Limerence in Women

We like to think that, when we become romantically attracted to someone, it’s because of something unique and special about them that we can intuit in our first meeting. A certain glint in their eye, a “type” they embody that we’re always attracted to, or maybe a rakish devil-may-care confidence that fills a room.

But the inconvenient truth is, we are usually romantically attracted to people who are going to perfectly reproduce the exact kind of relational trauma and pain that we experienced in our childhoods. The unconscious mind is brilliant, and it picks up on cues in an instant that this person is going to give us a particular kind of pain that feels like home.

And please understand, when I write about childhood developmental trauma, I am not pointing fingers or blaming anyone’s parents. Most parents are truly doing their very best and love their children to death. However, they (like all humans) were carrying their own version of developmental trauma when they raised us, and so were their parents, and theirs, and theirs. Furthermore, children are constantly making meaning in the wildest ways. A kid may have the most well-meaning parents who do everything for him, and he might make that mean, “I can’t do anything for myself.”

And the ghosts of those early relational dances and belief structures follow us into adulthood, shaping our lives and relationships in astonishingly powerful ways, and all beneath the level of conscious awareness.

When a woman is a limerent adult, this can show up in a variety of ways. The crucial factor that is always at play in limerence is that we find ourselves, seemingly hopelessly/helplessly drawn, over and over again, into highly charged romantic fantasies and situation-ships with potential partners who have already displayed, and continue to display, that they are unable or unwilling to truly see, know or love us or commit to us on any level. 

But the problem is, those are the only ones we want. The prospect of any actual relationship with an actual flesh-and-blood human being who actually loves us just brings up way too much weirdness, numbness, insecurity, and maybe even a kind of boredom and disenchantment with the realities of an adult human life. It’s sort of like that old Groucho Marx saying, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”

In limerence, we choose fantasy over reality. At least in fantasy, our hands are firmly on the controls, and everything can continue to glimmer with superb possibility, free from the ugly details of reality, like taking the garbage out, or gassy evenings after eating together at that new restaurant.

But underneath that glimmer of superb possibility, our heart is on a flaming clown car ride of glorious swelling anticipation followed by inevitable and numerous crashes, sending us back down into a familiar, crushing pain and desolation. Over and over again.

A part of us feels at home in that pain, in that eternally unmet reach. Maybe even likes it a little. At least in pain, there is intensity, aliveness and present moment awareness. (This is where a smidgen of unconscious masochism can tie into limerence, but I digress!) A part of us has held her arm out in an unmet reach for a very, very, very long time.

Often, when limerent people have done enough personal growth work to find themselves in a healthy relationship that actually feels safe in their nervous system (and to know that this is so), in the moment when they should be overcome with joy (having attained real love after years and years of nightmare, desolation and grief), all they can feel is a strange numbness or neutrality. That’s because there’s usually another internal part (partner in crime to the eternally aching, reaching part) who has developed a sort of resigned deadness about real love. Sort of like, “I’m never going to have real love anyway, so fuck it.”

And that’s where more fun inner work begins to open the heart to the real human love that is now available.

It’s a journey, and if you’re limerent (even in some small way), please know that you’re not alone. Perhap we’ve all experienced limerence to some degree (some more than others). Reach out to schedule a free consultation call if you know the desolation of limerence all too well. I’m here for you ❤️