Talk:Limerence

message: I don't feel competent enough to do it myself, but here are some thoughts:
1) Definition in the introduction makes little sense - unless limerence is "a state which SEEMS TO RESULT from a romantic relation", which could be just about anything. An actual definition is in the "characteristics" paragraph and should be used instead.
Done. Kbog (talk) 23:18, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clean up - especially definition 

message: The article states who coined the word and why, but not from what. I thought that it was related to liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning "a threshold"), a concept first developed by anthropologists in the early 20th century, but it's not. 
I'm going to add cross-references ("not to be confused with") at the top of both Limerence & Liminality, but my chronic illness is acting up so I can't take the energy and therefore the time to make this post smaller (apologies to Blaise Pascal & WP:TLDR), much less concisely add the info below to the article. I suggest a brief Etymology section quoting the coiner's purposeful attempt at lack of...uh...etymology. I would still call the section Etymology to be parallel with other articles' and because it answers the question of etymology that readers pose, as seen below.
http://www.gramps.org/limerence/ (about halfway down, apparently from the publisher of her ebook)
The Linguistics of Limerence—Professional Article
Dr. Tennov writes, “It is rare that an artificial term, invented, and chosen deliberately to be without cognates, that originates at a known date and place, expands tractably during a quarter-century, across disciplines and continents, sometimes arriving at meanings different from that intended by its inventor.”
(By the way, if you “Google” on the word “limerence” today, you'll discover over 120,000 references, from rock music groups to neurology articles. People have adopted the word in literature, poetry, as the name of a consulting business, and even pornography.)
http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001708.php
What's particularly interesting about limerence is its etymology, or lack thereof, as explained in this quote from Dorothy Tennov, the word's inventor:
1977 Observer 11 Sept. 3/9, I first used the term ‘amorance’ then changed it back to ‘limerence’... It has no roots whatsoever. It looks nice. It works well in French. Take it from me it has no etymology whatsoever.
Thanks in advance, even if all you could do is read all this. :) 
--Geekdiva (talk) 04:14, 2 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin of the word - request for someone to write up a summary of the references below (or more) 

message: ***1) Under definition: "Though there are no established preconditions for limerence, there is a high rate of coincidence between limerence, depersonalization/derealization disorders, and dysfunctional attachment environments in childhood."
Can we get a citation here? I've never read any research relating limerence to depersonalization/derealization disorders, but if it exists, I'd sure like to.
***2) Under characteristics: "Affection and fondness exist only as a disposition towards another person, irrespective of whether those feelings are reciprocated, whereas limerence deeply desires return, but IT REMAINS UNALTERED WHETHER IT'S RETURNED OR NOT."
Tennov stated that there were three ways that limerence subsided: 1) consummation (reciprocation), 2) starvation, and 3) transference. If the limerent's feelings are genuinely returned, it can/may fall under 1. Each limerent has a slightly different view of acceptable reciprocation. Some limerents, upon achieving reciprocation/consummation, remain limerent (as documented by Tennov)…while other limerents do not achieve any "real" consummation (e.g., physical, or in the form of an actual relationship) but find their limerence waning after an LO professes similar feelings. 
***3) Under sexuality: "In such cases, limerence may form as a defense mechanism against the limerent object, who is not perceived initially as a romantic ideal, but as a physical threat to the limerent. This is particularly consistent among limerents who were formerly victims of sexual abuse or trauma."
Again, is there a citation for this? I'm not sure when this article was so thoroughly changed from its previous incarnation(s), but this newer version makes a lot of statements linking limerence to psychological disorders, trauma, and attachment theory…some of the claims are made with citations, others are not, and I'm curious as to where all of this is coming from.   
***4) Under sexuality: "Limerence elevates body temperature and INCREASES RELAXATION, a sensation of viewing the world with rose-tinted glasses, becoming more receptive to sexuality, and daydreaming."
How does limerence increase relaxation? This should be more specifically explained or denoted, given that this article also stated:
"There is apprehension, nervousness, and anxiety due to terrible worry that any action may bring about disaster."
"...[contact] is accompanied with an acute feeling of ecstasy or despair, depending on the turn of events beforehand."
"Considerable self-doubt and uncertainty may be experienced, leading to 'personal incapacitation expressed through an unsettling shyness in the presence of the [L] person'[14] - something which causes pain, but also enhances desire to a certain extent…"''
***5) Under limerent reaction: "The correlation with dissociative disorders is particularly high among "serial" limerents."
Citation, please. I am a serial limerent and have known other serial limerents, but I have never heard this. On the other hand, I *do* know of NON-serial limerents who were affected by dissociative disorders. Honestly, if this research is out there, I'm interested in reading it.
***6) Under impact: "David Brooks defines limerence as a potentially positive, unifying, transformative encounter with the divine, or oneness of mankind.[21]"
I watched this video, and the only mention made about limerence was around the 15min mark--Brooks was not even talking about limerence as explained in this article. I am almost positive he is using some other definition of the word (possibly mistaken), in a totally different context, and I have no idea why this is even cited here.
Osiyeza (talk) 01:04, 25 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Several issues 

message: "Attendant to stress on the celestial qualities perceived, and devotion to them, there is abundant doubt of reciprocal amity: rejection."
What? Is there meaning here?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:37E7:9D70:9489:5A4F:D09:AC18 (talk) 17:53, 19 June 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Devotion to Celestial Qualities 

message: I propose adding a Causes section to the Limerence page. Mgdupont (talk) 19:08, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propose Adding Section: Causes 

message: I propose adding an Overcoming Limerence section to the Limerence page. Mgdupont (talk) 19:08, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propose Adding Section: Overcoming Limerence 

message: Intro sentence currently includes "compulsive thoughts". I think "obsessive thoughts" is more correct, since compulsions are behaviours whereas obsessions are thoughts.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A01:110:8008:1010:0:0:0:201 (talk) 10:08, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor: obsessive vs compulsive 

message: There is some indication that limerence is the product of a person with Asperger's Syndrome fixating on a person, instead of an object.GESICC (talk) 10:53, 27 February 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Can you link to some reliable sources supporting that statement? Permstrump (talk) 10:52, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  A product of Asperger's Autism? 

message: Substituted at 22:02, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

message: Is limerence pathological?  Always pathological?  How do we distinguish limerence from exciting love?  The article should make this clear.
Wikkrockiana (talk) 10:20, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: The french wikipedia says "Le concept de « limerence » est présenté par Tennov comme une façon de concevoir l'amour de manière scientifique", "the concept of limerence is presented by Tennov as a scientific way of conceving love". So, indeed, it IS romantic love, but conceptualized in a way that make it "measurable" by tests. At the worst, it is the suffered way of loving of a insicure, shy, undeclared lover. So, it's not pathological (but its obsessive characteristics could become pathological). The article shows great confusion because in Tennov's work "limerance" was not necessarily a negative mental state, quite the contrary (she says that it's potentially inspirant, and offers a definition that it's nothing more than the mainstream description of a general passion), but the term "limerance" was successively "pathologized" by Wakin Vo, who thought of a pretty specific condition in which a person is both pathologically affected by OCD and in love. - Brocabruno  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.82.16.176 (talk) 17:23, 3 March 2019 (UTC)
thread_title: Pathological?  Distinguished from other kinds of love?

message: New relationship energy.Weeb Dingle (talk) 06:53, 9 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  NRE 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: While I defend limerence as being a much more rigorously examined concept than the newer/trendier new relationship energy, Limerence isn't really substantially better than New relationship energy. 
As can be seen from browsing the Talk history of both articles, NRE has repeatedly been put forward as all the rainbows-and-unicorns happy-fuzzy feelings of "falling in love" (with no downside except maybe sacrificing your career or skipping out on your spouse and children), while all the bipolar obsessive stalkerish stuff has been damned as "limerence," when actually (leaving off the propaganda of mindless Romance) they are pretty much the same thing.
So it is with reluctance that I might be trimming the most questionable claims made in Limerence. I could use some assistance, namely the citations made to "Tennov, 1998" when the only Tennov piece clearly cited is the 1999 edition of her book (originally 1979). Similarly, there are citations to "Morris" and "Moore" and "Agmo" and "Leggett & Malm" that do not offer an actual book or paper, so it's well into W.T.F. range here; if I didn't have a bias, I might delete these assertions, and then remove the passages that had claimed them as support.Weeb Dingle (talk) 19:04, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  ought to be better 

message: Romance is the conspiracy of the hormones, and starts with the delusion that romance is the same as love.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.78.144.132 (talk) 20:20, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Magic Potion 

message: Since "limerence" is basically a synonym for infatuation, it does not merit its own article.
Especially since far more people are familiar with the word "infatuation".50.205.142.35 (talk) 14:34, 2 December 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Limerence, as characterized in the article, is of such duration as to qualify as a different phenomenon. Infatuation is frequently taken to be short-lived. The two share many features though. Spirarel (talk) 00:27, 21 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why this article? 

message: this, ladies and gentlemen, is an example of an infinitive that begs to be split. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:FD24:46CE:76AF:D0B5 (talk) 11:39, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  is passionately desired actually to take place 

message: I'm going to be removing references to Willmott & Bentley's book Love and Limerence: Harness the Limbicbrain. This book was self-published by Lynn Willmott using CreateSpace, and it's also no longer in print so it's not possible for anyone to obtain a copy of it.
A careful reading of policies such as WP:RELY, WP:SCHOLARSHIP and WP:SELFPUB would lead one to conclude that it's not appropriate as a Wikipedia source, because it's a self-published primary source by an author who is not an established subject-matter expert in the relevant field.
Willmott & Bentley have otherwise one single article published on the topic , published in a minor journal with a permissive editorial policy: 
Lynn Willmott's ideas are also not that well supported by the literature on this. She and her graduate student are basically the only academic authors I can find that are advancing an idea that limerence has to do with attachment issues. Everything else I can find on this topic relates it to dopamine and serotonin systems in the brain.
Furthermore, I found that references to this book seem to have been originally added by Lynn Willmott herself.  The username "Lathbury1" clearly refers to "Lathbury House", which is Lynn Willmott's self-publishing company.
See e.g. WP:UNDUE. From what I can tell, she is just a fringe author who tried to advertise her self-published material by citing herself as a source. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 16:54, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lynn Willmott's self-published book 

message: I've added reference to these 2 studies in the lead:  .
Neither of these papers specifically use the word "limerence", but if you read them it's clear what they are talking about. Fisher's fMRI paper repeatedly uses Love and Limerence as a citation, for example. Fisher also does use the word "limerence" to refer to this in another paper which also talks about the fMRI study before the results were published: .
It should be obvious why the 2 studies are relevant to the article, but I was careful with the wording to try to avoid synthesis.
Looking at Wikipedia's guidelines though, I think it may not even technically be synthesis to say these 2 studies are about limerence, because Fisher's 2002 paper connects all the ideas together using the word. WP:SYNTH says '"A and B, therefore, C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published the same argument concerning the topic of the article.'
Anyway, it should be fine.
There's actually a pretty large amount of research on this, they just rarely use Tennov's word specifically. Fisher, for example, seems to be a fan of the idea that "limerence is love" which may explain why she refers to Tennov quite a bit but avoids the word except occasionally. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 01:28, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Research on dopamine and serotonin 

message: Editors editing this page should read the WP:RELY article carefully. Many internet sources mentioning "limerence" are not reliable sources per Wikipedia's standards.
* Reliable scholarship – Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses. 
* Citation counts – One may be able to confirm that discussion of the source has entered mainstream academic discourse by checking what scholarly citations it has received in citation indexes or lists such as DOAJ.
* Isolated studies – Isolated studies are usually considered tentative and may change in the light of further academic research. If the isolated study is a primary source, it should generally not be used if there are secondary sources that cover the same content.  The reliability of a single study depends on the field. Avoid undue weight when using single studies in such fields.
Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (invited op-eds and letters to the editor from notable figures) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact.  Human interest reporting is generally not as reliable as news reporting, and may not be subject to the same rigorous standards of fact-checking and accuracy (see junk food news).
* When taking information from opinion content, the identity of the author may help determine reliability. The opinions of specialists and recognized experts are more likely to be reliable and to reflect a significant viewpoint. (Please keep in mind that any exceptional claim would require exceptional sources, and this is policy.) If the statement is not authoritative, attribute the opinion to the author in the text of the article and do not represent it as fact.
* Scholarly sources and high-quality non-scholarly sources are generally better than news reports for academic topics.
* The reporting of rumors has a limited encyclopedic value, although in some instances verifiable information about rumors may be appropriate (i.e. if the rumors themselves are noteworthy, regardless of whether or not they are true).
Albert Wakin's paper, for example, is not a reliable source, because it's not published in an actual peer-reviewed journal. It was just published by a university. Most internet articles about this are not reliable sources, because they're opinion pieces written by non-experts. Many internet articles e.g. claim that Albert Wakin is an expert, but he has little to no publications, so these articles can only be taken as the opinions of those authors, who are not authoritative sources in and of themselves.
The only authoritative sources on this topic are Dorothy Tennov herself, and probably Helen Fisher who is a domain expert that has written about Tennov and limerence.
The claim, for example, that "being in love" is a mental disorder would be an exceptional claim requiring exceptional evidence.
A number of internet articles, for example, claim that "limerence" affects "5%" of the population, but this does not come from any published study, nor are the articles clear about what they mean by "limerence". Several articles attribute this "estimate" to Wakin himself, who, again, can not be said to be an expert per Wikipedia's guidelines. Similarly, it cannot be said that "limerence" is actually being evaluated for inclusion to the DSM, because there is no proposal for that and the APA has not made a statement.
These are just low-quality opinion articles expressing the ill-defined opinions of non-experts. These articles also contain numerous provably false statements. For example, this article lists "Tennov's components" of limerence, but they are different from the ones in Tennov's publications. That article also says "limerence" is different from romantic love, but according to reliable sources they are the same. The article also says "In most relationships where limerence is an issue, one partner is limerent and the other is not, according to Tennov.", but Tennov did not say this. (What Tennov actually said is just that most relationships are limerent-nonlimerent, and she also included unrequited love in this grouping of people.) And so on. Again, these are provably false statements.
With respect to this 5% "estimate", Wakin's statement about his own study (which he has never published) suggest he found 25%. (Also note Helen Fisher's comments in that article.) For what it's worth, there is also a blogger who has done a survey finding more like 50% (although that's not a reliable source for Wikipedia), as well as a 1990 study that found limerence was common ('considerable overlap of distributions'), although they do not list a specific percentage.
So again, please read Wikipedia's sourcing guidelines carefully and do not add unreliable information to the article. ShiveryPeaks (talk) 18:33, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliable sources