Love, longing and obsession: Features, correlates, comorbidities, and real-time cognitive-affective dynamics of...

Limerence is an intense, chronic, and involuntary state of unreciprocated obsessive relational longing for a specific individual (the limerent object, LO). Limerence exists on a continuum, but research on its pathological form ('impairing limerence') has been limited. This paper presents two studies that advance understanding of impairing limerence. Study 1 is the largest quantitative investigation of limerence to date (N = 1647) and charts core features, psychological correlates, and clinical comorbidities. Findings indicate that limerence starts during adolescence (18-years) and then frequently reoccurs across adulthood (∼5 episodes), with episodes involving a prolonged (2-year) obsessive fixation and preoccupation with a LO. Limerent individuals reported elevated adverse childhood experiences, insecure attachment, and obsessive-compulsive cognitive traits. The rate of psychiatric multi-morbidity for limerent individuals was 42% (i.e., simultaneously reaching caseness for anxiety, depression, dissociation, and maladaptive daydreaming). Study 2 is the first to use experience-sampling methodology to intensively capture and model the cognitive-affective dynamics of impairing limerent episodes in real time over 7-days (N = 51). This revealed the high frequency of LO cognitions (50% of waking thought), and these thoughts were intrusive and immersive, with strong links to negative affect. Intrusive-distracting fantasy emerged as the dominant thought pattern, particularly during states of sadness and loneliness. Taken together, limerence appears underpinned by trauma and relational insecurity and maintained by obsessive-compulsive traits and maladaptive daydreaming. Findings shed light on the need for formal diagnostic criteria, identifies treatment targets and highlights the need evaluate the effectiveness of psychotherapeutic interventions for limerence.