You've probably tried to figure out whether what you're in is love addiction or limerence. And the harder you look for the line between them, the more it moves — every definition seems to blur into the next one.
Here's why: they're not the opposites they look like.
Love addiction chases the state — the falling, the rush, the electric part before anyone really knows anyone. When the feeling wears off, and it always does, the person gets swapped for a new source of the same high. Limerence looks like the reverse: not many people, but one you couldn't trade if you tried. One swaps endlessly, one fixates and won't let go. Opposites, apparently.
Except they're running on the exact same fuel. The love addict isn't addicted to love — they're addicted to uncertainty, to the moment before you know. And that's the same thing limerence runs on. The difference is only what happens to the uncertainty. For the love addict it keeps resolving, so they keep moving. In limerence it never resolves — you've found one person who can't be had, and an unavailable person is a perpetual-motion machine for the feeling of falling without ever reaching the part that spoils it. It's the same drug. Limerence is just the version with a lock on it.
In this episode I get into why neither state is really about the person at all — why you can spend years fixated on someone and still not know who they are on an ordinary Wednesday, how the blank spaces in a person you don't fully know are exactly where you paint your own unlived parts, when one episode is just an episode versus when it's a pattern worth looking at, and what the way out actually is. Not forcing the real person into focus. Just letting the fantasy resolve into what is — specific, ordinary, human — and letting the built version go.
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📗 Free resources
▸ Is It Limerence? Quiz — https://youreclaimedproject.com/is-it-limerence-quiz/
▸ Attachment Style Quiz — https://youreclaimedproject.com/attachment-style-quiz/
▸ The Calm-Down Toolkit — https://youreclaimedproject.com/calm-down-toolkit/
🔗 Submit a question for a future episode — https://youreclaimedproject.com/ask/
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Disclaimer: I'm not a therapist or medical professional. This podcast is for educational purposes only and is based on personal experience and research. It isn't a substitute for therapy, medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. If you're considering any techniques discussed here, I recommend exploring them with a licensed mental health professional. If you're in crisis or need immediate support, contact local emergency services or a licensed provider in your area.
