Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This episode was recorded on Camaragal land.
Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. I'm Brittany. Now today's episode we are talking about something which I'll be honest when Britt originally brought the idea of doing an episode on this I was like I don't even know what that word means. You're like yeah totally googled. I was like that's such a good idea but I don't know what that is but the word is limerence. Now you might have heard of it you might not have heard of it but I would dare bet that so many of us have experienced it and it's kind of
understanding the concept between that really infatuated love, that feeling of obsession around someone, but identifying the difference between what is a limerent state of love and what is actual love. Now, we're going to be unpacking like how to define what the difference is and also what patterns might be in your relationships and how you're showing up in your relationships. And we have literally the most qualified expert that's
has ever been on the podcast in order to talk about it. We have Tyus Gibson. She is a counselor, author, podcaster, and co-founder of the Personal Development School. She has a PhD and over 13 certifications in modalities ranging from cognitive behavior therapy to neuro-linguistic programming. She's also an expert in attachment theory. And so today's buzzword of limerence, which we're going to be unpacking, there's a few other parts of this as well.
But the parts of this and talking about limerence that we're going to be unpacking, if you found yourself in those sort of patterned relationships or if you found yourself in a very unfulfilling love cycle, I think that this is an episode you're going to get so much out of. Or maybe if you found yourself just super obsessed with someone. We're talking to you as well. Ty, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you so much for having me. I'm sure this will be a whole bunch of fun to be here today. Well, we start every episode the same way. I know that we just put you on the spot to try and think of what yours is, but our Axel and Filtred, your most embarrassing story, and you have one from right back in the trenches of your memory from grade nine. Okay, so this is the first one that came to mind.
And this is a true, true story. So I was in ninth grade. I went on a first date. I had gone out earlier with friends and had been drinking. I went to meet this guy that at the time I was like, okay, really interested in, literally went to meet him on a first date and went to this movie theater and arcade afterwards.
And I was in the movie theater and I like really had to pee. Like I really had to go to the bathroom and I kept being like, oh, it's fine. I'll just wait. I didn't want to be rude. I was doing other things before. I felt badly because I was already running late to get there. So I just kept waiting. Now, mind you, like I had never peed my pants in my whole life. So I just like that wasn't even a thought process or like that this would happen.
And sure enough, we finished the movie and his parents were going to come pick us up. And he was like, there's a really bad snowstorm. They're running late. They have tickets to do a hockey game afterwards. We cannot be late. Like he's like, let's just play at the very front by the arcade. And his parents were kind of going to pick us up and drive us home. And I was kind of a wild kid when I was young, like doing all sorts of stuff all the time. And I just kept thinking like, okay, I'll wait. I'll take it easy. And we're playing this basketball game in the arcade.
And I kept like being like, oh my gosh, I really have to pee. But I had said that we're going to wait. So as soon as his parents were going to arrive, we'll jump in to the car and go. And at one point I started laughing during the basketball game and I just peed. And I like literally could not stop peeing. I'm laughing during the game and peeing. And then I'm like, I cannot believe this is happening.
And, you know, at the end of the game, there's just a little tiny puddle on the floor. Oh my God. So much pain. It's not even like a little bit. And I thought I would die of embarrassment. Like I thought I would die, but I was like, okay, what do I do in this situation? Like the only opportunity I have is to own it. So I did. I was like, he, he like looked at me after the game. He's like, what's wrong? And I, I'm sure I was white, like a ghost. And I was like, I was laughing and I peed my pants. Oh,
And, like, fully beat my pants. And then he was so sweet about it, he went on to be my boyfriend of, like, a year afterwards. There's actually so much wrong with this conversation. Firstly, the fact that as women...
We're so trained to not disrupt a situation or not put anyone out. The fact that you're like, I didn't want to be rude and go to the bathroom. I don't want to be an inconvenience. It's like basic, like if you need to go to the toilet, it's not rude. I had so many people pleasing issues as a ninth grader for sure. So that was like the manifestation of that definitely.
God, at that age too, like prime teenage years, you are so lucky it went that way and he became your boyfriend and not went to school and just like told everyone and everyone started bullying you. I know. I know.
And he didn't tell his soul, which was good for him. He was a good guy for sure. Yeah, because your girlfriend kind of wet herself. Let's start from the beginning, because as Laura said, I think that the word limerence, it is a buzzword right now. It is a word we're seeing everywhere. But I understand there'd be so many people that have never heard of it whilst they'll know what it is when we explain it. So let's go back to the basics and give us an explanation of what limerence is.
So limerence itself is basically addictive and obsessive infatuation. It was a term originally coined by a psychologist named Dorothy Tenov. And she talked about how essentially there is a huge difference between just a crush and actual limerence. Limerence is usually something where it tends to be in a one-way dynamic.
It usually doesn't last for very long. And there are different stages of limerence where if you look at like just healthy feelings, they're generally secure and balanced. Somebody is not going to people please their way into a relationship. They're going to have steady and supportive emotions. They're going to generally be able to communicate and share themselves naturally with somebody. But limerence is like obsessive intrusive thoughts.
It is like checking somebody's social media nonstop all day, every day. It tends to be full of euphoric highs and then crushing lows when you don't get what you want or when the situation isn't going as you hoped or planned or the person doesn't notice you. And really, when we're in limerence, we have this really idealized version of somebody and we filter out any red flags. And also...
the uncertainty tends to fuel the attraction when it comes to limerence. Almost like the more there is mystery, the more our mind fills in the blanks with all of these amazing scenarios or seeing the best in somebody all the time. And there's this huge fear of rejection and constant overanalyzing when it comes to limerence. And usually it really robs a person's ability to be themselves around their object of limerence as a whole.
What triggers it? So, I mean, like for some people who might feel like they have or go into the state of limerence and especially when it's like one sided infatuation with someone, like what is it that triggers that type of infatuation versus just being like normally infatuated with a person who you've come in contact with and you think is amazing? It's such a great question. So generally it boils down to two major things.
One is if somebody meets your deeply unmet needs. So what that looks like is like, let's say for example, somebody grows up and they felt really unseen as a child. And so maybe their parents weren't available, weren't really present with them very much. And they were always aching to be seen because that's what children are wired for. And that's what they're needing. And let's say that they grow up. They've never really had somebody be super present with them.
And all of a sudden, as an adult, they meet somebody who's really present, really attuned, asks them deep questions, makes them feel like they're so interesting and unique and special and really goes out of their way to connect with them. Well, that is going to make the brain light up, essentially, because somebody is meeting in that moment your deeply unmet needs.
And in that particular case, I actually had a story once where, where I was meeting with a client and this is back when I was running my practice and she came in one day and we've been working for three sessions on her, like basically doing premarital preparation to have the best relationship possible with her fiance. And she came in to be like, Oh, I'm just going to work out my, my attachment wounds or different things. She came in three sessions later and she said, Tice, I'm calling off my wedding.
And I was like, wait, you're calling off your wedding. Why? Everything was going so well. And she said, I was in Starbucks at a coffee shop and I spilled my coffee everywhere. And this man came and he stopped what he was doing. He helped me mop up the coffee. We sat down and spoke for a moment.
And she's like, I think it was love at first sight. I think this is the love of my life. Oh my God.
And when we looked at her history, she felt like nobody was really there like that growing up for her. And when we looked at her fiance, there's a lot of great qualities about him, but he also wasn't very present. And I said, look, let's just invest for the next six weeks in trying to get your fiance to be more present, request that that's a need, have different strategies to connect that way. She did it within week number four or five. She was like, I can't believe I was thinking of calling off the wedding. So limits a lot of the time. Yeah.
Yeah, a lot of the time is needs. And the other pillar is traits. So if somebody has a trait that we feel is very separate from ourselves, if we think somebody is really assertive and we've always been boundary list, if we think somebody is really smart and we struggled in school growing up, we'll often put that person on a huge pedestal. And then when they like us, we'll be like, oh my gosh, and so infatuated. And you actually see this really commonly with people who grew up feeling like the ugly duckling growing up.
Maybe they had a funny haircut or braces or an awkward stage in high school. We'll put so much emphasis on physical appearance. And I had a client once as well come in one day and he said that this woman who he felt was so attractive, she was very flirtatious with him and sort of touched his face.
And he just went into full, he was married with two kids and went into full limerence, like just like, I think I should leave my wife, all of these things, because he had that trait of physical attractiveness on such a big pedestal that it just derailed him completely. But I think also from what you're saying, it sounds like, and we talk about it all the time, once you get into a lot, like a really long-term stable and quote unquote boring safe relationship, it's
that you often don't feel that chemistry and connection. You don't feel seen, you don't feel the attention. So does that play into the confusion of limerence? Like, can you think you're in limerence, but your brain hasn't actually gone into a state of limerence? And is that just because you've had the attention from a third party or an outside source?
This is such a great topic. So here at limerence outside of like sex addiction and narcissism, the main reason people cheat is because of limerence. And what I mean by that is this is what I would see time and time again. People would cheat because to exactly your point, they were in a relationship for a long time. It was always the same kind of storylines.
They felt really connected, got married, settled down, had kids. And there was always a significant theme where they just didn't prioritize their relationship. They didn't prioritize still dating, still getting to know each other. And eventually they drifted apart.
And then somebody started aching for something, aching usually for things like to feel seen or validated or wanted or important or have novelty or exploration or fun in the relationship. And these things got ignored and outsourced because we have young kids, we're too busy, work's stressful, all of the rationalizations and justifications for this. And then...
somebody comes along and guess what they represent those deeply unmet needs that this person's yearning for and our subconscious mind is literally a needs meeting machine it's wired to get your needs met that's how we evolved for so long as a species
So it is designed to get your needs met. And so what happens is then people start justifying. They say, oh, well, my wife doesn't really care about this anyways. Oh, well, my husband hasn't been present or paying attention to me for years and start justifying these feelings. And then these feelings feel like an addiction. And as soon as you're in this like really tremendous state of euphoria, it's almost like you're not of sober mind. And neurochemically, you're not. Limerence is characterized by like extremely elevated phenylethic.
thalamine, which is this attraction neurochemical, oxytocin, the bonding neurochemical. And people tend to bond more with their object of limerence in the fantasy world than in reality. When you say that, you mean as in like the perception of what they've made about this person and the person that they've kind of imagined them to be than who they actually are? Exactly. And it's interesting because people who are the object of limerence
they'll often say like, this person's obsessed with me. They don't even know me. This person likes me so much. They think that they know all these things about me and they really don't. And it's because usually what we're doing is we're outsourcing our mind. If it can't get its needs met in the present, gets its needs met through fantasies of the future or memories of the past. And,
And you'll see this, like if you've ever seen somebody, I remember this client I had once and she, this is somewhat related, but she said that she had a boss and she grew up like never being able to have a voice. She had four older brothers. She had this boss who made her feel really small.
She would come into client sessions with me and she would tell me these elaborate stories. I remember she would stand up, you know, instead of sitting on the couch, she would stand up and she would tell me these really elaborate stories of, I'm going to tell my boss this, and then I'm going to say this, and I'm going to tell her what I really feel. And she would say all these things. And it was, I could tell that in that moment, that was her way of taking her power back is fantasizing about what she was going to say and how she was going to show up. And we do this in all sorts of forms. And limerence is one of them.
So if we can't get our needs met, we'll often also project this whole fantasy of how this person would show up and all the places we'll travel and all the things we would do. And really, it's the mind starving for needs that we haven't consciously identified and actually been able to action out. And that's where it plays a crucial role, a huge role in terms of cheating in relationships. And so much of the work that I used to do with people around limerence, if they were having limerence outside of their marriage,
would be, okay, let's identify the needs that you're projecting in this fantasy realm. Let's start actually communicating about them and having strategies to meet them in your marriage. And literally the limerence would go away and the relationship would dramatically improve instead.
We talk all the time about the fact that we fell in love with someone's potential. And I think that that leans into what you're saying. It's like we romanticize and fantasize about what could have been. And I've never heard it said in a way that you just said it because I've never thought about it in that way. I know most of the time limerence is something that is
not reciprocated. It's like an unrequited love, but can you be in a state of limerence in a relationship as well? Yes. So you definitely can, but limerent relationships don't tend to last very long.
And the reason being is that when you have this addiction and you have somebody on such a high pedestal, whenever somebody is on a pedestal, you're like in the pit next to them. And when we have somebody on this huge pedestal, we end up engaging in behaviors that are really maladaptive for relationships. So you people please, because you're so scared of losing the person. You don't communicate your authentic needs in a relationship.
because you're scared that, oh, what if I'm too much or what if they don't like who I am? And so we end up connecting inauthentically and we end up building a relationship based on that. And with that obsessive infatuation also comes this addiction to that person's approval.
And so you build a relationship from the very ground up based on things that are not actually healthy, that are not actually going to increase the likelihood of that relationship lasting. And so generally you'll see, even if we get into some sort of relationship with the object of limerence, unless we do the inner psychological work to be like, hold on a second here.
Let me take on some of the traits that I think are so special. Let me see how I have some of those traits as well. One exercise that I would often give people when they're in limerence is, okay, well, if it's needs-based,
Let's start to meet our own needs. Let's learn how to self-soothe and self-regulate by being like, if this person makes me feel seen, maybe I start meditating. Maybe I start journaling. I actually start to see myself and understand myself better. And what you'll see is it's correlated with decrease of limerence. And now the relationship can last without all these extreme expectations. And if it's traits based, we get a person to see how they also have those traits.
So for example, if somebody is like, oh my gosh, my partner is just the smartest person. They're so intelligent. Oh my goodness. And that person maybe grew up feeling not smart in school. We're like, okay, well, where is your area of genius? Maybe you're like a creative genius. Maybe you're amazing with people and that's your area of intelligence, but you're judging it by like, oh, they're really intellectual in this capacity. So when we start owning those traits or meeting those needs, we're
then we can get out of that obsessive addictive infatuation and it becomes really this invitation to self-growth. It's like, okay, cool. Here's why I'm in limerence. Here's what it's actually telling me. Let me use it for something good that will grow me. And that's how we can get on track and actually make those relationships work. If you're not doing that work statistically, there's literally very little chance of that relationship everlasting or making it beyond just that dating stage of relationships.
Ty, as you mentioned early on that there's stages of limerence, can you talk us through what those three stages look like? Yes. So the first stage is really that stage of infatuation. It's that stage where we meet somebody, we're like, oh my goodness, we're overwhelmed. We have all of the rumination and often a lot of that bonding and connecting in the fantasy realm with that person. And so that's a huge first piece.
And then eventually that moves into what we think of as emotional addiction. And emotional addiction is that you then have your entire emotional state or so much of it throughout the day or week based on that relationship and your interactions with that person.
And you'll usually see things like in that emotional addiction stage, somebody is maybe driving to work in the morning. They're rich in the fantasy world with what's going to happen with that person. They're spending so much time not even present in their own life because they're so preoccupied with the fantasy of this individual. And so there's this emotional addiction. And then usually what ends up happening is that emotional addiction component is going to naturally have very high highs and very low lows.
And a lot of times, you know, you see people that have a huge infatuation or an enlomerance with their coworker. They get to work. They clam up around their coworker because they're so terrified of saying the wrong thing and they have them on such a big pedestal. And then all of a sudden they're like, oh my gosh, I didn't say the right thing. And then they feel terrible about themselves. Oh my gosh, they're never going to like me. Why did I not speak in front of them? Why was I, you know, not normal in front of them? And so you just have this roller coaster that's waiting to happen.
And then eventually you have this dissipation phase, really this deterioration of limerence. And usually it's not because that person's limerence goes away for the individual. It's because they're met with such consistent and unfortunate rejection from that person. Because again, you're just not connecting on authentic terms or you're not able to even be your normal self around somebody. And so that usually leads to big feelings of dejection, sometimes even depravity.
episodes or a lot of sadness and defeatedness. And then eventually that person may move on. And if they don't course correct, usually they move on by eventually falling into some sort of limerent dynamic with another person who still represents those deep needs that they're hungering for. It's interesting how much of our emotional stability we put on our romantic partner. I know you just said it could be a work colleague as well, but I was just thinking so much of your week and how great you feel and how healthy you feel and how productive you feel is a complete
direct correlation to your romantic partner and what they're bringing to a relationship and how they're making you feel. The fact that sometimes we put so much pressure on it that we're like, oh, if they don't write back, it's ruined my day. All I've thought about that whole day is,
And I'm assuming that probably doesn't happen in a very healthy, stable relationship. And maybe that could be an early sign of limerence. Absolutely. So what's really interesting is there's six stages of relationships. So we have our dating stage, right? The bedding stage, it usually lasts like three, four or five months getting to know somebody. Once we make a commitment, we move into the honeymoon stage. And this is like rose colored glasses, all these different things.
Every relationship, even with very secure people, goes through some form of power struggle stage.
And in the power struggle stage, we're actually supposed to really communicate and let somebody in and share our needs and our fears and our feelings. And if both parties really take each other into consideration, like, oh, you're sensitive to criticism. Let me be more mindful of how I communicate. Oh, you really need consistency or more texting. Let me be thoughtful about that and make an effort. Like if we do that work to bridge those gaps, when we deeply know somebody, we move into the stability, commitment, and then listing.
which is almost like the honeymoon stage, but you really deeply know somebody.
And what's so interesting about what you just said is that usually the things, if we end up in some sort of relationship with somebody that we were limerent around, because we put such high expectations on the person because they have so much control over our emotional state, like you said, usually the very things that we infatuate with so strongly in the dating stage are the things that we come to resent in the power struggle stage the most and often lead to its downfall.
So I don't know if you have any examples you can think of, but I'll share a few examples. Maybe we meet somebody and we're like, oh my gosh, they're so assertive. That's so attractive. We're so, oh my gosh, they're so confident and assertive. And we put this on a pedestal and we're so infatuated with that trait. Well, in the power struggle stage, we're like, they never compromise what that like what's going on. And we get frustrated. Or maybe we meet somebody and we're like, oh, they're so easy going. They're so go with the flow. And we think it's so attractive. And in the power struggle stage, we're like, they're
They're lazy. They never make an effort. They never initiate. So often these very things that we start off by having on a pedestal because they come with such high expectations because this person has so much weight over our emotional state.
Over time, as we keep getting closer and closer, if in fact that limited relationship even lasts that long, those will be things that really frustrate us later on because of those very same reasons. The thing you just described about how couples go through these six stages or six phases of a relationship is
can you fluctuate in and out of stages? And I say this because like being with my partner for eight years now, like you call it the power struggle phase. Like I feel like we have periods where we go back into a power struggle phase because we're in a different phase of life. It might be that we've had another kid or something else has happened. But I feel like those stages must be also related to what it is that you're experiencing in your life because, you know, there's always new things that's being thrown at you that you have to overcome as a couple. Yeah.
Generally, what happens is if we still have lessons to learn with each other, we'll navigate back into the relationship. And I want to differentiate here being in the power struggle stage of relationship versus having a blip, having a challenge, a disagreement, being able to navigate that, things like that.
So sometimes what happens is if we still have these things where we know, for example, that our partner is sensitive to criticism or inconsistency, or we know that our partner needs transparency, but we haven't had that conversation or we think maybe that's the case, but we haven't communicated about it. That's not a natural state of us having normalized the communication of needs in the relationship. Then we will find ourselves going back and forth.
If instead we really normalize open, transparent communication of needs and relationships, we're really usually pretty smooth sailing when it comes to challenges. So for example, let's say that you have a couple and they just had another kid. And let's say, oh my goodness, like life is already really busy. There's a lot of time and commitments and demands. Now you have two young children and there's just a lot.
If you know, for example, that, okay, one person really needs their time alone and we have to make a little bit of space for that. And the other person maybe really needs a lot of validation that they're a good parent, that they're showing up. Then if we know that in advance, those blips that would come up are going to be so much more smooth to sail through because we're able to go, Hey,
Hey, I know you need a little bit of time. I know there's a lot of demands. I'm going to make sure that we block off that one hour twice a week for you to do your own thing. And we can remind our partner if we're the one that needs validation. Hey, you know, I haven't heard a lot of validation in the relationship and I need that reassurance sometimes. Can you come back and just let me know like you think I'm doing a good job or, you know, so if we can normalize communicating openly, we'll usually get out of the power struggle stage and stay.
But if there's still needs that we haven't fully identified and communicated consistently or don't feel like we can just kind of raise our hand and bring back to the forefront as needed, then we may find ourselves going back and forth a little more frequently. Your expertise is in attachment styles. How do different attachment styles affect or show up in a state of limerence? And is there one attachment style that's more prone to experience this?
As you can probably guess, our anxious attachment styles, the ones that are afraid of being abandoned or alone, they tend to have limerence the most frequently and persistent.
They often go from one object of limerence to another, sometimes even back to back or sometimes with overlap, because we also tend to outsource the most into the fantasy world, the areas that we struggle the most in the relationship to ourselves. So because anxious attachment cells, they struggle to self-soothe, they're constantly soothing through limerence externally in their fantasy, or because they struggle to really make themselves feel seen or heard and important
then they're going to fall into huge infatuation with that when they meet somebody who does things like that. So that's our anxious attachment style. And they will often pursue and try to gain proximity and closeness with their object of limerence. If we look at the flip side of it, here's something really interesting. Our dismissive avoidant attachment styles are
They tend to actually fall into limerence sometimes too, contrary to what people would often initially imagine. And the reason is that this type of limerence for them tends to specifically be with people who are not available to them.
So dismissible avoidance are much more likely to fall into limerence with movie stars, with people that are in relationships, with people who are not actually available because it's like, okay, this is a safe way to get my needs met in the fantasy world without ever having to confront my fear of vulnerability or do much with this.
Fearful avoidance tend to fall into limerence as well. But if they feel rejected or hurt, they're very quick to turn those feelings off because that's their coping mechanism to really retreat quickly and strongly. So they can have limerence, but shut it off very quickly. And usually it's not as long lasting. And then lastly, securely attached people.
highly unlikely to fall into limerence. They usually vet well in dating. They don't let their feelings get the best of them. They have secure and balanced feelings when they get into relationships. They communicate their needs openly. And that's because they have those cornerstones of like, they already know how to meet their own needs and self-soothe to begin with. And so they're set up for success to not have limerence sabotage relationships. Wouldn't it be so nice to be that well-rounded as a person? Like, well done. Yeah.
How do you know? I'm just thinking back to when I first met my fiancé, as an example, and we met and we only had a couple of days together and then we were long distance. He lived on the other side of the world. And I remember our early days of communication were literally saying things like to each other, not just one-sided, I'm obsessed with you. How do you know if when you're in the early throes of dating or a relationship that
If it's crossing the border or crossing the line into limerence, or if it's just like quite a healthy lust, like that quite that healthy early day relationship, because I think a lot of people experience that in the early days where it's probably not stalkerish and unhealthy, but there are those feelings of like, you are all I think about, you are all I want. You imagine your life together. What are the actual signs and red flags that it's in fact, not just lust and you have 100% crossed that line?
So usually it's number one that you feel like you're on an emotional roller coaster. So I'll give you some of the signs together. You can kind of track them. So one, you feel like you're on an emotional roller coaster. You don't hear from them. Maybe you can't eat or you can't sleep, or you just feel this like sense of restlessness and
And that's because number two, there's usually a pretty high degree of self-abandonment taking place. So you're thinking about the person nonstop. You're not present in your own life. You're not soothing yourself as a result very effectively. Number three, a lot of your behaviors in that relationship are motivated by who you think this person wants you to be rather than who you are.
and actually showing and sharing your true self. And number four, you probably find when it comes to relationships that there's this sense of truly obsessive and intrusive thoughts. Like you'll hear with limerence all the way to, I dream about this person all the time at night. I think about them like nonstop obsessively.
Whereas when it comes to, and by the way, number five, you'll see a huge fear of rejection and just constant overanalyzing of things to the point where it can actually lead you to clam up or be in paralysis. Juxtaposing that, if you're like, oh my gosh, I'm really excited by this person. I feel this really strong sense of lust and excitement and connection. But
I'm able to be present in my everyday life. I'm able to be myself with this person. I'm able to communicate about my needs with this person or my boundaries or concerns. I'm able to really showcase who I am with this individual. And I'm not like people pleasing and overanalyzing everything so much. And I'm able to still focus on my career goals and my friendships and have balance in these other areas of life rather than constantly using my spare time to maybe check their social media or fantasize about them.
that would be the difference between really strong lust and connection versus actual limerence. I find this so fascinating because for a term that I honestly, prior to, like I said, bringing it up, I was like, I never really had heard of this or discussed it. And how now I can see it links into so many ways in which people show up into their, not just dating life, but into their relationships or their fantasies about relationships. I find it utterly fascinating. How, if you are somebody who is,
is inclined to have these sort of limerent style relationships or one-sided relationships. How do you identify it and break that pattern behavior? The first thing is to go through and recognize, like, am I somebody who...
A, this is a big theme in my life. I see myself doing this from relationship to relationship. I see this fixation and preoccupation with people. Maybe I noticed myself connecting with them way more in the fantasy realm than actually in reality. If you have a lot of those signs that we just talked about, then that's the first step is that awareness piece.
The next step, and this is one of the fun parts of what I find to just be so interesting, is that the next step is that you have to look at, usually there's a theme during every object of limerence. So let's just say, for example, somebody is like anxiously attached and they realize, wow, I'm often in limerence throughout my whole adult life. Like I usually have somebody who I'm in limerence with every few months or a few times a year. And this is a theme year over year. And I'm like, oh, I'm in limerence.
you'll actually see if you look at the types of fantasies you have when you're in limerence, that there's very similar themes. So some examples might be, and this is where we start to identify the needs that are getting met by the fantasy. A lot of people will say things like, oh my gosh, I always imagined that this person would see me doing something I'm good at.
And usually the need is to feel validated, right? To be seen as good enough and that you're capable. Some people are like, oh my gosh, I imagine that we go away together and we run away and we're just with each other and we're so connected and we have such deep conversations. And usually it's like, okay, that person just wants to feel connected, seen, heard, understood. Other times it's
The person will drop everything in this grandiose way to make me the center of their universe. And it's like, well, I want to feel like I'm important, like I matter. So what we do is we actually start basically dissecting the themes from limerent object to limerent object. In the fantasy, what specifically are you fantasizing about? And what needs is your mind actually attempting to meet in those fantasies?
And then as a result of this, then we're like, okay, from one to 10, how much are you meeting those needs in your own life in a healthy way? And usually it's like a zero or a one. Usually if somebody is like, oh, I want to feel seen, they really don't see themselves much. They don't really listen to their own feelings or attune to themselves. If somebody wants to feel important, usually they're the very same people that constantly put themselves last because
because they're people pleasing and putting everybody first. So they're yearning for somebody to make them feel important instead. Sometimes people want safety, right? Or certainty. They just want somebody to commit to the future because they're lacking safety and certainty in their own life and their own lifestyle choices. So we start dissecting those needs and
And then we go through an actual 21 day game plan of how to get those needs met and start building a healthy relationship to yourself in those ways, because it takes about 21 days to rewire or recondition our own subconscious patterns.
And so we do that work, meet your needs every day for 21 days. At first, it feels kind of mechanical for people like, oh, it's not that fun. But actually around day seven, 10, 11, people start to be like, oh, I actually like sitting with myself and seeing myself more or actually setting boundaries and prioritizing things that are important to me. It's actually making me feel good. And then they start to take what was limerence.
as feedback, do the underlying work, improve the quality of relationship to themselves and their lives in general, and also not fall so victim to constantly trying to outsource this from the outside in. Would this also require a aspect of no contact or reducing contact? Because I would dare say, I know that we speak about it being one-sided, but I would dare say that there are people who have these limerent relationships that
And they're not entirely one-sided. They're getting enough that's fueling the consistency of wanting it to continue. You know, like they might be getting the flirting or they might be getting the affirming text, but it doesn't go anywhere. There's nothing more to it. In that instance, would you say that someone would need to cut contact with that person in order to do this 21-day kind of detox from this?
Fantastic question. So the answer to this would be yes, if you're seeing yourself in a position where this person isn't investing back in you. So if you're getting breadcrumbs, if the person's clearly not making an effort and isn't interested in you, because if somebody is interested and it's like early days, we can do the underlying work and still try to like salvage the connection and relationship if we're willing to show up. And oftentimes that can move in a positive direction.
But if it's like your coworker and you text them all the time and they text you one word answers back or like, you know, these types of things. And it is like no contact. Give yourself the break, detox, withdrawal and do the underlying work to heal. So you don't have to just constantly feel like the band-aid is being ripped off. What's the connection in the crossover with limerence and stalking? And I say that-
Sorry. No, I say that. I just found it so extreme. Well, when you think of the two, they share characteristics. Intimate stalking, when you think of both characteristics of limerence and stalking, it stems down to an obsession. We talk about limerence being detrimental to yourself, your mental health, your relationship, but how often does it cross over and become detrimental to somebody else because you develop this obsession that results in intimate stalking? It's actually the exact root of stalking. Yeah. So you can imagine it exists along a continuum.
right? So anybody who's like, oh, I've been in limerence before, it does not mean that you're a stalker. Okay. Just to make it clear. If you're in their garden outside their house, that is stalking. You've crossed over. Exactly. And so there's this dynamic of, I'll tell you a story. So I had a client once and he came to me and he said, I want to win over this woman.
And I was like, okay, you know, usually I help people do the inner work, not really like the outer work. But I was like, I'll hear him out. And there's probably going to be patterns or themes that we can work on. So he told me that he had been on three dates with this woman. First date, he said he didn't really think he was going to be that interested. And it went super well. Second date, he said he started like feeling really strong feelings, like really obsessed.
And one of the things that she gave to him, which is one of the most common themes in limerence is she made him feel really seen. And he always felt really badly about himself. It wasn't that she just made him feel seen. It was like, she made him feel validated. Like she gave him a couple of compliments and between date two and date three, she,
He said he was like, the infatuation was just through the roof. Like he said that he was uncontrollably like thinking about her nonstop. Anyways, it turned out as the conversation unfolded that he was driving by her house every single day. They went on the third date. It didn't go well.
And when it didn't go well, she said, I'm not really like looking because he started to clam up. Right. He started not being himself. He was panicking. He was so obsessed with her. And, and what ended up happening is after the third date, she was like, yeah, I don't want to continue. Then him like a full breakup message or like ending dating message. And he said he kept going by her house, bringing her gifts, dropping her things off after it had ended. And she came out one day and she said, you cannot come to my house. Like you're not allowed to be here.
And by the time, like I was still getting to know him during this initial conversation, I was like, did you go back? And he was like, yes, I think she just didn't like the first couple of gifts.
And so he was rationalizing and justifying. And he, when you looked at his childhood and his background, he had a lot of really intense trauma around some of these different things, being deeply unseen, being made to feel really terrible about himself. And so you see how like trauma actually impacts the subconscious mind this way where like, oh my goodness, somebody is doing something to bring me the opposite of this. And it is so completely addictive. So we ended up having to do the work on like, what's,
wait a second here, here's reality. Here's where we're going. And good for him. He was willing to do it and eventually like really moved away and did the underlying work and stopped visiting her house. But like literally if limerence goes on for too long, if it's too extreme, if those needs are so deeply unmet and somebody represents them, I mean, literally we're wired to get our needs met as people. It's how we've gone after food and survived and built shelters. You know, we're wired for this. So if that happens in that emotional form,
People can't stop at nothing. So interesting because, you know, when we think about, we spoke about heaps last year, Baby Reindeer. I don't know if you're familiar with it. I never watched it, but I heard about it. Oh, you should. It's really interesting. But you literally just hit the nail on the head in the terms of like what their experience was there. This woman who came into the bar and the bartender gave her a lot of attention because he felt like she was so lonely. Yeah.
And that's what sparked this obsession. But he was like, I was just trying to, you know, I gave her a free drink and I was trying to make her feel better. I wasn't flirting with her. But it was this like level of her feeling seen that made her really attached to the idea that there was this fantasy of a relationship going on. It was fascinating. You've just made me like...
This happens so many times to Laura and I over the years. You know, we're six years and 800 episodes deep. And sometimes we'll speak to somebody like a psychologist or a therapist. And we have these moments of, oh, oh, I did that. Talking about, no, talking about like. Please don't say you stalked someone. No, but talking. Well, I want to talk about stalking, but in a way that I didn't really maybe think it was a thing. But I remember, do you remember two years ago before I got into my relationship that
There was this guy and we were very loosely seeing each other. It reminded me of what you just said. Couple of dates, didn't want anything anymore, didn't go well, called it. And then like excessive bunches of like 200 roses were coming to my house. And then he jumped my fence at night, like was trying to get into my house, like banging on my door at 3am. And I remember now that you've said it, I remember telling the girls and everything and everyone's like,
that's crazy. Yeah, he was like, I'm in love with you and you were like, you don't know me. I remember this. I literally said, you don't know me. But then I'm thinking of the way that I handled that and it was to almost make an excuse like, oh, he's just not dealing well with, you know, me not wanting to be with him and he just really likes me instead of being like, hey, this is cooked. You can't come to my house. Like these ideas of women constantly come
making excuses to not offend somebody else, like offend a man or I don't know, but I'm just like doing the work on myself as we speak, hearing you say that stalking episode. That's such a powerful story because it's exactly the truth. And what happens is usually the people who end up being the objects of limerence for a really long time are people who are afraid to hurt somebody's feelings. And they end up, because remember the person who like is in limerence
they will find like the teeny tiniest things and turn it into like, they like me, right? They'll turn it into, cause they're just wired so deeply to get this need met. And so often if we're like too gentle or too fragile, because we're like, oh, this person's just so sweet. They're sending me all these roses, which you can totally see why you'd arrive there. Usually what ends up happening is that person...
says, oh, they didn't reject me outright. They're just afraid of how strong their feelings will be. They're just, you know, and they'll justify all these things to keep getting closer. And it can be really hard to shake somebody like that in that particular case. So what would be your recommendation if you were on the opposite end of this and you can recognize that you are the object of someone else's limerence? How do you kindly but also...
with intention tell someone that you are not interested in them to break this sort of cycle? I always say there's sort of a two strike rule and then complete no contact. So you start by saying really clearly, like I am not interested, right? And this is usually probably the first time where you're cutting something off, but maybe the person's a little over the top. So you're really direct, really clear. I'm not interested. I don't feel like we're compatible. I don't think we're a match. This
If the person then keeps going and violates boundaries and you start to see some of these red flags that like, hey, you've given them a clear, distinct message that you're not going to proceed, but yet they're still coming back. Well, now we kind of have a boundary violation because you told them your boundaries. You told them you weren't interested and now they're still here, you know, clamming away at the situation. That's definitely a pretty big red flag. So at that point, we give a really clear rejection, like very, very clear.
If from that point, the person still keeps coming, then you have to go pure no contact because similar to a narcissist and how a narcissist and not saying that anybody in limerence or extreme limerence is a narcissist, but just as an analogy here, you know how the narcissist, they get narcissistic supply from if you are validating to them that pumps their tires, they get supply from that. They keep coming back for it. But also, um,
If you give them a negative reaction, they're like, oh, I have power over you. I can make you feel something. I can get under your skin. And that also feeds their need for narcissistic supply. Limerence is similar in that way. If you keep engaging for too long after really clear, distinct rejections, the person's like, oh,
Well, they keep reaching out to me. They keep talking about me. They keep talking to me. They keep. And so if it goes on for too long, they also derive the sense of connection from even the out front rejections itself. So it's always the two really clear. So there's no, you know, misunderstandings. And then if we still see somebody doing that complete, no contact, gray rocking and really going from there.
So fascinating. I think so many people right now listening would be having these aha moments for both maybe situations that they've been in or situations that they've been on the receiving end of it. Yeah. I have a question in terms of like, I mean, I feel like part of this kind of comes down to your EQ, but also is there an age relation to this? Because when I think about my own experiences, I feel like maybe I had more limerent relationships when I was younger and felt more experienced in dating.
And then, I mean, I'm married now, so I definitely haven't had one in a long time. But I guess like for me, I would say that potentially, and I don't know whether this is correct, but maybe there's an age element for some people in terms of the intensity and frequency of limerence. You're absolutely correct.
And the reason is because as we're individuating as teenagers, right, as like we turn 12, 13, we start to sort of develop our own sense of self and identity. So much of the development of that is the ability to understand ourselves, our needs, and be able to meet them as a means of self-regulating. And so if we start, you know, meeting specific needs, and then we start learning what traits we have and the things we find admirable, we take some of those traits on in ourselves, or we seek to become more of those things, then we have less of a context for limerence. However,
If somebody is just really insecurely attached, they really don't meet their own needs at all, or they have a history of tumultuous relationships or trauma. I mean, you're just, despite that person's age, if they don't do that inner work and healing, they're still going to not individuate properly into having a strong and stable sense of self.
And really the less stable that sense of self is, the more likely that person is to run into limerence as a whole. So definitely age for most people because we start to develop into ourselves and grow into ourselves. And that allows us to be less likely to be limerent. But if we have people who don't grow and develop properly, then you could say age could be taken out of that equation.
Let's take a little gear switch for a second to something a little bit more positive in the dating world. You do speak a lot about conscious dating and I know that there's a lot of pure exhaustion with people that are dating right now. A lot of people giving up because the dating world has changed so dramatically over the last sort of five, 10 years.
What do you mean by conscious dating? Great question. So conscious dating is like dating with your conscious mind. It's actually what it's used to represent. So when we start dating, we often start dating from this perspective of our subconscious mind. And your subconscious mind is your habituated self, your conditioned self from all of your upbringing and patterns and themes. And your subconscious mind is responsible for roughly 95% of all of your beliefs, your thoughts, your emotions, and your actions or behaviors.
Your conscious mind is three to 5% roughly. And so what often happens is we date from our patterns, okay, from what's familiar. Now, what's really interesting about this is that your subconscious mind is literally wired to seek familiarity because it equates it to safety and thus survival. And ultimately, we're just survival wired.
So let's use an example of somebody who grew up in a home where maybe both of their parents weren't narcissists, but maybe they had narcissistic traits. Maybe it was kind of always about the parents. You know, the parents put the kids down a lot. They were volatile and kind of all over the place. This individual probably has a lot of conditioning to go, okay, well, I don't really know how to empathize with myself because I wasn't empathized with, that wasn't modeled to me. I am pretty critical of myself because I was always criticized growing up.
I constantly had to violate my boundaries to please my parents. And maybe I constantly manipulated myself to become who I thought people wanted me to be. Well, now your subconscious comfort zone, what's actually most familiar is the way that you treat yourself as an adult. And if you're carrying those conditioned subconscious patterns from childhood, guess who you're most attracted to in your adult life?
the narcissist, because that is literally that person comes along and what do they do? They put you down. They violate your boundaries. They don't empathize with you. They manipulate. And so our conscious mind, that like little three to 5% of our logical, rational selves might be like, wait, these are red flags. Wait, this person's not speaking helpfully to me. This isn't appropriate, but your subconscious mind is going to go, well,
Familiar, feel safe. We have these butterflies. Let's keep going back in the same direction. So conscious dating means first and foremost, our ability to recognize our stuff.
and recognize, hey, if I'm going to date, I need to know my standards in a relationship. I need to know my non-negotiables and I need to know what patterns I have from my own upbringing that are maybe going to put me in harm's way later on. And let me actually do the work on those underlying patterns. And then when we start dating, it's about actually using the dating stage of relationships as something that is meant for vetting, not something that's meant for, oh,
Oh, I'm attracted to this person. Let me pursue it because I think they're super attractive and we have fun. No, no, no. I know what I'm looking for. I know what my standards are. I know what things I'm not able to put up with and or unwilling to, AKA my non-negotiables or deal breakers. And I'm conscious of some of my own themes from my past and how that might put me in a place where I'd be attracted to the wrong person. And I'm going to make sure I'm vetting for that.
And then what I often tell people is you don't take that information and like go on a job interview with people and sit down on day one and be like, okay, here's all the things that I need to know. But ideally we go on a first date, make it short and sweet. See if there's a connection or, you know, there's a spark. And then after that first date, I often say, okay, ask one or two questions per date. It's getting to the bottom of this vetting process. So for example, I know for me,
I was a fearful avoidant attachment style, did all this work. You know, one of the biggest things I value about my relationship with my husband is like, we work through conflict. If there's an issue, we're going to hash it out. And you know, if in some theoretical world, I went back to dating,
that would be one of the first things I would look for. Like, is this person going to navigate conflict by talking for you, having like a forward conversation, really being able to just speak openly and solve for things. And so maybe on like the second or third date, I might just bring up, you know, at one point during the day, you know, how do you tend to handle conflict? Are you somebody who addresses it head on and tries to hash it out? Or are you somebody who kind of like hopes it goes away, sweeps it under the rug. And based on their response,
that would be me being like, okay, is this somebody I want to continue to see or is this somebody I don't? So that's really what conscious dating is, is getting really clear on your patterns, your non-negotiables, your standards, and consistently spending that first three or four months of the dating stage of relationship, truly vetting to see if this person is actually what you're looking for.
I think about my past dating and I recognize in myself like that for a lot of people if you prioritize like the feelings part over the logical part, that seems very difficult. You know, like if you're someone who's like, but I have these strong feelings and I know technically is probably not going to be great for me.
Sometimes it's, and I think for a lot of people, it's hard to turn that off. It's hard to go, okay, I'm not going to pursue this on the odd chance that actually it works out, you know, like that it's the miracle exception. But yeah, I think that like, it's hard to put those parameters in place for a lot of people. Totally. And that's where it's so meaningful to do subconscious work. So really it goes back to that theme we were talking about with limerence, which is if you're finding yourself just having all these feelings and yet you know better, you know, this person is like, maybe
maybe, you know, demoralizing you at times, or maybe violating your boundaries, or maybe pressuring you in all these ways. If you see some pretty significant red flags, or if this person has non-negotiables, maybe you're like, I'm not willing to date somebody who's using drugs. And this person's using drugs all the time. And you're like, hold on a second here. This is my non-negotiable, but you find yourself pursuing it. It actually goes back to that sort of exercise that we did around limerence. Like,
what needs is this person meeting that they have such a stronghold on you when literally, you know that this is a non-negotiable for you. And then what we get people to do is learn to actually show up and meet their needs that way, find other healthy sources of people to meet those needs like friendships or healthy family relationships. And what you'll see as a result is then somebody is able to not obsess over somebody who maybe isn't right for them because they're doing that inner work to get those needs met in new ways. And that allows them to make more consciously based decisions.
Yeah, it's definitely one thing to be able to write down your non-negotiables and your boundaries. And it's another thing to stick to them. Same as it's easy to give advice, but sometimes you can't take your own advice. You know, sometimes there's a slippery slope. And when you go back to your non-negotiables list and you think a year deep what you've sacrificed, there's often quite a lot because you hold on to the one positive thing and you're like, well, it's okay. It's like a balancing act. It's okay that...
they don't meet this and they do drugs and parties sometimes because they show up when I ask them to, you know? And also sometimes it's a slow creep in like, you know, if you've started dating someone and it's like one non-negotiable and then you're like, oh, I'll forgive this because I'll, maybe this was like a one time, you don't want to be too severe with it. And so then you find yourself making these allowances and it's not until you look back that you're like, actually, I've made a lot of allowances. Like that's
That slow creep of allowances has gotten me to a place where I'm like, my boundaries and the things I said were non-negotiables have been totally compromised. Yeah. And that's when your limerence for someone outside of the marriage comes in. So can I share a story with you guys? So there is this book. It was one of my favorite books I ever read. And it's called The Mastery of Love. It was by the same author that wrote The Four Agreements. And
I read this book like 15 years ago, so I might butcher the story a little bit. But in this book, there's this analogy and they say, okay, imagine that you have a magical kitchen and you can snap your fingers. And the moment you snap your fingers, you can have whatever food you want in your magical kitchen. And let's say somebody comes along one day and you're well fed and you have everything you need from your magical kitchen and somebody knocks on your door and they're like, hey, I have a pizza.
And you can have a piece of the pizza, but you have to do all these things that I tell you to do. There's all these strings attached. You're going to look at that person and be like, no, I have a magical kitchen. I can make a pizza in a heartbeat. Like I don't need your pizza with all these strings attached. But then let's say your magical kitchen breaks down and it's like done.
And you're starving. You haven't eaten for three days. And that person comes back and they knock at your door and they're like, hey, I have a pizza. It comes with these strings attached. Because you are starving, you're going to be willing to put up with all of these things that you wouldn't normally because of your internal emotional state.
And this is an analogy for really self-love. If we know how to meet our own needs and we know what we need and who we are, then we're not going to put up with somebody's chaos just because they represent one or two needs that we are starving for.
And so that's why a huge aspect of like healing from whether it's limerence or being able to actually consciously date also requires doing that inner work first, which is like, what do I really need? What makes me feel good? How could I start giving these things to myself? So I have my own magical kitchen. I'm not starving. And then I'm going to see somebody come into my life and they're going to have all these red flags, but this one need, and I'm willing to filter out all of those red flags because I'm
starving. So just a huge encouragement for anybody who listens just to do that in our work, because if we do see ourselves having those themes or patterns, it's actually feedback for us that, hey, maybe there's a place we're not knowing ourselves or loving ourselves or showing up for our own needs. And that's a huge step towards healing.
Tyas, thank you so much for coming and being a part of the pod. Honestly, I feel like I've learnt so much from speaking to you. And, you know, we have these conversations every day, but there's always a few conversations that really kind of like crack the mould in terms of like a new way of describing it. And I genuinely feel that like both Britt and I can see we're sitting here being like, uh-huh, uh-huh. There'll be a lot of realisations, I think, from listeners that listen to this. I know that we had them ourselves in this discussion. So I know that this is going to drive home in a way that we're
we haven't probably done before, which I think is really cool. I think it's cool. We can get to this stage of these conversations and still be learning so much. And thank you so much. You've been an absolute dream. Thank you guys so much. It was so fun to be here with you and you was our exceptional host. So thank you for having me. Thank you. We're going to link all of your details in our show notes for anyone that wants to go and discover more.