Coping With Ghosting

Limerence Explained: Signs, Causes, and How to Move Forward with Kati Morton, LMFT

• Gretta Perlmutter, MA, Certified Post Betrayal Transformation® Coach • Season 1 • Episode 92

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Have you ever longed for someone who didn't feel the same way? If you have a deep infatuation or an obsessive pull toward a person, you may be experiencing limerence. In this episode, host Gretta is joined by Kati Morton, LMFT, author, public speaker, and creator of a popular mental health YouTube channel, to unpack the emotional complexities of limerence.

Discover:

  • The difference between limerence and healthy love
  • Limerence and how it relates to anxious attachment, BPD, and OCD
  • Why manifestation won’t change a limerent object
  • Supportive ways to move through limerence
  • And more!

If limerence is something you’re experiencing, this conversation will help you reclaim your time, your calm, and your peace of mind.

Connect With Gretta

❤️‍🩹Free & Private Facebook Support Group | Instagram | YouTube | copingwithghosting.com

Host Gretta Perlmutter, MA, a Certified Post Betrayal Transformation® Coach, delivers evidence-based strategies for turning personal betrayal into a powerful catalyst for growth and healing.

Connect with Kati Morton, LMFT | YouTube | Instagram | katimorton.com 

Kati Morton, LMFT, is a licensed therapist, bestselling author, and mental health educator with a global community of over 1.5 million subscribers. Kati’s work helps people understand their emotions, break unhealthy patterns, and build resilience. Her upcoming book, Why Do I Keep Doing This? (Dec 9th, 2025), explores how to break free from self-sabotage. Get your copy here!

Music: "Ghosted" by Gustavo Zaiah

Disclaimer: This information is designed to mentor and guide you to cope with Ghosting by cultivating a positive mindset and implementing self-care practices. It is for educational purposes only; it solely provides self-help tools. Coping With Ghosting does not provide health care or psychological therapy services and does not diagnose or treat any physical or mental ailment of the mind or body. The content is not a substitute for therapy or any advice given by a licensed psychologist or other licensed or registered professionals.

💫👉🏻Want more? Discover Gretta's Coaching HERE

Support the show

Note to All Listeners: Ghosting is defined as: The practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication (Oxford Languages). When you leave an abusive situation without saying "goodbye," it's not ghosting, it's "self-protection." When you quietly exit a relationship after a boundary has been violated, it's not ghosting, it's "self-respect."

Gretta Perlmutter:

Welcome to Coping with Ghosting, the podcast that provides hope, healing, and understanding for anyone who's been ghosted, betrayed, or hurt in relationships. I'm your host, Gretta, a certified post-betrayal transformation coach. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by Kati Morton, LMFT, to talk about limerence. Kati's a licensed therapist, best-selling author, and mental health educator with a global community of over 1.5 million subscribers. And Kati's work helps people understand their emotions, break free of unhealthy patterns, and build resilience. Her upcoming book, I love this title, Why Do I Keep Doing This? is available on December 9th, 2025. And it explores how to break free from self-sabotage. And I'm so excited to have her here to share insights on the complex topic of limerence. So thank you so much for joining me today, Kati.

Kati Morton:

Yeah, excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Gretta.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Limerence is a topic that I've wanted to focus on on this show for a while because so many people have experienced it, myself included. And just to set the stage, could you please share what limerence is and how it differs from healthy love?

Kati Morton:

Yeah, I think it's important to kind of understand that limerence, so it's a term that was coined way back in 1979 in a book called Love and Limerence. And essentially what it is, is it's when we have this intense, almost instantaneous infatuation with someone else. And this extreme excitement or lust that we feel is exacerbated by our concern about whether or not they feel the same way about us. Got it.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Yeah, I think of limerence kind of like fireworks. It's just like a big exploding, dazzling thing that happens to us. It's kind of unpredictable. Whereas love is like this steady flame, which is more warm, enduring, and grounding. I love that.

Kati Morton:

Yes, because limerence can come from like facts or not, right? It can kind of just come out of nowhere. Like you said, like it can just explode. Boom. We really are infatuated with this person. We maybe don't know anything about them. Like I did a video about limerence a while ago, and one of the examples that I gave is because I love the show The Office. I talked about how Michael became infatuated with that chair model. And he was like, She's gonna be my wife, and I love her so much. And he knew nothing about her other than that she what she looked like, you know? And so it can feel like that. It can be very quick and very fast, and it may not be grounded in anything real. Whereas love, like you said, is more steady. It's a steady growth, it's grounded in intimacy and closeness, getting to know someone in a real way and time. And limerence doesn't take those things into consideration.

Gretta Perlmutter:

So I feel like this is something that could happen to a lot of maybe like teen girls who are obsessed with somebody in a boy band and they have this fantasy of who they are. Maybe that's more of a parasocial relationship, but it's just it feels like you know them because you can see everything they do online or everything they do online.

Kati Morton:

Yeah. No, it definitely can come from social media. It can come from and being young in general. I think we definitely the like teen crush where we have a crush on somebody, like the new kid, we don't know anything about them, but oh my god, they're so hot, and blah blah blah. We have to have them. It can definitely come from that place. But I will tell you that also, even a member of my team, like a good friend of mine, he struggles with this and he's in his 30s. And he was saying that for him, and this was helpful for me in understanding, is he was like, I will like go on one date with somebody, I don't really know them well, and I'll find myself like super infatuated, like wanting to move really, really quickly. It's almost like that, like, gotta have them, can't live without them. And he's like, and then if they get too close, I'm like, oh, I don't really, I don't know. And I think a lot of that can, and we can talk about this, has to do with our attachment, you know, if we had any emotional neglect going uh growing up, if we ever felt like we had to chase attention and affection, it wasn't just given to us. All of that can kind of feed into this intense infatuation or crush or limerence as we're talking about.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Right. And so, what are the stages and symptoms of limerence?

Kati Morton:

To be honest, everybody's gonna be a little bit different. I think in general, it's kind of like every time you like someone, it feels very intense. It's kind of like how you can spot it in yourself. Like, how do you know this is what's going on? So, like if you like someone, it's it's very hardcore. It's not like, oh yeah, we had a good first date, we'll see how things go. There's no like slow grow or like, oh, I'd really like to get to know them. It's like intense infatuation happens really quickly. And another big piece is that we daydream about them most of the time. So we're like thinking about them all the time. And, you know, we could probably even daydream about them more than we see them. And so just kind of pay attention to what's reality, what is your like your daydream life, or what are you thinking about. And the another big piece and something that I always want people to be aware of is that when we are in a limerence state, a limerence state, we will overlook red flags. So, like, even if somebody does something that's kind of disrespectful, or maybe we see them being rude to somebody who's who's you know, serving them something at a restaurant, let's say, we'll be like, oh no, no, no, no, no, they were just having an off day. Like we just completely like poo-poo that and try to, oh, it's not that big of a deal. And all of our energy goes into obsessing over like getting them to reciprocate our feelings. We just want them to like look our way. Like a member of my community had told me that this person, their limerant object, that's what we call this person, like made eye contact with them one day. It was somebody at work. And she was like, I legitimately like spiral out. Like I couldn't stop thinking about them. I thought that was like them reciprocating. And those small little gestures can really like intensify the feeling even more. And so I don't, I mean, maybe there are specific stages, but I found with everybody it's a little bit different depending on how we know this or don't know this deliberate object. But those are just some of the things to really look out for.

Gretta Perlmutter:

I've been through that. It was really hard. It was a way long ago when I was a lot younger, and I had more of an anxious attachment style, and I've worked really hard to change it to being secure, securely attached. And since I've gone to therapy, done the work, I haven't experienced limerence at all.

Kati Morton:

I think that's very common. A lot of people don't realize, and again, there's no shame, right? This isn't like a blaming. Like we all have had these situations where we're infatuated with somebody, we want to move really quickly, we have this like dream of what the relationship could become. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just recognizing where it comes from. Like in your case, that's very common. Anxious attachment is the most common trigger for this because for those who don't know, anxious attachment is essentially the feeling that we are so concerned about someone abandoning us or not being there for us that we want to hold them really, really close. Almost like we can be kind of suffocating or clingy, because that perceived abandonment feels really scary and it can feel really threatening and we can feel overwhelmed by it. And so, in order to like assuage that anxiety, we try to hold people really close. And limerence plays right into that, right? It's like if I can just focus on this person and getting their attention, then I'll feel safer. And so it's um, yeah, it's it's no wonder that you struggle with that. But that's a beautiful thing about attachment styles, they're not fixed, right? We can work on ourselves, we can heal, and we can, you know, they call it like earning or growing a secure attachment. You can definitely do that. That's wonderful.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Who else would experience limerance in addition to people who are anxiously attached?

Kati Morton:

I think, I mean, a lot of different kinds of I'll go through diagnoses. It doesn't mean that this is necessarily the only ways it can show up, but like we talked about first, is kind of that childhood emotional neglect. I think that's kind of a big piece here. And what childhood emotional neglect means that like growing up, if if people looked at your life, they'd be like, it looks good on paper. Like her, she goes to a decent school or she's fed, you know, she has clothes on her back, a roof over her head, like her parents like quote unquote take care of her, but or him or whoever, right? But what what we don't get is that emotional support. So if we're found crying or we got bullied or we had a breakup, like our parent didn't really comfort us. It was like, you know, boys don't cry or brush it off, it's not that big of a deal, or you're being dramatic. We could have heard some of those either like overtly through language, more of like, you know, that kind of emotional abuse, or it could have just been what was kind of taught to us, like we don't get attention or support when we're having a hard time. And that neglect of our emotional well-being can lead to limerence a lot in our relationships as we grow up. We also find it to be incredibly common, like we talked about like insecure attachment. But then with people with borderline personality disorder. So people who aren't familiar with BPD, I know it gets a bad rep online, but it's incredibly common. It's also something that can be completely managed. It's that fear of abandonment. I always call it like the pillar of BPD is this worry that people are gonna leave us. And so you can see how that would attach to this. It's almost like we really want um people to give us the attention and the affection that we desire. And so limerence just like falls right in line with that. And it's like a very comfortable kind of position to be in, and we can find ourselves striving for their attention and affection. So that's another um, another kind of cause or another diagnosis that we see connected. And then the last one I want to mention is OCD. And when I was doing research for this a while ago, it kind of surprised me, but then it makes sense because limerence is characterized by obsessive thoughts about another person. And so you it could be part of OCD, like you obsess about something, you have to do these compulsive behaviors, the O, right? The C. So we're doing this, and that could be about the limerant object. So we could have these obsessions about this person, and then we we try to get their attention, we do the thing to try to attract them. Um, and it feeds itself and keeps going round and round. So we find those are the things connected to limerence most often. Again, everybody's different, but those are the most common.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Thank you for explaining that. It makes a lot of sense to me. And many people in my audience who have been ghosted, betrayed in relationships, they've experienced limerence. A few of them did submit some questions specifically for you. The first one is my limerant object ghosted me and I still want him. I feel like I'm broken and something is wrong with me. How can I release the feeling of shame when I still want them, even though I know it's irrational?

Kati Morton:

That's very common, and I'm so sorry. Because the thing that we do have to do is we have to acknowledge that the pain is still real, even though we can we can watch all these TikToks or videos about limerence and be like, oh, but it's not like a real relationship, and it can make us feel worse, like I'm crazy. Like, why do I keep thinking this way? Right. But in this situation, my best advice is to start talking more kindly to yourself about this. And I know you might be thinking, but Kati, that's not gonna like fix the problem. It will in the long term, because this conversation that you're having with yourself sounds like, and I'm just making some assumptions based on the question, is that it sounds kind of like you're saying, like, I can't believe you're still doing this. This is so stupid, you're such an idiot. Why are you still obsessing? This wasn't even real, and they've ghosted me. Wait a minute, right? It's just like essentially shit talking, shit talking, shit talking. And I think a better way to approach this is with a little bit of compassion. Because when we come at things from instead of saying, like, I'm so stupid, why am I still doing this? It's like, I don't like how this feels, we can validate, and then saying, but I'm doing everything I can to try to learn from this. And so we instead of trying to judge, we try to come at it from like a this is an opportunity for growth. And I want you just to try to pay attention to how you talk to yourself about it and lean into the growth slash curiosity, because in those spaces is how we actually heal and how we learn to do better and how we can make sure that this doesn't happen again. But shaming and blaming never gets us anywhere. There's like I've seen a meme, and I don't know whose quote it is, but it's always like, you know, shaming and blaming yourself worked. It would have worked a long time ago. And so just think about that, you know, when we kind of talk down to ourselves about an experience or a situation we're going through that doesn't really help. Instead, consider, you know, like this is an opportunity for growth in my life. I don't like this. So let's find out how I cannot do it again. So why? Why was this so upsetting? Why was this person so attractive to me? Where does that come from in my past? What am I trying to repeat here? And I know those are like loaded questions, and it'll take time in therapy or in your own personal work, but I really think that that's that's our path forward.

Gretta Perlmutter:

That's a great answer. And I have another question from the audience. It's pretty juicy, and I'm really curious to hear your thoughts on this one. So can I change someone via manifestation? The law of attraction and manifestation coaches say that our thoughts and worries about someone leaving can actually create that outcome. And they argue it's changeable. They claim that if we persist in new thoughts, we can even change the other person's thoughts. So, since everyone has free will, this can sound like wishful thinking. What's your perspective on that? That's a great question.

Kati Morton:

There's I have a couple of pieces a lot to unpack. So, first of all, we have to talk about our confirmation bias. For people who aren't familiar, confirmation bias means that whatever I think and believe, I look out into my environment to prove. So, like if I think everything isn't going my way, I'm gonna look for all the ways that things are not working out. I hit all the red lights on the way to work, oh, I had a spot on my shirt and I had to change again. And, you know, we can look for all these things that are like going wrong. But if we look at all the things going right, instead, if we look for that, like that's why gratitude actually works as a practice. I know it's hard and people kind of hate it, but it actually works. So if instead of me looking for all the things going wrong, what if I look for things going right? And I say that as kind of like a foundation because that's really important when it comes to manifestation and why they talk about it the way that they do. Because I'm not opposed to manifestation. I do some boo-woo stuff in my own time. I love tarot cards. I I don't have any problem with that because what that is, is it's working with your brain to have a better conversation. Where I don't agree. So, yes, I believe if we are thinking about the relationship, like it's not gonna work out and this is gonna end, we're without realizing it, unintentionally gonna sabotage and we're gonna do things to create, again, confirmation bias to create this outcome that we already believe is gonna happen, you know. However, we can't change other people. I don't believe that because we don't, if if we could change how other people interacted, like people pleasing would actually work, and we would be able to make our parents be more receptive to conversation and we would, you know, things would be so much different in our life. And that's one thing I know for sure is that we can't change other people no matter how we act or what we do. We can try to manipulate, we can do our best, but people, like you said, still have free will. So that's where I say that's that's not the direct correlation, but what I would like the pushback, I guess, in in agreement with manifestation is that when you're looking for things going right and when you're looking for support and your your uh your confirmation is a positive thing, you're gonna act differently, you're gonna be more receptive, you're probably going to attract people in a better way. Um, I don't know if you've ever been around someone who's struggling with negativity, but they're hard to be with, right? But people who are super positive and open and friendly, oh, we like them. We don't know why, but we want to spend more time with them. And I believe the law of attraction is that. And so if we have someone, could be a limerant object, could just be my next boyfriend, girlfriend, or whoever, we're gonna attract them with our positivity, with our focus on gratitude and the way that things are working for us. And that those can be through manifestations. So most of it I agree with, but we can't control other people. But I believe you'll be putting out that good vibe that people will pick up on, and new relationships can definitely thrive in that kind of uh it's almost like we're like fertile ground.

Gretta Perlmutter:

That was a really good answer. And I agree that positive thinking is incredibly important and do it as much as you can because it will affect your reality. Uh, for the final question on limerence that I have, it's what steps can support someone in releasing their limerant object and reclaiming their peace of mind? And what actions can people do on their own if they don't have access to a coach or mental health professional?

Kati Morton:

There's a lot we can do on our own. I mean, obviously, because we link limerence a lot of times to trauma or neglect, you know, that attachment. Even though it's best done with a therapist, that doesn't mean that we can't do things on our own. I think a big piece of the work here is going to be in you recognizing where it comes from. Like, what's the why for you? Like, is it, like you said, you're anxious attachment? We could easily say, like, I believe it would have come from that. And so if we recognize, hey, I think it's anxious attachment, we can get online and we can do. I'm never opposed to people doing their own research, internally or externally via the internet, right? So consider like, okay, if it's anxious attachment for me, I read online, that means that my caregivers weren't really consistent or didn't show up for me in the way I wanted. How could I offer that to myself? Are there ways that I could be more consistent? Could I keep promises to myself? Could I, you know, speak more truthfully? Should I could I learn how to set boundaries? Right. There's little pieces of it that I believe are all kind of these stepping stones to healing ourselves internally so that we don't go looking externally for that like calming or nervous system-regulating behavior that's not helpful, like the limerence piece. Um the as far as past trauma goes, I would really encourage people to work with a therapist on that specifically. But I don't think there's anything wrong with journaling about some of the tough times you went through as a kid. And I could see that as kind of another piece in this healing. So that the urge to have another limerant object or continue to feel obsessed with someone, it'll slowly go away as we heal that old wound. Probably that wound in us from a parent or other caregiver where we're like, this person will make it better, they'll make me feel whole. You know, as we start to better understand that void and that pain, then we can slowly, hopefully, through time, stop trying to put other people in it. And I think another piece, another kind of thing that I would mention, and we've talked about it a little bit, is like challenging those thoughts because the more we shame and blame ourselves, the worse we're gonna feel. And I think the more apt we are to find ourselves in these relationships again and again, and these kinds of I guess like unbalanced uh relationships through limerence. And so pay attention to the conversation that you're having with yourself. I think that that can be incredibly helpful. And then I guess the final thing that people can do today, like do it right now, is anything to regulate your nervous system. Because I find through like asking my audience about their limerence experiences and doing research on it, that a lot of people who struggle with it will feel completely dysregulated while this is happening, like very anxious, very just stressed out, feeling like you're not good enough. It's like all swirling inside of us. And so, if before we can do anything, meaning internally, if before we obsess, before we try to send another message or a text, or before we try to be on the same path when we know they're gonna be there to try to cross paths with them again, before we take any action, I want you to do a full body shake. Our body cues us up for to take like fight or flight. We talk about fight, flight, freeze. Our body does that when it feels under threat. And I know you're like, Kati Limerence isn't a threat. It can feel like it. Remember, going back to that attachment, feeling like someone isn't doesn't like us as much as we like them and we're like striving for it feels emotionally threatening sometimes. And so our body can cue us up to take action. We need to release that, and not through texting a bunch or messaging a bunch or doing any of those things, but through like body shakes or dunking our face in cold water. We we need to find ways to like bring us down so that we can, without getting too nerdy, so that our limbic system will calm down in our brain, which brings the adult of our brain, our prefrontal cortex, back online and allows us to make future-focused decisions. So instead of in the moment trying to survive and like, oh, I need to, I just need to reach out. And once I do that, if they say something, you know, that kind of spiral thought that we can have, instead of acting out of that, we can think, do I really want to get myself caught back in that? I'm trying to make different decisions and at least give yourself a beat to act differently. And sometimes we can't do that when we're all queued up. In fact, most of the time we can't. And again, there's no judgment if we still do act that way, but you're kind of giving yourself a leg up in that, you know, that decision-making process.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Does that make sense? Absolutely. Shake it out, shake it out. That's great advice. Thank you so much for sharing your insights on this topic. Wow, this has been a lot of great, um, like actionable tips and wisdom. So thank you. I've learned a lot. How can listeners connect with you and get a copy of your new book?

Kati Morton:

Oh, yeah. So I'm all over social media. It's just Kati Morton. That's K-A-T-I-M-O-R-T-O-N. I put out videos every week on my YouTube channel, also TikTok, Instagram, all those things. Um, I have a podcast called Ask Kati Anything, where I answer questions from my audience and interview other specialists and creators in the space. And you can find why do I keep doing this anywhere books are sold? It comes out December 9th, and pre-orders really do help authors. So grab your copy today.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Thank you. Thank you so much for being here and sharing all this great information. Of course, of course. Thank you so much for having me. And friends, I'd love for you to follow coping with ghosting on social media. I have a free and private Facebook support group. And if you're enjoying the show, please leave a review, um, a rating, and subscribe on YouTube. And I'm constantly hearing from people who wish they would have discovered this show earlier. So your feedback will help people who need it most. Finally, remember no matter what you're facing, you're not alone and you're worthy of care and connection. You deserve the best.