Limerence, Love & the Nervous System

When someone enters our field who feels emotionally attuned, present, or enlivening, the nervous system can surge awake. The intensity is real - but it is not necessarily about the person.

From intensity to integration

Eckhart Tolle writes:

“What is commonly called ‘falling in love’ is in most cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.”

For many people, this quote brings relief - and discomfort.

Because many of us have experienced a form of intensity that felt like love, but also felt destabilising: preoccupation, longing, confusion, or a sense of urgency that didn’t quite align with our values or lives.

This is where the concept of limerence, viewed through a nervous-system lens, can be deeply clarifying and compassionate.

What is limerence - really?

Limerence is often described psychologically as an intense fixation on another person. But from a nervous system perspective, limerence is better understood as a state of activation, not a failure of discernment.

It commonly includes:

• persistent thoughts about another

• heightened emotional sensitivity to contact or distance

• idealisation or fantasy

• urgency, longing, or magnetic pull

• emotional highs followed by confusion or fatigue

Crucially, limerence is not about love itself - it is about regulation.

It often arises when the nervous system has been living with:

• long-term emotional responsibility or caretaking

• constrained sensuality or aliveness

• limited permission to want, receive, or be moved

• safety without vitality, or vitality without safety

When someone enters our field who feels emotionally attuned, present, or enlivening, the nervous system can surge awake.

The intensity is real - but it is not necessarily about the person.

The seek–avoid loop: why limerence feels so confusing

One of the most disorienting aspects of limerence is that it often activates two opposing stress responses at once:

The seeking impulse

• desire for closeness

• focus, longing, curiosity

• a sense that something vital exists “over there”

The avoidant instinct

• fear of losing autonomy or self

• anxiety about being seen too fully

• retreat, shutdown, or self-correction after contact

Both are stress responses. Neither is pathological.

When these are activated together, the nervous system oscillates between:“Come closer” … “Pull back”

This push–pull is not immaturity - it is activation without integration. The body is seeking regulation and protecting against overwhelm at the same time.

Why limerence often softens with clarity and boundaries

One of the clearest signs that an experience is limerence rather than grounded love is this:

When honesty, presence, and boundaries are introduced, the intensity reduces.

This doesn’t mean the connection wasn’t meaningful.

It means the nervous system no longer needs fantasy or projection to regulate itself.

As regulation returns:

• mental preoccupation quiets

• the body settles

• urgency dissolves

• warmth may remain without charge

The seeking impulse no longer needs to grasp.

The avoidant instinct no longer needs to retreat.

Instead of oscillation, there is choice.

This is where Eckhart Tolle’s insight becomes embodied: what falls away is not connection, but egoic wanting - the belief that another person is the source of wholeness.

Integration: when limerence becomes healing

At Restore, we don’t aim to suppress intensity - we aim to integrate it.

Integration occurs when the nervous system learns that:

• closeness does not require collapse

• distance does not require disconnection

• desire does not require action

• feeling does not require a destination

When both the seek impulse and the avoid instinct are allowed to exist without being obeyed, the system reorganises.

What once felt destabilising becomes informative.

What once pulled outward returns inward.

What once created confusion becomes clarity.

In this way, limerence can be reparative.

It reveals where aliveness has been waiting to return.

A Restore understanding of love

True love, from a nervous system perspective, is not charged. It is present, spacious, and steady.

It does not depend on urgency.

It does not need fantasy.

It does not require self-abandonment.

This does not mean desire disappears.

It means desire is held, not acted out or suppressed.

You don’t become less alive.

You become more at home in yourself.

And from that place, connection becomes something you can stand in - not something you fall into.

A gentle reflection

If you recognise limerence in your own life, you don’t need to ask: “What’s wrong with me?”

A more healing question might be:

“What in me is asking to come alive -

and how can I meet that safely, here?”

Listening to that question, without rushing to answer it, is often where restoration begins.