TRANSCRIPT OF THE VIDEO
Hey, it’s Michael again, and I hope you enjoyed doing the I Like Myself game and got something out of it. It can be hard to look at yourself in a positive way.
So let’s talk about what love really is, and what men mean when we say, “I love you.” We’re going to get pretty deep and dense in this section, breaking down love into its component parts. Breaking it down and kind of talking about why what you might think is love is actually wrong.
Now, like a lot of people, you might think that love means this. What you see on the screen right here. I think we’ve all kind of gone through it. It’s that moment when you feel like, “I want to crawl inside you, consume your heart, and merge forever into one being, one soul, connected for all time like weird Siamese twins who like to have sex with… ” Okay, I’m stopping, but it’s an obsession, right? And if it’s real, it lasts forever.
A man in love would rather rip his genitals off than even look at another woman. He thinks of you and only you all the time. He wants you, you, you, you, you, and you in that order, and it must stay that way forever because that’s what they say love is. That’s what the movies show love is, that’s what the romance novels show love is, that’s what your parents told you love was, and then of course they fought with each other all the time about everything because they were both so disappointed in each other for not being the person they thought they were when they first got together because, well, love.
But here’s the thing. What you’re seeing right here on your screen isn’t love. That is not love. At all, by the way. What that is is something called limerence. I mean, look at this couple right here, with their perfect skin and… I think they just don’t eat? Is that how they get that thin? But look how in limerence they are! I know you probably haven’t heard that word before, but these people right here, who probably don’t even really know each other because they’re models, but they are showing themselves to be in what is actually known as limerence.
So this person right here, this wonderful woman in front of you, is named Helen Fisher. She is brilliant. I have been following her work for many years. She is a biological anthropologist at the Kinsey Institute of Indiana University. She’s a badass. Her website is theanatomyoflove.com. She has spent her career studying love, studying what love actually is, studying people who are in love, people who have fallen out of love, et cetera.
And what Helen Fisher says is that romance and romantic love is one of three basic brain systems that evolved for mating and reproduction. When you get rid of all of the wonder around them, all of the stories we’ve told, fundamentally, these three systems I’m going to talk about, what they’re really about is about mating and reproduction. These three systems are about getting you to want to have sex with somebody so you have a kid, and then getting you to stick around with that person long enough for that kid to actually survive. I know it’s a very cynical way of looking at things, but fundamentally, that’s what’s true.
So system one is the lust system. The craving for sexual gratification. According to Fisher, this drive evolved to enable you to seek a range of potential mating partners. After all, you can have sex with someone you aren’t in love with. You can even feel the sex drive when you are driving in your car, reading a magazine, or watching a movie. Lust is not necessarily focused on a particular individual.
And this is true, right? You have certainly, unless you are asexual I suppose, you have certainly felt lust and sexual attraction for more than one person in your life, and you have probably even felt lust or sexual attraction for two completely different people at the same time. And that’s not a big deal, is it? Feeling lust towards more than one person, not a big deal.
The second system is the romantic love or attraction, the obsessive thinking phase. According to Fisher, this drive evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one individual at a time. As Kabir, the Indian poet, put it, “The lane of love is narrow; there is room for only one.” So this system, the obsessive thinking system, is what narrows you down from the lust section. So when you just kind of feel lust, “Hey, that guy’s pretty hot. That other guy’s pretty hot. That guy’s pretty hot, too.” If he drives a nice car and has some money and is actually nice, who knows if he seduces you.
But then something gets triggered in you. You spend enough time with somebody, you smell their pheromones, this thing in your brain goes off and all of a sudden you focus like a laser beam on just this one person. And this is what a lot of us think love is, this obsessive phase.
Then system three is the attachment phase. The feeling of deep union with a long-term partner. According to Fisher, this drive evolved to enable you to remain with a mate at least long enough to rear a single child through infancy together as a team, although many of us remain together much longer and enjoy the benefits of life with a partner, even when there is no goal to have children.
So limerence is the second one. Limerence is the state of being infatuated or obsessed with another person, typically experienced involuntarily and characterized by a strong desire for reciprocation of one’s feelings, but not primarily for a sexual relationship. That’s from dictionary.com. So limerence is what happens. It’s not just about having sex with them, it’s about being with them, about being part of them in some way.
If you look at this from an evolutionary standpoint, what we just talked about, lust is about getting you to want to have sex with somebody; limerence is about getting you close enough to them to make that kind of happen; and the attachment phase is about making sure that you can actually raise those kids long enough to do it all themselves.
So symptoms of limerence. Let’s kind of go through what these are.
Special meaning. Your partner is the center of the world and you like anything like they like. It’s like, “Oh you like football? I like football. Oh you like this band? I like that band, too!”
Intense energy. It’s hard to sleep at those moments.
Loss of appetite. Mood swings. Separation anxiety. Craving, just wanting them when they’re not around.
Intense motivation for emotional union. Man, you want to be with them. I remember having my ex-girlfriend in college who lived 100 miles away, but I would get in that car and go see her.
Intrusive thinking, cannot stop thinking about her or him. Possessive, jealousy. That person is mine. Oh man, if they’re looking at another girl, what does that mean?
And an overwhelming certainty that they are the one, and this time it will last forever. This time is different. This time is real.
Now what do all those symptoms sound like? They sound kind of like drug addiction, right? Well that’s because it is drug addiction. See, limerence, the reason we feel that way is because when we are in that state, when we first meet that person who triggers all these wonderful feelings in us, when they are compatible to us, when their pheromones drive us crazy, when they look at us in that wonderful way, it sets off chemicals in our brain. It sets off chemicals that make us happy, that make us obsessed. And when those chemicals are taken away, of course bad things happen. We go through withdrawal. That’s why you feel so crappy when someone breaks up with you.
So limerence ending is actually a good and necessary thing, because being in intense limerence makes people kind of useless just like drug addiction does.
Now Helen Fisher says basically that limerence can last about two, maybe three years. During this stage, what she calls infatuation, you experience increases of norepinephrine, which is adrenaline, and dopamine levels in the brain, and of testosterone. Dopamine is a reward chemical in your brain. It’s what makes you feel real good. It’s also what things like Oxycontin, heroin, et cetera cause to flood your brain.
Also, testosterone goes up, both in men and in women, since lust is involved. Testosterone makes both men and women want sex more powerfully.
Now when you move into the attachment stage, where you see an increase of vasopressin and oxytocin, which is a chemical that makes you want to bond with people. It’s a chemical that is massively released when a woman has a baby. That’s why you’ll immediately feel this sense of connection to the baby, the baby feels the same thing.
The other hormones return to normal. Most couples in attached relationships have less sex than those in the infatuation stage. The phrase “addicted to love” applies to women and men who crave the excitement and sex of an infatuation, floating from one intense affair to the next, leaving a pile of heartbroken attachment-seeking partners in their wake.
So basically love, real love… Okay, so limerence is basically that feeling, that intensity, the Romeo and Juliet moment where you’re just like, “This is the person. This is the one.” People that are love-addicted are basically trying to find that over and over again, but it doesn’t really work that way.
Once you’ve transitioned out of infatuation, hormone levels dropping, you either attach or you do the opposite. Once the infatuation, the limerence phase, starts to fade away, you do one of two things. She says, “I don’t use the word detach in my research,” Fisher says, “but that’s what happens. When you’re heartbroken, hormones change again. You get another dopamine boost. That makes you have no interest in food at the beginning and end of a passionate relationship.”
Fisher is wary of presenting a relationship timeline by stages, but I’m going to. You can float from infatuation to attachment and back again. It is actually possible to go back into that phase for a period of time. Some relationships start with attachment, a loving friendship, and then shift to infatuation and lust, but no matter what, infatuation and lust will not last forever.
So here’s why treating limerence like it’s, quote/unquote, “love” is a bad idea, real love. When you are in limerence, there is that moment when you feel like you’ve found the one. This is real and therefore will last forever just like it is. We all get a little bit delusional.
Now, for the first two or three years, it feels kind of easy, doesn’t it? Especially at the very beginning, if you’re compatible. Then after two or three years, oh my god, what is wrong? You used to look at this man and feel this particular thing, he used to look at you and feel this particular thing, but now it’s not quite there in the same intensity anymore. So what a lot of people feel then is disappointment. “What’s wrong with me that this keeps happening?” Every man you’ve ever been with has caused this same pattern.
Then all of a sudden, you’re having fights all the time, about the dishes, whatever it is. Then you can start getting critical. “Why isn’t he who he’s supposed to be? Am I not good enough? Maybe this wasn’t love in the first place.” That’s what comes to a lot of people’s minds. You go into the, “If he really loved me, he would,” kind of phase. “If you really loved me, you would stop working late. If you really loved me, you would not watch porn. If you really loved me, loved me, loved me,” et cetera.
And all of that leads to what feels like failure. There’s this idea that if a relationship does not last forever, it’s a failure, so here we go. If you expect limerence to just naturally last forever, you are destined for misery and heartbreak no matter who you are with. No matter who you are with. It doesn’t matter how compatible you are with this person, even if they are actually Prince Charming, even if they actually are, quote/unquote, “the one”, if this is what you expect, if you expect it to last forever and for it to be easy and you’re just going to be in limerence forever, you’re going to fail.
But if you understand and accept that limerence will pass and that real, long-term love takes work, well, then you go through this phase. “I found this amazing guy.” Limerence is fun, you know it’s there. My wife and I went through this, because we both read a lot about this. We knew we were in limerence. We experienced and loved that limerence. We had so much fun having sex all the time and wanting to be together all the time. And then over time, it starts to fade a bit. But that’s okay and natural, nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong when limerence fades. It can be brought back, to a certain degree. We’ll talk about that. But it’s okay. You don’t have to panic about that when you’re getting off that roller coaster a little bit.
When it starts to fade, though, that’s when the work begins. That’s when you have to look at the man that you’re with and think, “I like him for who he is, even though he’s not perfect.” Because all of a sudden, the imperfections that you kind of ignored before, the bad habits that he has, the fact that he leaves the towel on the floor, et cetera, start to kind of matter to you in a way they didn’t before. Then you can go through some tough times together, and hopefully you have both chosen to stick around. You have both chosen to realize just because you are not feeling the intensity of limerence doesn’t mean you’re not in love, doesn’t mean you’re not compatible, and you have those moments of feeling like you’re so glad he’s with you through the tough times, and you both work a bit.
But that means it’s real. Real love means you choose to be in love every day. It means you choose to stick around. It means you choose to focus on the good and not the bad. And if you’re lucky, this means you get to be happy that you got to share your life with somebody. But you choose it. You choose to put this other person first. If you expect limerence to just naturally last forever, you’re destined for misery. But if you take it seriously, if you actually see it for what it is, then that is when you can actually experience wonder and companionship and partnership.
So like I said, important: limerence will end. It’s going to end. And it has to end, because otherwise we’d all be love drunk all the time and nothing would get done. Seriously, how much did you actually accomplish the last time you were in that state?
What I find useful is to think of limerence like your relationship’s childhood. We can’t go back to being kids. Sometimes we feel like we want to so we can kind of let go of all these responsibilities that we have these days, but you can’t do it. You’re never going to be able to do it. So the best thing you can do is look back on your childhood, hopefully happily, hopefully you had a good childhood, but accept that it’s over, that you’re an adult now. And moving from limerence into that kind of attachment phase is becoming an adult. It’s your relationship becoming an adult.
So going over the three systems one more time, lust is that moment like, “You’re so hot. I like the way you smell. I want to ravish you like an animal.” Limerence, which is what people think is love, “You are the most amazing person in the world. Finally, I want to feel this way forever.” That’s what people think is love. But real love, real love, the love that lasts is that a more attachment love. It doesn’t mean you don’t lust after each other, but it means it isn’t quite as intense as before and you’re choosing to be there. “I know your flaws, and I love you for them. I try to never judge you or force you to change.” “I’m in your corner,” is basically what is being said there.
Now really quickly, for many, but not all men and women, limerence temporarily focuses lust on one person. For many of them. But not all, by any means. It can be when you get into limerence, when you’re in that love drunk kind of phase, you only want to have sex with that one person, but it’s always temporary. It’s always temporary. Once the obsession starts to fade, and assuming you have a healthy sex drive, you both will find other people sexually attractive and that is okay. That is actually not that big of a deal.
And just like how you can still love and sexually desire a man even though George Clooney makes you feel funny in your pants and sometimes crawls into your fantasies, him looking at and even lusting after other women in no way tells you anything about how he feels about you emotionally or sexually. Though of course he should try not to be a dick about it, just being polite.
I’m married to a wonderful woman who I love, who I find very sexually attractive, and yes, I do find other women sexually attractive as well. She knows that. I also know that she finds other men sexually attractive, and that’s okay because we are secure in our love, we know who we are, we know how important we are to each other, and we know that nobody else is truly a threat. We both do it, okay? Isn’t’ that awesome? Isn’t it freeing that just like you, he can love you and still look at other people and it’s no big deal and it’s not a threat to your relationship?
By the way, in fact, making a big deal about it is the worst thing you can do. There is nothing more attractive to both men and women than being not threatened by this kind of thing.
So really, this whole limerence concept, the infatuation concept, when limerence is ending, there’s kind of three things that can happen. And you’ve probably gone through at least two of them.
The first one is heartbreak and failure. “Limerence is over, we are no longer obsessed with each other, we are no longer spending all our time with each other, we are no longer always happy to see each other. Well that means it wasn’t real love. Oh my god, we have to work at it? That means it’s not real love. No work done, it should be automatic. Love just lasts on its own.” And it’s a failure. You end up breaking up at that point. You end up breaking up, you move on to the next person, and because you think that limerence is love at that point, you go through the exact same thing again over and over again until you are 60, 70, 80 and alone. Horrible.
The other option is, “This is how it is. This is just how it is. It’s how it was for my parents, et cetera. It’s fine. We fight all the time and I feel dead inside, but it’s fine. It’s totally fine. It’s no big deal.” You did the wrong work. You tried to force each other to change and you kind of accepted misery instead of actually working on the relationship.
And then, “It’s pretty dang good! He’s not perfect and he pisses me off sometimes, but he’s a good man and I love him.” Accepting each other. Accepting your man for who he is. Helping your man to accept you for who you are. Loving each other for who you actually are, not who you think you’re supposed to be.
So all this means that happily ever after, where things just magically are great all the time and you stay in limerence forever, does not exist. And the expectation that it should happen is toxic. It’s toxic. It is killing every relationship you have ever been in. The idea that this, this overwhelming romance, this, “Oh my god I want to be with this person all the time,” that you’re going to be in that state all the time for the rest of your life is toxic. It does not exist. It will never exist.
So let me tell you a really quick story about myself and my beautiful wife. My god, she’s gorgeous, right? I mean, every time I look at her, my heart just kind of skips a beat. The way she’s looking at me makes me feel 10 feet tall. Even just looking at her now, it’s hard for me to talk. And that woman right there, whose name I am not going to share with you because it ain’t none of your business, saved my life and taught me what love really is.
Because over the last few years, I’ve gone through quite a bit personally. There’s a reason that I haven’t really released much material over the last several years, and I went through two kind of big things. One, I went through struggling through Lyme disease, which was horrible, stole several years of my life. And then my wife and I got together after that, and we fell in limerence, and for that first year-and-a-half or so, it was nothing but wonder. We were just in love with each other all the time. We had sex constantly, et cetera.
But then, and I don’t mean this flippantly, I kind of lost my mind. I’m very open about this, personally. Basically I have been suffering from Bipolar II disorder for most of my 41 years on this planet, but I didn’t know it. I never got the proper help for it. And a couple of years ago is when it really hit the fan, when my Bipolar actually caused me to become delusional. I was very paranoid, I was very angry all the time. My house is actually next to a pizza place in Seattle, and if somebody parked in front of my driveway from the pizza place, I would go outside and I would scream at them. I would absolutely scream at them. And it would’ve been so easy for my wife to be like, “Man, you know what? This is not the man I fell in love with. He’s not who I thought he was. I’m going to leave. I’m just going to go. I’m not going to be here anymore.”
But she didn’t do that. She didn’t do that. She stuck around. And I was horrible to her, which I feel guilty about every single freaking day. I said things I wish I hadn’t seen. I was emotionally horrible. But she stuck around, and she said to herself, “This is not who Mike is. I know who Mike is.” We had known each other for quite a few years before we got together.
Eventually she was able to convince me that something was wrong, was able to convince me that I was not acting normally, that my mood swings were not just part of who I was. She helped me get into the psychiatrist, she helped me get help, she helped me get on the proper medication, get on the proper therapy, and now it’s been a year-and-a-half since I got diagnosed. Now I’m feeling more stable and happier than I’ve ever been, and now, even though we went through hell together, and there were moments we thought we were going to end it, now we are more in love than ever. Now we see each other for who we really are.
And it taught me three things. That beautiful, beautiful lady right there taught me three things. One, real love cannot happen until after the limerence is over. Limerence is like romantic training wheels, but eventually they come off, and if you don’t accept that, you will crash. It’s not love when you first meet somebody. It just isn’t. And you’re not really going to find out if you can be in love with somebody until that starts to fade a little bit, until the work starts. When it’s easy, it’s not love.
That doesn’t mean you should choose to be with somebody you’re not attracted to. It certainly doesn’t mean you should be with somebody who is bad to you. Many people stay in bad relationships because they’re still in that limerence phase, and they end up with abusive people.
Two, love means walking through the fire with someone and seeing them at their worst and weakest and most messed up and choosing to share your life with them because their flaws and your flaws go together like peanut butter and jelly of flaws.
My wife knows everything bad about me. She knows my temper when I’m angry, she knows my paranoia when my meds aren’t right, et cetera. I know her stuff, too. I’m not going to share it with you, it’s none of your business. But I love her anyone. I know everything that I can about her, and I love her.
Love means wanting the other person to be happy, even if that means not being with you or you being less happy, and man that’s something my wife taught me. There were times when she looked at me and said, “Hey Mike, if us being together isn’t the thing that’s going to be the best for you in your life, then I guess we shouldn’t be together,” and that broke my heart in so many ways. But that lack of selfishness is what love is, is wanting that other person to be happy, and loving yourself enough to want that as well.
So a few important things to remember from this lesson. The obsession phase is not love. It’s limerence, and it will always change. Always. Think of it like your relationship’s childhood. You know it’s going to end, so you enjoy it while you can while laying the groundwork preparing for a real adult relationship. Enjoy it, it’s fun! It’s fun to be obsessed. It’s fun, but it’s not going to last.
And now I want you to go down to the material down below. There is the Relighting The Limerence worksheet. Like Helen Fisher said, you can flow in and out of limerence to a degree. The best kind of limerence is when you’ve already attached really properly and you love the hell out of each other and you know who each other really is, and then you can kind of trigger those chemicals again. So we have a worksheet that can help you to try to trigger those chemicals again, but it doesn’t mean you should be lazy in your relationship. It doesn’t mean, “Oh, being happy just means relighting limerence over and over and over again.” That won’t keep you together long term.
There’s also a Limerence Or Love quiz that tells you whether it’s really love or not. And the Letting Go Of Prince Charming worksheet. There might be some other stuff that we put together as well.
But anyway, check that stuff out and then meet me in the next video.
