Limerence vs. Love: Understanding Anxious Attachment and Building Self‑Worth with Therapy in Canada
You can’t stop thinking about someone. You're constantly checking your phone, re-reading every message sent between you two, and riding emotional highs and lows from the attention. Maybe it feels like love for a second, but deep down you sense it’s something else.
This is limerence: it’s not just attraction, rather it’s emotional obsession. And while it may seem romantic on the surface, limerence often reveals deeper patterns such as unmet emotional needs, unresolved attachment wounds, and old stories your nervous system is still trying to figure out. Often, limerence is less about the other person and more about what they activate in you.
Why Limerence Feels So Intense
Limerence isn't just about the excitement of someone new, it’s about what that person represents. Often, it mirrors earlier experiences in our lives where love might have felt unpredictable or conditional.
If you're anxiously attached, for example, limerence can feel painfully familiar: craving closeness, fearing rejection, and idealizing someone who’s emotionally inconsistent.
Many of us unconsciously try to "win" the love we didn’t receive before. Limerence taps into this drive, making attention from the unavailable feel addictive, and rejection feel like further proof we’re unworthy.
What does this look like?
Feeling euphoric when someone gives you attention, and then anxious or rejected when they withdraw.
Believing if you can just be enough, they’ll finally choose you.
Confusing unpredictability with chemistry.
The Fantasy Trap
Limerence thrives on fantasy. We project ideal qualities onto someone and imagine they’ll finally meet our emotional needs. But this fantasy is often less about them, and more about rewriting a painful emotional script:
“If they choose me, I’ll finally feel enough.”
Unfortunately, this keeps you stuck chasing validation instead of building real, secure connection.
Healing the Pattern
You don’t have to stay caught in this loop. Limerence is a sign. It’s not a sign of brokenness, but a sign of unmet emotional needs that deserve attention and healing.
Attachment-informed therapy can help you:
Recognize where your emotional patterns comes from
Build a stronger, more secure relationship with yourself
Break the cycle of needing external validation to feel worthy
And if you’re in a relationship, couples therapy can support both partners in:
Understanding how past experiences show up in the present
Creating emotional safety and open communication
Building secure, reciprocal connection without games or guessing.
You don’t have to keep reliving this same story! Therapy can help unpack what’s driving the emotional fixation underneath it all.
Some powerful questions to explore in therapy might be:
Who from your past does this person remind you of?
What emotional needs (validation, belonging, worthiness) are being externalized onto them?
What would it look like to meet those needs within yourself or in more secure relationships?
Healing limerence isn’t about “fixing” your feelings. Instead, it’s about understanding what those feelings are trying to tell you.
Final Thoughts
Limerence can feel like love, but real love doesn’t leave you anxious, it doesn’t leave you overthinking, or stuck in a cycle of chasing. Love should feel steady, mutual, and grounded in reality.
Limerence doesn’t mean you're broken. It means your brain and heart are trying to protect you with outdated strategies that are no longer serving you. If you're stuck in a cycle of emotional obsession, you're not alone, and please know that you're not too much. If you’re in the throes of limerence right now, be gentle with yourself. This is not about willpower or being “too sensitive.” It’s about the emotional blueprints we carry, and the incredible growth that’s possible when we start rewriting them.
Therapy can help you understand the deeper patterns at play and move toward the kind of love that feels safe, not suspenseful.
Ready to break the cycle?
Risework Therapy offers a wonderful team of therapists who specialize in attachment-informed individual and couples therapy.
Reach out to us for a complimentary consult call today to get started in creating relationships that support your healing. You deserve a love that does not leave you hanging or hoping for more.
