Reviews for Love & Limerence/2e

The average rating for Love & Limerence/2e based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-02-09 00:00:00 Robyn Villarin I am quite torn about what to write about this book. I have had a lot to do with this concept of limerence over the last few years, and this has given me much time to ponder the place of this book amongst the relevant literature. I find myself torn because the book serves two functions. The first is to de-mystify and validate the overwhelming and bewildering experience of limerence. Those who have never experienced its power will be quite perplexed about the madness that its victims describe at length. For its sufferers though, this book comes as a breath of valuable oxygen and a point of reference when all bearing is otherwise lost. This is a valuable purpose and, to me, is enough to justify the high praise some give it. I like how Tennov formalised the experience of falling in love and how she chose not to pathologise any of it. She made it a very human and normal experience, and her limerence equation of attraction, hope and uncertainty provides a simple mechanism to understand how the limerent unconsciously manipulates the variables to maintain the imagined dyad. The second function of the book is to then describe what to do about limerence. This is where the wheels fall off in my opinion. Tennov straight-out rejected Peele & Brodsky's conception of limerence as an "addiction" (they were later vindicated by researchers such as Helen Fisher). This led her to the somewhat fatalistic conclusion that limerence was an endless cycle of transferrence, consummation and starvation. And for some, this is the truth of their existence. As Tennov alludes, a feature of the condition is to deify limerence itself (reminiscent of the brain-sucker in an early Futurama episode), which compels this population to promote the Tennovian view. She could not and would not stand outside this system and see it in terms of attachment or a general dysfunction of relating, although in fairness, the concepts of codependence and adult attachment theory were popularised about 10 years later. So to me, I think she ended up on the wrong side of history in a sense. My experience of participating in and moderating a limerence support group for several years also led me to this conclusion. As I was sometimes wont to say there, the best books about limerence and recovery don't actually include that word in their titles. Books like Howard Halpern's How To Break Free of Your Addiction to a Person, and co-dependence titles like Facing Love Addiction and No More Mr Nice Guy are far stronger material that offer a 20,000-foot perspective on how inauthentic relating leads to covert contracts, bad boundaries and, apropros here, frustrated romantic attachments.

Review # 2 was written on 2007-12-23 00:00:00 Mark Parkyn This book explained my life. More particularly, it explained a phenomenon that has occurred in my life time and again, for better or worse (or more aptly, for best and for worst)... and made me realize that while I often act and feel crazy when in love, I am neither a bad person nor insane. For anyone who finds themselves regularly and unwillingly under the spell of another human being, check this out.