Confession: 90s R&B ruined me for love

Transitioning from limerence to love

Me in 1995, in the recording studio where I recorded an original song that was distributed via cassette tape at my Bat Mitzvah.

1995 was a pivotal year in my life. I turned 13, had my Bat Mitzvah (with a party that in retrospect was nicer than my wedding), and most importantly, I got my very first CD: My Life, by Mary J. Blige. And so began my R&B era. While I wish the song that moved me was Be Happy, which starts with the prescient phrase, “How can I love somebody else, if I can't love myself enough to know, when it's time, time to let go,” songs like I Never Wanna Live Without You better aligned with the constant state of limerence I had been in since I turned ten.

What is limerence you ask? I was so happy when I discovered this word. Limerence is “an intense desire for someone, with intrusive thoughts and a desire for a relationship and reciprocation.” Being that limerence largely takes place in your head, it’s no surprise that it is largely a neurological phenomenon that’s essential a dopamine hunt. During adolescence, there is evidence that dopamine levels drop, but “the release is more intense, which could cause craving of dopamine-inducing experience” like limerence. This explains a lot about my adolescence.

From the moment I had my first crush in 5th grade, intense desire permeated my daily life. The challenge of course, was that the object of my affection never knew about my feelings (at least I never told them) and I certainly didn’t act on it. In this way I constructed an entire world where my imagination had free reign: who this person actually was had no bearing on who I believed them to be. Even passing each other in the hall was enough to ignite a weeks’ long fantasy, and oh so poems. The poetry I wrote from ages 10-20 about people who literally didn’t know I existed could fill a book.

“An Ode to Him.” I wrote this in 9th grade (1997) about the object of my limerence. It was about watching him pine for someone else the way I pined for him. I love this line: “Each time you walk towards her, you miss me walking towards you.” I feel so lucky to still have these old journals.

From the outside, I was a prim and proper eldest daughter. The one who plays the piano and gets good grades and becomes friends with the teachers and runs for student council. The pride of my parents. The adherer to the rules of my culture. Inside though, inside. Inside I was raging fire that wanted to spill down the sides of my changing body.

If limerence was the psychological condition that governed my one-sided infatuations, R&B was the music that scored it. The minor melodies, the unapologetically passionate proclamations of love, the raw lack of restraint and restriction. My introduction to R&B may have come by way of Mary J. Blige, but it wasn’t long until I discovered the men of R&B who spoke directly to the brewing women inside me.

Jodeci.
112.
Genuwine.
D’Angelo.
Blackstreet.
Dru Hill.
(You know there’s going to be a playlist below, right?)

The men of Jodeci.

“Without you baby, I feel worthless…. I’m living on the edge. It’s been an hour since you’ve been gone, and that’s too long, so come back home. I can’t live without you, so I’ll cry for you…” — Cry for You by Jodeci.

Suddenly I felt seen. Validated. This is what I’ve been feeling. What I’ve been journaling and writing poetry about! This is what my limerence felt like, and thanks to Cry for You by Jodeci, I finally had the words to describe it. It wasn’t long before my limerence and soundtrack collided. I remember calling my crush in 9th grade and asking him to sing Blackstreet to me: “Before I let you go, before I let you go…Can I get a kiss good night baby? (Hmmmm).” There was no kiss that year, from him or anyone else, but I did get my song.

My relationship with my limerence was and remains a complicated one. Although it utterly consumed me and made me feel nuts, it also had a more desirable side effect: it made me feel alive. Infatuation has a way of doing that. It creeps into the empty moments of your life and fills them. It doesn’t matter if you are without a friend, or a boyfriend, or a party to go to… thanks to the all-consuming nature of limerence, you never feel alone. Once I started dating in my twenties, I had to learn to distinguish between limerence and love, and had to realize that even if I had enough desire and passion for two people, that simply wasn’t enough to make for a relationship. Love requires the reciprocity and stability that is fundamentally absent from limerence. Suffice it to say, the transition from one to the other wasn’t without its bumps.

Self Love Poetry, 186.

Now that I’m an adult, and in a loving marriage of over 13 years, limerence is a thing of the past. In my relationship, there is stability, communication, consideration… it exists in the world beyond my mind. But if I’m being honest, sometimes it’s lacking the desire that dominated my limerence era. And that is the challenge: can I be in an imaginary relationship and a real one at the same time, and with the same person? Can I maintain the thrill when I’m indisputably safe? Can I lust, when I am so deeply in love? Can we (at least in our minds) burn it down — when every day we are building… together? Esther Perel of course has a lot to say about this, and like her, my answer is yes.

When I listen to the R&B of my youth, I now wonder: is there space for little bit of limerence in my current relationship? Can we be in mutual limerence? Where each of us builds an altar in our imaginations and worships the other, the way I did the strangers of my youth? Yes and yes.

Self Love Poetry, 197.

And when it comes to loving myself, is there room for limerence there, too? Can I reclaim that same intense desire I felt in my teen years but this time apply it to myself and my life? Yes! Because let me tell you: I realize now that it was never about the boys and men I lusted after. It was about the desire that lived within me, my imagination, and my ability to build worlds. Thanks to my commitment to self love, I have build a new world for myself: both in my mind, and in reality. In this world, I am the sexy, vibrant Melody of my youth. I have to believe limerence has played a role in this homecoming.

So I’m inviting you to welcome a little bit of limerence back into your life. And of course, I have a playlist for you to listen to as you do.