
Romantic Love: The problem with Western cultures - mgh2
http://www.nickyee.com/ponder/love.html
======
Rod
_"LOVE, n. A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the
patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder. This
disease, like caries and many other ailments, is prevalent only among
civilized races living under artificial conditions; barbarous nations
breathing pure air and eating simple food enjoy immunity from its ravages. It
is sometimes fatal, but more frequently to the physician than to the
patient."_

-Ambrose Bierce

~~~
mgh2
I understood everything about this awesome quote, just not the last part about
the physician...can you please elaborate on that?

~~~
shaddi
If being in love is the disease, the physician is the one who tries to stop
that from happening: interfere in someone's pursuit of love and you're likely
going to face negative consequences!

------
msluyter
Co-incidentally, I recently read the book referenced in the article:

[http://www.amazon.com/Love-Limerence-Experience-
Being/dp/081...](http://www.amazon.com/Love-Limerence-Experience-
Being/dp/0812862864/)

While it's short on prescriptions for actually overcoming limerence, I found
it helpful in at least understanding the mechanisms driving my limerent
feelings. If you want help coping with limerence, the tribes.com forum may be
of some help (though a fair amount of it is simply people broadcasting their
neuroses). I have found some nuggets of good advice however:

<http://tribes.tribe.net/limerence>

It's hard to say whether limerence is in and of itself a problem. Tennov takes
a NPOV. Certainly, if you're supposed to be working and instead you're
daydreaming about someone it's a problem. Like a lot of things, it lies on a
spectrum from pleasurable to pathological or dangerous. Still, I would agree
with the author's point that understanding the distinction between limerance
and love can be helpful.

~~~
hernan7
Sorry, non-native English speaker here... Never heard the term "limerence
before". Seems to be a kinda-sorta synonym of "infatuation", no? Why everybody
in this thread is using it instead of just "infatuation" -- some Internet meme
that I'm not aware of?

~~~
gruseom
It's not a real word. It was coined by the author of the book, and
<http://www.google.com/search?q=limerence> makes clear that usage of it is
limited to discussions based on the book.

It's a strange neologism, too, that doesn't sound right to my ear. What's the
etymology? The only thing I can think of is _limen_ (threshold) as in
_liminal_ and _subliminal_.

~~~
danohuiginn
It seems there is no etymology: According to the creator, "I first used the
term ‘amorance’ then changed it back to ‘limerence’... It has no roots
whatsoever. It looks nice. It works well in French. Take it from me it has no
etymology whatsoever." <http://www.languagehat.com/archives/001708.php>

I also find myself feeling slightly uneasy when confronted by a word without
etymology. Knowing it was consciously made up is somehow reassuring.

~~~
gruseom
Thanks for the info. I say she should have stuck with "amorance"!

------
ericd
Wow. I've had some girlfriends who I was not strongly limerant about, and that
always bugged me when I thought about it, to the point that I thought marriage
was probably out of the question. This despite the fact that I really enjoyed
being with them, and had "compassionate love" for them. I tried to remind
myself that that was probably Disney talking, but it's as if it has been
almost hard coded into my brain.

Best article I've read in months.

~~~
AndyKelley
I feel like I've been hit by the other end of the spectrum. Girls have dumped
me saying they only want to be friends, but then when I stop returning their
calls they get really upset.

~~~
loewenskind
What do you mean? Some girls tried to play you and you responded (correctly)
by cutting them off. What does this have to do with infatuation?

~~~
AndyKelley
I'm suggesting that the reason they dumped me was that they felt the
companionship love but not limerance. I guess I'm simply complaining that they
need to feel limerance for it to be successful in their minds.

~~~
loewenskind
Ah, now I get it. Yes, every American girl I ever dated seemed to have this
problem. Limerance is just a chemical thing so it can be hacked. Being
charming but extremely mysterious seems to trigger it. I'm talking like "at
the end of the first date she doesn't know my last name" kind of mysterious.
Every question she asks is dodged, redirected or answered with an obvious
joke.

Of course I wasn't interested in living this way so I married a European. :)

~~~
AndyKelley
Sounds like you've been listening to David Deangelo.

~~~
loewenskind
Never heard of him before now. It did first hear the theory from some internet
source, but from what I just read about Deangelo it's sounds a little
different.

In any case, every time I tried it it seemed to work and every time I deviated
the relationship ended. Hardly scientific proof but the source I read had
spent years surveying women to arrive at his conclusions.

------
endlessvoid94
This is a fantastic article. How many people are aware of this distinction,
and the idea that you have to be comfortable with who someone really is rather
than your vision of them?

Hopefully it's rather high :-/

~~~
ardit33
I had no clue until about a year and half ago. I had that intense limerence
feeling, (with alll the irrationality walking in the sky when I saw her type
of thing). It is intense. BUT when I was scrutinizing that person closely I
knew that she was somebody that I knew wasn't right for me (in the long term
anyways). So, something was wrong with my primitive instinct lying to me to be
attracted to this person a lot, while the rational side was saying that this
is not right, especially when scrutinizing/imagine the future.

I eventually found the term, and looked at it closely. Sadly I could describe
my two other 'loves' of my life (or what I thought was the feeling of love
then), as simple limerence.

:(

But I guess, the shattering of an illusion is a price you pay for maturing up.

~~~
endlessvoid94
Yeah, otherwise known as "disillusionment" I guess.

~~~
keefe
It's called growing up.

Real love is something that grows and the article would have done well to just
use the word "crush" because that's what it is describing. Crushes can grow
into love, but clearly don't have to.

------
wallflower
Can we experience limerence with new projects? The project at hand becomes
your whole new world.

I wonder if the reticular activating system has anything to do with it.

As I remember from the director's commentary track on some Almodovar film:
Love isn't love unless there is reciprocity. (This was when some male
character is stalkily going through the things in a woman's abode)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reticular_activating_system>

~~~
klodolph
"Limerence" specifically refers to infatuation with a person. "Cathexis" is a
broader term which also applies to objects or ideas.

------
nooneelse
Good article, but it doesn't back up the title given to it here.

~~~
frossie
I am guessing the justification for the (admittedly editorialised) title lies
in this extract:

 _The central paradox of limerence is that someone who is actively limerent
feels like they are experiencing the most unique, rapturous experience in the
world even though limerence seems to have fairly universal characteristics (at
least in Western cultures, although it could be argued that traditional Asian
cultures do understand limerence but don't use it as a basis for marriage)_

Of course it's not as simple as that. Even in the West there are many
different, and complex, reasons that people chose to get married, and I am
sure the same is the case in Asian cultures. But as a culture-wide
generalisation, I guess there is some truth in it.

The thing I find peculiar sometimes in the West is not so much the fact that
so much emphasis is placed on the limerence phase, but that the companionate
phase is so... almost scorned. I am pretty sure that biologically and
culturally the point of the former is to get us to the latter.

------
pavlov
Interesting points and well-written. The title given is certainly misleading.

Quite honestly I don't think I've ever experienced this feeling. I have been
the "limerent object" as a teenager, though. It felt simply horrible that
someone was intrusively obsessing about me for years, seemingly with no regard
for how I actually felt about it.

For a long time afterwards, I was convinced that "love" is a socially
acceptable front for something entirely selfish which has nothing to do with
communication or compassion.

~~~
Tycho
Not trying to be nosy, but, what qualified as 'intrusively' obsessing? Would
it still bother you if you were aware of the obsession but not subject to any
intrusive actions?

------
tmsh
I think it works like this:

You think you see something amazing. You really want that. You are a human,
with a brain, which is flexible and adaptable. So if you don't get what you
want, you adapt and try to make the best of it, rationalizing further and
further from the truth. The mind, if resolved, can adapt and see the better
parts of things. A monk who lives in a post-apocalytic world could, for
example, really enjoy a blooming daisy. Same pattern.

But then other things come along. And finally you move on.

Re: _[oatmeal]...this is true love because it can be everlasting, but this is
not the love script that we are bombarded with from every literary or
entertainment form in our lives._

I would just say, in defense of fairy tales, that some nice morals are (a)
it's good to be optimistic and (b) you should step up and _win_. It's good
practice. Seems unrealistic or even unhealthy to promote such behavior
sometimes. And there is a balance. But sometimes you should step up and win.

 _This is particularly because human infants cannot cling onto their mothers
the way all primate infants can (a consequence of hairlessness and shorter
arms)._

Awesome.

 _...the optimal middle area..._

What? That's wrong. Premature optimization. There's nothing wrong with more
diversity, esp. regarding immune systems.

 _For as long as we project god-like idealizations onto our romantic partners
and demand that they make us happy as the fairy tales describe, we will never
truly love them as human beings._

Yeah, but clearly the qualities of steadfastness and adaptability in limerence
can also be found in the qualities of steadfastness and adaptability in
marriage. The difficult parts, in limerence and in marriage (though the latter
I am just guessing about) are in those moments of honesty with yourself and
reality.

------
anyo
I've been limerant twice in my life, I'm 21 and I can say both were so far the
worst times of my life. The only cure is never seeing the person again or
putting a bullet in your head. I can see how it can bring joy to those for
which it is reciprocated, for me it sucks and I wish it never happens again.

~~~
ido
Be careful what you wish for, lest it come true.

~~~
loewenskind
The feeling is useless, sex is both much more fun and actually real.
Personally I thought it was an awful thing that happened once and then you
weren't susceptible to it anymore. I had no idea it could happen again.

------
AndyKelley
I was with it until

"In the end, the basis of a stable relationship is founded on a love that
emerges not in spite of but because of the other person’s flaws and
weaknesses, because ultimately it is our imperfections that make us human."

It seems more logical to me to love someone in spite of their flaws.

------
may
Most useful thing I've read in years.

~~~
sashthebash
Indeed.

Nothing really related to Hacker News, but that's one of the reasons why I
"love" the site... those great off topic articles that apply to almost
everybody and that let you see that there is a world beyond bits and bytes.

~~~
may
Exactly.

------
thornad
We are very attracted when we project on the other that which we repress or
feel missing in ourselves, a part of our own un-developed, unaccepted or
unknown true nature. Therefore the need to merge.

Best thing in this case is to see what that is in ourselves. Cherish the
relationship, while knowing the other is not neccessarily what we project on
them, but a catalyst for us to know ourselves better.

Same thing goes for intense hate by the way. It's all towards unowned features
of ourselves, but we project it on the other when they have the slightest
resemblence to it.

Like the old bard said: "There's so many different worlds / So many different
suns / And we have just one world / But we live in different ones"

------
lvecsey
Even the notion of being human is outdated. There were previous century views
and now we're in a new era, with deeper understanding of what makes us up.
We've gone from a blob of living matter, to a horrendously intricate
biological machine.

~~~
itistoday
That period stretched from a few centuries ago (Newtonian mechanics) to the
first half of the 20th century. Now, I think, we're heading toward the
understanding that "intricate biological machine" might not be the best of
models, and that "blob of living matter" is worth revisiting.

The notion of world-as-machine is becoming dated I think, as a more organic
understanding arises, both from the mixing of western and eastern ideas, as
well as better physics.

~~~
jerf
Also, I'd observe that our machines have become more complicated. The
complexity of the first car is nothing whatsoever next to the complexity of
your cell phone. The more complicated our machines get, the more organic their
behavior has been getting quite naturally. (Indeed, one of the most important
things about building large systems is learning how to write code that works
less "organically", lest the problems that organic machines tend to have
overwhelm you, things like errant state propagation and such that cause weird,
weird bugs five minutes after the trigger.)

------
ca98am79
For those interested, I recommend a book that has similar ideas and completely
changed my view of love: The Art of Loving, by Erich Fromm

------
mgh2
Hello everybody, I am the one who posted this article and it is because I have
been trying to find an answer for so many troubling things for such a long
time (wait to see my post on why I shared this)...among them is that this
might be the reason to the 50% divorce rate in the United States. But before
we go into that, I have a question for all of you: Can someone you have been
limerent about, being nonrequited, dissapointed...basically having gone
through the whole pain process...still be trusted and cared about? This is
actually the main reason why I sought for an answer for so long.

~~~
ytNumbers
When it comes to advice: Wise men don't need it, and fools won't heed it. And
those who want it the most, like it the least. There's plenty of fish in the
sea. Life's too short to waste it with people who can't/won't return your
affections. Of course, if masochism is your thing, by all means go ahead and
reopen that old wound, and bring on the pain.

~~~
mgh2
Except that the limerent one was her, and I am just trying to give advice of
the very pain she taught me. Yeah, I admit, it is complicated.

~~~
loewenskind
The advice remains the same. You/she tried. It didn't work out. Move on to the
next.

------
Tycho
Rather than getting rid of 'limerent' feelings, is it possible to channel them
into motivation for something else? For instance, Y loves unobtainable woman
X, but sees there's no reason why X should want Y, therefore sets about a
disciplined program of self-improvement and wealth/prospect/prestige-
accumulation in the hope that X may one day be attracted.

It comes back to the universal problem of how to focus ones mind in order to
become more productive.

~~~
georgieporgie
> therefore sets about a disciplined program of self-improvement > and
> wealth/prospect/prestige-accumulation in the hope that > X may one day be
> attracted.

That's basically the plot of every mind-poisoning, B.S. movie fed to American
(all Western?) youth.

So many men, especially young men, believe in this concept of winning over
their love. Somehow he'll _make_ her love him (creepy overtones of misogyny).
He'll _convince_ her that he's worth loving.

If you really like yourself, then that's good enough. If you're not happy with
yourself, yeah, improve. But don't _ever_ think you need to improve _for_
someone else[1]. Anyone who actually responds to this is a manipulative jerk
who will gradually up the stakes to watch you dance.

If X doesn't win over Y, he should consider whether he feels he needs to
improve in any areas, pursue any changes, then see how things go when he bumps
into Z, having forgotten about Y.

[1] - exception: unquestionably defective personality traits (alcoholism,
gambling addiction, abusiveness) when you're in a long-term relationship and
you both agree to work on it.

~~~
Tycho
Personally I think the more 'poisonous' idea is that 'you are who you are' and
that people don't respond to actual values/achievements. Who wants to be loved
_in spite_ of what's good about them, of what they try to do.

The films you talk about usually show a very superficial process of
improvement, typically involving dressing in cooler clothes, lots of silly
shenanigans, taking on some new hobbies, and going places to 'hang out.' I'm
talking about actual achievements, starting with getting yourself in shape and
becoming more entertaining, but extending to meeting your academic potential,
finding a good career, developing new skills, committing to side projects,
establishing a network of admirable friends, broadening your horizons etc.
Things that would serve X well regardless of whether they really do impress Y
in the end. With the quality of life possible in the West on a meagre wage,
it's tempting to coast through life achieving a fraction of your potential

~~~
georgieporgie
> the more 'poisonous' idea is that 'you are who you are'

Er, are you talking about trashy movies? I don't really know any that tell you
not to achieve things.

> The films you talk about usually show a very superficial process of
> improvement

It seems to depend on the sex of the character. Females have to lose the
glasses and wash their hair with conditioner. Men seem to have to prove
themselves, learn stuff, go to ridiculous lengths of sacrifice thereby proving
to the female lead that they're worthy, etc.

> it's tempting to coast through life achieving a fraction of your potential

It sounds to me like it's more tempting to waste your time obsessing on the
pursuit of money and success in the eyes of others, rather than doing what
makes you happy and brings you closer relationships.

~~~
Tycho
I wasn't talking about movies - but the prevalent 'love is blind' idea (there
are many ways of describing it). It's worse than the shallow 'get the girl'
antics of movies IMO.

Also I think you imply a false dichotomy between 'the pursuit of money and
success' and doing what makes you happy and brings you closer relationships.

~~~
georgieporgie
> Also I think you imply a false dichotomy between 'the pursuit of money and
> success'

You cut out the critical "in the eyes of others" part.

As for a "false dichotomy," spending your life trying to make more money and
present the image of success is not a path to happiness. It's quite well
documented that the best thing you can do for happiness is to improve your
personal relationships. As for money, it doesn't lead to happiness. A lack of
money leads to unhappiness, but you only need enough.

Anyway, I really think you're missing my points entirely. I'm not saying you
shouldn't seek self improvement, and I'm not saying you shouldn't try to
achieve things (which may or may not lead to riches). I'm saying do what you
want to do _for yourself_ and focus on your relationships. Don't be led around
by false ideals implanted in your psyche, and don't try to be "good enough"
for others, as it will only make you unhappy.

~~~
Tycho
I left out 'in the eyes of others' because I didn't want to have to bring up a
second false dichotomy you were implying, namely between 'success in the eyes
of others' and 'success in your own eyes.' I mean most people have pretty
similar ideas about what constitutes success.

If you try to make the most of yourself and feel you've succeeded, and you are
still not 'good enough' for someone else, then I don't think that would make
you unhappy. At that point you'd probably peacefully accept that something
wasn't to be and that you were not to blame. On the other hand, if you never
fulfill your potential, if you never really give it a try, and are left
wondering what might have been, that seems a surer root to unhappiness. Though
it will creep up on you after years of just having 'enough' money and
maintaining the same relationships.

Value isn't just the domain of money, it's also the domain of creativity and
of personal qualities/virtues. Relationships, self esteem, etc, are not exempt
from the concept, recognition and exchange of value. Although a lot of people
talk like they are, which I think is at the bottom of this argument here.

------
julius_geezer
It is interesting that he can manage an essay of such length without
mentioning Stendahl, whose _On Love_ isn't that hard to find--wasn't before
Amazon, actually. One trusts that Ms.es Hatfield and Tennoy found room for him
in the bibliography.

And what in the world might be the proposed derivation of "limerence"?
Wikipedia offers no hint, though it does use the word "crystallization", which
Stendahl I believe popularized in this context.

~~~
pmichaud
I'm thinking it comes from "liminal," which is a big concept in literature.

~~~
julius_geezer
I was hoping it came from "limerick", a not-so-big concept in literature, but
your guess sounds better than mine.

------
mgh2
As you guys know, the website has been taken down due to excessive
traffic...my apologies to Nick Yee, I contacted him to fix this problem.

Thank you,

Trend Guardian publisher

~~~
nky335
It's actually not your fault. My web host is moving the server hosting my
domain and they've clearly messed up somehow. I'm in the midst of resolving
this with them.

In the mean time, if you google "Love in Four Acts", Google has the article in
its cache. Sorry for the inconvenience all.

Nick

~~~
mgh2
It got fixed, thanks!

------
metra
Mirror?

------
zeynel1
"The prince and princess merely change forms and show up on TV sitcoms, movies
and fill the roles in novels, plays and even songs. The same story is being
re-enacted over and over again for all ages."

I think if we recognize that human organism -the individual system called
human body- is a programmable organism like a computer -and tv and movies
program this organism- then we would be taking a step toward understanding
this concept called -love-

