Hacker News Reader

Comment by asdflkj | Hacker News Reader

Sweet! I've got this other problem, though--I really enjoy sunshine. Anyone got a cure for that?

Limerance can wreck your life. I'm not kidding. Being with someone just long enough to have a kid may be optimal for your genes, but can really cramp your style in the modern world.

The person whom I was most strongly limerant with was both unmarriable and not someone I want to be connected to by a kid for the rest of my life. Using my brain, or perhaps rather the rest of my brain, and not treating limerance as some mystical holy thing is probably in the top three best decisions I have ever made in my life, along with marrying the person for whom I never had a lot of limerance (a smidge, I suppose, but nothing by comparison), just shared values, life goals, senses of humor, and the ability to have a strong truth-based relationship with each other. You know, all that unimportant stuff next to the question of whether I feel floaty around her.

Use your brain. All of it. Nobody will save you if you don't; they all think this same stupid thing.

(For that matter, it's also dangerous to think that a relationship must be built on limerance and once it fades it's "over". I suppose there are more reliable ways to fail at relationships, but this is up there. The question is not whether it'll ever be "over", the question is, what will you have left once it's "over"?)

I strongly agree. Limerance has never been a "great feeling" for me, especially because it pushes one to take important decisions that they would have never taken otherwise. What's best for your genes is not necessarily what's best for you.

> What's best for your genes is not necessarily what's best for you

That brings about all sorts of meta-questions. I mean, for starters who's to say that's true? Is what's best for you really whatever makes you happy, or is what's best for you what's best for your genes?

We have evolved the ability to pursue goals that are more fulfilling than simply "Passing on the genes". That's why, for one thing, we have condoms. People can consciously decide whether to have children or not, and I believe most educated people agree that this is a good thing. There is no reason why we should allow evolution (which has zero foresight) to dictate what's good for us.

Limerance for me has always been either the lowest (in the cases when it was unrequited) or the highest (in the cases when it worked out) point in my life. In retrospect, I remember both kindly, but at the time, the lowest points have been the most tortured misery I've ever experienced.

Personally, I wouldn't consider marrying someone unless I had limerance for them at some point in our relationship. I wouldn't marry someone while I am in the state of limerance because that's a potential recipe for disaster, but I want to know that if I'm with someone for the rest of my life, I can rekindle the fire that once was.

Of course, never say never.

I understand what you're getting at, but limerence certainly can be a bad thing, as msluyter pointed out (" Like a lot of things, it lies on a spectrum from pleasurable to pathological or dangerous.").

Here's a good example of one in action: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/cgot5/askreddit_h...

Seattle.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com