Limerence and the Repetition Compulsion
When you’re in limerence, you’re repeating a pattern of longing established early in your childhood which likely took root when you felt loved in some moments but not in others. The tension brought on by confusion and uncertainty – especially when concerned with something as important as feeling loved – can compel you to persistently try to find resolution by seeking out relationships and experiences that promise complete, unwavering love. Freud called this phenomenon the repetition compulsion.
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), Freud observed that people tend to unconsciously repeat painful or traumatic experiences, even when doing so brings no obvious pleasure or relief. Freud noted that many patients seemed compelled to relive distressing experiences through recurrent dreams, behaviors, or relationships. The tendency to repeat these experiences couldn’t be explained by his previous assertion that we simply seek to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. Instead, these repetitions seemed to work against the individual’s well-being.
After watching his daughter Sophie repeatedly retrieve a coveted toy that his 18-month-old grandson kept tossing out of reach, Freud speculated that “...children repeat everything in their play that has made a powerful impression on them, and that in so doing they abreact [i.e., release a previously repressed emotion] the intensity of the experience and make themselves, so to speak, master of the situation.” Applied to limerence, we unconsciously strive to get unstuck by seeking mastery over the pain of our emotional abandonment in order to break free from it. Limerence’s aim is to gain control over the anxiety caused by past abandonment and work to neutralize it so we can finally move on from the pain that repeats on us. Reliving painful moments of loss and emotional unavailability from childhood ostensibly alters the outcome, resolving and healing the old wound. But what actually happens is that limerence recreates the painful circumstances of one’s past, reinforces the pain, and traps the limerent person in an enactment cycle of hope and hopelessness.
If you are to symbolically transform past abandonment trauma through controlled and predictable methods of re-enactment via limerence, you will have more success in the care of a therapist. Otherwise, you’ll just continue to experience your trauma without moving through and beyond it.
Now that you understand the repetition compulsion and its flawed mechanism, consider this: Your limerent object has their own repetition compulsion (e.g., avoiding potential closeness due to childhood experiences of rejection or emotional pain), which is symbiotic and catalytic with yours, leading to a precarious pattern that stretches on for as long as you’re in each others’ lives. Even longer, in some cases. Recognizing this problematic complementarity can help you face the futility of repeating your pattern with them, moving you forward in your attempts to feel loved.
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