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We all know what it is to love, be loved, or be in love – or at least we think we do. But what would you say if I were to tell you that so much of the love that you thought you’d been in was actually a little thing called limerence? No, it doesn’t sound as romantic – and it’s not – unless you’re into the whole Obsessed-type of love. But one might say at least one side of that dynamic might be…thrilling.
Personally, I always understood limerence (from my time in college psych) to be a crush. However, not in the cutesy crush way (maybe if you’re 9) that you may be thinking – it’s a very one-sided connection. And though I tend to be good with words, I thought it might be far more helpful to get a more in-depth answer to the burning question: what is limerence? Every expert pretty much said the same thing, give or take. They essentially described limerence as a rash without much logic, and quick to burn with little to no substance.
CEO and Professional Matchmaker with Something More Julia McCurley gives us a more detailed description of limerence, stating that it "often leads people to make impulsive decisions being under the belief that they have found utmost chemistry with someone they have just known for a short time. The love at first sight, or limerence relationship, is based on overwhelming attraction, possibly lust, that may or may not lead to real love."
The Object of Your Heart’s Desire
Katina Tarver, a relationship expert, tells us, “Limerence is all about emotional dependency, intrusive thoughts, and a strong desire for emotional reciprocation. The person who suffers from limerence is called limerent, and the person who is desired is called a limerent object or LO.”
New Limerence
Expert Sheila Eugenio speaks on the early stages of limerence, explaining, “In the beginning stages of limerence, it's easy to tell the difference between limerence and love because they are both very different feelings. However, as time goes on and if you start to feel like you're in love without ever being in limerence before, it might be difficult to tell the difference between them.”
Punching a Clock
Limerence, similarly to love, doesn’t have a timeline, it mostly depends on the variables: commitment, compatibility, and reciprocal interest (at some point). Limerence itself can be as brief as a week or as long as a year(s).
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What Love Is
Licensed Psychologist and Owner of LifeWise David Helfand explains that “limerence is when you can’t objectively assess your partner because you are high off just being with them. Love is when you can see them truly for who they are, and still choose to be with them.”
Psychotherapist Valentina Dragomir provides us with the main differences between the love and limerence in a nutshell:
- Love is founded on trust, mutual respect, and genuine caring. Limerence, on the other hand, often starts with an intense but one-sided attraction.
- People who are in love tend to be more rational and level-headed. Those who are limerent may act impulsively and do things that they wouldn't normally do.
- Love is something that grows over time. Limerence, however, is often a sudden and all-consuming feeling.
- Love is based on reality, while limerence is often fueled by fantasy. People in love see their partner for who they really are, warts and all. Those in limerence may idealize their object of desire and ignore any negative qualities.
- Love is healthy and supportive. Limerence, however, can be obsessive and even harmful. People in love want what's best for their partner. Those in limerence may be more interested in what they can get from the other person.
How Limerence Plays Out
Founder of Find Black Therapist, E.L. Forrestal, points out that “limerence can sometimes develop into love, but it is not always the case. There are many factors that contribute to whether or not limerence will turn into love, such as the level of commitment and investment in the relationship, how well the couple communicates and gets along, and whether or not there is mutual trust and respect.”
Love Takes Many Forms
We like to view love as something that lasts forever, but Good Vibrations Staff Sexologist and Curator of the Antique Vibrator Museum Carol Queen reminds us, “Love comes in many flavors beyond romantic and erotic, the kind of relational love we think of when, say, people couple up. While people commonly think of this as a long-term experience, many couples do not sustain long-term love; and it's possible to experience long-term love with someone outside of the monogamous partnership model that people frequently think of when they hear that word.”
Though there are plenty of similarities, it seems that limerence and love can be distinguished with a little bit of discernment and of course, my favorite word…introspection. Still, as humans, it doesn’t always happen that way. Unfortunately, that’s when it goes from being a harmless crush to a weird obsession.
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Idris Elba and Sabrina Dhowre Elba are gearing up for the second season of their podcast Coupledom where they interview partners in business and/or romance. The stunning couple has been married for three years but they have been together for a total of six years. During that time, they have developed many partnerships but quickly learned that working together isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
Idris and Sabrina shared more about that in an interview with PEOPLE. "It's not 100 percent easy to work with someone you're in a relationship with,” Sabrina said. “But I feel like we've definitely sort of found our way. Now we get to sort of build dreams together and see what that looks like."
Working together may lead to arguments but the couple believes in working things out prior to ending their day. "Generally if we have an argument, I don't like to go to bed angry, and I think he's the same," Sabrina said. "That's probably the one thing that we always try not to do."
Idris shared some beautiful insight into how he believes relationships should be navigated even in the face of adversity. "Everyday sort of squabbles, you just differ and move on,” he said. “I think never losing sight of the fact that it's a journey is really important. When you're swimming, you don't look up to count the laps, because you get tired very quickly. It's a bit like that with marriage. I love anniversaries, but I don't want to count the years."
Idris and Sabrina’s podcast is just one joint venture they’ve been working on. They also launched genderless skin care brand S’Able Labs in February in an effort to make Black people feel more seen in the wellness industry.
In an interview with Vogue, the businesswoman shared what it was like creating the company with her British beau. “It’s definitely had its hardships—we’d be completely lying if we didn’t admit that off the bat,” she said.
“But at the same time, it’s brought us so much closer together. We have a shared purpose of creating this change, and we remind each other that it’s okay if it’s hard sometimes, because it just leads to better outcomes. As our business relationship grows, our personal one grows alongside it. And Idris is really new to the skincare journey, so it’s great to be able to share amazing skincare with him—he finally gets it!”
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Before she was Amira Unplugged, rapper, singer, and a Becoming a Popstar contestant on MTV, she was Amira Daughtery, a twenty-five year-old Georgian, with aspirations of becoming a lawyer. “I thought my career path was going to lead me to law because that’s the way I thought I would help people,” Amira tells xoNecole. “[But] I always came back to music.”
A music lover since childhood, Amira grew up in an artistic household where passion for music was emphasized. “My dad has always been my huge inspiration for music because he’s a musician himself and is so passionate about the history of music.” Amira’s also dealt with deafness in one ear since she was a toddler, a condition which she says only makes her more “intentional” about the music she makes, to ensure that what she hears inside her head can translate the way she wants it to for audiences.
“The loss of hearing means a person can’t experience music in the conventional way,” she says. “I’ve always responded to bigger, bolder anthemic songs because I can feel them [the vibrations] in my body, and I want to be sure my music does this for deaf/HOH people and everyone.”
Amira Unplugged and other contestants on Becoming a Popstar
Amira Unplugged / MTV
In order to lift people’s spirits at the beginning of the pandemic, Amira began posting videos on TikTok of herself singing and using sign language so her music could reach her deaf fans as well. She was surprised by how quickly she was able to amass a large audience. It was through her videos that she caught the attention of a talent scout for MTV’s new music competition show for rising TikTok singers, Becoming a Popstar. After a three-month process, Amira was one of those picked to be a contestant on the show.
Becoming a Popstar, as Amira describes, is different from other music competition shows we’ve all come to know over the years. “Well, first of all, it’s all original music. There’s not a single cover,” she says. “We have to write these songs in like a day or two and then meet with our producers, meet with our directors. Every week, we are producing a full project for people to vote on and decide if they’d listen to it on the radio.”
To make sure her deaf/HOH audiences can feel her songs, she makes sure to “add more bass, guitar, and violin in unique patterns.” She also incorporates “higher pitch sounds with like chimes, bells, and piccolo,” because, she says, they’re easier to feel. “But it’s less about the kind of instrument and more about how I arrange the pattern of the song. Everything I do is to create an atmosphere, a sensation, to make my music a multi-sensory experience.”
She says that working alongside the judges–pop stars Joe Jonas and Becky G, and choreographer Sean Bankhead – has helped expand her artistry. “Joe was really more about the vocal quality and the timber and Becky was really about the passion of [the song] and being convinced this was something you believed in,” she says. “And what was really great about [our choreographer] Sean is that obviously he’s a choreographer to the stars – Lil Nas X, Normani – but he didn’t only focus on choreo, he focused on stage presence, he focused on the overall message of the song. And I think all those critiques week to week helped us hone in on what we wanted to be saying with our next song.”
As her star rises, it’s been both her Muslim faith and her friends, whom she calls “The Glasses Gang” (“because none of us can see!”), that continue to ground her. “The Muslim and the Muslima community have really gone hard [supporting me] and all these people have come together and I truly appreciate them,” Amira says. “I have just been flooded with DMs and emails and texts from [young muslim kids] people who have just been so inspired,” she says. “People who have said they have never seen anything like this, that I embody a lot of the style that they wanted to see and that the message hit them, which is really the most important thing to me.”
Amira Unplugged
Amira Unplugged / MTV
Throughout the show’s production, she was able to continue to uphold her faith practices with the help of the crew, such as making sure her food was halal, having time to pray, dressing modestly, and working with female choreographers. “If people can accept this, can learn, and can grow, and bring more people into the fold of this industry, then I’m making a real difference,” she says.
Though she didn’t win the competition, this is only the beginning for Amira. Whether it’s on Becoming a Popstar or her videos online, Amira has made it clear she has no plans on going anywhere but up. “I’m so excited that I’ve gotten this opportunity because this is really, truly what I think I’m meant to do.”
Today is Malcolm X’s birthday. As an icon of Black liberation movements, his words are often rallying cries and guideposts in struggle. In 2020, after the officers who executed Breonna Taylor were not charged with her murder, my timeline was flooded with people reposting Malcolm’s famous quote: “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.”
It was certainly an apt quote to use for the tragic situation surrounding the life and death of Taylor. Quickly, however, a cynicism began to take hold of me as I saw people with questionable politics around Black women repost Malcolm’s words.
Malcolm delivered those words to a congregation of Black people in Los Angeles, California just days after his birthday on May 22, 1965. Using his signature authoritative oratorical skills, he declared the harm that this world has caused Black women. In this same speech, he would go on to say: “Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? Who taught you to hate the texture of your hair? Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?" Hating and harming Black women is akin to hating and harming yourself.
For Malcolm, to protect Black women, to respect and love Black women was not a hypothetical position to take. Just a few years prior to giving that speech, Malcolm severed ties with his mentor Elijah Muhammad after allegations against the Nation of Islam leader of having affairs with underaged girls were revealed, an allegation that Malcolm didn’t initially want to believe until speaking directly with one of the accusers himself.
He showed us that to show up for Black women means holding the abusers within your community accountable — even the ones you admire. It means listening to Black women but also taking principled action in response to what you’ve heard–even at the risk of your relationships and even your life.
The name and legacy of Malcolm X conjure strong feelings in many people. To some people, Malcolm was a militant hellbent on stirring racial unrest. To others, he was a messianic figure, who sacrificed himself for the good of the people. But this is how I choose to remember him: as someone whose love for Black women anchored his life. To honor Malcolm means to honor Black women, today, tomorrow, and always.
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Celebrity News
Tiffany Haddish Dishes On Life-Changing Baths And Wanting To Enjoy The Fruits Of Her Labor
19 May
As her fame continues to rise, Tiffany Haddish has remained a positive light for her fans with her infectious smile and relatable story. Since Girls Trip, fans have witnessed the comedian become a modern-day Cinderella due to the many opportunities that have come her way and the recognition she began to receive.
We watched her She Ready: From the Hood to Hollywood comedy special, read her book The Last Black Unicorn, anticipated her red carpet looks and interviews, and rooted for her relationship with Common. Through it all, Tiffany has given us a front-row seat into her life and the excitement just keeps building. The L.A. native interviewed with Byrdie for The Balance Issue and she opened up about an array of topics such as her trip to her grandfather’s homeland of Eritrea and getting the big chop. Here are some highlights:
Photographer: Jason Kim for Byrdie
Tiffany Haddish on Using Baths to Bring Positive Energy Into Her Life
“I imagine all that pain just going down the drain. Sometimes, there’s a little ring around the tub and I’m like, ‘ooh, look at all that negativity.’ I call it programming the water. I program the water to get me jobs. I program the water to bring me adventures. Whatever energy you put out, that’s what you get back.”
On Getting Into Agriculture
“I got some land in Eritrea. I’m about to be a full-blown farmer. About to open this grocery store in South Central [Los Angeles]. We’re going to have Black-owned products from Black farmers in there. That’s going to be dope.”
On How She Felt After Her Big Chop
“It’s really important to know who you are, to know every nook and cranny of your body, and that’s the one part of my body I didn’t know. Baby, best feeling I ever felt in my whole entire life. The most sensations I ever felt. The most alive I ever felt. And then I was jealous of every bald-headed man I’ve ever seen. When you touch the back of your head, you feel it in the back of your feet. Then you go outside, the sun is shining, and it feels like this warm hug around your head—just deliciousness.”
Photographer: Jason Kim for Byrdie
Tiffany Haddish on Advocating for Herself
“I tell people I want to be paid like I got a pink penis from Australia. I want to get paid because I know that if I’m getting paid a certain amount, that’s going to raise the price for everybody. And I want to be done by 50. Not done with life, but I want to relax. I want to enjoy all the fruits of my labor. I want to sit back and eat plums and pomegranates. So I got a lot of work to do.”
On Being Fake
“When I was trying to be something I wasn’t, my soul was screaming at me. ‘What are we doing? This is not who we are. Stop it! Stop pretending b–h. Be you. You might actually find somebody that really loves you."
To read the interview in full, check out Byrdie.
Featured image by Amy Sussman/WireImage
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