306: Think It’s Love? 5 Signs It’s Obsession (And It’ll Never Last)
Love Life With Matthew Hussey
Matthew Hussey
4.8 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 23 July 2025
⏱️ 81 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How do you know if it’s love or obsession? What does it mean when you can’t stop thinking about someone who doesn’t return your feelings?
In this episode, Matthew, Stephen, and Audrey talk about the phenomenon of limerence, how it can leave you always clinging to hope in dating, and strategies to get yourself out of a one-sided attraction.
Topics include:
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The psychology of limerence and how it arises.
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How we become blinded by obsession and stop seeing the reality in front of our eyes.
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The 2 most dangerous emotions that keep us hooked.
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The difference between limerence and a crush.
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How to escape the trap of obsession and find healthy love.
Links
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See your year at a glance with the Big A## Calendar—your key to staying organized and intentional. Get 10% off with code LOVELIFE at thebigasscalendar.com/discount/LOVELIFE
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Join Matthew’s 30-Day Confidence Challenge – MHChallenge.com
- Try Matthew AI (ask any relationship question) – AskMH.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | guys i am so excited for you to listen to this episode we talk about obsession in love we talk about |
| 0:11.8 | the negative effects it has on our lives we talk about why it happens to us the kinds of people |
| 0:17.0 | it happens with and why it happens with those particular people. We talk about a word |
| 0:23.0 | that some of you know, but will be new to many of you called limerence and how it shows up in |
| 0:29.0 | our lives and how it might be affecting you without you even knowing it right now. This is, I think, |
| 0:35.4 | one of the most fascinating episodes we've done in a long time. |
| 0:39.2 | And I'm really, really excited to hear what you think of it. |
| 0:42.4 | Don't forget to email us your thoughts as you go through the episode podcast at Matthewhussy.com. |
| 0:48.0 | Now, enjoy the episode. Why is it? |
| 1:16.0 | Why is it there are certain people who seem to get so under our skin that we cannot let them go? |
| 1:22.2 | There are different kinds of feelings that we have towards people. |
| 1:32.1 | There's a kind of basic attraction that you might feel for someone who you think is physically attractive. There's the kind of feelings you might have towards someone you admire. |
| 1:41.3 | But there's a point at which physical attraction and admiration turn into something else. |
| 1:51.7 | And it's at the root of what we want to talk about in today's episode, which is this word that some people have heard about and delve deep |
| 2:03.8 | into and other people have never heard of, but most people listening to this have probably |
| 2:09.9 | experienced. And that is limerence. Limerence is, it was a word coined by Dorothy Tenov back in the 70s I think for the intense feelings of |
| 2:31.1 | what we traditionally think of being in love with somebody. |
| 2:37.7 | But she really kind of broke it down and studied it and turned it into a kind of a science, |
| 2:46.7 | a psychological idea with components to it, things that create limerence. |
| 2:56.4 | And what limerence really, when it's turned into its full potentiality, turns into |
| 3:04.4 | a kind of obsession towards someone. And we can talk about this and how it happens, |
| 3:10.9 | but it's a very specific way of looking at the kind of obsession that we feel towards someone. |
... |
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