Tom Bellamy

When you get that electric can't eat, can't sleep obsession with someone, is it actually love or is it sort of a dopamine loop hijacking your brain?

The rush of romantic fireworks might be less about fate and more about your brain and its neurochemistry.

So when that happens to you, how can you break the loop?

I'm here to discuss all of this with Tom Bellamy, a neuroscientist and writer.

Check out his new book, Smitten, Romantic Obsession, the Neuroscience of Limerence and How to Make Love Last.

That's available wherever books are sold.

Tom, welcome in.

I'm excited to chat with you.

Great to be with you, David.

We got to start with a definition.

What exactly is limerence?

Is it just having a crush on someone?

So limerence is best described, I think, as an altered state of mind.

So it's a state, a psychological state that people can fall into in the early stages of romantic love.

So it's an intense desire to form a pair bond with another person.

It's a state of very kind of profound infatuation.

So the word itself, limerence, was invented.

So a psychologist in the 1970s, Dorothy Tenoff, came up with this word to describe this particular altered mental state.

And she did that very deliberately because, of course, words like

you know, romance or addiction or obsession, they've got a lot of sort of psychological baggage around them.