Is falling in love a health hazard?

Are you now, or have you ever been, hopelessly head over heels?

If so, then, according to Professor Dorothy Tennov, you have something in common with Scarlett O'Hara, Richard Burton, Jay Gatsby (known also as "The Great Gatsby") and Barbra Streisand. And what is that?

All of you, she says, are limerents.

Professor Tennov is a behavioural psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, USA. She has just completed 10 years of research on romantic love, as well as a book on the subject.

Limerent is a word invented by Professor Tennov. It goes like this: A limerent is a person who falls in love. A limerent object is the one with whom a limerent is in love. And limerence describes the state of being in love, a word Tennov coined to specify that state, to distinguish it from other aspects of love such as concern and caring. Tennov says that, just as limerent people are able to fall in love, non limerent people are not.

An example: Take "Gone with the Wind," a novel and film in which, it turns out, limerents, non-limerents and limerent objects run rampant. Scarlett, of course, was a limerent. Her limerent object was Ashley. Ashley, a passive fellow, did not experience the state of limerence, though he did, from time to time, work up a sexual passion for Scarlett and shared with Melanie a feeling of love that runs deeper than limerence, which Tennov calls "sustained mutuality."

Now, are you still with me? Rhett Butler was a confirmed non-limerent. That is, until he met Scarlett and became, to his considerable amazement, limerent about her. By then, however, he was habituated in his non-limerent behaviour, and thus continued to see his friend Belle Watling, the good-hearted whore of Atlanta, who was, herself, limerent about Rhett. Poor Charles Hamilton, Melanie's brother, was as limerent as can be about Scarlett. I could go on…

Though it is often assumed that women are the limerents of this world, and men, the limerent objects, Tennov disagrees.

"Limerence doesn't have anything to do with personality characteristics," she insists. "Let me explain: When I talked to people who were limerent and asked where they felt it, all of them pointed to their hearts. Always. But when I spoke with non-limerents, they described what they felt, but it was never there, it was never heartache."

But how else can you tell if you are a limerent or a non-limerent? The first distinguishing factor about limerence, according to Tennov, is "The pre-occupation — the not-thinking-about-anything-else. A limerent will think about everything in terms of the limerent object — how he or she will like something, what he or she will say. The limerent also feels good and bad depending on what the other person does. The limerent object controls the limerent's emotions by his or her behaviour."

This sounds so fanatic that I wonder about all the well-adjusted people in the world. Do you have to be crazy to fall in love?

I recall in the movie "Cleopatra" that, just before her suicide, she says to Antony, "Without you, this is not a world I want to live in." You could hear people blowing their noses all over the theatre. A tear-jerking concept, yes, but an unenviable state to be in, and certainly what psychiatrists call neurotic.

ls love neurotic? "Yes, that's the way limerence is," Tennov says. "This is why love has been called a madness down through the ages. Being limerent is a kind of insanity. Yet, it doesn't mean that you're crazy. Let's describe limerence as a normal maladjustment.

"You see, limerence is not just a psychological state. We're dealing with what I believe to be a biologically mediated, automatic action, a kind of instinctual response people don't have control over. Maybe limerents have a different electric potential in the brain. Maybe they secrete some special hormone. I don't know what it is, but I do know it has this crucial, involuntary component."

There's another side to being or becoming limerent, too. "Limerence and non-limerence are self-sustaining states," Tennov explains. If you are a limerent, you will most likely be one throughout your life.

So, suppose you meet that man or woman of your dreams. What happens next? How does limerence enter the relationship? "The way people become limerent is through certain specific stages," Tennov explains.

"The first stage is admiration. You see a person you like, who has qualities you admire. Next, there is some awareness of sexual attraction — which doesn't, incidentally, always happen in the same way. You may have known someone for a number of years and never thought of him or her in a sexual way and one day you do, and you're off.

"The next igniting thing is something that suggests to you that there is hopefulness of return. And this is what produces real limerence. So, you go away feeling exhilarated and happy, and what are you thinking? You're thinking about how nice he is, and this produces what I call the first crystallization."

"After the first crystallization, the limerent begins to emphasize the good qualities of their limerent object, it's not that they can't see the poor qualities, but they tend not to focus on them."

But limerence doesn't begin and end here, though it may happen that way. What you really need, says Tennov, for definite, crazy limerence to develop is some kind of doubt. That doubt, or the play between hopefulness and uncertainty, is what produces Tennov's second crystallization. Then you're gone.

Tennov says that she has often heard limerents insist, after what may have been particularly trying love experiences, "I could have stopped it if I had stopped it at first." What they mean, the psychologist says, is that it's easy to stop something before you get to the point of hoping for reciprocity — before that second crystallization.

"Whether limerence is desirable," says Tennov, "depends upon what happens. If it goes well, it's certainly touted as the best thing that can happen to two people." Some individuals say, "There is no power as great as love." It means taking a high risk for a potentially great stake, "because at its worst, limerence can be a killer, either suicide or murder," Tennov explains.

There are different states and degrees of limerence, Tennov says. The first state, or characteristic, of limerence goes hand-in-hand with the preoccupation mentioned earlier. "I call it intrusive thinking," the psychologist states, "It's not only the amount of thinking about the person but that it intrudes. You have people reading and not following the words on the page. That sort of thing. In this fantasy thinking, the limerent object often initiates mutuality: returning your gaze, clasping your hand."

The second major characteristic of limerence, after intrusive thinking, is exclusivity. "The limerent person wants the limerent object and no one else. You can't be limerent over two people. Only one at a time," Tennov says.

In order to be assured of this exclusivity, a limerent often craves "some kind of commitment. A ring, a promise the loved will never go out with anyone else," according to Tennov. "The need for commitment is so strong that people in the limerent state promise even when they know they shouldn't."

Another limerent characteristic is an enormously strong fear of rejection. This fear often works against the limerents' own best interests. They smother their limerent object with attention instead of trying to build the love interest and mutuality slowly. Even when their heads tell them to say no, they can't. As Tennov says, "If the person calls you up, you might think, 'I shouldn't see him. I should hold out. I'm too easy to get…' But you can't do it."

But being limerent isn't all agony. As Tennov says: "People can reach a mutuality where they are able to walk on air together for a while. There is a time when they feel wonderful, when they get a feeling of incredible buoyancy. I don't want to leave that fact out. In fact, everyone who is limerent is happy." And according to Tennov, this basic happiness persists even if the love is unrequited.

Shocked at this notion? Tennov explains: "Some people find great beauty in unrequited love, and when they are in it, tend to deify the limerent object. Limerence tantalizes, it promises much. But you see, even though limerence does ordinarily pass, it can develop into something else that people like."

Tennov admits that happy endings after limerent relationships aren't always the case. "There is an inherent danger that as limerence fades, you might grow to resent the other person and feel so betrayed by the whole situation — by the fact that limerence is fading — that it would be impossible for the love to grow into something deeper. 'I never promised you a rose garden,' says one, and the other says, 'Well, then, what were you promising? It sure looked like a rose garden to me.'"

Yet, does a deep love have to begin with limerence in order to become great? No.

"The ultimate relationship may even have a better chance if it starts off non-limerently. I say this on the basis of conversations with people who have been married many years and who don't feel and never have felt limerent for one another."

This may be a reassuring thought for those of us who have always fallen in love rationally, but what about the limerents who are lovesick and want to know how long their illnesses will last?

Unfortunately, there is no definitive panacea for this malady. They're just going to have to hope for the best outcome and enjoy it while it lasts.

But don't give up hope. "There are three ways limerence can end. One, which I mentioned before, is through mutuality and the development of a lasting relationship. Another is through the final death of all hope. You could call this starvation. And the third thing that can end limerence is not exactly an end of it, but a transference of it to another individual. Yet, if you transfer your affections too soon, that's what's called a rebound." Beware, falling in love on the rebound can be just as agonizing as your original case of limerence.

"There are other things that can happen early on that kill limerence. But once you're up there at the 100 percent level, after that second crystallization, and all your spare moments are taken up with the other person, and your emotional well-being is dependent on what you see as the hopefulness of mutuality, you can stay there a long time."

But really, there are worse places to be.

— ELIZABETH KAYE