Over the past five years, the word ‘limerence’ has well and truly cemented its position in the cultural lexicon. If you’re somehow unfamiliar, it’s a term used to describe the experience of intense romantic obsession or infatuation, first coined by Dorothy Tennov in her 1979 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being In Love. According to Tennov, key facets of limerence include “intrusive thinking” about the object of your desire (also known as the ‘limerent object’ or LO); “dependency of mood” on their actions; and “a general intensity of feeling that leaves other concerns in the background”. Whether a limerent’s LO returns their feelings or not is often ambiguous.

The book and Tennov’s arguments gained some traction in the years following its publication – according to a 1990 Washington Post article, Tennov was often deluged with letters from ‘limerents’ who strongly identified with the label – but interest in the idea has exploded in the social media age. Today, on the r/limerence subreddit, thousands of limerents seek support from like-minded individuals on dealing with their feelings; on TikTok, over 30,000 videos have been posted under the limerence hashtag.

The latter platform has effectively become ground zero for this second wave of interest in limerence, with creators – mainly women – offering up explainers on what limerence is or confessional-style clips about their own experiences of limerence. “Have you ever been obsessed with someone you don’t even know that well?” asks a creator called Gia in one video. “Like your brain is constantly thinking about them? If they text you, you respond immediately? You’re constantly imagining this fantasy life with them? Well, that, my dear, is called limerence.” So far, so relatable. But I can’t help but wonder: isn’t this just… having a crush on someone?

In short: yes. Tennov, a seminal researcher on the psychology of love, coined the term in part to “distinguish between these overwhelming emotions and the more stable, domestic feelings experienced by long-term couples”, as one 2003 Guardian article put it. Tennov did acknowledge that not everyone experiences the head-scrambling highs and lows of limerence (a 2025 survey suggested that 50-60 per cent of the population have experienced it) – but this still tracks, given that some people have had such frictionless lives – or so much therapy – that they approach relationships without staking their entire self-worth on the outcome (weird).

What was once an innocuous word used to encapsulate the heightened emotions that are common and normal in the early stages of a relationship has become a diagnosis

But as time has gone on, social media has enabled people to bastardise Tennov’s work and ‘limerence’ has become yet another term to fall victim to concept creep. What was once an innocuous word used to encapsulate the heightened emotions that are common and normal in the early stages of a relationship has become a diagnosis, with videos explaining how to “cure” or “get rid of” limerence proliferating on TikTok. But Tennov never argued that limerence was some kind of mental illness (to this day, it is not in the DSM), and even rejected the idea that it was inherently unhealthy. “This ‘thing’ I aimed to study was a normal condition, not a pathological state, or a sign of a weak or ‘neurotic’ personality,” she wrote.

Really, though, it’s little wonder so many people have taken the idea of limerence and run with it, given the dire state of modern dating culture. Dating apps have “privatised intimacy”, enabling a culture of disposability where people can be unkind to others with total impunity. It doesn’t help that, more generally, we exist in a society shaped by neoliberalism, where individuals are forever encouraged to trample on others to get ‘ahead’. While there have always been sharks in the dating pool – people who are emotionally stunted, selfish, or just plain nasty – in our current landscape, it’s fair to say they’ve become more emboldened than ever.

At the same time, as dating apps – and our neoliberal society more broadly – espouse the (false) notion that individuals have total control over their lives, it tracks that people who find themselves romantically mistreated instinctively blame themselves for their bad luck. And by ‘people’, I largely mean ‘women’: research shows that while men who experience repeated romantic rejection are more likely to project their frustration outwards onto women and feminism, rejected women are more likely to blame themselves.

It’s a perfect storm. While dating apps and neoliberalism have made bad behaviour permissible, at the same time, they have encouraged those on the receiving end to see themselves as responsible for their romantic misfortune. In this context, it makes complete sense that limerence has become such a hot talking point – because it’s appealing to think that finding love is as simple as ‘curing’ yourself of limerence.

Of course, it’s healthy to reflect on whether you had a part to play in a relationship’s demise. As Moya Lothian-McLean wrote in a 2022 Guardian article on the phenomenon of straight women casting themselves as perpetual victims of men’s poor conduct: “Only after I finally cast off cultural scripts that pigeonholed me as a person things were done to in a relationship, rather than an actor in my own right who could take responsibility for her actions, did I experience huge steps forward in understanding how I related to people around me, and how to improve those connections.” But in the intervening years, I worry that we’ve overcorrected this issue.

Because, ultimately, I think it’s fair enough to fantasise about building a life with someone you’re dating. I think it’s fair enough to feel despondent and empty when they’ve left you on read, and giddy and buoyant once they reply. I think it’s fair enough to think about them so much that you can scarcely concentrate on anything else. And I think it’s fair enough to feel insane if they ghost you or call it quits out of the blue. It hurts to have your hopes dashed – and sometimes the hurt can upend your life. But what’s the alternative – be guarded? Keep your walls up? Never let anyone in? To me, that sounds far more toxic than privately looking up the type of engagement ring you’d like after a third date with someone you’re really into.

It’s also worth noting that when it comes to discussions about limerence on social media, we usually only hear from people who have been badly hurt after falling hard and fast for someone who didn’t reciprocate their feelings. In this context, it’s no surprise limerence has been misunderstood as a ‘bad’ thing, or a ‘condition’ which needs ‘curing’. But there are countless people who are now in happy, healthy, reciprocal relationships who, in the early stages of dating, were also totally consumed by their feelings; who read into every little thing their partner did; who couldn’t go two minutes without thinking about them. Limerence, as Tennov argued, isn’t the evil antithesis of safe, secure love – often, it’s a precursor to it. With that in mind, don’t run from your big feelings. Embrace them.