Limerence Deep Dive (Chapter 3 - Signs and Disorder Justification)
Added 2025-11-26 12:00:06 +0000 UTCDr Kirk Honda provides his long-awaited lecture on limerence. November 26, 2025
00:00 Intro
05:37 The signs of experiencing limerence
18:22 The functional impact
28:53 How does limerence disrupt life?
46:43 How is it different from a crush?
1:06:43 Is it possible to have a healthy relationship?
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Comments
Dr. Kirk, is the latest book by Elizabeth Gilbert about limerence? She calls it “love addiction” herself
Olha Lylyk
2025-12-30 14:51:54 +0000 UTCWhat an interesting concept!
Riso Chan
2025-12-09 07:42:17 +0000 UTCYeah. I've been through limerence. There was a man I fell in love with the moment I saw him. He is very avoidant and I think he also had a very strange relationship towards me. There was love involved for both. But the limerence part: in 2011 I first met him. Once we walked through the city hand in hand until the sun was rising... He led me to his place and we just looked into each other's eyes. THEN he didn't contact me for two weeks. Like at all. And if I would contact him, there would have been a silence. Sometimes the period was longer. Like much longer. I tried not to “dwell” on that feeling. I felt obsessed by any sign he posted on Facebook, anything he liked there, because it was the only “place” I could see him on. I couldn't think about anything else. I tried to break free plenty of times. During 2012 I started dating someone else but it was someone highly destructive to me, but I didn't care. Because he was there and responded to messages. Then this relationship ended and I started lingering in the world of “what if he writes to me and I can see him” once again. And eventually, he always did. Once! We even went together on vacation for a week to Italy. That was 2013. We spent all the time together. I told him I liked him. Not even that I loved him. I was too scared of saying that. He didn't respond, he just smiled. He had problems of his own... After the holiday, no contact again for one full month. Then sharing photos from the holidays ... Every time we were in any kind of contact, I would bloom like a flower and radiate with love. Everytime we were no contact it would completely dim my life. I would feel pain every day, every minute of silence from him. It hurt so much, guys. I couldn't escape this. 2014 I actually tried to escape when he was no contact for 3 months and I flipped and told him he HAS to contact me now because it is killing me and hurting me. We met and I kind of broke up with him, if there is a word for such a thing when there is such a “relationship”. I told him that I guess I just needed to be given a hug at times. To be reassured. He said that he guessed he didn't want to hug me when I needed it and that he doesn't know why. He couldn't give me reassurance. Then I tried to escape big time when I moved to Liverpool for two years. To cut myself out of this pulling feeling towards the man. The pain. The ripping soul, because when I was with him I felt whole, when I was not, u felt as if i even didn't exist. I came back to Czech republic after those two years (having lived there with two absolutely unsuitable men for me, the second actually started to mentally abuse me and it led me to more darkness and more disconnection from myself. I wrote to my limerent object then, that I feel like what had happened was terrible for me and that he should know it. That I am trying to forgive him but he never said sorry and I know he has his own set of weird problems which causes him to disconnect right after a brilliant and beautiful connection of talking up to 4 a. m. about anything and great sex – to no contact. Eventually he did apologise, he tried to explain his own traumatic background. When u live in another country for some time and survive, you feel stronger. I guess that led to be able to confront him. Now, after almost 15 years after I first met him, I still feel a Ghost of that feeling. But what actually “cured” me are those things: YEARS of therapy, the period of time when we started meeting again (but it became regular and highly discussed, I set the goal to be the most open I could with him, he opened up to me and we did hug a plenty of times, at least everytime we parted our ways for another 14 days) because we both broke up with someone else and needed a friend. We both knew what it was about and that it had a timer set. There was a lot of understanding and helping (to each other). A lot of healing. A lot of reassurance. We ended things for good in 2021, naturally. I even don't remember what was the date. He now has a girlfriend who he might even start living together (something that never happens for him ever before) and I am since then with my partner in a relationship which is developing into something more and more meaningful, also my longest real relationship so far. So the limerence left my life with this man. But what I will tell you is this: whenever I see him (and I see him like once or twice a year in some small and brief occasion and my partner knows about everything that had happened and has seen the guy himself), my heart radiates with the same amount of love like in the very beginning. It never left my system. The limerence part, the pain part, the compulsive part did, though. We are going to be quite far from each other everytime, I guess. And that is for the best. Ooof. I didn't think this would be so long, so sorry to anyone who doesn't like long posts. But I guess it was just a long story: it's been almost 15 years, after all. Sending hugs to anyone who has been through the pain themselves.
K.
2025-12-05 13:01:16 +0000 UTCI found the comparison to grief to be helpful also… sometimes intense, distressing feelings are indeed quite normal/healthy. But they should eventually resolve. When they don’t, that warrants intervention.
KS
2025-12-04 06:27:44 +0000 UTCAs Im listening, Im really hearing the amount of distress these long term sensations create for people. Im wondering if those things might be symptoms of other problems. (Besides being a loser. Killer Dr Kirk out of context audio clip. Right now, half way through the series, Im conceptualizing limerence like grief. Totally normal human experience, but these long protracted intensity that won’t go away is where a disorder comes in. But Im interested in listened to the rest to see if that is oversimplified.
Lauren King
2025-12-03 19:31:48 +0000 UTC
