Limerence (obsessive love): why it is so hard to stop thinking about someone

The first thought in the morning is about them, and so is the last one at night. In between come the checks: whether that person has been online, whether they replied, what they meant by something they said, why they smiled at someone else. One message lifts the whole day; a slow reply flattens it. The person knows the feeling is probably not returned, and perhaps cannot be. But switching it off does not work.

From the outside it looks like an ordinary crush. From the inside it feels more like being taken over: the feeling lives a life of its own, drains energy and attention, and barely responds to what the person thinks about it. This state is called limerence.

What is limerence?

The concept was introduced by the American psychologist Dorothy Tennov in Love and Limerence, published in the United States in 1979. Drawing on questionnaires from around 800 people and interviews with more than 300, she described a particular kind of being in love. Its main features are:

• intrusive thoughts about the other person;
• an acute longing for the feeling to be returned;
• a mood that depends on the other person’s behaviour, and on how it is interpreted;
• relief through fantasies in which the feeling is mutual;
• fear of rejection and shyness in the person’s presence;
• a tendency to read interest into neutral words and actions;
• an intensity that pushes everything else aside.

Limerence is not a diagnosis. Systematic research on it is fairly recent: the first validated questionnaire for measuring it to be published in a scientific journal appeared in 2025, developed mainly by UK researchers.

What does limerence feel like?

Above all, it is involuntary. The person does not decide to think about the other; the thoughts simply arrive: in a meeting, on the Tube, in the middle of a conversation with someone close. In a 2026 UK study, 51 people with limerence recorded their thoughts in real time for a week. Thoughts about the person they were fixated on made up roughly half of their waking thought and came with low mood.

Life starts to revolve around signals. A short reply, a like, a chance meeting in the corridor, a look that could mean anything – each becomes an event. Hours go on rereading messages, replaying conversations, searching small details for hidden meaning. Each signal briefly raises hope or crushes it, and none of them brings clarity.

Fantasy becomes a refuge. Imagined scenes in which the feeling is returned bring brief relief, and the pull to go back to them is strong. Gradually they take up more and more time, while work, friends and the person’s own plans slip into the background. The body is often affected too: sleep and appetite suffer, the heart races before a possible encounter, and the longing feels almost physical.

And then there is shame. The person can see that the feeling is out of proportion, that they barely know the one they are thinking about, that from the outside it might look strange. But seeing it changes nothing, and that can be the hardest part. People start to think of themselves as weak or “not normal”, even though they are far from alone in this.

How is limerence different from ordinary infatuation?

The difference lies not in how strong the feeling is, but in how it works.

Limerence runs on uncertainty: it needs hope without clarity. Once reciprocation becomes obvious, or clearly impossible, it usually fades. That is why the most exhausting stories of limerence are the ones where clarity never comes.

It rests on an image rather than the real person: the less real contact there is, the more freely the image can be built. The other person’s flaws are usually noticed but carry little weight, and sometimes even start to seem endearing. Infatuation that grows into a relationship eventually meets the real person. Limerence often remains a relationship with an image.

It is involuntary and crowds everything else out. Someone who is simply in love may think about the other person a great deal and still work, sleep and see friends normally. In limerence there is little room left for any of that, sometimes for months.

What is limerence linked to?

The same 2026 UK study is the largest to date: its main part involved more than 1,600 people.

• Limerence often comes with anxiety and depression: 42% of people with limerence simultaneously reached clinical screening levels of anxiety, depression, dissociation (a sense of detachment from oneself and one’s surroundings) and excessive, hard-to-control daydreaming.
• It is linked to past experience: people with limerence more often reported difficult childhood experiences and insecure attachment (for example, a deep-seated expectation that those close to them may not respond, or may leave).
• Fantasy takes over in loneliness: when participants logged their thoughts for a week, the most common pattern was intrusive fantasy about the other person, especially in moments of sadness and loneliness.
• It comes back. Limerence usually first appeared around the age of 18 and then recurred: by the time of the survey, participants had had about five episodes on average.

Other studies have connected limerence with lower self-esteem, more anxious attachment, a less clear sense of self and a stronger need to belong.

The key point follows from this: limerence says less about the other person than about the state of the one experiencing it. The object of the feeling often becomes a screen onto which a person projects what they most lack:

• being seen and chosen;
• aliveness, the sense that life is happening;
• hope that things could change;
• confirmation of their own worth: “if someone like this responds to me, I must be worth something”.

That does not make the feeling unreal. It is real; it simply carries far more than any one real person can hold. That is why limerence so often arrives in difficult periods: after a loss or a break-up, in long loneliness, during burnout, in a relationship that has gone empty. And it is why, across repeated episodes, the story is often the same: a different person, different circumstances, but the same rollercoaster and the same unavailability of the person who draws them in.

What does limerence mean for someone in a relationship or marriage?

This is one of the hardest situations. The person loves their partner and values their family, yet cannot stop thinking about a colleague or acquaintance. Guilt follows, along with the fear that the marriage must not be “real”, and sometimes an urge either to change everything at once or to hide it all and endure.

In a UK doctoral study that preceded the 2026 research, the stronger the limerence, the more anxious the attachment to its object. But it was not linked to anxious attachment to a current or most recent partner. In other words, limerence on its own does not prove that a relationship is bad or that “real love” lies elsewhere. It can exist alongside a genuine bond with a partner.

It should not be ignored either. It can point to distance that has built up, to exhaustion, to a sense that one’s own life has drifted away. But making irreversible decisions under its pressure is risky: it is worth first understanding what the feeling is about, and only then deciding what to do.

How long does limerence last?

Tennov estimated about two years on average, most often between 18 months and three years. But she also described episodes lasting a few weeks and rare cases that lasted a lifetime. At the same time, she observed that full-blown limerence seldom settles in less than six months. In the 2026 study, the average episode also lasted around two years.

Limerence lasts longest where there is room for hope: mixed signals, rare but warm messages, daily contact at work, someone who draws closer and then pulls away. Distance and time without contact help, although the first stretch without that fuel can be especially hard.

What can a person do themselves?

Stop feeding the cycle. This matters most. Every social media check, every reread message, every “accidental” encounter relieves tension for a moment – and keeps the state going. It helps to unfollow or mute the person, turn off notifications, move old messages out of easy reach, cut down contact where possible and keep unavoidable contact, at work for instance, strictly businesslike. Familiar fantasy rituals feed the cycle too: particular songs, places where the person might be, replaying scenes in bed at night. They do not have to be cut off all at once, but it is worth reducing them steadily.

Don’t fight the thoughts: forbidding a thought can make it stronger. It works better to notice the thought as a thought (“there I go, thinking about them again”) and bring attention back to what is happening now. The thought will come back, and it can be let go again. Over time it loses some of its force.

Bring the image back to reality. Some people find it helps to deliberately notice the ordinary in the other person: their inattention, their limits, the moments when they were hurtful or dismissive. It does not end limerence on its own, and it can feel sad, because some hope goes along with the idealisation.

Ask what is missing: if the limerent object is a screen, it is worth looking at what is being projected onto it. What does this image provide that is missing from life right now: attention, aliveness, a sense of worth, hope? The answer often matters more than any attempt to “fall out of love”.

Go easy on oneself: self-criticism does not speed recovery; it adds pain. Limerence is not a character flaw, and it is not foolishness.

When is professional help needed?

It is worth not waiting if:

• the state has lasted for months without easing;
• sleep, work or relationships with loved ones are suffering;
• limerence comes with low mood, anxiety, a sense of meaninglessness or thoughts of self-harm;
• episodes keep recurring;
• there are urges to message, seek out or monitor the other person against their wishes.

Help can come from a psychologist or psychotherapist, a psychiatrist, a GP, or NHS Talking Therapies, which adults in England can refer themselves to. Psychotherapy can help make sense of limerence, and where depression or anxiety is present, antidepressants may help too.