Limerence

The singular idea of liking someone and of creating space for another person inside our mind is one of the things that makes us profoundly human. Yet at times the distance between who people truly are and how we perceive them creates a limbo, a suspended state where we drift without fully understanding why we feel so lost.

We are speaking about something that consumes us. A kind of ugly beauty in loving so deeply a personality we created for someone who without any real effort repeatedly proves that they are not what we want, not what we dream of, not what we need.

But how does this happen.

The term itself feels both simple and complex, and it would be unfair to continue without first removing blame. The blame of the one who becomes deluded. Every situation is specific, some are supposedly more avoidable than others. Still no one wants to be deceived, nor to deceive themselves. No one chooses illusion consciously.

What hurts most is realizing that all the pieces we tried to gather, all the fragments we forced into place to complete the puzzle, always lead us to the same conclusion. Perhaps this person is not the one. In other words perhaps this was never meant to happen.

It often begins with doubt. When something fails to give us certainty but our desire for it to work is strong enough we find ways to ignore the signal, the quiet warning that we are stepping into something without any guarantee of happiness at the end. And that is how it becomes a vicious cycle. Hope replaces evidence. Desire replaces clarity.

I have a theory.

If our brain is capable of investing so much energy into creating people, shaping their personalities to fit the architecture of our dreams, then how can we learn to reserve space only for who they truly are. How can we protect our heart and more importantly our sanity.

The answer must lie in learning to look outward with more attention. In noticing those who are capable of consistency, the kind that does not leave us trapped in a constant search for answers. Perhaps the solution lives close to this, people who show they are comfortable with our flaws, who do not worship us, but remain present. People who stay for both good and bad. Without judgment yet with the courage to speak hard truths when necessary.

Personalities that whether in friendship family or love are willing to start from zero. To be themselves with us and with everyone else inside a shared space that slowly becomes a mutual bubble between two people.

It requires the elimination of every behavior that keeps us standing at the edge of a precipice, constantly questioning whether others are there for us in the same way we are there for them. We crave intensity, yes, but more than that we crave people who are willing to show it when it matters. We crave security.

I once wanted that. And I believe I always will.

To never settle for someone or something that does not offer safety. Because certainty may be relative but when intuition is sharp it is rarely wrong.

We need more sincerity from the people we love and from those who surround us so we do not remain frozen in time, exaggerating personalities, idealizing figures that exist only in our minds, clinging to versions of people that are neither real nor alive in the present.

Limerence is not love. It is the space between desire and reality, and learning to recognize it may be one of the most important acts of self respect we ever practice.