Why Do I Become Emotionally Obsessed With Someone Who Gives Me So Little? Understanding Limerence

"I don’t just like them. I think about them constantly. Their messages regulate my mood. Their absence destabilizes me. A small sign of interest gives me hope; distance or ambiguity sends me into anxiety. I know it’s disproportionate. I know it’s painful. And yet, I can’t seem to stop."

This experience is often described as limerence a state of intense emotional fixation on another person, marked by longing, idealization, and a desperate need for reciprocation.

What Limerence Really Is (And What It Is Not)

Limerence is often confused with love, passion, or romantic intensity. Clinically, however, it is something different.

Limerence is not about who the other person actually is. It is about what they represent psychologically.

Common features of limerence include:

• Intrusive, repetitive thoughts about the person

• Strong emotional dependency on their attention or approval

• Idealization and minimization of red flags

• Heightened sensitivity to ambiguity or inconsistency

• Difficulty disengaging despite emotional pain

Limerence thrives not on closeness, but on uncertainty.

Why Limerence Feels So Addictive

Limerence is powerful because it operates through the nervous system, not through conscious choice. The alternating presence and absence of the other person creates emotional highs and lows that resemble an addictive cycle.

Small gestures are magnified. Silence feels unbearable. The mind constantly scans for meaning, signs, reassurance.

Psychologically, this pattern often reflects:

• Unmet attachment needs

• Emotional deprivation or inconsistency in early relationships

• A deep association between love and unpredictability

• Difficulty self-regulating emotions without an external anchor

The obsession is not about desire alone, it is about emotional regulation.

Why Limerence Often Targets Unavailable People

Many people notice a painful pattern: limerence almost always attaches to someone emotionally unavailable, ambiguous, or inconsistent.

This is not accidental.

Unavailable partners recreate a familiar emotional landscape for individuals who learned early that connection had to be earned, waited for, or imagined rather than reliably received. The longing itself becomes the bond.

In these dynamics, hope replaces intimacy and imagination replaces mutuality.

“Why Can’t I Let Go Even When It Hurts?”

One of the most distressing aspects of limerence is the loss of agency. People often ask themselves why they cannot simply detach, especially when the situation is clearly damaging.

From a psychological perspective, letting go does not feel like loss of a person it feels like loss of meaning, regulation, and identity. The fixation provides structure, direction, and emotional intensity. Without it, there may be emptiness, grief, or a confrontation with unmet needs.

This is why advice like “just move on” is ineffective and often shaming.

How Limerence Is Understood in Psychotherapy

In psychotherapy, limerence is not treated as a flaw or immaturity. It is approached as a meaningful signal.

Therapeutic work often focuses on:

• Understanding the emotional function limerence serves

• Exploring attachment patterns and relational history

• Identifying how self-worth became externally anchored

• Reducing reliance on fantasy and emotional hypervigilance

• Developing internal emotional regulation and stability

• Mourning what was never actually available

The goal is not to suppress feelings, but to shift the source of emotional regulation back to the self.

From Obsession to Emotional Grounding

As therapy progresses, limerence often weakens, not because the person becomes less sensitive or passionate, but because emotional needs begin to be met internally and relational expectations become clearer.

Intensity is replaced by presence.Hope is replaced by discernment.Longing gives way to self-trust.

Healthy attachment does not require obsession to survive.

Limerence is not proof that someone is special.It is proof that something inside is urgently seeking connection, safety, or recognition.

Psychotherapy offers a space to understand why longing has taken this form, and how to build relationships that do not depend on uncertainty, fantasy, or emotional deprivation.

What feels like love may, in fact, be a call to return to yourself.