By Robin and Adrian Schep | Counselling Solution
Over the past year, we have been seeing more people coming to counselling because they are struggling to stop thinking about someone and very often they are already in a committed relationship or marriage. Sometimes an emotional or sexual affair has developed. Sometimes there has been no relationship at all, but the person's thoughts about someone else have become increasingly consuming.
They often arrive at counselling feeling confused and ashamed. They may say, “I don't understand what is happening to me. I love my partner, but I can't stop thinking about this other person.” Or, “I know this isn't healthy, but I can't seem to let it go.”
There is a word that can help make sense of this experience: limerence.
Limerence was first described by psychologist Dorothy Tennov as an intense and involuntary preoccupation with another person, often accompanied by a strong desire for that person's feelings to be reciprocated. It is not a formal mental health diagnosis, and the research is still developing, but there is increasing interest in understanding why some romantic attachments become so obsessive and difficult to control.
One of the defining features of limerence is uncertainty. You don't quite know how the other person feels, and that uncertainty can become part of what keeps the attachment alive. You may find yourself analysing messages, replaying conversations, wondering what a particular look or comment meant, checking social media or looking for signs that the other person feels the same way.
The more uncertain things are, the more your mind can become preoccupied with trying to find an answer.
Recent research is beginning to give us a better understanding of just how consuming this can become. A large 2026 study involving 1,647 participants experiencing limerence found that episodes could last for years and that, during an active episode, some participants reported thoughts about the person occupying around half of their waking thoughts. The research also found associations between more impairing limerence and factors including insecure attachment, adverse childhood experiences and obsessive-compulsive thinking patterns.
This doesn't mean that everyone who experiences limerence has insecure attachment or childhood trauma. It is much more complicated than that. What the research does suggest is that, for some people, limerence is connected to deeper emotional patterns and needs that are worth exploring.
Limerence isn't necessarily love
This distinction is particularly important when we work with people who have become involved with someone outside their relationship.
The feelings can be very real. The excitement, longing, attraction and sense of connection can be incredibly powerful. But the intensity of a feeling doesn't necessarily tell us what that feeling means, or whether the relationship itself is healthy, sustainable or right for us.
Limerence can involve a significant amount of idealisation. We can fill in the gaps about who the other person is and imagine what life with them might be like. We may compare the excitement and anticipation of this new connection with the reality of a long-term relationship that includes children, work, responsibilities, conflict, history and all the ordinary pressures of life.
That is not necessarily a fair comparison.
An affair or new romantic attachment can contain novelty, secrecy, anticipation, sexual excitement and uncertainty. A long-term relationship contains a much fuller experience of another person. We see their strengths and weaknesses, and we have to navigate disappointment, conflict, repair and everyday life together.
This is why we often encourage people not to make major decisions about their marriage or family while they are in the strongest part of a limerent experience. The feelings ought to be taken seriously, but they also need to be understood.
And it is important to say that understanding limerence does not remove responsibility for behaviour. If an affair has occurred, the person is still responsible for the choices they made and the impact those choices have had on their partner.
So, what can you actually do?
The first step is to recognise the pattern rather than continuing to interpret every feeling as evidence that this person must be uniquely important to you.
It can be helpful to look honestly at what is maintaining the attachment. Are you checking their social media, rereading messages, finding reasons to make contact, imagining future scenarios or looking for signs that they feel the same way? These behaviours may seem small, but they can continually reinforce the attachment.
Where possible, creating some distance and clearer boundaries can be extremely important. If there has been an affair and the intention is to repair the primary relationship, continuing an emotionally intimate connection with the other person makes that work much harder.
It is also worth becoming curious about what the other person represents for you. What did you experience when you were with them that felt so powerful? Did you feel particularly seen, desired, interesting, free, heard or understood? Or was there perhaps something happening in your own life at the time that made you particularly vulnerable to this kind of attachment?
This isn't about finding someone to blame. It is about understanding yourself well enough to make different choices.
Counselling can be particularly useful here because it gives you somewhere to explore these questions without judgement. We can help you understand the difference between the person themselves and the story or fantasy that has developed around them, identify the behaviours that are keeping the cycle going, and work with the underlying emotional and attachment needs.
For couples dealing with an affair, there is another layer to the work. The partner who has been betrayed can be left feeling that they are somehow competing with another person, often an idealised version of that person. They may ask themselves, “Why wasn't I enough?” or “What did they have that I didn't?”
The answer is not for the betrayed partner to become more attractive, more interesting or more like the other person. The work is about understanding what happened, taking responsibility, rebuilding safety and trust, and deciding whether the relationship can be repaired.
You are not alone, and there is a way through
One of the things we want people experiencing limerence to know is that they are not necessarily “going crazy”. The experience can be incredibly consuming, and shame can make it much harder to talk about.
The research into limerence is still relatively young, and we don't yet have a single recognised treatment specifically for it. But there is enough evidence and clinical experience to know that people can move through these experiences and regain a sense of choice and perspective.
If you recognise yourself in this article, you don't have to work it out by yourself. Sometimes the first step is simply being able to say to someone, “I think I am caught in limerence and I don't know how to get out of it.”
That is something we can work with.
At Counselling Solution, we work with individuals and couples experiencing limerence, affairs, betrayal, attachment difficulties and relationship distress. Sometimes the work is about helping someone understand and step out of an obsessive attachment. Sometimes it is about helping a couple make sense of what has happened and begin the process of rebuilding their relationship.
Whatever brings you to counselling, you don't have to have everything worked out before you ask for support.