Dr. Alok Kanuja (Dr. K)

You have a normal life, but then you transform into this other thing for periods of time.

And then when you're like one person over here who's building a normal life and then like another person over here who's obsessively thinking about the limerent object, it's really hard to get a sense of like an integrated life.

So a very common feature is that people feel really, really like a sense of disintegration, like disintegration, like I'm over here and I'm doing one thing and I'm over here and I'm doing another thing.

So these are the core features, and it kind of begs the question, like, how the hell does this happen to people, right?

What is going on in them that they sort of end up with these up to seven-year-long obsessions over small interactions?

And where they're very, very paranoid about reciprocation, and they long for reciprocation to be noticed, etc., right?

So why does this happen?

So this is where—this is why it's actually taken me a couple of years, because—

The majority of the, you know, stuff out there I've seen tends to focus heavily on attachment theory.

So people will say basically limerence is a consequence of a particular attachment style.

That never really sat right with me for a couple reasons.

So...

You know, people will say, okay, the reason you develop limerence is because you have an anxious attachment or something like that.

So that may be true, that limerence has been associated with an anxious attachment, but let's understand the statistics, okay?

So 50% of people have secure attachment, 25% of people have anxious attachment, which means the way that they relate to other people, we have a whole section on attachment theory and stuff, so you can check that out if y'all want.

But basically, they're very, very concerned about abandonment.

They're concerned about that this person doesn't care for them.

They feel very, very paranoid.

They don't feel secure in the relationship.

So they engage in a lot of behaviors to pull this person in.