Siri, play Sober (Stripped) by Chelsea Taylor.
This isn’t about love.
Not the kind that’s rooted, mutual, and nourishing. This is about the illusion of love. The kind that takes up space in your chest and calls itself connection.. but never quite lands.
It keeps you on edge, craving, fantasizing… waiting for someone to become the version you’ve created in your mind.
It's the feeling of being in love.. but in a way that's overwhelming, debilitating, and unexpected. An episode can last between one to seven years. It usually leaves you pretty messed up.
It’s called limerence. And it might be one of the most overlooked emotional addictions of our time. It is the new, artificial love.
It’s psychological intensity disguised as intimacy. A rush that mimics devotion, but leaves you more disconnected than before. If left unchecked, it can disrupt your life and sense of identity. The hardest part? Most people don’t even realize it’s happening.
It’s everywhere.. woven into stories we call love.
What does limerence look like?
Sometimes it looks like a friend. Sometimes it’s a stranger. Sometimes, it’s the person you still think about when the room goes quiet. "The one that got away."
Below is a great example:
- Dorothy Tennov, in her 1975 book Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love, explores the intense emotional state known as limerence.
It can start subtly. You meet someone, and they light something up in you. You start imagining conversations that haven’t happened yet. Not always sexual in nature. It can strike, even if you are in a healthy relationship.
You write versions of them in your mind that are more attentive, more passionate, more present than they actually are. You see signs, symbols, “meant to be” moments. It feels electric. And it is.. but it’s not always love.
Sometimes, it’s the hope that someone will save you from something you haven’t faced in yourself. It's more common than we realize. Many people experience it without ever naming it, even myself.
It’s not always “bad.” Sometimes, it opens a door.
It can awaken parts of us that have been dormant. Desire, aliveness, and even hope. But when it becomes a substitute for true emotional nourishment, that’s when it turns. Instead of connection, it creates craving. Instead of satisfaction, it offers a kind of emotional sugar. Quick highs, followed by the ache of absence.
Fantasizing about someone gives us a temporary feeling of being chosen, needed, or special. Sometimes, everything else takes a back seat, disrupting your motivational hierarchy.
But beneath that, there’s often a deeper belief running the show:
To be chosen is to be safe.
To be desired is to be valuable.
To be wanted is to be worthy.
And anything that threatens that equation.. anything that reminds you that real love is quiet, steady, and doesn’t always come with fireworks.. you push it away. You reject it. Not because you don’t want love, but because your nervous system was wired to chase intensity over stability. Especially someone who’s chaotic. Hard to impress. Emotionally distant.
That feels like redemption.. like finally proving something. Like healing. But it’s not. It’s performance. And you deserve more than that. You deserve a connection rooted in virtue, not trauma tethering. Not just someone who triggers your past, but someone who meets your present.
Because for many of us, it started long ago.
Maybe it was a parent whose love you had to earn. A caregiver whose affection only came when you were hurting. A family system that rewarded performance and punished emotional needs. Intermittent care-giving. Intermittent love.
So you learned to adapt. You became charming. Helpful. Smart. Pleasant. Never too much. You made yourself easy to love (on the outside). And the version of you that wasn’t? The part that was messy, needy, wild, or honest? You buried them. That’s why now, even when things are “fine,” you feel disconnected. Not because you’re broken. But because the self you abandoned is still waiting to come home.
As someone who works deeply with emotional patterns, shadow work, and subconscious attachments, I’ve seen how common this is—even among highly self-aware, successful people. Recognizing the pattern is not about blame and more about compassion. Once you see it clearly, you’re no longer trapped inside it.
Why is it harmful?
One: it disconnects you from yourself. You stop trusting your own rhythms. You wait for their text before you eat. You measure your worth by their attention. You stop being the main character in your own life.
Two: it creates emotional confusion. You confuse longing with love. You start interpreting mixed signals as proof of potential. Instead of asking if they’re emotionally available, you ask what you can do to win them over.
Three: you override your intuition. You feel the red flags. You notice the distance. But you justify it. You cling to the fantasy because it gives you something to hope for—even if it’s not real.
Four: you stay stuck in the loop. Because limerence is a cycle. The dopamine hit of fantasy. The crash of reality. The hunger for another hit. It’s addictive.. and the withdrawal feels like grief.
And yet, real love matters.
This isn’t a call to shut down emotionally or shame the desire for connection. If anything, it’s a reminder that we need each other. We are wired for deep love in many forms. Romantic, yes. But also platonic, communal, familial.
I said this before and I'll say it again: You can't self-help yourself out of your human needs. We are meant to know each other in a real way. To hold space for one another. To let love be something we live through presence. This is about remembering that love doesn’t have to come from one source. Your healing can come from friendship. From community. From choosing people who see you clearly and hold you without condition.
And yet—when we chase the Hollywood fantasy in romantic love. We bypass the work of building what’s real. Mutual. Respectful. Secure. Imperfect. Sacred.
What’s the desired outcome?
The goal isn’t to shut your heart down. It’s to come home to it. To see your patterns without shame. To reclaim the parts of you that gave away power in the name of love. To build a relationship with yourself that isn’t dependent on someone else’s attention. When you do that, everything shifts. You stop chasing. You start choosing. You stop fixating on what someone could be.
You start asking, “How do I actually feel when I’m with them?” You stop making yourself smaller for someone’s potential. And you start building a life based on truth, not fantasy.
If you’re in it right now…
Slow down. Breathe. Ask yourself: “What am I hoping they’ll rescue me from?”
Then ask, “What would it feel like to give that to myself?”
That’s where the healing begins.
The Deeper Cost of Limerence
Ultimately, limerence disconnects you from yourself—and from others.
It places you in a suspended reality, where everything revolves around “what could be” instead of what is. It becomes a form of emotional escapism—pulling you out of the present moment, out of your body, out of the life that’s actually unfolding around you. You may find yourself caught in a cycle of anticipation, overthinking, idealization, and disappointment. All while life is quietly moving past you.
This is the hidden cost:
You miss real connection because you’re chasing a fantasy. You miss yourself—your truth, your peace, your presence—because your energy is elsewhere.
A Broader Perspective: Mo Gawdat, Expectations & Shadow Work
At its core, this work isn’t just about romance. It’s about reclaiming how we engage with life itself. Mo Gawdat, a software engineer, entrepreneur, author, podcaster, and public speaker, suggests that happiness is the result of reality minus expectations.
Both Mo Gawdat’s Happiness Equation and shadow work point to the same root issue: The gap between reality and expectation.
If your expectations are unrealistic or unconsciously shaped by old beliefs, disappointment is inevitable. Shadow work goes deeper into why we have those expectations in the first place. It asks:
What wounds shaped those desires? What parts of me are still trying to earn love, safety, or approval? When you do shadow work, you uncover the unconscious beliefs running the show—beliefs like:
“I’m only lovable if I’m wanted,” or, “Being chosen means I matter.”
These beliefs distort your reality. They keep you stuck in cycles of pain, longing, and dissatisfaction. And here’s the thing:
Limerence doesn't only land on the wounded or inexperienced. Even highly successful, emotionally intelligent people fall into this pattern. Rather than writing it off as a sign of weakness, we can objectively see it as a sign of unacknowledged hunger. Of needs that were never safely met, being re-enacted in silence. But once you see these patterns clearly, you get to choose differently.
You reduce the friction between what is and what you thought should be. You make room for real clarity, real joy, and real love, starting with the relationship you have with yourself. This is how healing becomes freedom. And how presence becomes peace.
Learning to Stay—Even When It’s Hard
Whether you're single or in a relationship, one of the most powerful things you can learn is how to stay present with discomfort.
Not every hard moment is a sign that something's broken.
Sometimes it’s just something old rising to the surface.. an unmet need, a buried fear, a younger part of you asking to be seen, not fixed.
The temptation to escape is strong.
To revisit someone who once made your heart race.
To swipe.
To flirt.
To create a new fantasy that pulls you away from the tension you feel now.
But running from discomfort keeps you stuck. And the pattern repeats until you've learned the lesson.
It’s another way of outsourcing your self-worth, your stability, your truth. Real love, whether it’s with yourself or with someone else, asks you to stay.
To feel what’s hard without numbing it.
To ride the wave without jumping ship.
To say to yourself:
“I can hold this. I don’t have to run.”
That’s how self-trust is built.
That’s how intimacy grows.
That’s how healing happens. Through presence. Through taking a look at where you contributed to the dance.
And one more thing.
If you truly want romantic connection with multiple souls, there’s no shame in that.
Love can take many forms. What matters is the energy behind it.Feelings are sacred.
And as long as you’re honest about where you stand, rather than using fantasy or deception to hold people in orbit—you create space for real alignment.
Find those who share your values.
Because when truth leads, love becomes liberating, not confusing.
Maybe this is what it really comes down to..
We’re all looking for unity. For wholeness. And that’s not wrong. It’s human. But maybe the answer isn’t out there. Maybe it starts by becoming the one we’ve been waiting for. To be our own soulmates first.
To stand in our own presence without needing someone else to reflect our worth back to us. To stop chasing breadcrumbs of validation, and instead feed ourselves with the truth that we are already enough. When you can do that, when you can sit with yourself and feel full, you stop trying to manipulate outcomes. You stop bending your boundaries to stay chosen. You stop tying your value to someone else’s ability to recognize it. You begin to love from overflow, not scarcity. And that’s when everything changes.
This is the work. Not easy. But real. And you are ready for it.