This easily misspelled word was coined by Dorothy Tennov to refer to the unique and often extremely unpleasant combination of love, attraction, lust, anxiety, depression, and elation that sometimes accompanies sexuoerotic interest in another person; in older English, a synonym is love sickness. Limerence is not sexual frustration, but instead is an all-encompassing emotional state in which one is completely preoccupied by the other person's every act and statement and oblivious to other concerns. The preoccupation seems obsessive to the limerent individual, and is felt as being beyond conscious control.
In the United States and Western culture generally, limerence is often considered a normal and inevitable consequence of sexual attraction, but it is not. Instead, limerence arises as a combination of sexuerotic attraction plus unclear or paradoxical communication in which the desired partner sends messages that might mean that interest might be reciprocated. It is the uncertainty of the response, not the sexuoerotic attraction itself, that generates limerence. Limerence only rarely cures itself, although a folk saying implies that time is the best doctor. It can, and perhaps often should, be treated psychotherapeutically, because a limerent individual may be crippled emotionally by a pattern of repeated anxiety, preoccupation bordering on obsession, and depression alternating with elation. It can also be treated if a professionally trained third party can bring the two individuals together in order to clarify the nature of their miscommunication. It then sometimes turns out that the individual who has stimulated the limerence is well aware of it and enjoys the seeming power that it gives him or her over the other person. Alternatively, the limerent individual may decide to withdraw from the entire situation─the colloquial expression being“to cut bait.”This is often advisable if limerence is pro-longed past several months and communication remains cloudy