Love, Lust & Limerence
When we first fall in love, we have a biochemical reaction. There's an increase in dopamine, to the point we almost feel intoxicated. It's like drug addiction. We've all been there when we meet someone and suddenly feel starry-eyed and infatuated. We place that person on a pedestal, but this comes from a place of limerence. In this episode, I'll be diving into all things love, lust, and limerence. I'll be sharing all about why we experience limerence, how to recognise the signs, and how to tune into your body to understand these biochemical reactions so you can maintain healthy relationships with yourself and your lovers.
In this episode, you'll learn:
What Limerence is
Tuning in to your definition of 'love.
Sign of being in 'limerence’
Addictions, fantasies, and starry eyes
Questions to ask yourself for lust and love awareness
This podcast is for YOU, so if you ever have any questions you’d like me to answer on the show, or topics you’d like me to cover – reach out to me on email here or over on instagram @eleanorhadley
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Join the Embodied Course: Waitlist
To work with me 1:1 head to eleanorhadley.com/work-with-me
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Episode Transcript
Welcome my loves to episode 51 of The Sensuality Academy Podcast!
Now if you've paid attention to the intro of this podcast, you'll know that one of the main pillars that I love teaching about is elevating your relationships. That's why I have SO many episodes about communication and it's why I dedicated an entire module to the topic in my online course, EMBODIED. It's actually the final module in the 6-week intensive and it's intentionally last because I take you on a journey throughout this course from deeply understanding yourself and your conditioning, understanding the energetics of polarity, through connecting with your body, exploring your pleasure and orgasmic potential on your own so that you're already feeling fully embodied in yourself. This way you can bring your whole self to a partnership, allowing deeper, more authentic connections and the ability to surrender and communicate more effectively. I've recently been receiving the post course feedback surveys from my most recent round of EMBODIED students, here's what one student had to say:
"I absolutely loved this course! It was everything I was needing and more. Before the course I felt incredibly disconnected from myself and my sex drive was very low. I learnt so much about female pleasure and the female anatomy, as well as so many practical exercises that have helped me feel more connected to myself and my partner."
Another student also shared that "I feel like I now have the tools to communicate more effectively and fairly." she also that her and her partner worked through some modules together too.
It makes me so happy to share this work with you and I'm excited to be opening EMBODIED back up for enrolment in just a few weeks time. You know the deal, head to thesensualityacademy.com/embodied-waitlist to join the waitlist now and be notified once enrolments open. Otherwise, if you're listening to this a few weeks after the release date or later, head to thesensualityacademy.com/embodied to enrol. All links can be found in the show notes.
Today, I want to talk about relationships - but from a different perspective. Specifically, the start of relationships and how to tell if it's real. We've all been there, when we meet someone and suddenly feel starry eyed like we've met "the one". Side note, I very much don't believe in "the one". I don't think it’s in any way helpful to put this pressure on life to serve up one person and one person only for you. It leads to misery when we think we've loved and lost the only one for us, and heartache when we haven't yet met someone who ticks every single box on our list that we've expected that 'one' person will tick. But, I digress.
When you first fall in love - it’s actually not love, but infatuation - or, more specifically, what I'll be sharing more about in today's episode - it's limerence. Our hormones & neurotransmitters play a huge role in that gooey, blissed out feeling we get when we think we’ve finally stumbled upon that person that just gets us, who sees us, who wants us. But this chemical cocktail can be soooo misleading.
Firstly, Dopamine makes us feel like we can’t get enough, like we’re intoxicated by this person.
Then, Oxytocin creates this beautiful bond with them.
Adrenaline spikes creating feelings of euphoria, but also emotional dependency.
Serotonin, interestingly, drops causing an increase in desire to get more.
At the start of a new relationship, we can feel so excited by this person, and have all these lovely dovey feelings come up for them. They're beautiful and it's super fun to experience, don't get me wrong. But - the problem can lie in when we assume this is love. But, love and limerence are totally different.
Limerence is a term and concept first coined by Dorothy Tennov in her book 'Love & Limerence' and it's that feeling we experience of emotional arousal, romantic infatuation and that craving we get for someone. You know how we've grown up with the fairytale trope of how a new crush gives you butterflies, that being awkward and highly nervous is a sign that you just really like them? That could actually be limerence.
Now, love and limerence can overlap for sure, but remember that limerence is typified by full on infatuation and borderline obsession with your object of desire. You might hear that and think it's a bit extreme, but I would bet that most of us have experienced some level of limerence before.
So, what are the signs of limerence exactly?
When you exaggerate their positive traits and downplay or straight up ignore their flaws. We all do this at the start of a relationship, yes. But if you're in limerence, you're not even allowing yourself to see potential red flags or real compatibility.
If you're in limerence you might experience a hyperfocus on the other person to the point where you get distracted from your day to day life and revolve your whole day around interacting with this other person. Whether that's waiting for a text back and being unable to focus on work in the meantime, or obsessively waiting for your next date and struggling to be present with yourself or others until then.
Putting someone on a pedestal is another sign of limerence - when you place them on a pedestal and project this image of perfection and flawlessness onto them - again, ignoring any red flags and rationalising even bad behaviour as acceptable simply because you dig them. It creates this idea that they are perfect when they aren’t you are ignoring it or your illusion of them can be crushed and that’s not fair on the other person either because you are creating this idea of them which is not reality.
When you’re in limerence, you can feel like this person is your soulmate and that you’re meant to be together really early on, like, before you really truly know them kind of thing. Now, I know that sometimes “when you know, you know” and I’m not insinuating you don’t have an intuitive feeling about people and that’s worth following - but this is when you kind of lose sight of the reality and project this fantastical image of “meant to be” on to someone.
Remember how I said before that when we first fall in love, we have a biochemical reaction? Your serotonin levels are lowered so much - almost to the level as those with OCD, which triggers the reward centre of the brain and an increase in dopamine - the one that makes us feel fully intoxicated - and it's hard to detox from this. It's like a drug addiction. And so, being with your new partner can create this huge rush of pleasure, but similarly with drugs - once they're gone, you feel this big crash, almost like a withdrawal. Have you been there? Honestly, it makes love sound pretty bloody dramatic, doesn't it? No wonder we've written so many stories and movies about the drama that is love, lust and limerence.
Another major sign that you're in limerence is that you're addicted to the fantasy of the relationship, perhaps its potential or a projection of what you perceive you could be together, or who they are. It's not grounded in reality. You are ignoring those flags, the real truth about the person or situation.
I know I've personally been here. I went through a HUGE heartbreak earlier this year that left me really fucking bruised. I was love-bombed really hard, - and lovebombing, for those that don't know is when someone will absolutely overwhelm you with affection and promises about a future together, only to turn around withdraw completely, leaving you rather shellshocked. So for me, being love-bombed - told I was perfect, everything they were looking for, that they imagined a future together, essentially talking like they were committed, before peacing out and ghosting me - this only added to the experience of limerence. I realised after my heartbreak, and after a whole lot of healing - that what I thought was love, wasn't love at all. I was in limerence with this person. I had created this fantasy of this potential relationship - bolstered by the intense love-bombs being thrown my way - and I had broken my own damn heart because my expectations and assumptions fuelled by this fantasy weren't met. I got wayyyy ahead of myself. The person who had alluded to emotional availability was nothing of the sort, and I was left putting my heart back together when the relationship didn't reach the potential I had crafted in my mind. Perhaps you can relate.
Limerence differs from lust though, in that lust tends to be about sexual desire, focussed primarily on the external, the physical and the pursuit of pleasure and sexual gratification with this person. Whereas limerence tends to be about emotional dependence.
All of this to illustrate that it's important to be cautious at the start of a relationship. I want you to ask yourself:
Do you like them? Or do you just like that they like you?
Are you choosing them, or are you simply allowing yourself to be chosen?
Do you like who they really are, or the idea of them?
Do you like the reality of your relationship, or the projected fantasy that you've created?
Do they make you nervous, or are you comfortable around them?
Are you in love, or could it be limerence?
Now, limerence does have a tendency to fizzle - ignoring all the realities and all that projection will do that. But, not always. Limerence can turn into love, or should I say, when the limerence subsides, it’s possible for love to come through after that.
Speaking of which, let’s look now at love - I think it’s important to take some time individually to really tune in to your own personal definition of love, because everyone's going to be different. Personally, I feel like deep, lasting love is typified by feelings of comfort, compatibility, trust, stability, security. None of which sound particularly sexy, but these are the foundations of a healthy, long term relationship.
I think where we trip ourselves up is that we mistake limerence for love. We assume that love must feel exciting, passionate, all consuming. And when that inevitably wears off, we assume that the absence of limerent feelings is an absence of love itself. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in relationships where my partner assumed something was wrong, because those feelings, that new relationship energy had worn off. They had this assumption that love means rainbows and butterflies all the time, infatuation, damn near obsession, a total absence of conflict. Which, clearly, is entirely unrealistic.
Instead of talking about how we fall in love, losing ourselves and becoming all consumed with passion and near obsession with the other person, can we instead reframe and seek to grow in love? Understanding one another on deeper and deeper level, feeling aligned in your values, your goals, feeling safe, compatible, like you can be your whole self - light and dark and still be loved. There’s nothing worse than feeling like someone only likes the bright, shiny side of you. Only to get triggered when you’re less than sparkly, or worse - bounce altogether. I’ve been there.
I wanted to share these ideas of love, lust and limerence with you to perhaps give you something to consider the next time you’re dating or even when you're falling for someone. Not from a place of pessimism, but instead realism. Awareness.
A task I give my 1:1 clients who are actively dating, is to write a list - often in your notes app on your phone so it's easily accessible - of things you desire in a relationship. These are about your values - to see if they align, the qualities you wish them to have, the behaviour and treatment you expect and deserve, plus the boundaries you need to set and ensure aren’t crossed. Basically, it’s a list of things to remember so you don’t lose yourself or get caught in fantasy.
A huge one that my clients have found to be a game changer and - quite frankly, a rather confronting concept - is do I like them, or do I just like that they like me? Am I choosing them, or am I simply allowing myself to be chosen?
I’ll say that again: Am I choosing them, or am I simply allowing myself to be chosen?
I see the former all the time - with my clients, my friends and of course with myself. As women, especially, we’ve been conditioned to put the feelings of others before our own, along with the expectation that we should be flattered by attention of any kind - sometimes to the degree that we don’t ever even think about checking in with ourselves and deciding for ourselves if this is a person is someone we want to be with, let alone be build a relationship and a future with.
My invitation to you - Take a moment now and ask yourself, how often have I actively chosen a partner? I’m not suggesting you never have, of course. But perhaps you recognise that some of your early relationships - those that you look back on and wonder what the fuck was I thinking? - perhaps some of those people chose you, and you kind of went with it. It happens more than we are maybe aware of and more than we like to admit.
And so - the next time you’re in the throws of that intoxicating new relationship energy - take your time, don’t rush and really tune in with yourself. What you want, what you need, what’s important to you and whether this person meets you where you’re at. It can be so tempting to rush into things, especially when it feels so damn good. Trust me, I know. This is someone who thought she had met her damn soulmate and fell madly in limerence within a matter of days. Like, chill the fuck out babe, take your tiiiiiime.
And again, if you want to learn more about relationships, love, communication and managing conflict in a healthy, sustainable way - I'd love you to join me in EMBODIED. Check the shownotes now to join the waitlist, enrolments open in just a few weeks.
Alright my loves, I wish you deep, true, lasting love. See you in the next episode, and until then, stay sensual.
