8 Comments

It’s insane how the impossibility of it makes it more intense. It feels a bit like love comes down to choosing between “very intense love that only happens in your head” or “actually possible but more grounded & therefore not feeling quite as special love”. The romantic age unfortunately pushes us a lot towards seeking the former.

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“For many people limerence will be the strongest emotion they ever experience”

this is breaking me

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"There’s an inability to be limerent about more than one person at a time."

> Hold my beer

But seriously, what if two people are limerent about each other? Could it be related to serial monogamy?

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I stan this hypothesis

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Loved every bit of this essay. Never even heard of limerence before, but am positive I have experienced it. wow--the things people do and say in a state of limerence...

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> Plato believed that obsessive love for another person could sometimes be successfully be converted into a non-possessive love of the beauty you see in them, which you can then appreciate in all other places it appears in the world

This idea (which I think primarily derives from the Phaedo) is a major recurring interest of Iris Murdoch's. I think you would like her writing, if you haven't tried it!

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Jealousy can be good. Non possessive love isn’t the goal.

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“Superstitious thinking requires a massive investment of energy” if that’s true, explain how I only get MORE tired the older and more superstitious I get!

I had this with the grifter I was in love (“”) with - that only lasted two years. But then there was another. Less obsessive but longer lasting (the first woman I ever wrote poetry about). When I look at that flowchart… oof.

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