The emotional politics of limerence in romantic comedy films

Abstract

<p>When we discuss falling in love, we tend to use terms that point to a division in thinking and feeling. Consider, for instance, the phrase 'my head wants one thing but my heart wants another'. The experience of falling in love is not simply a change in our thoughts about another" it is a marked biological shift, one that is felt. In the literature on the psychophysiology of pair-forming and attachment, the distinctive intensity of those changes is referred to as a period of 'limerence'. Dorothy Tennov coined the term in Love and Limerence, referencing a pattern in subjects' self-reported descriptions of falling in love: a state of intrusive obsessive thinking and intensity of passionate feelings toward a limerent object (a partner or love interest), typically lasting anywhere from a couple of weeks to several years.[1] The romantic experience of 'being in love' is distinguished from love as a long-term, pair-maintaining care for another's welfare.[2] Because limerence is a space of intensified emotion more so than logical deliberation, it appears ripe for narrative representation, as storytelling modes introduce resources for representing phenomenal experience that argumentation might describe, yet not truly reflect the dynamic feeling of" but crucially, screen fiction also offers a simulative space for attaching meaning to one's emotional responses, and then querying their relation to emotions we might experience in the world.</p>