The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

Limerence: Theory of Romantic Love

by Dorothy Tennov

Introduction
n this paper I am assuming the state of limerence to be a hard-wired physio-psychological mechanism that is proximate to breeding and, therefore, to natural selection. According to the strong version of Limerence Theory, the one with which I believe it is wise to begin, because easily tested, is that the state of limerence follows a rigid, unyielding, and entirely distinct pattern. It is conceived as an algorithm that is constant across sex, race, education, occupation, wealth, culture, even age differences. Strong limerence theory is the one to which further research effort should be directed because it is the theory to which existing evidence points and which can be tested by future researchers. The algorithm, or law of limerence, goes something like this: 1. Given any human being, A, who is in a certain state (of receptivity, unspecified except that A is not already in a state of limerence which is directed at another individual, if another person, B, who possesses a high level of attractiveness, exhibits behavior interpretable as an expression of interest in mating with A, then A will enter a state of limerence with B as its object. 2. Once A becomes limerent for B, intensity of desire for mating with B and involuntary thought concentration about B, are dictated by interpretation by A of Bs interest in A. 3. If B is viewed by A as showing interest, A enters a state of elation (called by Stendhal and other poets, the greatest happiness). If Bs apparent interest in A is sustained, involuntary thought concentration centered on B begins to diminish. With consummation (not to be equated with copulation, but rather with expression of intention by B to enter a long term mating relationship), happiness gradually is reduced from extreme intensity and may remain at a constant, positive level. 4. Alternatively, if Bs actions are interpreted by A as signifying lessened interest, As yearning for reciprocation from B and intensity of involuntary cognitive focus increases rapidly and may remain at a high level. 5. As limerence condition is henceforth a function of Bs behavior (as interpreted by A). The course of the condition cannot otherwise be specified and duration continues until one of two conditions occurs. a. B is removed entirely from the environment through death, or relocation combined with emphatic rejection of A by B. Minimal attention by B toward A, attentions that may not be

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

seen as such by external observers will produce an increase in limerence intensity that may endure for long periods of time. Reports of limerence sustained for many years have been obtained. In any case, duration is highly likely to continue for what might be a minimum of three years among mature adults. Perhaps shorter durations occur among youth, but there is little evidence on duration as a function of age. b. B provides full reciprocation. A and B begin a sustained mating relationship. (Note: Marriage alone may not satisfy this condition if B, as spouse, continues to emit behaviors that signify some degree of rejection.) Limerence is an either-or matter. Either the algorithm is operative or it is not. Intensity depends on immediate conditions. Therefore, a scale is meaningless. Intensity changes from day to day, even from moment to moment. Measurement of duration, i.e. how long the algorithm remains in effect, requires longitudinal procedures. In limerence, a person can be high one moment and low the next. The course is dictated by conditions. It can be (and often has been) argued that self-report is unreliable as a research instrument. On this issue, I make two points: First, high reliability has been found in psychophysical experiments in which presence or absence of a stimulus or its intensity is given by the self-observer. Not only has this been shown to be the case for hearing and vision, but I personally witnessed such high reliability in the productions of pain intensity reports as a function of water temperature into which the hand was immersed, that estimates of the water temperature on the basis of pain reports on a 10-point scale were accurate to within at least a half degree Centigrade given prior knowledge of the particular subjects scaling parameters. Since pain is believed to be highly influenced by personality and situational factors, this result may surprise many, but it is a robust finding given absence of demand characteristics of the experimental situation (Orne, Rosenthal). I therefore suggest that persons are similarly able to provide accurate estimates of cognitive prepossession in percentage of time thinking about LO, and would strongly urge future researchers to utilize this variable.

Obstacles to Research on Limerence

Some obstacles are technical. We could not map the topological features of the dark side of the moon before solar system space had been penetrated because only a portion of it was visible through terrestrial telescopes. We do not yet have the instruments with which to identify and therefore study the state of limerence. Knowing physiological correlates is not the same thing as understanding the mechanisms. Some obstacles are cultural. Some research procedures are judged harmful to human subjects or contradictory to contemporary philosophical, ethical or religious principles. Experiments that cause pain or have injurious consequences are unacceptable. In the early 1970s research on romantic love was denounced in the Congressional Record. There are also obstacles to conducting research are actually based in the fashion and practices of the disciplines involved, a subject I have dealt with at some length elsewhere.

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

The Sins of Psychology

sychology has been notoriously blind to phenomena outside the narrow confines set by what became acceptable procedures whereby it tried to be scientific. Many of psychologys errors were byproducts of the 20th century psychologists wishes to copy the methods of the natural sciences, notably physics. The effort was self-defeating in the end. A science of human behavior becomes scientific as the result, not of its adherence to the canons of quantification, but by how it interprets the available data. Sloppy observation may make the drawing of meaningful conclusions difficult or even impossible, but the most careful observaA science of human behavior tions do not lead automatically to correct or useful conclusions. It is the process of traveling from becomes scientific as the result, not observation to conclusion that uniquely identifies the of its adherence to the canons of scientific process, a process that begins with definition quantification, but by how it interprets and ends with speculation, however tentative, about the available data. Sloppy observation implication. Unfortunately, this point is often not may make the drawing of meaningful sufficiently emphasized amid the flutter and confusion of conclusions difficult or even impossinference by statistics based in quantification of poorly ible, but the most careful observations defined variables.

do not lead automatically to correct or Furthermore, to prove that a thing is possible, as useful conclusions. It is the process of paleontologists know well, requires but a single welltraveling from observation to documented instance. On the basis of the existence of one clearly established occurrence of a phenomenon it conclusion that uniquely identifies the can be concluded that the phenomenon can exist. scientific process Guesses might be proffered about frequency in a specific population, and these speculations may be informed by inferences based directly or indirectly from other observations. But an instantiated class cannot be declared null. When the first hot air passenger balloon lifted off, it could never again be asserted that human airships were impossible. That single multiply-witnessed flight provided permanent, irrevocable, unarguable proof of the possibility.
Despite a century of protest to the contrary, psychology has remained a fragmented, incoherent collection of ideas some of which are interesting and useful in themselves, but which hang in separate disunity. Except as it borrows from other disciplines neurophysiology, genetics, statistics, etc. each set of findings stands alone. This has been noted many times; it remains true. In its fixation on differences, psychology is particularly bereft in the aspect that is the core of what I see to be the thrust and importance of human ethology, the search for samenesses, for species universals. In the wake of almost universal environmentalism and opposition to biological explanation, those genebased aspects of human psychological nature which are as characteristic as are the visible anatomical features of hands, feet, eyes and noses by which members of the species are identified remain to be discovered.

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

Innate Resistance to Science

Some scientific inhibition springs not from irrational customs within academic disciplines and in the larger societies in which they function, but from human nature itself. Cromer (199?) offers the thesis that the human brain does not easily take to scientific thinking. In fact, he maintains that the beginnings of scientific thinking occurred just once in human cultural history, specifically in ancient Greece, and that all subsequent scientific progress emanated directly from that beginning. Science is not natural and great civilizations, notably the Chinese, have risen to astounding technical and engineering heights without incorporating the essence of science, i.e., unbiased inquiry and exploration of natural processes through observation, experiment, and theory unfettered by the absolutes of religion.

Science is Personal
Another aspect of science that bears noting is that it is a deeply personal process. What, we, as selfconscious and professionally recognizable scientists, do, how we do it, what we object to and what we applaud depend on such personal matters as our awareness of methodology, our emotional reactions to particular problems, the political surround into which we might be published (or be unpublishable) and the various human, financial, and technological resources available for carrying out the research. I think we have paid insufficient attention to exactly how those aspects of the scientific process affect problem selection.

Notes
arious aspects of my personal situation bore directly or indirectly on selection of the research topic as well as on procedures as they existed initially and as they developed. Details are beyond the scope of this presentation. What is relevant to the thesis I am advancing here is that aspects of my particular circumstances might have been unusual enough to produce an unusual result. How else can I explain thirty years of focus on a phenomenon beset by as many obstacles as is this one? Although the book, Love and Limerence: the Experience of Being in Love, first published in 1979, and reprinted in 1999, has been widely cited in introductory psychology textbooks and even in journal articles, the two main findings have never, to my knowledge, been reported. They are (1) the state is distinct; it occurs in exactly the same way whenever it occurs across personality and other categories, and (2) it is so unlike any other condition that those who have not experienced it have no experiential base from which to imagine it. Therefore, they tend not to believe in its existence except as romanticism or as pathology (cf., Liebowitz, 1983?). My conclusions seem incapable of being communicated within the presently existing field of psychology, but may be acceptable to the field of human ethology. Why this is so presents a way of viewing the difference between these two fields.

Ethology
Ethology is the study of the behavior of intact organisms within their environmental niches, with emphasis both on the proximal mechanisms that bring the behavior into immediate existence, but also on the relationship of the genetic basis of the phenomena from the standpoint of natural selection

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

during the biological history of the species. Human ethology, like all ethology, is concerned with explication of the essential genetic and phenotypic essences. Ethology seeks the long range, phyletic (or evolutionary) history of how humans as a species acquired a behavior; it is concerned with function, i.e., how the behaviors contributed to the survival and/or reproductive success in EEA, as well as how a given individual developed the behavior. (Bailey, HEN).

The Love Choice

At the level of awareness at the time, my choice of romantic love as a focus of study was based in the cultural (e.g., literary) and anecdotal evidence which suggested that it was an important aspect of human nature and because familiarity with the professional literature revealed a dearth of information that was almost absolute. Introductory textbooks in psychology at that time did not typically include the word love in their indexes. The few that did, devoted but a few sentences to mother love, or, in the more literary texts, gave some references to Greek categories of love (distinctions lost to modern languages). With love as with science, the Greeks were pioneers. I hope I can make it clear why, at the present stage of development, the limerence theory of romantic love can be constructed without greater numerical specificity. Essentially it is because the process thus far has not developed beyond identification of a phenomenon. Comparisons of intensity, frequency, or magnitude lie in the future. We are at the very threshold of understanding what I believe to be a vast unexplored territory.

Earliest Love Research

began with questionnaires which I administered to a respectable number of college students who responded individually and in private as part of an assignment in a psychology course. The questionnaires revealed only that intense experiences of love caused considerable anguish to a respectable minority (7% admitted to thought of suicide or worse) and that love-distress occurred to both males and females. Otherwise, questionnaire responses were uninterpretable since there was no way to know whether the question asked was in fact the one answered. The interviews to which I turned for clarification revealed that the word love was indeed used differently by different people and in difference contexts. Although I continued to collect data for several years I was puzzled by what I seemed to be finding, namely nothing not already profusely represented in story and song. Then, gradually, out of the confusion, there emerged a condition, that separated itself out of the morass.

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

The Giant Continuum Error

It was helpful when I realized that I had been under the assumption that there existed a kind of giant continuum along which people could be arranged according to their degree of loving. I had, almost unconsciously, oriented my thinking toward what is so common in psychology, measurement along a scale. The new idea was to discard that idea in favor of examination of the thing that was emerging like the Loch Ness Monster from the depths of confusion. Instead of looking at how people differed, I began to study a condition that seemed always to be similar whenever it appeared. I ultimately affixed the neologism limerence (derived, if you like, from the limbic system believed to be its controller) to the involuntary state called being in love.

Discovery of Nonlimerence and Rejection of the Giant Continuum:

That change of focus gave a large boost to the process, but a second was yet to come. On a flight from Paris to New York in 1973, I was seated with a friend from whom I found the final two pieces of information on which the limerence theory was to be constructed. First, I learned that the condition that had by then allowed its form and structure to be seen in bold relief against the former confusion was totally unknown to some people. It was unknown to my companion. There was the single instance that proved the possibility. Later I found other strange creatures my reluctant companion was one for whom limerence was not only entirely foreign as a first-hand experience but unable to be imagined. Second, and this revelation grew only slowly with the following weeks and months of cogitation, although the beginning of it occurred during the flight: I recognized that the topic was, despite poets and Hollywood, loathsome to those not caught in its tentacles. It was particularly so for those who had suffered the condition of being its object, those I called nonlimerent LOs. This realization began on the plane, but I underestimated its strength at first.

1. The type of interviews which first evoked descriptions of limerence were extremely timeconsuming and evoked considerable personal revelation. 2. I could see no reason why responding to a description would produce invalid data. 3. The need for revealing personal details about which I had begun to have ethical qualms, was greatly reduced. 4. Those who disliked the subject were not excessively subjected to it. 5. Those who (and this came only with further realizations) were in the state of limerence at the time would not be encouraged to worsen the situation by focusing on it. If the condition is distinct, which had became my hypothesis, the answer could then be either yes, the description is consistent with my experience or no it is not. Consistency referred to distinctiveness. Yes

New Methodology

ventually, my interview strategy changed to one in which I presented informants with a description of the limerent state. I no longer attempt to elicit descriptions from them. That may sound like stacking the cards toward the hypothesis, but there were several advantages.

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

meant either I have had the experience exactly as described or I have not experienced it at all. No meant something in between and weighed against the hypothesis of distinctiveness.

Aversions of Nonlimerents
In the beginning, very few of those who volunteered to be interviewed about their romantic love experience denied the experience, but when I deliberately sought non-volunteers, I did find those who, like my companion in the plane from Paris, found the whole idea absurd as well as repugnant. Not only had they not experienced such a ridiculous state, but they found it hard to believe that any one else could ever have fallen into such a pit of madness. Only in the excesses of fiction, in extreme romanticism, or in pathology was such unrealistic hyperbole possible. I might well have walked away from the subject myself had it not been for the confirming data that I received following publication of descriptions of the condition. I received hundreds of letters and some phone calls, and later emails from readers who supplied confirmatory comment. The typical letter began by asserting that I had described exactly what they had experienced.

Either-or, no mixtures
I did not receive letters which stated that only part of the described experience had occurred. No one who thought about the person constantly and involuntarily did not yearn for reciprocation. Distinctiveness is the main question; it is the point of controversy most often mentioned. It also required several years of my own involvement with the research before the possibility of distinctness occurred to me. There seem to be two uses of the term adaptive that are not always separated even in scientific discussion. On the one hand, there may be a distinction between scars or traits left over from previous times to use Morgans (1992) term for carry-overs from previous evolutionary stages dragged along because the process provides no mechanism for getting rid of them. The existence of universal human traits depend on aspects of other changes. Such traits persist although in themselves they are neutral regarding reproduction. These traits are not adaptive in that they do not increase an individuals reproductive viability. Adaptive is also sometimes used immediate, individual reproductive advantage is asserted. In this case, limerence seems questionable. People no longer under its spell look back at a time when it interfered with other aspects of life (including economic productivity and child-rearing). It led to wrong decisions. It seems likely that marriages destroyed by extra-marital limerence detract from ultimate reproductive success, although some (e.g., Buss, 1993) has noted that forces which cause the end of a marital relationship might be adaptive because they permit the individual to make new reproductive alliances. If limerence is involuntary and if a marker can be found which is objectively stable, I would expect it to follow that lawyers would seek to use it. The highly publicized Jean Harris murder case was differently interpreted by those who, having undergone that type of unrequited love, i.e., limerence, felt greater sympathy for her than those who had not. There may turn out to be aspects of human nature that, if known, would undermine basic assumptions. Lack of direct experience does not prevent scientific awareness. There is much we know about through inference from evidence that is not directly observed. A stumbling block is inadequate and incorrect use

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

of self-report by 19th and 20th century experimental psychology. Those who reject self-report as without scientific meaning fail to understand that science is identified not by methodology but by verification and practical or theoretical usefulness This has not been the view, as judged by practices and expressed policies, of scientific journal editors in the behavioral and social sciences. Instead, set probability levels and number of subjects remain the bottom line criteria, even when the subject of inquiry has not yet been isolated. I can think of investigations that might be conducted to determine limerence incidence as a function of any number of interesting independent variables -- gender, culture, situation, physiology (e.g. feigned interest of attractive persons in unattractive individuals, a study which when caused such disruption that it was discarded. Also discarded was the psychoanalytic encouragement of limerences they called transference. Whatever further scientific analysis of limerence might be done in the future could not be done had not the initial step been the isolation of the condition. The experience (especially in its involuntariness of thought and responsiveness to interpretations of LOs feelings) appears to be so unlike other human experiences, that those who have not undergone it are without an experiential base from which to understand the descriptions of the afflicted. Although obviously experienced by many people, there are some clearly otherwise normal (or even better than normal), to whom it is completely foreign. The hypothesis of specificity is among those to be critically tested within the current multidisciplinary project. There may be aspects of human nature that are not merely unable to be reached by presently accepted methods of investigation, but that there is about humans something that prevents their study. Its an old-fashioned idea, sometimes cloaked in spiritualism. Limerence was isolated through interview and self-report. It is a phenomenon unreachable by presently acceptable methods of inquiry. Two questions can be raised: 1. Does there exist a distinct and involuntary reaction of emotional involvement and cognitive preoccupation which operates according to identical laws across individuals, phenotypic variability being the result of stimulus conditions? I have applied the term limerence to this state to differentiate it from other states. 2. Are methods that support an affirmative answer scientifically valid, and would they be applicable to other investigations into the adaptive psycho-behavioral characteristics of human beings? Copyright 1994 Dorothy Tennov

The Collected Works of Dorothy Tennov

The Birth of Limerence Theory

(and some random comment)
by Dorothy Tennov

Through the voices of thousands by letter and by artistic productions, limerence appears as follows: (1) Limerence as it appears in the words of those who provide testimonials fills up much of human experience of the arts. It is a stronger influence on ordinary lives than is realized. It is distinct when it occurs, but is not experienced by all. (2) The word instinctual is currently out of fashion. I have found two reasons for this: There is ideological resistance to the denial of free will. Furthermore, traits, which psychologists and scientists speak of, do not come in either-or fashion as instincts do. Even in animals, instinctual tendencies are not carried out in set patterns; they are changeable with experience and depend on conditions. My first Big Insight was seeing the distinctiveness. Superficial and circumstantial details of experience varied, but, more like an instinct, the limerence state operated by the same laws in every case. For many years, in my various attempts to understand human nature, I thought, not of instincts, but of what I called common inclinations. Anthropologist Donald E. Brown wrote a book called Human Universals. Various lists of human tendencies have been made from the time of the Ancients. Greed, hate, love, curiosity, etc. were seen as tendencies that may exist to some extent in all, but exist in degrees. Personality is conceived of as a matter of how various tendencies are expressed or inhibited, and which are strongest. (They used to say personality had an omnibus definition. I never understood what that meant except maybe the opposite of what I mean by definition.) Seeing that the state of limerence did not exist in degrees marked a turning point in my approach to the subject. It happened with suddenness in about 1970. A second Big Insight occurred during an extended and uncomfortable wait in the baggage area on a return from Paris. It is recreated in TT by Brownes ride to California to attend a convention. During

t was more than decade after I began to study romantic love that the word limerence was first used. I have written elsewhere the exact time, place, and reason why some fundamental conceptions became clear to me.

A Scientist Looks at Romantic Love and Calls It Limerence:

the flight, I had interviewed a person who claimed that she had never felt the way I was describing to her. Now I knew why others had not seriously studied the subject of romantic love. What I saw as a distinct state were interpreted by others as a personality trait or a form of mental illness. The many references to the state throughout literature were as romance. They were unreal, exaggerated, like the lives of the gods, imagined but not experienced in real life by real people and this despite the ubiquity of limerent images in story and song, ancient and modern. It was decided that there were no human instincts, there are only tendencies on which experience operates in a mix with other tendencies to greater or lesser degrees, etc. I didnt use the word until recently, when I realized that limerence is in a category of its own and fits my image of an instinct. (3) Because it is distinct, limerence will eventually be objectively detectible physiologically and seen as the universal innate on-off mechanism. Reports of first limerence occurring later in life leads to the speculation that a universal potential (proximate mechanism) exists that is not always triggered into action. (4) Finally, I note that few if any researchers are likely to put limerence in the scientific context in which I place it. Nor are social and legal implications easily understood by others. I spell out or hint at some of them in TT and B3. There are many darkened aspects of the human machine, motives and inclinations that make us do what we are sorry to have done. I have given much thought, since Milgram, who first pointed it out scientifically, to following, the tendency to do what we are ordered to do. Following is demonstrated by Daniel Jonah Goldhagens book, Hitlers Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Many have objected to the implication that ordinary people can easily be led to do terrible things. This apparently universal tendency to follow orders might also explain the prevalence of religious fervor. Perhaps it is essential to the formation of societies. What impresses me is its strength, its universality, and that institutions, especially governments, depend on it. Elsewhere, I review the role of fear and intimidation. Regarding Brave New World concerns that are so often expressed these days, what is going on now is bad poverty, starvation, preventable illnesses, the proliferation of danger of weapons, to name a few examples. I have much in my files written by people who fear what science might find and might do. I understand those fears. There are many reasons to fear. But many reasonable fears emanate from the nature of human beings, even including misunderstanding of ourselves. If reducing damaging behavior resulting from our inborn tendencies, then some risk-taking seems reasonable. Where else have we to go? Furthermore, at least some of the resistance to science is, I believe, based in absolutist ideology, some fear of maybe giving even more power to those in power. The history of the world is that of elites taking resources from the deprived masses, increasing poverty while rich grow richer. We dont see much of that reality because the elites largely control information sources and the military. The power of even subtle intimidation is not properly recognized. The ending of Limerence Retreat, written at least a decade before The Trial, suggests impenetrable inherent roadblocks to understanding human nature. In The novel, I provide a fantasy solution. In reality, I fear current trends and existing conditions as much as I fear the big black cold unknown. Copyright 2003 Dorothy Tennov