Stop Romanticizing NRE

As all three readers of this blog know, we here at SoT take a pretty cautious view of what polyamorists refer to as “New Relationship Energy” (NRE), otherwise known as “limerance” in the psychology world and “infatuation” to the rest of us.  We’re certainly written about it enough, and it was clear that in our situation, it was something we were hoping to avoid.

Whoops.  

I’m seeing someone, and yes, fairly extreme limerance on my part is involved.  And it’s just the worst.  I don’t feel in control of my thoughts, I’m constantly distracted, and the extreme highs and lows are exhausting. Even if logically, I understand that I am having irrational thoughts, that doesn’t stop me from experiencing the emotions that said cognitions lead to me to.  Here’s a brief guide to where my head’s been out in the last three weeks:

-Not receiving an email within the space of a day or sometimes even hours?  He’s obviously lost all interest in me.

-Sends me a nice email?  Walkin’ on air for hours.

-I am probably the worst wife ever, I should probably cry about the guilt a lot

-Then I should spend hours asking my husband to analyze what’s going on and tell me that my limerance object is totally into me/not into me at all

-We should probably go to Berlin together as soon as possible even though I have no idea if we share the same travel interests and have had only one overnight to date

-Thinking it’s a good idea to force a “where are we at” conversation way too early into it and freak out and say we shouldn’t see each other anymore before giving him time to respond appropriately

-Time to over-analyze everything he says for signs that he’s totes into me/totes not into me

-Making like 5 mixtapes for him that I will certainly never send

-This is the best/worst thing I have experienced in a while.  Whether it’s the best or the worst thing can change within the space of 5 minutes, for no particular reason.

To make myself feel better, I started doing some research on this state and what I found was not very encouraging.

Psychologists define limerance is defined as “an involuntary state of mind which results from a romantic attraction to another person combined with an overwhelming, obsessive need to have one’s feelings reciprocated.”  Experts believe it is biochemical in nature, functioning similarly to the way obsessive-compulsive disorder and addiction in the brain.  When you read through the symptoms of being in a limerant state, it’s clear to see how irrational, and, well, silly it is.  But remember that involuntary part?  Yeah.  You can’t control your thoughts.

There is a semantics issue here as well.  Polyamorist author Franklin Veaux claims limerance and NRE are actually different things - NRE being just positive, of course, and limerance being a little more of a grey area.  Even some limerance experts make a distinction between being limerant and “true romantic love”.  Frankly, I’m not sure I’m buying it.  Taking the same chemical reaction and splitting hairs to validate a positive outcome of limerance doesn’t help us rationally evaluate the state for what it is.

In a situation where you’re genuinely compatible with the object of your limerance and your feelings are reciprocated, it runs concurrently with the beginning of the falling-in-love process.  Eventually romantic love develops, and that grows stronger as the limerance fades over the months.  Then, in theory, you wind up in a healthy relationship.  That’s certainly been the case for my own marriage.

But even that happy ending doesn’t negate the fact that limerance is irrational and blinds you to reality.  I’m lucky that I experienced limerance for someone who was so perfect for me, but I’ve also experienced it for people who most certainly were not, which lead to getting into relationships that were very unhealthy.  Had I not been blinded initially by limerance, I would’ve been able to perceive that person wasn’t a good partner for me much earlier than I did.

Of course, that sounds like I’m shirking responsibility for bad decision-making, but I’m not.  I’m older and wiser now, and most importantly, aware of what limerance is and how it functions.  And I know I can control my actions, even if in a limerant state I feel almost completely unable to control my obsessive thoughts.  I can logically tell myself that you cannot fall in love in a matter of weeks, or even a few months, because you cannot know someone well enough to truly love them in such a short amount of time..  I can remind myself of what real romantic love feels like and understand that just because my body is telling me one thing my head knows better.  

What worries me is the celebration of this state in polyamorous culture, however.  For starters, limerance is inherently selfish.  It is not unconditional love or genuine regard for another person, although it’s easy to lie to yourself and say that it is.  The state is best evoked by the poets of the band “Cheap Trick” in their classic song “I You To Want Me.”  Note how many times the words “I” and “me” are used in that song.  

Limerance desires reciprocation above all else.  It’s ego-driven, and the opposite of selfless love.  This excellent blog post explains specifically the selfishness of an infatuated person. And yet polyamorist writers say things like “NRE is transcendent,” and “New relationship energy should always be celebrated,” and then avoid addressing the topic in too much detail.  Everyone’s favorite poly book of the moment, “More Than Two” is over 700 pages long, yet spends exactly two pages discussing NRE, and is largely very positive about it, just adding a few cautionary notes to not neglect your existing relationships while experiencing it.  That seems insufficient, given the degree to which NRE both creates and sometimes destroys relationships.

I’m not trying to say that limerance is bad, though.  It just is, and for most people, there’s no avoiding it unless you avoid other human beings.  What is bad is taking this involuntary, obsessive, crazy-making state and confusing it with love, or even with the beginning of love.  Just because limerance is something most people experience as they’re falling in love does not mean that limerance itself is the process of falling in love.  Limerance is chemicals in your brain trying to get you to make babies with another person, basically (no surprise so many safer-sex slip-ups also happen when in the throes of NRE).

It’s often referred to as a drug-like state, and I think we can take that metaphor further.  People can experience great, wonderful feelings while on drugs, and have insights that seem well, transcendent at the time.  (Oh hello, ecstasy!)  But those feelings and realizations are inorganic, they are literally being created by altered brain chemistry.  However, if an insight can actually be taken from that experience and applied fully to your life when you’re sober, that’s great.  But that didn’t come from the drug, that came from you.  When you’re on the drug, you’re not able to distinguish what is real that you’re feeling and what isn’t.  Or you can even have realizations that may be true but simply cannot be applied to your life while sober.  (Which reminds me of the time I decided there was no reason I should ever have to feel physical pain, because it’s simply an electric current being transmitted by nerves that our brains then interpret as an unpleasant sensation.  But with enough brain control you could interpret that signal as neutral.  Great idea!  Except it’s impossible, whoops.)  My point being that you can be limerant and actually falling in love with someone, but because your brain is “high” it’s impossible to tell in the moment whether you are or not.  You just have to wait until you’re “sober” to figure it out because being in limerance is literally an altered state.

The only way to experience this state without neglecting your life, work, hobbies, friends, and most importantly, your existing relationships is to be extremely aware of the irrationality of it - and then do your best to behave as if you are not experiencing it as much as you can (which will probably mean you’re only talking about your limerance object way too much, as opposed to the way way way way WAY too much you would be if you weren’t being self-conscious about it.)

So I’m against romanticizing NRE or at this point, even calling it NRE.  Referring to it as energy that comes from a relationship elevates the crazy to the same level as a love relationship, which it clearly is not.  It’s fine to enjoy it or rather, not enjoy it if you’re a control freak like me, but don’t call it something it’s not.

NRE Isn't Why We Fall In Love, But It Might Be Why We Break Up

For years, my biggest issue with polyamory, or more specifically, poly advice, was that the incredibly destructive, relationship-ending chemical rodeo known as “New Relationship Energy” (also known as “infatuation” if you’re level-headed, “limerence” if you’re a psychologist, or “love” if you’re an idiot) was downplayed consistently.  Many poly problems seemed to stem from bad choices or inconsiderate behavior made by one partner in NRE, while the other partner has to deal with the insecurity and jealousy of seeing their SO acting like a crazy person and showing little interest in them.  Feeling like you’re losing your partner to another is the primal fear that prevents many people from exploring poly and haunts many who do.  When you have a partner in full-on NRE, many of those fears seem to be coming true - because, maybe, they are!

For years, most people have viewed NRE, or whatever you want to call it, as crazy chemical drug that induces people to begin relationships for the sake of makin’ babies.  However, an article on The Quartz brings up the idea that maybe the point of NRE isn’t so much to get into new relationships, but rather to get out of an existing one.

It sounds crazy, but it also makes sense.  You don’t need NRE to start a relationship - it helps, but many solid relationships exist without NRE having ever been in play.  And certainly many relationships end without NRE for another factoring in.  But when one person leaves someone for another?  NRE is always in the mix.

The age old question in sexuality and relationship research was whether humans are fundamentally monogamous or not.  There are extremists on both sides arguing their case furiously, but reality seems to be more complicated.  A lot of evidence is starting to point towards the fact that when the status of the sexes are relatively equal, serial monogamy will be the norm.  This article argues that may be the way nature intended it to be.

I’m wary of the naturalistic fallacy no matter who it’s coming from - Conservatives on one side, Christopher Ryan of “Sex at Dawn” on the other.  From a common sense perspective though, ending an otherwise happy, stable relationship does seem strange, until you consider the idea that NRE might exist to encourage us to do just that.  

If there’s some truth to this hypothesis, it might help explain why poly relationships do seem, on the whole, more unstable than monogamous ones.  I know this will get the poly readers I don’t have huffy, but as much as we all love to hate him (and we do kinda hate him on this blog), Dan Savage famously remarked that he’s been to plenty of poly commitment ceremonies, but not a whole lot of poly three-year anniversary parties.  He has a point, and the point isn’t that polyamory is bad or invalid, but it is an inherently destabilizing relationship model.  Shira B. Katz, formerly of Pedestrian Polyamory (which ended when her marriage ended due to...NRE) and currently of Life On The Swingset and an enthusiastic and proud poly person has advocated that line many times as a positive, as does Franklin Veaux.  Two people who are famous poly experts who don’t put a lot of value in established relationships.  It’s not hard to find monogamous or “ish” people who have been together for 10 years.  It is quite difficult to find poly people who have maintained more than one relationship for 10 years.  (And when you do, it’s often a closed triad or V, which for some reason seems to be a more stable structure than others.)

These musings only matter if relationship stability is your primary goal when navigating an open relationship.  It isn’t for everyone, and that’s fine.  Many polyamorous folk look down on those of us who value that stability as engaging in “couple supremacy” and I say, hey, we are all free to choose what’s most important to us in life.  My current relationship is the most important thing to me outside of my basic personhood.  I know I could survive and thrive without my husband, but I just don’t want to, not if it could be helped.  We know, being in an open relationship, that NRE is possible.  Hell, I found myself in crazy, one-sided NRE with a friend that I simply had a crush on.  Despite my deep commitment to my husband, and the fact that I did not find this guy a good match in any other sense, I found myself indulging in fantasies of running away with my crush object.  It’s crazy, it defies reason, or even what I really want in my life, but that’s NRE for you.  It’s not logical.  And like all NRE, it passed, I’m really, honestly glad that he never made a pass at me, and I kept my feelings hidden from him.   It would have been incredibly destructive to the thing I hold most dear, and for what?  Indulging in a temporary chemical high with someone that I’m fundamentally incompatible with in a way that could have very likely harmed the relationship I care the most about?

I’m not saying that being poly is inherently bad, but I am saying it’s inherently destabilizing.   If maintaining an existing relationship is a primary goal of yours, opening yourself up to the possibility with NRE is risky, no matter what poly advice gurus will tell you.  It’s up to you to negotiate responsibly the line between risk and reward.  Tread carefully.