When the Limerence Dies

Listen & read <3

I'll admit it: I have a habit of mistaking my imagination for chemistry.

Yes.. I turn small connections into entire love stories.

Some people would call it delusion. I like to call it passion. But if I’m being accurate, it’s probably just limerence.

For the longest time, I didn’t have a word for it.

The way every person I felt a spark with immediately became the beginning of a whole life I’d already written in my head. Suddenly there were dinners we’d never had, a house in the hills we’d never bought, Sunday mornings we’d never lived, and unlimited access to a love they hadn’t even offered me yet.

It’s ridiculous.

Okay, yes.

But I also think there’s something beautifully youthful about it. In a generation that treats love like a game of emotional musical chairs, there’s something almost innocent about believing so deeply in the possibility of someone.

The fantasy isn’t always about them.

Sometimes it’s about what they allow you to imagine.

Here’s where it gets dangerous.

When love doesn’t feel cinematic anymore, when there aren’t constant highs, butterflies, obsessive thoughts, or that addictive anticipation..I start wondering if something is wrong.

Why does stability feel boring?

Why does peace sometimes feel like the absence of chemistry instead of proof that I’ve finally found it?

I think a lot of women eventually realize something uncomfortable.

We’re the atmosphere.

We set the tone. We create the conversations. We romanticize the ordinary. We notice the details. We build entire worlds out of one text message and a shared playlist.

For a while, it’s comforting to believe the man is carrying half of that magic.

It’s nice to think he’s so extraordinary that he deserves all the mythology you’ve built around him.

But eventually, the limerence wears off.

The fantasy expires.

And that’s when you meet him for the first time.

Not the version you narrated. Not the version you projected onto. Just... him.

Sometimes he’s still wonderful.

Sometimes he’s painfully average.

when a woman’s limerence for an average man dies, what is she left with?

The unsettling realization that the chemistry she was mourning wasn’t entirely his.

It was hers.

The electricity was coming from inside the house the whole time.