Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

From dust jacket notes: "This book will change forever the way we think of being in love. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov has made a startling discovery: many people experience the head-over-heels feeling of extreme joy and extreme pain in romantic love - or 'love-sickness' - just as it is portrayed in story and song, and many people do not. Both are normal. Both can usually identify themselves. Tennov began her work 14 years ago when she was struck by the number of disastrous love affairs around her. In the beginning she did not know what she was looking for. Over a thousand people poured out their stories and those of their friends on questionnaires, in diaries, and in individual interviews. 'I heard tales to rival the grands amours of fiction. They ranged from a three-day spree in Naples to a fifty-year unrequited yearning.' What she can tell us now is that whether being in love feels like sublime spirituality or mental illness, it follows a consistent, recognizable pattern in both men and women that she has named 'limerence.' In Love and Limerance she describes the different aspects of the state, from the compulsive daydreams and fantasies to the couple's full-blown ecstasy when together and jealousy and despair when apart, and the intense suffering when the limerence of one person is not returned by the other. She tells us what is likely to happen after limerence peaks, what is its average duration, and also why it may last for years. She explores how limerence affects marriage, including 'open marriage,' then what happens when a limerent person is attached to someone who returns love but does not become limerent. Tennov also describes the violence that limerence may cause in everyday life (as well as in opera) and suggests that it can be predicted...."