsessive love" to refer to this because it's the main term which has been uniquely used to identify that construct.

Forward & Buck (2002, p. 6) define four conditions which can be used to clarify when a person is suffering from obsessive love:

They must have a painful, all-consuming preoccupation with a real or wished-for lover.
They must have an insatiable longing either to possess or to be possessed by the target of their obsession.
Their target must have rejected them or be unavailable in some way, either physically or emotionally.
Their target's unavailability or rejection must drive them to behave in self-defeating ways.

Items 2 & 4 are the items which properly distinguish obsessive love from limerence (passionate love or OCD lovesickness). Reis & Sprecher (2009) state that:

...obsessive love, much like other forms of romantic love, is accompanied by a motivation to approach a potential partner to fulfill needs for affiliation, closeness, intimacy, attachment, and sex; however, unlike other forms of love, obsessive love is marked by unequal commitment, lack of reciprocation, and repulsed approaches. Obsessive love is similar to infatuation, lust, a "crush," and limerence, all of which are viewed as an involuntary and emotional state of intense romantic desire for another person.

According to Forward & Buck (2002, p. 9), "Rejection is the obsessor's ultimate nightmare. When confronted with the loss or growing disinterest of a lover, obsessors do not let go. Instead, they grow more desperate for their target's love." Obsessive love continues into a relationship, always demanding more and more love and attention from the partner: "No matter how promising the relationship may seem in the beginning, the insatiable demanding nature of obsession will drive most targets away." (Forward & Buck, 2002, p. 8).

Obsessive love is associated with violence and stalking (Forward & Buck, 2002; Mullen et al., 1999). Moore (2010, p. 4) calls it "confusing love with obsession" and essentially "a combination of what the American Psychiatric Association refers to in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR, or DSM) as dependent personality disorder and borderline personality disorder". Moore (pp. 19–21) attributes this to childhood abandonment and abuse.

Moore (2009, pp. 131–136) details the "Obsessive Relational Progression", a cycle of phases which describes the process of obsessive love:

In the "attraction" phase, the obsessive lover develops a sudden attachment to a new individual with overwhelming attraction, unrealistic fantasies, and the start of controlling behaviors.
In the "anxiety" phase, the individual develops overwhelming relational anxiety, fear of abandonment, mistrust, and escalation of control.
In the "obsession" phase, the feelings and behaviors overwhelm the individual to the point of obsessive monitoring and stalking.
Finally, in the "destruction" phase, the relationship reaches a tipping point, and the partner flees.

This description clearly follows some similar principles as I've outlined before: it's a kind of romantic obsession fuelled by anxiety and paranoia, and resembles the trajectory of decreased satisfaction inside relationships probably associated with anxious attachment (Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Graham, 2010; Hendrick & Hendrick, 2006). When compared to "pure" limerence (passionate love or OCD lovesickness), however, obsessive love has additional psychological properties (mechanics and mental states), different causal conditions and different outcomes.

In technical terms of mechanics, one major difference is that obsessive love involves explicit punishment in the form of repeated rejections, encounters with law enforcement, and so on. Obsessive love after a break-up may involve little to no positive reinforcement (i.e. reciprocation). This can also be explained in terms of "wanting" versus "liking" (Fisher et al., 2016), but obsessive love also involves a host of feelings (e.g. anger; Fisher, 2004, p. 164; Marazziti et al., 2015) and behaviors not present in OCD lovesickness because the causal pathways are different. Because the causal pathways are so different, it also seems unrealistic to me to say that a typical obsessive lover is experiencing something like "OCD lovesickness with addition properties". Rather, these are simply different, separate things.

Obsessive love is a different mechanistic property cluster, or different type of love addiction.

In summary, there are at least three constructs here which involve "obsessive passion" (the way it was defined earlier according to Vallerand's theory), but they're quite distinguishable:

Obsessive love: involves an overwhelming desire to possess the love object, and persistence despite repeated rejections.
Passionate love: involves some level of reciprocation (although it could be imagined) with both positive and negative experiences; in some cases (however rare) it can turn into a relationship, even a secure relationship.
OCD lovesickness: involves unwanted, distressing and distracting thoughts about a love object, probably as a development of passionate love going on too long or becoming overly reinforced.

Please note that these are simply labels for concepts. Bellamy (2025), for example, sometimes uses the term "obsessive love" to refer to limerence (passionate love), but I have talked to him about this and he is not confused about the above distinctions. As far as I can tell, he and I have largely convergent viewpoints on what this conversation is about, although we do not always agree on what words to use. In some sense, labels are interchangeable. What is important is that people understand the distinctions being made between concepts, and which labels refer to which concepts in a certain context.

When is obsessive love limerence?

At this point, I've shown that obsessive love and OCD lovesickness are different; however, there's a problem that "limerence" might refer either to passionate love or to OCD lovesickness (explained earlier). This leaves a possibility that obsessive love is passionate love with additional properties, and that "limerence" might sometimes legitimately refer to this, while risking the equivocation fallacy.

Tennov has made remarks to this effect:

Limerence is associated with various forms of violence. Consult police records for statistics on accidents, murders and suicides in which a limerent component clearly exists. Such tragedies seem to result not from limerence itself, but from limerence augmented and distorted. Fred's limerence is, in this sense, pure; and pure limerence, while clearly a madness, operates within a more limited domain. (Tennov, 1999, p. 90)

It is clear (and I will get to some examples later) that certain cases of obsessive love conform to this idea of "limerence augmented and distorted".

However, should her comments here about violence actually be taken seriously? Tennov did not actually consult police records. Later, she has clarified that she has no data on this.

Data is not available relating limerence to increased jealousy or violence. It is my guess, but only that, that very intense sexual jealousies may occur outside the limerent state. Famous fictional cases do not conform to the expected pattern, e.g. Flaubert's Madame Bovary and Hollywood's Fatal Attraction. But limerence combined with psychopathology may produce results that escaped inclusion in the data base. (Tennov, 2005, p. 314)

In other words, she did not collect any personal stories during her research about this. It's all based on a cultural idea. It's also clear from "famous fictional cases do not conform to the expected pattern" that she perceives a distinction between limerence and obsessive love.

According to other authors and some research, romantic stalking and violence are most often committed by partners or ex-partners, because of obsessive love, or also e.g. delusional jealousy (Forward & Buck, 2002, p. 149; Tallis, 2005, p. 212; Mullen et al., 1999). Stalkers who are not ex-partners are usually delusional (Mullen et al., 1999). Tennov would have had no knowledge of any of this in 1979.

I will also examine her other (known) comments about this.

Limerence is not a mental illness in a clinical sense. It might be that in certain persons – the Glen Close character in Fatal Attraction, for example – in whom there is unusual vulnerability, limerence evokes destructive acts that might otherwise not have occurred. (Tennov, 2005, p. 20)

There are two points: first, that Fatal Attraction is fiction, and then second, she's specified elsewhere that this either does not conform to limerence (p. 314), or that she's not sure if it does:

6 Q: You have called it “love madness.” Doesn’t limerence sometimes exist in a pathological form, one that creates a stalker, or a Fatal Attraction?

DT: I draw a blank. All I can say it that Glenn Close’s character seemed to me an caricature probably created by a nonlimerent person who has fallen into the uncomfortable role of LO. The answers to such questions begin with an understanding of limerence and the ability to identify it in a given individual. (Tennov, 2005, p. 371)

In a few places, Tennov has stated or implied that Jean Harris was limerent:

Jean Harris, the headmistress who killed a well-known diet doctor, presents an interesting case. She was certainly disturbed by her intense attraction, and her medications may well have been a contributing factor, but in other aspects of her life, she was quite normal, and the behavior of Herman Tarnover toward her, during the many years of her affliction, was entirely conducive to bringing her to an extreme condition of limerent anguish. (Tennov, 2005, p. 19)

If limerence is involuntary and if a marker can be found which is objectively stable, I would expect it to follow that lawyers would seek to use it. The highly publicized Jean Harris murder case was differently interpreted by those who, having undergone that type of unrequited love, i.e., “limerence”, felt greater sympathy for her than those who had not. (Tennov, 2005, p. 324)

However, Jean Harris was actually a partner or ex-partner of the man she murdered, whom she had been with for 14 years (Isaacson, 1981). Was Tennov aware of this? Jean Harris does not "conform to the expected pattern" she was interested in. Tennov is also attributing it to medications ("limerence augmented and distorted").

Jean Harris actually seems to conform to a case of spousal murder because of pathological jealousy (see Tallis, 2005, p. 212 for jealousy) over an affair happening between Herman Tarnover and his lab assistant (Isaacson, 1981). According to the prosecutor in that case, "There was dual intent, to take her own life, but also an intent to do something else . . . to punish Herman Tarnower . . . to kill him and keep him from Lynne Tryforos." (Isaacson, 1981). This is actually a completely different thing from limerence. I am not sure if this even qualifies as typical obsessive love, according to the definition I've laid down above.

These comments by Tennov about Jean Harris ought to be considered an error. The comments both contradict her other statements on this type of issue (2005, pp. 314, 371), and we can identify that the case clearly does not fit her usual definitions (e.g. Tennov, 1998; Tennov, 2001). In fact, Tennov (2005, p. 314) even leaves open the possibility that "very intense sexual jealousies may occur outside the limerent state".

Earlier, I showed how pedantic Tennov is with her definitions, so she might have simply not considered ex-partner violence to fall under "limerence" because the behavioral pattern does not fit her interest, if she had understood what I've explained here.

To summarize, some cases of obsessive love do conform to Tennov's definition of limerence, but these cases are "limerence augmented and distorted" by e.g. additional psychopathology. Tennov has never (correctly) identified a real case of this in her matieral, she does not have any data on this, and many (or even most) cases of obsessive love do not conform to her definitions.

The main specific case of "limerence augmented and distorted" (obsessive love limerent subset) we will consider is the minority of stalkers who have no prior relationship with the victim, but who all have personality disorders (Mullen et al., 1999).

But why do any of these distinctions matter?

Because these constructs all have different causes and effects!

If an individual wants to self-identify with this or that word or concept, there's little consequence other than personal misdirection. From a clinical or research perspective, however, these distinctions are paramount. Obviously, to understand what causes a particular phenomenon or how to treat it, you first need to properly define what the phenomenon even is that you're trying to study or treat.

This is also the kind of problem that the mechanistic property cluster (Kendler et al., 2010) is invented to solve, because biological and psychological phenomena can be otherwise difficult to define.

In fact, Dorothy Tennov is complaining about this in her own material:

Lack of direct experience does not prevent scientific awareness. There is much we know about through inference from evidence that is not directly observed. A stumbling block is inadequate and incorrect use of self-report by 19ᵗʰ and 20ᵗʰ century experimental psychology. Those who reject self-report as without scientific meaning fail to understand that science is identified not by methodology but by verification and practical or theoretical usefulness This has not been the view, as judged by practices and expressed policies, of scientific journal editors in the behavioral and social sciences. Instead, set probability levels and number of subjects remain the bottom line criteria, even when the subject of inquiry has not yet been isolated.

I can think of investigations that might be conducted to determine limerence incidence as a function of any number of “interesting” independent variables -- gender, culture, situation, physiology (e.g. feigned interest of attractive persons in unattractive individuals, a study which when caused such disruption that it was discarded. Also discarded was the psychoanalytic encouragement of limerences they called “transference.” Whatever further scientific analysis of limerence might be done in the future could not be done had not the initial step been the isolation of the condition. (Tennov, 2005, p. 325)

7 Q: What is your rationale for using nonstandard methods?

DT: That limerence research did not rely on standard methods does not mean that the methods used were either inappropriate or unscientific. Science is a matter of interpreting observations. However the data may have been obtained, it is the soundness of the interpretation, not the amount or type of data collected, which distinguishes science from non-science. Limerence had first to be identified using self-reports. On the other hand, now that that stage of investigation has met its objective, it is time to move on. Questions that it raised can begin to be answered. Further research must be based on the exploratory work because to do adequate research, limerence status (limerent, nonlimerent, formerly limerent, etc.) must be identifiable. During my years of teaching experimental psychology, I found that virtually journal article we criticized, was logically faulty. Often it was because the experimenters had skipped the first steps of identification of the variables measured. (Tennov, 2005, p. 371)

In other words, to study a phenomenon, you have to actually properly define it first. Tennov's research was in fact specifically intended to define a phenomenon in such a way.

Psychology research is often skipping this step, and generating bad research as a result. One example of this I showed earlier was Elaine Hatfield's (1988) definition of passionate love. Another example is these fringe authors writing about "limerence", while conflating several concepts (passionate love, obsessive love, OCD lovesickness) and therefore not only writing useless and misleading papers (for clinicians, etc.) and doing pointless, inferior research, but actually defaming the people suffering from OCD lovesickness as stalkers or potential stalkers.

Stalker!

Paul Mullen (1999, Study of Stalkers) showed that romantic stalkers could be divided into a number of subcategories:

Rejected ex-partners (41/145), who had some type of a relationship with their victim. (Note that Mullen classifies 52 as rejected in total, but 11 were not romantic.) "The majority of the rejected stalkers had personality disorders, although nine had delusional disorders, five involving morbid jealousy."
Those who had DSM erotomania (27/145), in which they delusionally believe their victim is also in love with them and will eventually reciprocate.
Those who had what Mullen terms a "morbid infatuation" (15/145), in which the stalker has a delusional belief that the victim will eventually reciprocate, but acknowledges the victim is not (yet) in love with them. This appears to be a type of delusional disorder which does not explicitly fall under DSM erotomania, because DSM erotomania is based on de Clérambault's syndrome.
Those who did not have any previous relationship with their victim, but who all had personality disorders (7/145).
Those who were socially or intellectually incompetent (22/145), who "did not endow [their victim] with unique qualities" and were not infatuated.

What I want to point out here is that only seven out of 145 stalkers seem to fit the description of limerence—all "augmented and distorted" by a personality disorder.

These stalkers (termed "intimacy seekers" by Mullen) are also a strong match for the definition of obsessive love given earlier: "several were prey to jealousy, and a number became enraged at their would-be partner's indifference to their approaches" (Mullen et al., 1999). Mullen's description of the rejected stalkers is also a good match for obsessive love, but these do not fit the definition of limerence, as explained earlier. The ex-partner is love addicted from being in a relationship, and is motivated to get their partner back after abandonment. Limerence follows different mechanics.

Most stalkers in Mullen's study were either delusional or had a personality disorder, regardless of other categorization:

Sixty-two stalkers had an axis I diagnosis. Forty-three had delusional disorders, 20 of which were of the erotomanic type; five morbid jealousy; three persecutory and 15 morbid infatuations categorized as unspecified. Fourteen had schizophrenia, five of whom had erotomanic delusions; two had bipolar disorder; two, major depression; and one, anxiety disorder. The primary diagnosis was personality disorder in 74 men, with the majority falling into cluster B. Comorbid substance-related disorders were noted in 36 (25%) of the stalkers. There were 59 stalkers with psychosis (delusional disorders, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder). (Mullen et al., 1999)

It's very clear from Mullen's study what the main precursors are to stalking: personality disorders and delusions. In fact, there were zero stalkers in this study who sound like they might have been in limerence and did not have some other condition.

From this study, it's very easy to conclude that limerence has nothing whatsoever to do with stalking, and that if there is such a thing as a limerence stalker, the limerence is only incidental. None of these stalkers fit the description of OCD lovesickness either, where the person experiencing it really wants to be doing other things.

OCD lovesickness and stalking addiction follow diverging causal pathways:

Different causal pathways & mental states = different mechanistic property clusters

If these two things (OCD lovesickness, stalking addiction) share some commonality, it's this early period which is just typical infatuation. This is why associating limerence with stalking does not make sense.

According to Marazziti et al. (2015), stalking addiction also differs from OCD lovesickness in that stalking obsession is egosyntonic:

From a cognitive/thinking point of view, the stalker presents immaturity and magical thinking, sustained by the distorted belief of being able to change the emotions of the victim with his harassing behaviour. As it has been pointed out by several authors, the stalker thinks constantly about his/her victim, without exerting any significant resistance, this thought is egosyntonic in nature and voluntarily recalled, thus lacking the typical subjective suffering of patients suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

According to this description, you would not diagnose a stalker with a "limerence disorder" (properly defined—if such a thing ought to exist), because they would not meet diagnostic criteria for that.

The feature which is common to both phenomena (early infatuation) is not a disorder; ergo, even assuming both phenomena (OCD lovesickness, stalking addiction) were considered disorders, they are distinct diagnoses each with unique symptoms and etiologies. Both would be considered subtypes of love addiction (Reynaud et al., 2010; Earp et al., 2017) but they ought not to be conflated.

Also, again, the point here is that these are simply different constructs which need to be given different labels. I have used "limerence" to label the path shown at the top of my diagram (yellow→blue) because this is what Dorothy Tennov's writing pertains to and what people in the community are generally talking about, not to the bottom path (yellow→red). Changing the meaning of the word to refer to obsessive love/stalking addiction would be ahistoric, incoherent and confusing.

A merging of the two into one concept is already covered by the more general love addiction idea (Reynaud et al., 2010), but this is not useful for research and therapeutic purposes, according to my previous arguments. The conflation of limerence with stalking phenomena is purely destructive and defamatory.

This phenomenon of "morbid infatuation" is worth dwelling on briefly, because people are not generally aware that it even exists, and there is no DSM diagnosis for it. A clinician could foreseeably have a patient, for example, which they conclude suffers from obsessive love (or likewise, incorrectly, limerence) while having no idea the patient is actually delusional, simply because they did not know this phenomenon exists and did not know what questions to ask. A small YouTuber, Jordan Owen, gives an excellent profile of a case which he incorrectly attributes to limerence, and which is actually a morbid infatuation involving religious delusions. This case may have started like limerence (with an infatuation period), but then turns into a morbid infatuation once the individual begins to develop delusions. This case also involves a degree of relational intrusion reminiscient of obsessive love rather than limerence, but the religious delusions are the defining feature and likely cause for stalking.

If somebody has a grand old time chasing down an unreciprocating person under a delusion they're doing a good thing, that's a disorder, but it doesn't fall under a proper definition of limerence.

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Defining limerence: harmonious, passionate and obsessive love