SUPER MARITAL HEALTH/LOVE LIE: A LIMERENCE MINI-QUIZ
The following mini-quiz may help you understand the difference between limerence, the one-dimensional and unstable feeling state similar to drug addiction, and love, the complex, more stable and ‘ controlled state of bonding.
1. Does your feeling state depend upon your partner’s feeling state?
2. Do you experience intense jealousy regarding your partner?
3. Do you feel palpitations, digestive and eating problems, or other metabolic upset when you are in the presence of your partner or even when you just think about your partner?
4. Do you feel “swept away,” dizzy, light-headed, out of control when near your partner?
5. Are you in an altered state of consciousness, disconnected from the world, when near your partner or even when just thinking about your partner?
6. Do you have constant genital stirrings, erotic feelings about your partner?
7. Do you “long” or pine for your partner in his or her absence?
8. Do you feel lucky that your partner accepts you, almost not believing your luck?
9. Does everything else in life diminish in significance compared to being with your partner?
10. Do you feel that, without your partner, life would be barely worth living?
If you answer yes to more than two of these questions, you are leaning more toward limerence than love, experiencing a one-dimensional feeling that you can be sure will not last. Data indicate that this state is a lust state that lasts only a few months. Sit down and this “love seizure” is likely to pass.
When I talk with adolescents about sex and love, they ask many different questions, but the question they ask most often is, How do you know if you are in love? I answer the question this way: If you think you’re in love, you are certainly in something. It could be love and it could be lust. Lust is distracting, worrisome, takes away your attention at school, at home, takes time away from your friends. Love will cause you to be more involved in many people and find energy for your school, religious, and family life in general. If you’re in lust, it will never last because you are hooked on some “quick high” brain chemicals. If you allow time for love, which can follow lust sometimes, you are in for a treat, for the chemicals of love are the heavy-duty, long-acting type.
So limerence is a feeling. Love is only partly feeling, and much more behavior, thought, commitment, and belief. Most of the love songs you hear are really limerence songs, and when you hear them, remember, they may not be playing your song, a song of super love.
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