Limerence: When Loving Someone Feels Like an Excruciating Addiction You Can't Escape, Because It Is.
Updated: Aug 10
There is a particular kind of pain that nobody talks about.
It lives in the space between a text message sent and one not yet received. It is the obsessive checking of a phone, the rehearsing of conversations, the physical ache in your chest when someone you love goes quiet. It is lying awake at 3am replaying every word, every look, every moment — searching for clues, for reassurance, for proof that you still matter to them.
You don't call it addiction. You call it love.
But what if it's both?
What Is Limerence?
Most people have never heard the word limerence. But if you've ever felt completely consumed by another person — not just in love, but obsessed, dependent, unable to function when they pull away or don’t show up and match your needs — you already know exactly what it feels like.
Limerence is an involuntary state of intense romantic attachment. It is not a character flaw. It is not weakness. It is not "being too much."
It is a trauma response wearing the costume of love. It feels like never ending trauma bond even if the person is still present.
Think of it like a person addiction. Just as someone can become physically dependent on a substance, a limerent person becomes neurologically dependent on another human being — on their attention, their approval, their presence. When that person pulls away, even slightly, the withdrawal is real. The anxiety spikes. The obsessive thoughts intensify. The chest tightens. Breathing becomes harder.
It feels like you cannot survive without them.
And the cruelest part? You often don't even realize that's what's happening.
It Takes Courage to Name This
I want to say something directly to you if you're reading this and recognizing yourself in these words:
It takes a strong person to look honestly at their own patterns in relationships. Most people never do. They repeat the cycle — attaching quickly, falling hard, crumbling when the other person distances — and they blame themselves each time without ever understanding why.
You are here. You are reading this. That already takes more self-awareness than most people ever develop.
I write openly about limerence because I have lived it. I know what it is to build your entire emotional world around another person. To feel chosen when they're warm and utterly worthless when they're cold. To mistake intensity for intimacy, and obsession for devotion. Read that part again….
To think it is something a lot more special or serious than it ever was. To be the only one showing the deep connection and love and intense feelings toward the other. Then wondering why, you never get it in return. To be devoted on a next level that no one else is participating in. Your heart races, it pounds with fear, dread, anxiety and panic almost daily. It takes your breath away.
That takes guts to identify in yourself. As I did. It is way beyond codependency. Next level and some could call it an obsession. Because it is. You love so hard and so deeply except sadly, you never get it back in return. You wonder why, you desperately try harder and you stop everything in your life to be with this person that is unaware of your addiction and so are you.
Maybe even until right in this moment you didn’t know why you were so into someone who was not matching your ability to “love.” Even if this person is mean to you and you see that, you will still chase them and try harder and harder. This must be “the one” you are sure of it. That panic. The terror. The sickness in your gut…. It is not conscious. We don’t know why its there….
I am one of the few people writing honestly about this — because it deserves honesty, not shame.
Where Does Limerence Come From? Limerence doesn't appear out of nowhere. It grows from wounds that were planted long before you ever met the person you can't stop thinking about and trying for. These wounds don't make you broken. They make you human. They make you someone who learned to survive in an environment that should have been safe but wasn't. The wounds are called core wounds.
The core wounds that feed limerence include:
Abandonment wound: The deep, early terror that people you love will always leave. When someone pulls away, it doesn't just feel like rejection — it feels like annihilation.
Unworthiness wound: The belief, often formed in childhood, that you are inherently not enough. You seek constant external validation to temporarily silence that voice.
Attachment wound: Growing up without consistent, safety, feeling lonely often, nurturing love teaches your nervous system that love is unpredictable. Inconsistency becomes familiar. The push and pull feels like home.
Neglect wound: When emotional needs went unmet in childhood, you learned to work extraordinarily hard for scraps of attention. In adulthood, you unconsciously seek people who replicate that dynamic.
Identity wound: Without a stable, secure sense of self, another person becomes your anchor. Losing them feels like losing yourself entirely.
There Is Another Way to Live
Here is what I want you to know, from someone who has been exactly where you are:
This is not who you are. This is what happened to you and it happened to you, not because of you. Often, it was something unintentional and very normal for those times in parenting a baby or a child. And it can heal.
The path forward isn't about trying harder, loving less, or building walls around your heart. It is about going back — gently, safely — to the places inside you where those wounds first formed. It is about giving your nervous system an experience it never had before. Safety, consistency, and unconditional worth — not earned, not performed, simply given.
Through somatic healing and inner child work with reparenting the self. Real and lasting change is possible. Your nervous system can learn that it is safe to be loved without chaos. That you do not have to chase, perform, or disappear into someone else to be worthy of staying.
The addiction can end. The obsession can quiet. The wound can close. And psst… it does not take long to heal when you have me guiding you through it and somatic reprocessing working for you! I am here to help make your healing time a lot faster and more efficient than mine was!
Not because you white-knuckled your way through it. But because you finally gave the youngest, most hurting part of you exactly what she always deserved.
You Are Not Too Much. You Were Just Never Enough for the Wrong People.
If any part of this resonated with you — if you felt seen reading these words — I want, you to know that feeling seen is just the beginning.
There is a way through this. There is a version of you on the other side of this pain who loves freely, attaches securely, and no longer measures her worth by someone else's attention.
That version of you is not a fantasy. She is waiting.
When you're ready to take the first step, I'm here.
Author, Kelli Leis May 2026 © ~ Trauma Recovery & Emotional Healing
Trauma-Informed Positive Psychology and Brain Spotting Practitioner, EMDR, Hypnotherapy and Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Specialist
This taught me so much valuable information, and it’s such an important thing to be aware of! Thank you Kelli Leis!