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- [00:05]
A
Anticipation was her drug. Boulder journalist Amanda McCracken writes about limerence in her new book, Another Term for it, person addiction.
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B
Scientifically, I learned you actually get that hit of dopamine when you're anticipating a text back or a certain kind of look or a connection or even a fantasy in your head coming true.
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A
McCracken's book about limerence is when longing becomes your lover.
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B
More and more people are learning about it, as did I, because we live in this society with social media, online dating apps, hookup culture. All three of those, I feel like, create this fire for Limerence.
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A
How she healed and found a stable relationship with someone who wasn't necessarily her type. It's Colorado Matters from CPR News. I'm Ryan Warner. It stung to hear, but it was true. Amanda McCracken's therapist told her, longing is your lover. This after decades of dates, flings, fantasies, but no committed relationship. McCracken, a journalist in Boulder, turned her search for a solution into something of a cottage industry. She has a podcast called the Longing Lab. She did a popular TED Talk, and her new book is When Longing Becomes yous Lover. Welcome to the program.
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B
Thank you for having me.
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A
A note for listeners that we may very well talk a bit about sex. You write early on that anticipation was my drug. What did that drug do for you, Amanda?
- [01:48]
B
Well, scientifically, I learned you actually get that hit of dopamine when you're anticipating a text back or a certain kind of look or a connection or even a fantasy in your head coming true. So that's kind of the drug that became really appealing, I think, to me.
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A
So you were getting addicted to the blips as opposed to something steadier?
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B
Yeah. I mean, there has to be hope, a combination of hope and uncertainty mixed in there.
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A
Oh, why do you think that was your drug? What need was it fulfilling?
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B
I think from what I've learned now, I don't think I really understood it in the past, but now I understand that I've had ADHD but didn't get diagnosed until I was 36. And that was a way of fulfilling that low dopamine reserves, that novelty, the anticipation, the trying to interpret certain texts, you know, like there was that. I got a dopamine hit from that. I think that was serving me from a neurological standpoint.
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A
Did it disappear when you got on meds for adhd?
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B
That's a great question. Not really, though the meds helped me focus on particularly writing, but it didn't really help with my crushes.
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A
So there was something deeper?
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B
Yeah. Yes. For sure, yeah.
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A
And you say in this book that exploring the why is only helpful to a point. You know, what was it about your childhood or your parents or your first relationships that might have led you to this addiction? But it only goes so far to understand what the genesis is.
- [03:35]
B
Right, right. And I think what you were getting at too, is that it goes beyond the fact that the meds didn't necessarily keep me from having these intense crushes. I think goes back to the idea that remaining in that state of anticipation, thinking about those individual that I put on a pedestal, was a way of, from a perfectionist standpoint, staying safe from making a mistake with someone. Because I was never really getting into a relationship with someone, if that makes sense.
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A
You were protecting yourself to some extent.
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B
Exactly.
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A
By never truly committing.
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B
Right.
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A
But, you know, that state of waiting for the text, that state of hypervigilance as you're composing the text to begin with, I understand that draws you in to some extent, but it's also incredibly painful, isn't it?
- [04:28]
B
Yes, it is. And I think it was also painful for friends and family who I would be, you know, leaning on to be like, is this. Okay, should I say it this way? It wasn't just me overanalyzing it, but also, like, checking in because I. I didn't trust myself. And that was, I think, a point that when you said, you know, you can continue to, like, question your background and your family history and your first relationships and stuff, but it does boil down to, I think, really learning to trust yourself and being okay with being imperfect too.
- [05:00]
A
I mean, it turns out there are any number of terms for this. Limerence. Limerence is one person. Addiction is another. Germans, you write, call it an addiction to yearning. Wow. Okay. You gravitate towards this term, limerence, which was coined some 50 years ago. I gotta say, even though, Amanda, I have limerence, this was a painful but also eye opening read for me. Just like, to turn this into a therapy session. How come I'm just learning this word limerence?
- [05:35]
B
That's a good question. I think there. I mean, a lot of people are just learning it, and it was coined in the late 70s by this experimental psychologist, Dorothy Tenov. And then from what I've learned, it kind of got lost in the dust, you know, with. When attachment style research took off.
- [05:53]
A
Yes.
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B
And I.
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A
Which I'm far more familiar with.
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B
Right, right. Everybody knows or thinks they know their attachment style, but it's really picking up now, and more and more people are learning about it, as did I, because we live in this Society with social media, online dating apps, hookup culture. All three of those, I feel like create this fire for Limerence.
- [06:16]
A
The nature of dating apps I just have found, for instance with Tinder, is to constantly bring you back to the app. I mean, they really want you to spend time on it, Right. It really feels to me that the goal is less a match and more that I continue to go back to the app. There are just clever ways that they make me think I have a new message, but I actually don't. It's just the app checking in. Like, pay attention to me. But the point is, the apps are like the heroine of limerence. What was your experience with online dating?
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B
Well, I tried a little bit of everything. At least that was around when I was dating Match.com, okCupid, Bumble. At the end, Hinge was just getting popular. I met my now husband before that. But I.
- [07:07]
A
Well, way to give away the ending.
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B
Yeah, sorry, there is a happy ending here, but it's true.
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A
Like, even as one app vies for your attention, then there's the question of which of the 20 are you gonna sign up for?
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B
Right? And then if you're on three. And I also had some interesting experiences where I had friends in Boulder who were going on dates with the same people I was going on. And we had to negotiate, okay, who got the next date, you know, so because the pool was getting smaller and smaller, I also found them, you know, they're entertaining and kept me, you know, they're a great source for boredom to just start scrolling and just start swiping, right? Get a hit. Oh, somebody likes me and they want to choose me, you know, and that feels good.
- [07:50]
A
At the moment, Boulder journalist Amanda McCracken is our guest. Her new book is When Longing Becomes yous Lover. Still to come, the Shaky Bridge Study and and obsessing over a love interest with the help of ChatGPT. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News. It's Colorado Matters from CPR News. I'm Ryan Warner. When Longing Becomes your Lover is a new book about limerence, AKA person addiction. Let's get back to my conversation with Amanda McCracken of Boulder. The subtitle of her part personal, part journalistic project is Breaking from Infatuation, rejection and perfectionism to find authentic love. Again, the topic of sex comes up. Before the break, we discussed online dating. Did you give up to some extent on an IRL in an in real life encounter?
- [08:49]
B
I didn't give up on it, but I kind of got bored with that idea. It feels like, even just in Boulder. And I think that's why I think the travel that I talk about in the book became like, an even bigger hit, dopamine hit, you know, by the novelty of all that.
- [09:06]
A
So the novelty of travel to you and the fantasy, perhaps. And I think we all do this to some extent on vacation. Like, what if I met Mr. Right or Ms. Wright here? But talk about how travel then became the dopamine hit.
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B
Yeah. I came across this really interesting research called the Shaky Bridge Study that talked about how people were more likely to fall in love with somebody at the end of a shaky bridge than if they met that same person at the end of a stable bridge. I think his name was Art. Aaron was one of the researchers on that. And that felt really true for travel. I mean, travel feels like the shaky bridge. It's novel. There's uncertainty. There's a little bit of risk involved. And so, especially in my late 30s, I was, like, taking trips every month. I wasn't pouring money into a mortgage and kids. So I had some money to travel. And I definitely felt like I was sold that story that you can find love abroad and it would just be more romantic that way. So I was definitely searching for someone somewhere, anywhere but my own backyard.
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A
And you had encounters during your travel, but they weren't lasting. What was the nature of them?
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B
I mean, they were super exciting, basically, you know, flings in the Caribbean or wherever else I was meeting up with somebody. And some of them were new people I met. Some of them were friends that I was meeting overseas. And I don't know if you want to. When and if you want to get into the virginity and sexual.
- [10:51]
A
I think this is the time to get into it. Because one natural question hearing this would be, oh, Gosh, is Amanda McCracken a sex addict?
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B
Right.
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A
You know, I mean, that's a diagnosed thing, and there are support groups for sex addicts. But this actually relates to virginity for you. So. Yeah, talk about that now.
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B
Okay. If I dive into the talk of virginity. And speaking about travel, I was still a virgin when I was in my late 30s, up until technically I was 41.
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A
Yeah. And this relates to the perfectionism, by the way.
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B
It does, yeah. This fear of making a mistake. And virginity, as I defined it, sexual intercourse, which I feel like I have to, because it's such a loaded word, virginity. And. But for me, it was important, and I had felt like I wanted to reserve something that still felt sacred to me. And I'd been out there dating for a long time, and there Was definitely that fear of being hurt. I had been in a long term relationship once in my late 20s, mid-20s, and had told the guy, okay, I'm ready to have sex. And he had said no. And he was being deployed. So, you know, it brought up a lot of emotions. But I reeled it back in after I had said yes. And when I got to my late 30s and I was still hanging on to this, you know, now I can see that I was self sabotaging by continually dating people who weren't going to fall in love with me and commit to me. Those kinds of people I found very boring and I steered away from when they dated.
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A
That is to say, if they felt safe, they were boring.
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B
Yes, yes, yes.
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A
And you even sometimes would interpret kindness as weakness in men.
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B
Yes, yes. There was one point even I bring up in the book where I was going on a date with a guy when I was back one summer at my house with my parents and my dad shouted from the couch something he had never done, which was advice for the man and said treat her like. Because he had gotten tired of me dissing the nice guys. And he wasn't. He's a quiet nice guy too. So by the time I got to my late 30s, I was thinking, how do I move on from this? Like it has almost become, you know, Salvatraz or something. You know, like I just, I just like overanalyzed everything. And I was, admittedly was using alcohol more and more to dissociate. It feels like in intimate situations to just move further and faster. So I had this idea that maybe if I went abroad to have sex for the first time, then I wouldn't feel guilty about it or I would, it would feel safer just because when, even just like when you're cursing, you know, the bad words, don't feel so bad, if that makes sense. It just seemed also kind of more romantic and adventurous to think of like going somewhere far away.
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A
Yeah. I mean, in 12 step programs, this is often called pulling a geographic. It's the idea that when you move or change locations, somehow the problems don't come with you.
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B
Is that a true. Is that a false assumption that people make or.
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A
Very often.
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B
Okay, yeah.
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A
What do you think the rejection of the nice guys was about when your father said that? Did it lead to some introspection at the time?
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B
Oh man, that is a good question. And something I think I am still working on peeling back those layers. Something I even still work on. I feel like in therapy there was something as I was growing up, it Felt like nothing was worth anything unless you earned it. And so there was something about the not so nice guys that made me feel like I could try harder, I could prove myself. And with the nice guys, there wasn't. I didn't have to do that. It was too easy.
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A
That makes sense, right? If love comes with no resistance or work.
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B
Right.
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A
Do I deserve it?
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B
Exactly. Exactly.
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A
Oh, God. So are we having a breakthrough together? So you have a sort of checklist in the opening chapter, why a reader might press on with the book. One item is, this book is for you. If you've ever used ChatGPT to replace the human crush who is ghosting you.
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B
Mm.
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A
Now that is not an avenue I've been down.
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B
And neither have I. But as I was writing the book, I was seeing more and more people talking about this. And also in these limerent support groups, I was seeing people who were popping in and saying, hey, this is what I'm resorting to right now. I've created a chatbot to talk to about my crush. Almost like therapeutic. And also turning the chatbot into the crush themselves to I guess make up for the fact that their crush wasn't responding or they're too afraid to reach out to their crush.
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A
This makes a lot of sense to me because if you are perseverating about whether a particular text means something, you know, what did he or she mean by that? Plugging that into ChatGPT and saying, where is this person coming from? That would be an awfully attractive thing to do.
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B
Right, Right. Especially when your friends and family are sick of you reaching out for trying to analyze those things.
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A
Yeah. So limerent support groups, you found a community then around this?
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B
Yes, there were a couple on Facebook. There's some Reddit groups. I've just been involved with some of the Facebook groups.
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A
And what else have you learned from folks who have walked down this path?
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B
Loads of stuff. So limerence is. There's a spectrum with it. Right. So I think there can be just as a lot of people see it as like light limerence. I feel like it's that kind of crushed feeling you get when you're in high school or even earlier. My crushes were much earlier. And you get the butterfly feeling and so on and so forth, but you move on. Right. It's not consuming your thoughts every day. And then the intense limerence that I've seen, I've seen people like saying, are there programs, like week long programs I can get involved to stop thinking about this person? It's like they cannot turn the wheels off. And the self flagellation, you know, because with limerence, you keep that person on a pedestal and that keeps you constantly beneath beneath them.
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A
Right. And that's not a fundamentally there's a lot of self criticism going on, for sure. And comparison, I mean, comparison is one of the most painful things you can
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B
do, I think, especially if you're a limerent object, as they're called. Lo is like married or in another relationship or you see them online posting pictures with other individuals. Yeah, you can really go down a nasty rabbit hole.
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A
Amanda McCracken of Boulder is author of When Longing Becomes yous Lover. Coming up, a term coined by a science fiction writer with real world applications, lover shadow. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News. You're with Colorado Matters from CPR News and krcc. I'm Ryan Warner. In what occasionally sounds like a therapy session, we're talking about lim rinse today. You might call it infatuation flitting from one date to the next, fueled these days by the seemingly endless romantic options online. Boulder's Amanda McCracken has written when longing becomes your lover. There's a glossary in the book, and I certainly did not expect to see a term coined by the father of science fiction, H.G. wells, who of course wrote War of the Worlds. What's the word?
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B
Lover's shadow.
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A
Lover shadow. What is this?
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B
It's a term that I came across in a book that was written by a Freudian psychoanalyst who said, you know, H.G. wells had coined this term to describe this like, concept of someone that we create even when we're children of that ideal person we want to bond with or pair with.
- [19:18]
A
Disney certainly fuels this, doesn't it?
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B
Oh, for sure, for sure.
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A
With the glass slipper and such. Do you think that you had created a lover shadow from early on?
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B
Yeah, I think, I mean, when I look back, patterns of men that I was interested in and even just down to like jaw structure or eyes and so forth, I think when people look at patterns, certain people, they're like, oh, he has a type or she has a type. Right? Yes, yes. And I do think I did. And it was, I don't know. Do you want me to describe that person?
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A
Sure. Because maybe we can contrast that with who you wound up with.
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B
Right, right.
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A
I think that's important.
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B
I think my Love or Shadow was more based off this Superman character which I talk about in the book. Right. Even like Christopher Reeve's character.
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A
Yeah. So, yeah. Jawline for sure.
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B
Jawline for sure.
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A
Dark hair.
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B
Dark hair Muscly. Yeah. Fit. Fit. You know, not like.
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A
Not Schwarzenegger.
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B
Right, Right. And, you know, about 6 foot 2. And usually along with that came along the personality of kind of being elusive, mysterious, hard to interpret, unavailable. Very unavailable.
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A
Mm. And you eventually meet Emmanuel, Mary, Dave, and he's a half inch shorter than the standard you'd set.
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B
Mm. Nice. You picked up on that. Yes.
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A
He's not necessarily your type. His long hair doesn't smell quite like you'd want it to. You don't get the butterflies. How did you know to stick with it?
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B
Well, first of all, his hair smelled more florally just because it happens to pick up the shampoo. So it wasn't that it smelled bad, but yes, it had picked up whatever shampoo scent he was carrying. There was something still about him that was rugged or adventurous, you know, that was still intriguing to me. What else?
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A
Because this is not a search for bland. That's not the solution here.
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B
Right.
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A
This is not in search of boring.
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B
Right. So he wasn't. Yeah, he wasn't the opposite. He was nice, though. He was a really nice guy. He responded to my texts right away. There was never any ambiguity about what his feelings were. Very clear. And in fact, sometimes when he. I felt like he was moving in too close, I would. I told him, you know, if you get too close. I told him, I will fly.
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A
I will fly if you get too close. I wrote down this line.
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B
Mm.
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A
And it made me wonder if that itself was a defense mechanism.
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B
Oh, for sure. Yeah. But I think with him, with other guys, I wouldn't have dared say that, you know, but I was ready to start. You know, I was trying to change my patterns. And I felt like I trusted him enough that I could say this to him and he would hold space for that, and that. That was a big thing, too. I say in there that I trusted him before I loved him, which was very different than the other people that I would feel like I was madly in love with. But no way did I trust them.
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A
I trusted him before I loved him. Yes, but of course, that takes time. Things have to unfold. And when you're in Costa Rica with a week, none of that can happen.
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B
Right? It's true. It's true. And you kind of fast forward in your head and almost create trust when there isn't enough there yet.
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A
I think sometimes when longing becomes your lover is Amanda McCracken's new book about limerence, aka person addiction. She's a journalist based in Boulder. After a break, tools she picked up to find and Keep love. This is Colorado Matters from CPR News. It's Colorado Matters from CPR News. I'm Ryan Moerner. Boulder journalist Amanda McCracken went from Constant longing to finding love. She documents her experience with limerence in the new book when longing becomes your lover. Could you give us a tool that you used to stick it out with Dave?
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B
Mm.
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A
Because a guy who's texting you back quickly and who doesn't make you wonder isn't giving you the dopamine.
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B
Right, Right.
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A
So at this point, you're medicated for the adhd. Yeah, that's tamped down a bit.
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B
Yeah. He came with me to see my therapist, and I remember one of my friends was like, what's wrong? And I'm like, no, that's what's right. Like, he's willing to step into the ring with me in this very uncomfortable situation.
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A
Proactively.
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B
Yeah, proactively. And also see how my body responded to talking about stuff that felt really uncomfortable. So that I feel like was really helpful that to go there with him, and he was willing to go there with me, you know, because we've talked about dopamine and anxiety and so forth. It really. A lot of people talked about limerence being more about, like, a nervous system issue. So working with my. It was a somatic therapist, and we really worked on how things felt in my body. And so realizing that the anxiety that I got when I was with the artist, one of the long term los I talked about was not healthy.
- [24:47]
A
Limerence object, yes.
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B
Limerent object, yes. But this comfort and safety that I felt with Dave was not boring, but was healthy. And so we worked on that. One of the other key things that I did, which I swear was very helpful, was writing in my journal. It was the best homework she gave me was writing in my journal every night. And I also tried to say it out loud because I think that's important with the mantra, I am ready for and worthy of a deeply intimate and loving relationship. So even if I didn't really believe it, that I was worthy of it, the more I feel like you write it down and you say it out loud, the more you are willing to adopt it.
- [25:28]
A
Yeah. Receive it.
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B
Receive it. And that was the key word, I think, too, was it was so much easier to give love. It felt like in chasing after people who weren't giving it, but to receive it from somebody was something I also had to. I really had to work on.
- [25:46]
A
Wow. Why don't you leave us with your wedding?
- [25:49]
B
Okay.
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A
What a setting and what meaning.
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B
Yes. So this is the scene that always gets me choked up, too, but me, too.
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A
Well, I mean, as a reader, it certainly did me.
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B
Well, good. Well, we had gotten engaged about a little less than a year after we had our first date.
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A
You and Dave?
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B
Yeah, Dave and I. And then we were planning a small wedding in Cincinnati, where I'm from, with my grandmother there and his mother there, because. And both my grandmothers, because they were both elderly. 95. And the other one was about 100, almost 101 at that point. And my grandmother Velda got sick with pneumonia. And, you know, that is. People say that's the kiss of death.
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A
And this is the eldest.
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B
This is the eldest, yes. She was almost 101, and she had waited so long for me to get married. She lived with me, lived with my parents since I was 8. And there was something weirdly intertwined between her mortality and my virginity, which sounds bizarre to most people, but there was something that I felt like her getting closer and closer to death. Felt like my timeline was also running out in terms of finding somebody and so on and so forth. So.
- [27:10]
A
Sounds a bit like magical thinking.
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B
Yes. Well, so much of that book is about magical thinking.
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A
Yep.
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B
So once she got sick and she got out and made it to rehab, and then she was back in the hospital, and it was clear that she was dying at this point. And so I flew in, Dave flew in, and my mom pulled out her wedding dress that had been in a dry cleaning box for 45 years. And because we didn't have a dress at that point, and I put on that dress, and we had the wedding at her hospital bedside three days before she passed. And for the wedding that we had planned, her duty we had assigned her was to say the prayer. And it was pretty remarkable that as soon as I walked into that room, the pastor that was there didn't even prompt her. She just immediately. It was like as soon as she
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A
had her chance, she knew her cue.
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B
She knew her cue exactly. And so that was incredibly special because it felt like I had this moment in time where she was lucid and all the pieces fell into place. And I'm very, very grateful for that.
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A
It's so interesting because so much of your life is lived wanting a happy ending. The picture book right off into the sunset image. And you've just described one.
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B
Yes, I did feel like I got my happy ending in the end. It was a very bittersweet happy ending.
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A
So it's certainly cinematic, I think, is what I'm getting at. Thank you so much for talking to me.
- [28:54]
B
Thank you for having me here.
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A
Amanda McCracken of Boulder. Her new book is when longing becomes your lover, Breaking from infatuation, rejection and perfectionism to find authentic love. This is Colorado Matters from listener supported CPR News and krcc.