Limerence and Narcissistic Abuse: Why Obsession Isn’t Love
By Brenda Stephens, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor
When you’ve lived through narcissistic abuse, the word love often feels complicated. Survivors describe early relationships with narcissists as intoxicating like nothing they’ve ever felt before. But in psychology, we have a name for this kind of intense infatuation: limerence.
Limerence isn’t real love. It’s an obsessive, trauma-driven state that narcissists are skilled at creating and exploiting.
What Is Limerence?
- Limerence is a psychological term for intense emotional infatuation. It’s marked by:
- Obsessive, intrusive thoughts about the other person
- Extreme emotional highs and lows depending on attention or rejection
- Idealizing the other person, often ignoring red flags
- A desperate craving for reciprocation
Unlike healthy attachment, limerence feels more like an addiction. The brain releases dopamine when the narcissist gives affection, and crashes when they withdraw. This cycle keeps survivors hooked, chasing the “high” of early love-bombing.
How Narcissists Create Limerence
Narcissists are experts at pulling people into limerence. In the beginning, they overwhelm their partner with attention, praise, and promises commonly known as love-bombing. This floods the survivor’s brain with euphoria.
Then the cycle shifts. The narcissist withdraws, criticizes, or becomes cold. Instead of leaving, the survivor clings harder, desperate to return to the magical early days. This intermittent reinforcement, unpredictable rewards followed by punishment, creates a trauma bond.
The survivor isn’t in love. They’re trapped in limerence.
The Impact on Partners of Narcissists
For a partner, limerence is devastating. It:
- Distorts reality. The relationship feels like both heaven and hell, making it nearly impossible to walk away.
- Breeds self-blame. Survivors internalize rejection, believing if they were “better,” the affection would return.
- Destroys identity. To hold onto the relationship, they sacrifice their needs, boundaries, and sense of self.
- Triggers nervous system chaos. Partners live in constant anxiety, hypervigilant for signs of love or abandonment.
The result is exhaustion, shame, and a deep negative self-view that makes recovery feel daunting.
What It Does to Children
Children of narcissists are not immune to this cycle. They experience a form of parent-child limerence when affection, approval, or basic safety is inconsistent.
- When the parent is loving and present, the child feels safe, wanted, even euphoric.
- When the parent withdraws, criticizes, or rages, the child feels worthless and desperate to regain closeness.
This intermittent reinforcement wires the child’s developing brain to confuse love with unpredictability.
How It Affects Adult Children of Narcissists
As these children grow into adults, the imprint of this pattern runs deep:
- Distorted self-worth: Their sense of value often hinges on how others respond to them, making rejection or disapproval feel catastrophic.
- Attraction to intensity: Calm, steady relationships may feel “boring,” while chaotic or emotionally unpredictable partners feel familiar, even intoxicating.
- Hyper-responsibility: Many become people-pleasers, scanning for shifts in mood and adjusting themselves to keep others close.
- Difficulty trusting stability: Genuine love, which feels consistent and safe, may initially trigger suspicion or discomfort because it doesn’t match the template they grew up with.
- Risk of re-enacting the cycle: Without awareness and healing, adult children are vulnerable to recreating the same dynamics with narcissistic partners, mistaking limerence for love.
This is why survivors so often say, “It feels like I always attract narcissists.” In truth, the nervous system is being pulled back toward the familiarity of limerence, mistaking intensity for intimacy.
Limerence vs. Healthy Attachment
It’s easy to confuse limerence with love, but here’s the difference:
- Limerence is obsessive, unstable, and fueled by anxiety.
- Healthy attachment is steady, mutual, and grounded in trust.
In healthy love, you don’t have to earn affection or walk on eggshells. Love doesn’t require you to abandon yourself.
Breaking Free from Limerence
Healing begins with naming limerence for what it is: a trauma response, not a soulmate connection. Survivors can learn to:
- Recognize that obsession is not love
- Separate their true identity from the negative self-view planted by abuse
- Rewire their nervous system for safety and stability
- Rebuild self-worth outside the rollercoaster of toxic relationships
Final Thoughts
Limerence is powerful, but it isn’t love. It’s a survival response that narcissists exploit to keep partners and children under control. Survivors must know this: the longing, the obsession, the desperate hope it’s not proof that someone is your person. It’s evidence of trauma.
Real love feels steady, safe, and mutual. And you deserve nothing less.
