Tom Bellamy

People understand those terms differently.

So she very deliberately coined this phrase limerence to try and identify a particular emotional state.

I've been there.

I've had that feeling like the world will end if I can't talk to someone, be with someone, be in bed with someone.

Is it fairly common?

Do most people experience this?

It is.

So about half the population experienced limerence in the early phases of love.

So I carried out a survey where I asked people who hadn't been primed, have you ever experienced this state?

And I gave a kind of brief description of what limerence feels like.

And about half of the people who took that survey said, yes, they had, which of course means that half have not ever experienced that state in the early phase of love.

So one of the common things, you know, talking about limerence and sharing limerence experience with other people,

Half the world think, well, that's just love.

You don't need a special word for that.

That's just what love feels like.

The other half of the world thinks, well, no, that sounds crazy.

That sounds like an irrational crush.

It sounds very unstable and a bit unhealthy.

And that mismatch in expectations about what love is and what people in love behave like, I think is an explanation for quite a lot of a heartache in the world because people have such different expectations of how, you know, their potential lover will behave that, you know, those misunderstandings unfortunately lead to a sort of romantic folly.

Yeah, you know, honestly, I felt unwell when I've had limerence.