Limerence is an involuntary, obsessive attachment in which the beloved becomes a person and a possibility.

Sexual identity is not fixed; context, connection, and experience can reshape how we understand our desire.

Disclosure builds intimacy as powerfully as desire, while vulnerability invites vulnerability.

"I thought you said you were a lesbian." "I am. I mean, I was. I mean…" What did I mean?

For years, "lesbian" was the word that organized my life. It shaped my friendships, my dating history, my politics, and the way I moved through a room. It wasn't just a label. It was my world.

Then, on an ordinary Saturday morning, my phone lit up with a WhatsApp video call.

His face filled the screen, and a rush of adolescent, almost humiliating adrenaline ran through me.

"Hi," I said, my voice softer than I expected.

"Hey, can you give me a few minutes?"

And suddenly I cared how I looked. I applied lipstick, blush, and mascara in front of the mirror as if I were going to perform on stage. I didn't have a word for what was happening to me yet. I would later learn it was limerence and that it had been building for months. Psychologist Dorothy Tennov, who coined the term "limerence," describes it as an obsessive, all-consuming attachment to another person.

I called him back; he looked at me and said, "You put on makeup."

Not a question. An observation. He noticed.

I wasn't attracted to him at first. He invited me to be a regular guest on his talk show, Mind Over Chatter, to discuss my book about alcohol and drug addiction. The connection felt intellectual. Clean. Safe. Nothing cinematic. Nothing dangerous. However, he quickly became not just a person but a possibility, an alternate life. Limerence arrived uninvited and rearranged the furniture, indifferent to my identity and my plans.

And there I was, sitting in fresh makeup on a Saturday morning, about to say the thing out loud.

"I need to talk," I said. "Over the past six months, working on the show, something has shifted. I've started to have romantic and sexual feelings for you. I spoke with my therapist, and she encouraged me to be honest."

Silence dropped between us.

Then he said, "But what about you needing to drink twenty beers just to be with a man?"

It was a fair question. During my teenage years, I had used alcohol to force chemistry with men where none existed. I came out as a lesbian soon after I got sober. But sobriety doesn't erase who you've been. It made room for something I hadn't expected. "For years, I called myself a 'lesbian,'" I said slowly. "But the feelings I have for you are real. Maybe 'queer' is a better word to describe my sexuality now."

He looked at me the way people do when understanding arrives all at once and too late.

Then he announced, "I'm married."

There it was. This fact should have ended it. The shut door. I recognized it. But my mind started to override the boundaries. What do I do when my desires conflict with reality? I rewrite reality. Limerence insists on keeping the fantasy alive, even in the face of all evidence.

"What if you weren't married?" I asked.

"I'd be on the next plane out there."

His certainty stunned me. It was immediate and sharp. I started doing the happy dance in my living room.

Then, he stood up and stepped outside. Buildings rose behind him, the camera shaking a little as he walked, as if the conversation needed to breathe.

"You know," he said, "the first recording equipment I used for interviews was something I stole from my last job."

Confession invites confession.

"In high school," I said, "I once stole hundreds of dollars in a drug deal when no one was looking. The dealer never found out."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because you told me the truth, and I wanted to do the same."

And just like that, we kept going, peeling back layers, handing each other pieces we'd kept hidden. Desire opens the door. But you let someone in by handing them something you're not proud of and seeing how they respond.

Then, out of nowhere, he said, "My wife completes me."

I coughed dramatically. "I feel a hairball coming up."

And there it was, the impossible split-screen of the whole conversation: I'd be on the next plane out there. And I'm married; my wife completes me. Both are true. Both exist. That call held longing, loyalty, fantasy, and restraint all at once within the same sentence. Limerence doesn't resolve the painful contradiction; it lives in it.

Afterward, I replayed the call. His face on the screen. His pause. His certainty. His baritone voice. I began constructing alternate fantasies after the call ended. This is what limerence does: the eroticization of a ghost. Not the person in front of you, but the version of them that exists only in the space between what is and what could be.

"Lesbian" no longer provides a complete narrative. "Queer" feels closer to a word with more air in it, more room for what I don't yet fully understand about myself. Something had begun, quietly and irreversibly, and I was determined to follow where it led.

Limerence ignores your identity, labels, and rules for desire. Context shapes who we want. Connection sometimes rewrites who we think we are. We can't impose order on desire, and perhaps we were never meant to.

To protect the privacy of those involved, I have changed certain identifying details.

The emotional truth of this story remains intact.

Perel, E. (2006). Mating in captivity: Unlocking erotic intelligence. HarperCollins.

Tennov, D. (1979). Love and limerence: The experience of being in love. Stein and Day.

Tolman, D. L., & Diamond, L. M. (2001). Desegregating sexuality research: Cultural and biological perspectives on gender and desire. Annual Review of Sex Research, 12, 33–74.

Paige, L. (2026). Half of forever: A journey through love, longing, and the next chapter [Unpublished manuscript].

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