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[banjomensch]

I've been reading about Dorothy Tennov, and her ideas about human bonding. In her analysis of romantic relationships, she identified an initial emotional state called "limerence" - an intense, involuntary attachment, characterized by intrusive thinking, an awkward wavering balance between hope and uncertainty

Comments

[animate_mush]

I don't know that limeral and affectional bonds can not co-occur. It seems that often (perhaps ideally?) a weak affectional bond can deepen into a strong affectional bond via a period of overlaying limerence. Or at least, that seems to better describe my own experience than any of the "discrete" models proposed above.

A less technical way to put this is something Tom Lehrer said when discussing romance in musicals:

"It's not enough to love somebody - you should like them as well!"

[wreckerofplans]

I know that limerent/limerent bonds give me the heebee-jeebees. That is the feeling I had with the First Boyfriend and it ended disasterously. Henceforth, the lesson I learned was that the intrusive and intense feelings of that type should be RUN AWAY FROM at all costs, as no good can come of them.

Limeral/Affectionate bonds are okay, but I prefer Affectionate/Affectionate as they do not smell, even a little of Disaster.

[banjomensch]

Ah, I love the smell of disaster in the morning. It smells like....awkward.

[bemaddy]

hmm... interesting. I've always heard that typically a strong limerent period leads to the strongest affectionate bonds later. That, while it is by nature unstable, it is also a temporary state, lasting from 3 months to a year, and eventually being replaced by other feelings (or not). When I took human sexuality, the professor said that studies that had been done indicated that marriages that lasted for over 30 years usually started off as a limerent/limerent bond.

Typically speaking, I tend to have an affectionate non-romantic relationship, first, which turned into a limerent/limerent bond, then back into affection. The exception was David, in which case it started out as limerent/non-limerent and wound up with serious annoyance on both ends.

Which would you say you and kore were?

[banjomensch]

yeah, I'm not 100% sure I buy the notion that limerent-limerent bonds are unlikely to become long term relationships.

Kore and I, from my point of view, have a limerent-nonlimerent bond. I've only been the limerent party a few times in my life, and it's never really worked out.

[curioustwibbit]

Ooh! Interesting! Looking at this, it looks like I was in a limerent-limerent bond, which started as a big mutual crush and led to a big mutual codependency, and then I was in a limerent (me)-EXTREMELY non limerent (him) bond (or possibly it was limerent-non limerent in one direction and then it switched to limerent-non limerent in the other direction, but I'm pretty sure we were never limerent at the same time), to a limerent (him)-non limerent and terrified (me) bond. But maybe we're in a limerent-limerent bond now. Or maybe we're just saps.

I like being the non-limerent one the best, because like I said, "intense, involuntary attachment" sounds a lot like "codependency", or at least it does to me, because I'm depressed and like being needed and because desperately loving someone and wanting to be around them and being constantly uncertain all the time just fucking sucks.

[babe_of_beyazit]

In my experience, being limerent