Customer Reviews

Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book explained what happened to me numerous times when meeting different women to whom I was very attracted. I discovered that I could control the degree into which I became "limerent" by the messages I told myself about the other person. It helped me to conclude that emotional responses by human beings are created by the self talk we do. As a result of reading this book, discussing it's premise with others, and sharing it with friends, I have found a wonderful relationship with a person who cares for me in the same way I care for her. It's a mature, deep friendship spiced by delightful suprises. For an easy reading, helpful, yet scientific look at attractive relationships, you can't do better than this book.

I ordered the book to try and find out all I could about the state of limerence that I was in. I was hoping to find advice on how to end the limerent feelings (which the book did contain to a certain degree, ie basically avoid the person you feel limerent about, if it is unrequited)

The book was very helpful in that it made me feel somewhat normal, and I discovered my feelings and bursts of intense creativity, overwhelming sadness, interspersed with the highs that come with fleeting hope are a regular part of this condition. It made me feel like I wasn't so alone, and not totally insane.

From a psychological point of view I found the book and theories interesting. There are many limerent case histories peppered throughout the book. If you have been (or still are) in a limerent state you will recognise the patterns!! You will see parts of yourself in many of the case histories!

The one draw-back to the book is while reading it, and for about a week afterwards my limerence steadily increased. I lent the book to a friend, who is also going through the same thing, and the same thing happened to him.

If you are feeling love-sick or know of somebody who is- get the book it is money well spent(especially if it's unrequited love) but be warned that intensity might increase for a short duration. It really is well written and informative.

What a wealth of information Dorothy Tennov offers. What a resource for those who become love obsessed with one particular person. Apparently it is not all of us. Some of us become "limerant" (her name for being "in love") and some of us never do. Some of us are limerant sometimes and other times not. It is key to know that the condition is NOT LOVE. That it is INVOLUNTARY, that it is NORMAL, that it has existed since the beginning of history, that there are probably EVOLUTIONARY REASONS for it, that there are TRIGGERS which set it in motion, that "sufferers", are legion, that practically nothing is known about preventing it, or ending it at will. Ouch!

I had first read "Love and Limerance" 25 years ago, and remembered it as being a fascinating book because it described "limerance" (a word which the author made up herself) as that heart-pounding excitement when one first encounters a love object. Accordingly, I ordered 3 copies (one for myself and two to offer to therapy clients.) However, I was able to get through only 1/2 of the book before laying it aside (and determining to donate the other 2 copies to the library) because after it makes its [very worthwhile] point in the first 25-50 pages, it repeats and repeats it to death.

I had this book when it first was printed. It gave me a new word to use to descripe the mania you feel when you first become so attracted to someone that you can think of nothing else. It really isn't love, although you think it must be. It's painful and obsessive. It makes no sense. It's out of your control. Well, the word Limerence is meant to describe the whole feeling. I mistakenly loaned the book to someone who never returned it. Today, just to see if it could still be found, I searched on Amazon, and here is a new printing! I'm eagerly ordering it.

Of Love and Limerence appeared some years ago, but it is still a book which needs to be read widely, something that probably did not happen when it was first issued.

The author's topic is the experience of "being in love," that ecstatic, rhapsodic state people find themselves in from time to time in which all caution is thrown to the winds and the world would be well lost for the love or the loved one. It attacks young and old alike; it's the kind of love Romeo and Juliet portrays; my suspicion is it's the kind of experience the majority of inane popular love songs describe. The author says, "That ain't love."

Although it's been years since I read it, I recall the author identifying "limerence" as a state of mirror-gazing, a Narcissist attempt to look into somebody else's eyes and see: himself. Such lovers--or limerents, he would say--always ask, "Do you feel the way I do?" and if the answer is, "No," then he must insist that his correspondent do just that.

The author suggests that love is not so, that it seeks the other, not the self, in the relationship.

In a culture where "luv" has been so degraded and so besmirched, a clear understanding of what love is and isn't is helpful. I found this book entirely helpful in that regard.

Tennov fails to make such distinctions as those between what she actually calls the "limerence" of a battered wife and the overwhelming universal involuntary biological phenomenon of limerence that serves the fundamental evolutionary command to "be fruitful and multiply." She asserts in her 1999 preface that she found nothing to change about her understanding of love or limerence since the original edition. Evolutionary psychology has a long way to go in its disregard of the complementary clinical findings of depth psychology and object relations theories, and Love and Limerence remains "politically correct" testament to that. (Experts in the archetypal symbols and processes of the psyche will have a field day with the case stories.)

Yet this remains a very important book, exceptionally well written for its time. If you aren't on the floor in stitches at the countless private stories of the complete insanity and embarrassment of "The Supreme Delight," then you can only be among the (lucky or unlucky?) few immune to the grip of the often cruel involuntary falling in love experience. Divine madness, indeed -- yet also of "higher" archetypal integration processes and purposes than Tennov and her evolutionary psychology colleagues are yet capable of grasping. Highly recommended for its part, especially for anyone suffering its unrequited grip, but with reservations. A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis, offering a stunning and poetic current understanding of the importance of limbic brain function in mammalian love and attachment that includes an understanding of depth dynamics, is must companion reading. (Don't miss Dorothy Tennov's review below.)

I must say I was very pleased with the book. Well the first half of it anyway, the second half goes a little bit downhill with all the psychology that's makes you lose interest in the rest. This is a book for anyone who has ever been really madly in love (which is most of us)and can't comprehend why you can never get this person away from your thoughts. In short, this book makes you realize your not crazy after all. If your into someone who does not feel the same way as you, this book will explain everything your feeling. She really gets into alot of lack of reciprocation from someone you like/love, which we can all identify with how hard that can be. It will also help you to understand that if you don't think anyone else is going through all this except you, your wrong, your not alone. It really helped me get through a rough period and I think its worth it to read it, this is a book you can truly identify with.

I came across "Love and Limerence" shortly after it was first published, and it's stayed with me. The things I learned have served me very well - and have saved me from repeating what I suffered through in my twenties. I'd rate it as one of the most influential books I've ever read.

Dorothy Tennov
Love and Limerence:
The Experience of Being in Love

(Briarcliff Manor, NY: Stein & Day, 1979) 324 pages
(Library of Congress call number: BF575.L8T46)
(Lanham, MD: Scarborough House, 1999;
paperback reprint with added preface) 357 pages
(ISBN: 0812862864; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: [about the same as above] )

An excellent description of how romantic love feels from the inside
--as experienced by the person who has 'fallen in love'.
This is perhaps the most complete description of romantic love in print.
Here are the major features of the condition of "limerence":

1. a magical, ecstatic, enchanted feeling--an emotional 'high'.

2. vast overestimation of the good qualities of the beloved
and minimization of the faults.

3. acute longing for reciprocation from the love object.

4. deep mood-swings--from elation to depression.

5. involuntary, compulsive, repetitive, obsessive thinking
about the love object (even if there is no response).

6. deep heart-ache when limerence is over.

Love and Limerence is based on extensive original research,
mostly among college students in the 1970s.
They answered questionnaires about their feelings;
and many had comprehensive interviews with the author.
The book includes several first-person accounts
of romantic love and its aftermath.

The major chapters of Love and Limerence discuss these themes:

§ The individual's experience of limerence.

§ The social effects of 'falling in love'.

§ Variations between the sexes and people of different sexual orientations.

§ The biological basis of limerence.

§ Some ways of coping with limerence.

If you would like to read reviews of other books critical of romantic love,
search the Internet for this bibliography:
"The Best Books Critical of Romantic Love".

James Leonard Park, existential philosopher