Subject: limerence and hot you know what: An old sermon by Rev. Joel
Miller
I have talked about this with various individuals over the years, but I cannot find that I have mentioned it to you in the eight or nine years that I have been writing regularly to family and friends.
I think it is something worth taking note of even if it's not relevant to your own life at the moment. It's about what's frequently been called romantic love, to begin with.
Rev. Joel Miller was the minister of the big church in Buffalo that I attended faithfully for several years. Faithfully meaning I sang in the choir, and I was reliable. I and others consider Reverend Miller a great man. One Sunday Reverend Miller chose to focus his sermon on the concept of limerence. He had finished reading a book about limerence, and he thought the concept was worth sharing.
I think so also.
What I remember from the sermon is this:
Putting it bluntly, and I could be paraphrasing, for about the first two years of a hot sexual relationship, limerence is the common experience that we humans share. During that two years a couple are "in love" and can live happily without talking much, almost as if in a dream, each living within his or her imagination of what the other is really like as a person and seeing no conflict, just being happy.
Then after about two years limerence commonly wears off. Again, that's the common human experience. After the limerence wears off, love certainly can continue, but it starts to requires a bit of concentration and work for it to continue. People commonly feel as though something has gone wrong with their particular relationship, when it's just the limerence wearing off, something that happens to everybody.
That was it. That was the message that Sunday morning.
Like it or not, it's worth knowing so that you can avoid the path of thinking there must be something wrong with you or the other person or that something must have happened to change the other person.
It's still up to each member of the couple to decide whether or not he or she wants the relationship to continue or to stop. Many couples have mutually decided one way or another that it was time to start paying attention and working to continue love. Many of those couples have been successful in loving each other for many years. :-)
The Wikipedia page makes limerence sound more complicated. I am sure that Reverend Miller did not mention the words "an involuntary interpersonal state that involves intrusive, obsessive, and compulsive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation from the object of interest." Perhaps the book he read was older, before that redefinition occurred. I also do not remember the part about despair sometimes in the limerence period, over whether or not the adoration is reciprocated. That may be the limerence starting to wear off. Anyway, whatever the description, it wears off in about two years. Limerence is something for everyone to know about. Knowing about it can help make things better. If you are old and settled like me then knowing about this limerence phenomenon might help explain some things that have happened in your life. In any event you can pass on the information where it might help someone you know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence
Larry
I have talked about this with various individuals over the years, but I cannot find that I have mentioned it to you in the eight or nine years that I have been writing regularly to family and friends.
I think it is something worth taking note of even if it's not relevant to your own life at the moment. It's about what's frequently been called romantic love, to begin with.
Rev. Joel Miller was the minister of the big church in Buffalo that I attended faithfully for several years. Faithfully meaning I sang in the choir, and I was reliable. I and others consider Reverend Miller a great man. One Sunday Reverend Miller chose to focus his sermon on the concept of limerence. He had finished reading a book about limerence, and he thought the concept was worth sharing.
I think so also.
What I remember from the sermon is this:
Putting it bluntly, and I could be paraphrasing, for about the first two years of a hot sexual relationship, limerence is the common experience that we humans share. During that two years a couple are "in love" and can live happily without talking much, almost as if in a dream, each living within his or her imagination of what the other is really like as a person and seeing no conflict, just being happy.
Then after about two years limerence commonly wears off. Again, that's the common human experience. After the limerence wears off, love certainly can continue, but it starts to requires a bit of concentration and work for it to continue. People commonly feel as though something has gone wrong with their particular relationship, when it's just the limerence wearing off, something that happens to everybody.
That was it. That was the message that Sunday morning.
Like it or not, it's worth knowing so that you can avoid the path of thinking there must be something wrong with you or the other person or that something must have happened to change the other person.
It's still up to each member of the couple to decide whether or not he or she wants the relationship to continue or to stop. Many couples have mutually decided one way or another that it was time to start paying attention and working to continue love. Many of those couples have been successful in loving each other for many years. :-)
The Wikipedia page makes limerence sound more complicated. I am sure that Reverend Miller did not mention the words "an involuntary interpersonal state that involves intrusive, obsessive, and compulsive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are contingent on perceived emotional reciprocation from the object of interest." Perhaps the book he read was older, before that redefinition occurred. I also do not remember the part about despair sometimes in the limerence period, over whether or not the adoration is reciprocated. That may be the limerence starting to wear off. Anyway, whatever the description, it wears off in about two years. Limerence is something for everyone to know about. Knowing about it can help make things better. If you are old and settled like me then knowing about this limerence phenomenon might help explain some things that have happened in your life. In any event you can pass on the information where it might help someone you know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerence
Larry
