What happens when love tips over into the infatuated state of ‘limerence’? | Life and style

I never thought about the nature of love until it became a problem.

Throughout adolescence, I suffered through a series of intense crushing, often not required, but I just assumed that this was the great suffering of the desires in which poets and singing address worked hard to capture words.

As a PhD student in neuroscience in the nineties, I met and fell deeply, in love with the woman who will become my wife. We were influenced by the mutual bliss – classic fictional stories – and I just assumed that I had discovered these things in the end, delighted with my intuitive skills. I was amazingly for a long time.

There were a few rugs along the way, as fireworks for early love fired the way to the steadfast warmth of emotional interdependence, but we moved them, married, gave birth to children, and started a happy and safe family life. Just an error occurred when – in the Calis -Life Crisis – I mistakenly became fascinated with a co -worker.

The delicious highlands have returned from the crushing of adolescents, but now with guilt about the implicit betrayal of being a person other than my wife. I had absolute intellectual clarity about the result that I wanted – to break the fascination and end the threat to my marriage – but also, again and again, I failed to master my feelings. I just couldn’t stop them.

To manage the temptation, I adopted simple limits that do not lose sight: I will never disclose my feelings. I don’t know if my being made of parts know this ever. I did my best to hide it, but there was some “telling”, and I was not trustworthy about reading my mind when I was “under influence.”

I did my best to keep professionalism through my own psychological battle, but I was not sure that I would win. For the first time in my life, I understood the dilemma of the addict – a deep part of you Want To fail the moral test, because failure means that you are satisfied with your passion.

I felt as if you were Living in a variable mental state that turns out to be my first great advantage. As an academic and neuroscientist, the changing mental states fell directly in my experience.

It started in plow through literature on love, the nervous chemical basis of euphoria, and the processes that control addiction. This penetration came when I was reading an unknown book written by the psychologist in the late seventies Dorothy Tenov: Love and guarantee, the experience of being in love. I completely seized my experience.

Tennov invented the term “LIMERENCE” to describe the early stage of love specified by intense euphoria, a deep emotional connection, mood swings, intrusive ideas, violation, obsessive violation, and the involuntary raid of the other person. She saw it as a distinguished mental state that people were “in” when they were focusing on another person on another person, and in the half of the century since Tennov carried out social psychology research, we can now understand the distress from the perspective of contemporary nervous sciences.

Under the appropriate circumstances, stimulating excitement, rewards, and interconnection in the brain can make an incredibly strong person. They become the main source of reward in Limarent’s life, as it leads to an unusual natural height.

If the barriers or uncertainty prevent the open expression of these feelings and the tigers continue without a solution, then these nervous systems can move themselves into a state of supernatural activation that resembles addiction. Most people are aware of the idea of ​​sex addiction, love or pornography. In the same manner, distress can be understood as addiction to another person. Their company is really poisoning.

This insight led to a follow -up decision, and a second great advantage – I told my wife what was happening to me and discovered that she also suffered from distress. I understood what I was ordering.

That was a turning point. I no longer fight a secret personal battle, but work in partnership with my wife to solve the problem. It has tested methods of overcoming infatuation, reflected mental programming and eliminating psychological texts. This means disrupting the habits that enhance the distress by limiting the contact with my colleague at work, deliberately spoiling the daydreaming and reformulating the happy memories of focusing on the negatives. Equally important, I realized that I could not only use mental punishment, you needed to develop a new, positive and purposeful vision for the future.

The progress was slow But fixed. Home life improved, practical life improved, and I learned important lessons about not knowing the impression of my weird and intuition. During this period, I made another decision that would change my life. It has started a blog. I bought the name of the field Livingwithlimenece.com The writing began under the “Dr L” name. It was the expelling of evil spirits of a kind – poured what I learned, what I went through, and the methods that I tried to drop the sound level on the fabric. Over time, people started finding the site. The comments began to appear, readers discussed their own experiences, asked questions, and shared their painful secrets: the lawyers who became immune to their customers; Patients who have become therapists. People whose love and supporting wives previously turned into a harsh adulterer in the obsessive obsession obsession.

The site grew into a society of people trying to understand their fibers, how it started, and what it concerns about them, as the origins of this romantic weakness may lie in their personal history. Repeated and repeatedly, I report visitors about the same diving feast that I went through when reading Dorothy Tinov’s book: “Yes, this is exactly what I face! I don’t feel crazy. I am not alone.”

At this stage, I realized that I have two very strong powers available to understand texts: neuroscience and a community of thousands of injured who committed more than six million words of the site’s personal certificate. The blog introduced a new stage of collecting information and improving the definition of Limarece, in an attempt to understand the difference between the global elements of the experience and the unique personal details of individual cases. The status studies have been analyzed and suspended, and I conducted a survey through the market research company to try to obtain an unbiased estimate of the joint siege in the public.

This poll indicated that 50-60 % of the population suffered from distress, and among these people, half of them again were so bad that addiction has harmed their lives. There seems to be truly two “love tribes” there, Aymar and unlimited, who suffer from the early stage of love in a very different way. Some of us fall brutally and ecstasy that feels a different operational situation for the brain, while others are able to enjoy the “new relationship energy” of gravity without fluctuating. The inconsistent expectations of these two tribes are about what love He should As you explain a lot of heartache and romantic adventures that we all suffer.

I have also learned other interesting details. Limnerce is equally popular in men and women, whatever their sexual lives, but there is one group that seems to be particularly vulnerable to experience: those who have an anxious attachment style. This is a style of interconnection characterized by uncertainty and insecurity. The frightening people are looking for a lot of intimate relationship from their romantic partners, and they are very sensitive to fear of giving up and spend a lot of time concern about the safety of their relationship. Small differences with their partner can feel a major threat. It is believed that this psychological state arises from the unreliable care during childhood and childhood.

In our poll, 79 % of people with an anxious method of anxious experience. People who had no anxiety style had a 55 % less anxiety than Limerin. Obviously anxious attachment pattern is not required to experience texts, but it seems that it is strongly associated with it.

After seven years of research and blogging about texts under a pseudonym, I finally decided to “go out” myself and wrote my first book, fond. It surrounds everything you learned about distress so far, how to understand the changing mental state, and how to recover from it.

For myself, this devastating fascination now feels a long way in the past. I am grateful because the experience in the end led to a new direction purposeful for my life and the creation of a society to help others pass the same trials.

It was sober to accept personal palaces. Paying it into a changing mental state, a new, increasingly emotional scope experience and forcing it to face great questions about your life and your options greatly disturbed, but it also forces you to reassess yourself. For anyone who has the pain of unwanted texts, I hope this is an encouraging idea that what appears to be an obsession that shakes life can turn into a power of personal renewal.

Smitten: romantic obsession, neuroscience in text and how to make love last by Dr. Tom Bellami publishes Waterkins at a price of 16.99 pounds. Buy a copy of Guardianbookshop.com For 15.29 pounds sterling