Limerence

Lyrics

[Intro]
(piano — a short ostinato figure, repeating, repeating, the loop established immediately)
(it doesn't develop — it just repeats, the way the thought repeats)

[Verse 1]
Limerence is not love
Love is the house
Limerence is driving past the house
At 3 AM
For the sixth time
With the headlights off
And calling it devotion

The dopamine reward prediction loop
Has found a slot machine
Shaped like a person
And the lever is the maybe
And the maybe is the cruelest currency
The brain has ever minted

Tôi biết vì tôi đã ở đó — I know because I was there
Checking my phone with the diligence
Of a cardiologist
Monitoring a patient
Who is also the disease

[Pre-Chorus]
(strings enter, circling, the ostinato never stopping)
And the OCD-adjacent circuitry
Fires the same way —
The intrusive thought
The compulsive check
The momentary relief
That lasts exactly long enough
To reload the doubt

[Chorus]
(building — but building in a circle, not upward, never resolving)
Limerence, limerence
The reward loop wearing love's perfume
Limerence, limerence
The dopamine slot machine in the next room
It's not the person — it's the uncertainty
The maybe that the nucleus accumbens can't quit
Love says I see you
Limerence says I see the space
Where you might sit

[Verse 2]
(just voice and the piano loop, closer, confessional)
Dorothy Tennov named it in 1979
She interviewed five hundred people
And found the same machine in every one —
The involuntary obsessive fixation
That has the manners of a house guest
Who has moved their furniture in
While you were sleeping
And now it's their apartment
And you're the guest
And the guest can't leave
Because the door is made of maybe
And maybe doesn't have a handle
On the inside

Tôi yêu một người theo kiểu limerence một lần
I loved someone in the limerence way once
And the loved is wrong
And the someone is wrong
What I did was orbit
And the orbiting
Was a full-time position
That offered no benefits
And required the entire circulatory system
As collateral

[Chorus]
Limerence, limerence
The reward loop wearing love's perfume
Limerence, limerence
The dopamine slot machine in the next room
It's not the person — it's the uncertainty
The maybe that the nucleus accumbens can't quit
Love says I see you
Limerence says I see the space
Where you might sit

[Bridge]
(the piano loop finally — finally — changes one note. Just one. The spell cracking.)
The cure for limerence
Is not the person saying yes
The cure is the maybe dying

And the maybe dies
When the answer arrives —
Either answer — yes or no —
Because limerence doesn't feed on love
It feeds on the gap
Between the question and the door

(the loop changes another note)

Và một ngày — and one day
The loop just stops
Not because you healed
But because the machine
Ran out of maybe
The way a slot machine
Runs out of someone
Else's money

And you stand up
And the room is yours again
And the furniture is yours again
And the door has a handle
And the handle
Was always there

(the loop stops. Silence. The first silence since the song began.)

[Outro]
(piano — not the loop, something new, open, a chord that breathes)
Limerence
(softly, free of it, looking back)
Tôi đã thoát ra — I got out
Not through the door
Through the maybe dying
(one muted trumpet note — far away, the person who was never really there)
(silence — clean, unlocked, done)