Chapter 1: The Person You Cannot Stop Thinking About
Avery eventually replies at 9:07.
Sorry, busy night. That made me laugh though.
Riley’s body relaxes before Riley has even finished reading.
There it is.
Relief.
Not excitement exactly.
Not yet.
First, relief.
The story Riley had been building for the last few hours collapses almost instantly.
Avery was not pulling away.
Riley had not ruined anything.
The joke was not embarrassing.
The connection is still alive.
Then comes the second feeling.
Hope.
That made me laugh though.
Why add though?
And why apologize for being busy?
Maybe Avery wanted Riley to know the delay was not personal.
Maybe Avery had been thinking about replying.
Maybe—
Riley catches the thought.
Then follows it anyway.
Within minutes, the painful uncertainty has changed form, but it has not actually disappeared.
This is one of the confusing things about limerence.
The answer does not always end the question.
Sometimes it simply gives the mind better material.
When attraction becomes occupation
It is difficult to draw a clean line between strong attraction and limerence because ordinary romantic attraction can be intense.
People who are newly in love often think about each other a great deal. Research on romantic love has described intrusive thinking, focused attention, idealization, craving for emotional union, and strong shifts in mood as common features of passionate attachment. 4
So if you have spent an afternoon replaying a first kiss, there is no need to turn it into a clinical event.
If you checked your phone five times after a promising date, you are in very crowded company.
If you have imagined a future with someone you barely know, you are still human.
Intensity alone is not enough.
What starts to matter is how much flexibility remains.
Can your attention return to the rest of your life?
Can you feel disappointed without becoming destabilized?
Can you receive unclear information without spending hours trying to force it into certainty?
Can you continue relating to the person as they actually are, including evidence that conflicts with what you hope?
Can you allow their attention to rise and fall without your sense of worth rising and falling with it?
Can you choose not to check?
Can you stop?
For someone in a limerent state, those questions may become increasingly difficult to answer.
The 2025 research that produced the Limerence Questionnaire is useful here because the researchers did not find just one cluster of “strong feelings.” Their measure separated into two related dimensions. One reflected intense attachment and longing for reciprocation. The other reflected neglect of oneself, other relationships, or responsibilities because attention had shifted so heavily toward the person. 5
That second piece matters.
It moves us away from the idea that limerence is simply “loving too much.”
The issue is not only what you feel.
It is what the feeling begins to reorganize.
Maybe your work still gets done, but only after losing an hour to scrolling.
Maybe you remain physically present with your partner while mentally conducting another relationship.
Maybe you cancel plans because the person might become available.
Maybe sleep starts depending on whether a conversation feels settled.
Maybe you stop reading books, playing games, making art, calling friends, exercising, or doing the small things that once made up your inner life because your mind keeps returning to one subject.
Maybe you are still functioning on paper.
But there is less of you available for everything else.
That is an important form of cost.
Ruminative hope
One phrase will help us describe what is happening.
Ruminative hope.
Rumination means repetitive thinking that circles the same material without producing much new understanding.
Hope gives that thinking a direction.
Put them together and you get a particular kind of mental occupation:
Maybe this means something.
Maybe there is still a chance.
Maybe I need one more piece of information.
Maybe the next interaction will finally tell me.
The mind keeps working because the problem feels solvable.
This is different from thinking about somebody simply because you enjoy remembering them.
Ruminative hope is investigative.
It looks for evidence.
It treats details as clues.
A pause before answering.
A change in punctuation.
Where they sat.
How long they hugged you.
Whether they viewed your story.
Whether they remembered something small.
Whether they acted differently around you than around someone else.
Whether “we should do that sometime” meant we should actually do that sometime.
The trouble is that human behavior is noisy.
People are inconsistent.
Warm people are warm.
Busy people become slow at texting.
Some people flirt without wanting a relationship.
Some people feel attraction they never intend to pursue.
Some people care deeply and still say no.
Some people do not know what they want.
Some people give mixed signals because their own feelings are mixed.
Some people are simply having a Tuesday.
When you are emotionally invested, all of this ordinary ambiguity becomes difficult to leave alone.
You begin to mine it.
And because the evidence is rarely complete, interpretation fills the gap.
Why uncertainty matters so much
We often assume attraction should grow when we receive positive information.
Sometimes it does.
But uncertainty can have a strange effect on attention.
In a well-known 2011 experiment, women who were uncertain about how much several men liked them reported thinking about those men more and, in that study, feeling more attracted to them than participants who knew the men definitely liked them. The researchers proposed that increased thinking helped explain the effect. 6
That does not prove uncertainty causes limerence.
It does show something important about the human mind:
not knowing can keep a person mentally active.
An unanswered question has unfinished business built into it.
Think about the difference between these three situations.
Someone clearly tells you they are not interested.
Painful.
Someone clearly tells you they want to date you and begins building a relationship with you.
Exciting.
Someone behaves warmly, perhaps flirtatiously, but never gives you enough information to know what the relationship is becoming.
That third situation leaves the door open.
The mind can keep returning to it because possibility remains alive.
For some people, rejection eventually closes the loop.
For others, even rejection can be converted into uncertainty:
Maybe they are scared.
Maybe the timing is wrong.
Maybe they said no because they are trying to do the responsible thing.
Maybe they will change their mind.
This is why uncertainty is not always something the other person is deliberately creating.
Sometimes the outside situation is genuinely unclear.
Sometimes the limerent mind keeps creating uncertainty after reality has become more definite than it wants to accept.
Those are not the same thing.
We will return to that distinction later.
For now, notice how hope changes the meaning of ambiguity.
An unanswered message is not merely an unanswered message.
It becomes a question about the future.
A smile is not merely a smile.
It becomes evidence that the future may still be possible.
And when the imagined future begins carrying enough emotional weight, every small signal about it begins to matter.
The imagined future partner
Limerence is often described as intense focus on another person.
That is true, but incomplete.
Much of the experience can actually be focused on the future.
Not the life you are living.
The life that might happen.
There is a version of Avery in Riley’s actual life.
That Avery has a job, irritating habits, an ex who still causes occasional drama, strong opinions about food, a tendency to avoid difficult conversations, and a calendar that does not revolve around Riley.
Then there is another Avery.
The Avery of possibility.
That Avery represents spontaneous weekends.
Being understood without explaining everything.
A more exciting sex life.
Long conversations at two in the morning.
A relationship that somehow avoids all the disappointments Riley already knows how to have.
In imagination, Avery does not have to leave socks on the floor.
Avery does not have to get sick on vacation.
Avery does not have to become stressed about money.
Avery does not have to become boring on a Thursday in February.
The imagined relationship has not failed these tests because it has not taken them.
This does not make the fantasy foolish.
Every future begins partly in imagination.
People have to imagine dating somebody before they date them.
They have to imagine a shared life before they build one.
But imagination has an unfair advantage over reality.
It can select its evidence.
It can skip the tedious scenes.
It can repair conflict instantly.
It can give people motives they have never stated.
It can make compatibility feel proven before compatibility has had to survive anything difficult.
This is why wanting someone intensely is not the same as knowing them deeply.
Sometimes we know someone very well and still become limerent.
Sometimes the person is a close friend, coworker, ex, mentor, neighbor, or longtime acquaintance.
The issue is not necessarily lack of information.
It is what the mind does with the information it has.
A real person can become the foundation for an imagined future that grows much larger than the available evidence.
And once the future matters enough, losing it can feel like losing something that already existed.
That is one reason limerent disappointment can be confusingly intense.
Other people may look at the situation and think:
But you weren’t even together.
Your nervous system does not necessarily care about that distinction in the moment.
You may be grieving hundreds of imagined mornings.
A home you never shared.
Conversations you never had.
Sex that never happened.
Trips never booked.
A version of yourself that never had the chance to exist.
The grief is real even when the future was imagined.
What matters is learning to call both things by their correct names.
Real grief. Imagined future.
Those can exist together.
Every signal becomes personal
A person in limerence can become extremely sensitive to changes in contact.
This does not always look dramatic from the outside.
It can be a series of tiny internal movements.
Avery normally sends three-line replies.
Today Avery sends “lol.”
Riley notices immediately.
Yesterday Avery was affectionate.
Today Avery seems distracted.
Last week Avery initiated two conversations.
This week Riley initiated all of them.
None of those observations is invented.
The shift may be real.
The problem begins when observation and explanation become fused.
Avery sent a shorter message becomes Avery is losing interest.
Avery spent more time talking with someone else becomes I am being replaced.
Avery was tired becomes Something has changed between us.
Once that happens, the mind no longer experiences interpretation as interpretation.
It experiences it as reality.
This matters because our emotions respond not only to events but to the meaning we assign them.
If you believe a delayed reply means someone is abandoning you, your body can react to abandonment even if the other person is asleep.
The fear is real.
The explanation may still be wrong.
That distinction is one of the hardest and most useful skills in this entire book.
You do not need to dismiss your feelings to question your interpretation.
You can say:
My panic is real.
and also:
I do not yet know what this means.
Both statements can be true at the same time.
The emotional slot machine problem
You may have heard limerence compared with gambling or addiction.
There is a useful observation hidden inside that comparison, but the language often becomes much more certain than the science allows.
Unpredictable rewards can be powerful teachers. When a behavior sometimes produces relief or reward and sometimes does not, the behavior may become surprisingly persistent.
That principle is well established in learning research.
What we cannot honestly say is that psychologists have proven limerence is a “dopamine addiction” to another person.
They have not.
Romantic attraction involves brain systems related to reward and motivation, and there are meaningful similarities between craving states and aspects of passionate romantic love. But translating that into “you are addicted to dopamine from your crush” turns a complicated research area into a catchy slogan. 7
We will use a more careful model later.
For now, the important part is behavioral.
Riley feels uncertainty.
Riley checks.
Sometimes there is nothing.
Sometimes there is a message from Avery.
When there is, the relief is immediate.
That relief matters.
It teaches Riley that checking is worth doing.
The next time uncertainty appears, the urge arrives faster.
This is how ordinary behavior can gradually become a loop.
Not because Riley is weak.
Because the behavior worked.
For thirty seconds.
The problem is what happens after the thirty seconds are over.
When hope becomes regulation
There is one more piece we need before we can understand why this experience becomes so powerful.
Avery does not only produce romantic excitement.
Avery changes how Riley feels about Riley.
On days when Avery is attentive, Riley feels funny.
Attractive.
Interesting.
Alive.
The workday seems easier.
Music sounds better in the car.
The future feels open.
On days when Avery seems distant, Riley becomes restless and self-critical.
Nothing else has objectively changed.
But something important has happened internally.
Another person’s attention has become a form of emotional regulation.
Emotional regulation means the ways we influence, manage, tolerate, or respond to our emotional states.
We all use other people for regulation.
A child calms in a safe parent’s arms.
Adults call friends when they are upset.
Partners soothe each other after difficult days.
Healthy relationships are full of co-regulation, which simply means that human beings help one another return to steadier emotional states.
The problem is not needing people.
The problem begins when one particular person’s behavior gains an extreme amount of control over whether you feel okay.
That is a heavy job for any relationship.
It is an especially unstable job when the relationship itself is uncertain.
If Avery’s attention now regulates Riley’s sense of hope, worth, and aliveness, then every change in Avery’s behavior becomes more than social information.
It becomes emotional weather.
That is one reason a delayed reply can feel much bigger than the delay itself.
The mind is not simply asking:
Will Avery text me back?
It may also be asking:
Am I still wanted?
Am I still special?
Is the future still possible?
Do I still get to feel like that version of myself?
Those are much larger questions.
And if you are trying to answer them through one person’s text messages, you are going to need a lot of text messages.
Three things to begin noticing
We are not going to end every chapter with homework.
Understanding deserves room to breathe.
But there are three distinctions worth carrying with you from here.
When you find yourself thinking about the person, notice which layer you are in.
The person: Who are they, based on what you actually know?
The possibility: What future are you imagining with them?
The regulation: What happens inside you when they seem closer or farther away?
You may discover that these overlap.
That is expected.
The point is not to force them apart.
The point is to start seeing them.
Because the more they blur together, the easier it becomes to believe that wanting the person, wanting the future, and needing emotional relief are all the same need.
They are not always the same.
That matters because only one of them may truly require Avery.