Difference between limerence and romantic attraction?

[Member54880]

Pardon me if this is disorganized, but I have several questions about this. I'm trying to write something about romantic attraction, relationships, and limerence. I know what limerence is; it's those intense, obsessive, possessive and over-idealizing feelings over the target of attraction.

I've also made a thread months ago about romance repulsion. The responses were varied, but a lot of it looked to be repulsion towards either limerence, or the expectations surrounding conventional romantic relationships.

I assume that romantic attraction is simply the desire to form a romantic relationship with someone, and it can be possible to enter a romantic relationship without limerence factoring into it. Is limerence a particularly strong and obsessive degree of romantic attraction, or can aromantics also experience limerence?

To anyone who is, or has been in a romantic relationship, did you go through the phase of limerence first? If you used to experience limerence, do you still feel romantic attraction to your partner without it, and does it feel more stable?

I have no useful first-hand experience with these questions, because I'm not sure if I experience romantic attraction, and the "romantic relationship" I was in was one-sided, and I couldn't reciprocate.

[dissolved]

Limerence is a part of romantic attraction. It's strong, yeah, and can be quite engrossing to the point of being able to somehow link everything to that person in a way that feels as though you can't really stop thinking about them, but it can be as simple as "I want to share this with them". I wouldn't however, call it obsessive nor needing to possess them in any way. Once the limerence slows down, it becomes a general mental warmth towards that person, a desire to be with them in a romantic way and to make them happy.

[TooOldForThis]

Well - in my experience, the feelings are similar but not identical, and limerence tends to be both shorter-lasting and almost annoyingly intense. It's sort of like an intrusive thought, though less disturbing than most of those tend to be :P

I sometimes experience limerence towards people I don't know too well. As I get to know them better, the limerence fades, sometimes leaving real romantic feelings (so, a crush of sorts) and sometimes leaving only friendly feelings (or not even that, if they turn out to be not such a great person). That's one reason I don't tend to ask anyone out until I've been crushing on them quite a while; I don't want to take the chance that I'm only feeling limerence towards them, and not romantic attraction.

Sometimes, romantic attraction can happen without limerence. My last relationship shifted straight from friendship to romantic feelings (and still friendship, obviously) without stopping at limerence at all.

For what the feelings are like - limerence is sort of a giddy, vaguely obsessive feeling for me. I think about a person towards whom I feel limerence a lot, and may have a somewhat distorted view of them. I want to talk about them frequently, and get sort of daydreamy when looking forward to seeing them. But it only tends to last for a short while - maybe a few days, a couple of weeks at most.

Romantic attraction, on the other hand, is like friendship in that it doesn't have a time limit, and tends to be non-intrusive. So, when I think about a person to whom I'm romantically attracted, I get a 'warm and fuzzy' kind of feeling, maybe similar to how one might feel when coming across a favourite toy from childhood, with lots of happy memories attached. I know that comparison is weird, but it's the best one I can think up at the moment. At the same time, my mind isn't constantly jumping to the person, like with limerence. I can choose when to think about them, and when not to. I want them to be happy, and maybe want to impress them a little; their opinion matters to me. Also, I don't want to impress them by putting up a facade, but by actually being admirable. I want to make grand sweeping gestures to show them how I feel about them. I want to protect them from anything that might hurt them. I also want to trust them with information about me that I don't often share, which I am sensitive about, because I want to have that kind of connection with them. I want them to reciprocate that trust.

Trust is actually really important to it. I mean, yes, I want to be able to trust my friends, but there's no real desire to share deep dark secrets with them, or have them share such secrets with me. If it happens it happens, but there are no particular feelings attached to it.

That's just my experience. Different people experience romantic attraction, and limerence, differently.

[K!m]

I'm within the aromantic spectrum, and I think I might have experienced limerence, or something akin to it, towards an aesthetic crush and a squish. I thought about them a lot, too much in fact that it bothered me, but I couldn't do anything about it. I wanted to get to know them better and spend time with them. I did a few embarrassing things for them, but nothing that could cause harm or anything. Maybe I was being obsessive, but I wasn't being possessive nor was I over-idealizing them. Then again, I'm not an alloromantic, but I thought I'd share my experience as an arospec.

As for the question in the title, I can't answer that since I'm not really sure what romantic attraction is exactly. (And that's why I can call myself a WTF/quoiromantic.)

[WhenSummersGone]

For me limerance is when my crush on someone gets out of hand. I feel it is close to obsession and thinking about them lots. Romantic attraction is before all that in my opinion. I have had some crushes that were not as intense.

[Member54880]

I understood limerence as "falling in love" (and I distinguish between being "in love" and a loving attachment towards someone), which often does involve obsessing over and overly idealizing the other person, but it fades over time in favor of a more stable form of love. I was looking to know is if romantic attraction includes that initial falling in love, but also the more stable romantic feelings that remain after limerence fades.

[ithaca]

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[MsGreen]

I have experienced limerance some times, but didn't know until now that there exists a word for it! For me, it's like a very disturbig obsession, I think about the person all the time. Mostly I think limerance exists when I like someone, but for some reason canät see this person in person, so instead my urge to talk to and get to know and be near the person transforms into lots of thoughts. It doesn't have to be for only a short time, experienced it for 5 years for the same person, but it wasn't as intense all the time.