The People We Can’t Stop Thinking About

Sarah on limerence, obsession, queer desire, and getting your brain back.

There’s a particular kind of person who can take up residence in your brain without paying rent.

You replay the conversation. Check your phone. Read into the text. Decide you’re over it. Check their Instagram. Decide you’re definitely over it. Then spend 45 minutes imagining a future together based on something they said three weeks ago.

There’s a word for when attraction starts behaving less like a crush and more like an altered state: limerence.

For some people, limerence is exhilarating. For others, the phenomenon can become genuinely destabilizing, disrupting sleep, relationships, work, appetite, and the ability to think about much of anything else. Add mixed signals, unavailable people, and constant digital access to one another, and the whole thing gets considerably louder.

We recently sat down with limerence and attachment therapist Sarah James Pearse to talk about the complexities of connection: why queer relationships can be particularly fertile territory for intense attachment, why certain people become impossible to shake, and how to tell the difference between love, desire, and a brain caught in a loop.

How do you explain limerence to someone who has never heard the word before?

Sarah James Pearse: I usually describe it as a temporary state of romantic, ruminative obsession - one that can either destabilize someone's life if it's unrequited or left unresolved, or transition into deeper attachment and, hopefully, love if the feelings are mutual and able to move past the honeymoon stage into an actual relationship.

At its core, limerence involves a few specific ingredients: intrusive, involuntary thoughts about a person that you can't easily turn off, an intense craving for your feelings to be reciprocated, a fear of rejection that can border on panic, and a mood that rises and falls almost entirely based on that person's behavior toward you, a text back and you're euphoric, silence and you're spiraling.

And it really is involuntary. It hijacks the same neurochemical systems that, evolutionarily, were designed to help humans pair-bond, it just runs at a much higher intensity, and in some people, for a lot longer than anyone would choose. This isn't a few weeks of butterflies. Limerence can last months, sometimes years, if it isn't understood or addressed.

Where is the line between having an intense crush, falling in love, and experiencing limerence?

I think of it as a spectrum, not a different category. We've all had a crush. That feel-good pull toward someone you're attracted to. Most of us have also fallen in love - the rush, the longing, the increased focus on another person that takes over during the honeymoon stage. Limerence runs on the exact same neurochemicals. It's just turned up to a 10.

Think not being able to sleep, not being able to eat, not being able to focus or find pleasure about anything or anyone but this specific person, and having your mood soar and then crash solely based on interactions from this person. Often, in a limerent episode you are not thinking clearly and can make very impulsive decisions.

If you're thinking "but that's just normal falling in love" - I'm here to tell you: you are probably someone who experiences limerence. Research suggests a large portion of people do, at least once in their lifetimes, though a meaningful portion of the population actually never does. According to Tom Bellamy, neuroscientist and author of Smitten, roughly 50% of adults in the US and UK have experienced limerence, and about 25% found it significantly disruptive enough to interfere with their ability to enjoy life.

Some brains are more susceptible, particularly ones that already struggle to regulate certain neurotransmitters, or that are more prone to obsessive thought patterns and intense emotional reactivity in general. Think OCD, mood disorders, ADHD, addiction.

The underlying neurochemistry of limerence is a normal biological mechanism at root, likely designed to help us find mates and pair-bond. But for a smaller portion of people, it doesn't fade into love once the honeymoon stage ends. It usually doesn’t even make it to the honeymoon stage. Instead it becomes all-consuming, more like a behavioral addiction than a feeling. People feel out of control, emotionally flooded, and their personal, professional, and social lives start to fracture, similar to an addiction. Those are the people who end up in my office.

What does limerence actually feel like when you're in it? Are there signs people tend to miss?

The biggest mistake is assuming limerence just feels like "a normal crush." For anyone who's actually been in it, it's unmistakable - the intensity, the highs and lows, the desperation, the longing for mental relief. People start behaving, thinking, and feeling in ways that are unrecognizable to themselves.

Some real quotes from clients: "I've had a lot of traumatic experiences in my life. I'm a survivor of rape, I've lost all my belongings in a fire, I've had cancer... and yet somehow, this is the hardest thing I've ever gone through." And: "I feel like I've woken up in a nightmare and no one in my life can understand. Nothing has ever hijacked my mind the way limerence has."

At this level, we're not talking about the feel-good effects of falling in love anymore. We're talking about a painful, isolating experience that a lot of people don't have words for.

The person you can't stop thinking about.

Why can uncertainty or mixed signals make us want someone even more?

At the center of limerence is dopamine, the brain's anticipation chemical. Most people assume dopamine is about pleasure, about having something. Actually, it fuels the sense that something meaningful is just around the corner. It's the wanting, not the having.

So when your brain tags a person as significant, it can get locked into a loop - scanning for them endlessly, replaying interactions, imagining future scenarios, because the anticipation of connection is what keeps the dopamine firing. In the beginning, this feels pleasurable. Just like any addiction, that's what gets you hooked. By its very nature, the loop can't resolve, because resolution would mean arrival, and arrival would end the anticipation.

Limerence thrives on ambiguity. Mixed signals, inconsistency, circumstantial barriers, an unknown future - these don't dampen the obsession, they intensify it. When the outcome is uncertain, the brain stays on high alert: scanning, analyzing, hoping. Funnily enough, the high isn't coming from your actual interactions with them. It's coming from the mental activity that happens before and after.

Why are unavailable people sometimes the hardest people to let go of?

Limerence tends to take hold when three things line up: a person who matches your emotional blueprint (they reflect unmet childhood needs, core wounds, or beliefs), some hope or encouragement that they like you back (real or entirely imagined), and an obstacle that creates uncertainty (distance, mixed signals, fear of rejection, unavailable circumstances). Relationships with clear, mutual reciprocation tend not to produce limerence in the same way. Certainty quiets the anticipation loop, while uncertainty keeps it running.

Unavailability doesn't just spark limerence, it's also what makes it so hard to release. That’s because variable reward is more addictive than consistent reward. This is the same mechanism behind slot machines. If someone was consistently unavailable or straight out rejected you, your brain could eventually file them away as a clear "no." But unavailable-with-occasional-crumbs - a text back, a warm moment, a maybe - teaches your brain that connection is possible if you just keep trying. So the search never fully powers down.

There's also no resolution, which means no closure. A typical breakup gives your nervous system an ending it can actually process and grieve. Unavailability rarely offers that. The door stays cracked open just enough that your mind keeps returning to check it, because it never received the signal that it's actually closed.

Can someone be genuinely in love with a person and also be experiencing limerence toward them?

Yes, I believe it's possible to feel both at once. A couple of examples: some people develop limerence for a long-term friend they've already loved for years, or for an ex they'd already fallen in love with in the past. The important thing is telling apart how each one shows up.

The limerent episode is often what blocks someone from thinking or seeing clearly. The biggest tell is urgency and need - the sense that they must secure emotional reciprocation right now, at all costs, even at the expense of their health, sanity, or family. That urgency is coming from the limerence, not the love. The love itself is far less attached to outcome. Once the limerent state resolves, people usually notice their thinking becomes far less black-and-white, far less urgent.

What happens when the person you're limerent for actually likes you back? Does the feeling disappear, turn into love, or become something else?

When there's mutual limerence from the start, both people can enter what looks like a more intense version of a normal honeymoon stage. It eventually fades on its own because the brain gets used to any unchanged reward over time, even something this exciting, and the intensity naturally settles. From there, it either turns into love and attachment, or it disappears completely, and both people realize they don't have much in common and aren't actually drawn to each other after all.

To figure out whether a limerent episode can transition into something healthier, I like to ask: what qualities in the relationship let fantasy slowly give way to reality, and turn into something like love? Is the way you're relating to each other changing you in healthy ways? Are you learning that love can feel steady and safe, instead of anxious and uncertain?

Love, relationships + queer life.

Can limerence happen when you're already in a happy, loving relationship? If so, what does that mean, and what doesn't it mean?

Yes, and it happens more often than people realize. Long-term relationships naturally move toward stability and routine, which is exactly where safety and real intimacy live, but it's not where dopamine thrives. Dopamine is fueled by novelty and uncertainty, and a long-term partnership produces less of that over time by design. So when someone new shows up who feels exciting and activating, the neurochemical response can be immediate and powerful, and a part of you may interpret that intensity as meaning, fate, or chemistry, when it's really just your brain responding to novelty.

It's worth being clear about what this doesn't mean: it doesn't mean your relationship is over, it doesn't mean you don't love your partner, it doesn't mean the other person is your true match, and it doesn't mean you're a bad partner or a bad person. Limerence is a state, not a verdict.

What it often does mean is that this person has activated something in you - an unmet need or a disowned part of yourself. Maybe it's a longing for desire, depth, or feeling truly chosen that's faded in your relationship. Or maybe it's a quality you had to suppress to belong such as spontaneity, expressiveness, confidence, that you're now drawn to in someone else. What feels like "this person is my soulmate" is often, underneath, "this person is showing me something I've been missing in my life, or in myself." The longing is real. It's just pointing inward, not outward.

The most important thing I tell people in this position: limerence alone isn't a reliable guide for deciding whether to leave a relationship, because by its nature it idealizes the object of longing and quietly diminishes what's already in front of you. The more useful question isn't do I feel more alive with this other person - it's what would it take for me to feel more alive in my own life?

Do you notice anything distinctive about the way limerence shows up in queer relationships or queer dating?

Yes, and this is something Ruth Schwartz and Michelle Murrain write about directly in their book Conscious Lesbian Dating and Love. Their observation, backed by their years of coaching lesbian and queer women, is that two women often move into limerence faster and more intensely than couples of other orientations tend to. There's a particular kind of merging that can happen quickly - deep emotional attunement, rapid intimacy, a sense of finally being understood - and it can feel like undeniable chemistry or fate.

The tricky part is that this intensity doesn't necessarily correlate with actual compatibility. Two women can feel powerfully, unmistakably drawn to each other while being fundamentally mismatched in values, needs, or life direction. The depth of feeling gets mistaken for depth of fit.

I think part of this is structural, women in general tend to be socialized toward emotional attunement and fast intimacy-building, and when you put two people with that same relational wiring together, the pace and depth can compound quickly. It's not a flaw in queer relationships; it's a pattern worth knowing about so it doesn't get mistaken for certainty. Going slowly and getting to know someone beyond the limerence, lust, and projection matters just as much in queer relationships, maybe even more.

Do dating apps, social media, and having constant access to someone's life make limerence worse?

Oh, absolutely. Limerence runs on uncertainty and intermittent reinforcement…and apps and social media are basically a delivery system for both. Every read receipt, every "online now," every new post is a fresh hit of ambiguity for your brain to chew on. We've built entire platforms that function like slot machines for the anticipation loop. It's not helping.

Getting your brain back.

If someone realizes, "Oh shit, I think I'm in limerence," what's the first thing you want them to know?

You're not crazy, and you're not broken. This is a real, documented psychological and neurochemically altered state, not a character flaw, not proof you're obsessive or unstable, not a sign you're a bad partner or a bad person. Your brain is doing exactly what brains do under these conditions. Naming it "limerence" instead of just "I'm losing my mind" is actually the first useful step, because it means this is something you can understand, work with, and move through, not something that has to run your life indefinitely.

I'd also want them to know: limerence does not equal compatibility. Plenty of relationships start without any limerence at all and go on to become stable, successful, loving partnerships. And plenty of relationships that start with intense limerence, once that high fades, leave two people realizing they actually have very little in common and aren't even that drawn to each other anymore. Limerence tells you very little about whether a relationship will actually work.

What it can tell you something about is your relational blueprint - the unconscious pattern, built from past experiences, unmet needs, and core beliefs, that determines who you're drawn to and why. A person who matches your blueprint can feel instantly compelling, even if you barely know them. For some people, that blueprint points toward unhealthy patterns like the perpetually unavailable, the narcissist. For others, it points toward people who embody qualities they wish they had themselves. Either way, it's worth getting to know your own pattern, because that's the thing actually running the show.

What are some of the behaviors that unknowingly keep limerence alive?

The big ones: checking their social media, replaying conversations on a loop, over-analyzing texts for hidden meaning, fantasizing about future scenarios, seeking reassurance from friends, "testing" them to gauge interest, and going out of your way to run into them or be seen by them. Each of these feels like harmless coping in the moment, but they're all actually feeding the anticipation loop and reinforcing the exact neural pathway you're trying to calm down.

Is going no-contact actually helpful, or is that too simplistic?

It's helpful, but it's not the whole story. Sometimes it’s not even possible, for example, if someone is limerent for a coworker or family member of their spouse. No-contact works because it removes the fuel. Every interaction, DM, or glimpse of them is a fresh hit for the anticipation loop, so cutting that off is often the fastest way to stop actively reinforcing it. But no-contact alone doesn't address what's happening internally. You can be fully no-contact and still spend hours a day replaying, fantasizing, and obsessing, the loop can run entirely in your own head with zero contact required. So it's a necessary first step for a lot of people, but not a cure on its own. The real work is what you do with your nervous system and your mind once the external contact is gone.

What does getting over limerence look like? And how do you know when you're actually on the other side of it?

It's rarely a single moment, it's more like the volume gradually turning down. The intrusive thoughts get less frequent and less urgent. You notice you've gone a few hours, then a day, without checking or replaying. The highs and lows flatten out. You start being able to think about them without your whole nervous system reacting.

But the clearest sign isn't really about them at all, it's about you. You start feeling more like yourself again: your appetite, sleep, and focus come back. You're present for your actual life instead of half-living in a fantasy about a different one. Decisions stop feeling urgent and desperate and start feeling like they're coming from a clearer, calmer place.

You know you're on the other side when you can think about that person with some neutrality, maybe even warmth, without it hijacking your whole system. Not because you've suppressed the feeling, but because your nervous system has actually settled and you've reclaimed the parts of yourself that limerence had commandeered. That's the real marker: not that you never think of them again, but that thinking of them doesn't cost you anything anymore.

A little more personal.

How did you become so interested in limerence in the first place?

Honestly, because I lived it. Over the last 38 years, I've experienced limerence four separate times, and in about every form it can take: unrequited longing from afar, mutual limerence that eventually imploded into a painful breakdown, limerence for someone else while I was in a long-term partnership, and limerence that existed almost entirely in my own mind for someone who haunted me for over a decade.

Along the way, I tried nearly every method people talk about for resolving it, including no contact, staying friends, deliberately seeking closure, following it to its natural conclusion by actually dating the person, running from it, coming back and trying to slowly integrate it, and eventually transmuting it into friendship by doing the deeper work of healing what was underneath it. For most of that time, I wasn't consciously gathering information, I was just in survival mode, doing whatever I could to get through it.

It wasn't until I'd been through it enough times, and finally released it in a lasting way, that I looked back and thought: how much easier this could have been if I'd had this knowledge and self-acceptance from the beginning. How many years, how many nights of heartache, how much closed-off love could have gone somewhere else instead. That question - what could I have done with all that energy if I'd understood what was happening to me - is really what turned my own experience into a calling.

One thing I've learned, and that I try to bring to my work: there's no single cure that works for everyone. Limerence communities love to hand out "no contact" as the answer, but I don't think there's ever one answer. Each person's limerence is rooted in something specific to them, and the real work is helping them find their own way through it, not handing them a copy of mine.

What has studying this changed about the way you personally think about love and attraction?

It's changed almost everything. I used to think love was about finding someone who made me feel a certain way - intensely, uniquely, like a drug. Now I see that as escape, not love. Real love includes the joys of the honeymoon phase, sure, but it also includes boredom, loneliness, disappointment, doubt - the whole range of being human with another person. Love is a choice because you keep choosing someone even when you're not feeling loving feelings in the moment.

Honestly, it makes me a little sad now, seeing how our culture sets people up to chase something so artificial as the passionate, limerent-fueled version of love we get sold everywhere when genuine love is so much more romantic than that. It's not about finding someone who gives you a certain feeling. It's about finding the person you're willing to feel everything with.

What's something you wish more people understood about desire?

That shame is usually what distorts desire, not the wanting itself.

So many of us learned somewhere along the way that wanting too much, too intensely, or for the "wrong" thing meant something was wrong with us. So we either chase the desire urgently, trying to make the ache go away before we have to sit with it, or we suppress it, trying to prove we need nothing from anyone. Both are just different flavors of shame.

But judging ourselves for wanting doesn't get rid of the desire, it just cuts us off from the tenderness underneath it. Desire is usually pointing to something real: a longing for love, for aliveness, for connection. Reject the desire, and you end up rejecting that too.

The healthier move isn't to chase desire or eliminate it, it's to feel the wanting without judgment. To notice the craving, name it, and stay present with it instead of either indulging it or shaming it into hiding. That's usually when it actually starts to loosen its grip. Not because you fought it into submission, but because it finally felt safe enough to be seen.

And finally: what's one piece of relationship advice you find yourself giving over and over again?

If you're deciding whether to text them, confront someone, end things, or chase an answer while you're anxious, spiraling, or activated, wait. Your nervous system in that state isn't lying to you exactly, but it's not giving you clarity either, it's giving you urgency. And urgency feels a lot like certainty, but it isn't the same thing.

Clarity only becomes available once you're actually regulated. So the advice is simple, even if it's hard to practice: before you act on a relationship decision, ask yourself honestly whether you're regulated enough to trust what you're feeling. If you're not, the most important thing you can do isn't act, it's to get yourself calm first. The decision will still be there. It'll just be a better one.

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Sarah James Pearse is a licensed mental health counselor and certified coach based in Washington.