Everyone Is in a State of Limerence: Between Who We Were and Who We’ll Be
By Natalie McCarty
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There is a particular ache that defines this chapter of life. It hums beneath everything. It lives in half-decorated new apartments, in sporadic plans for a weekend brunch, in the way friends speak about the past as if it were a place you could still visit if you drove far enough.
Everyone, it seems, is in a state of limerence—not just for people, but for versions of themselves, for moments already slipping into memory, for lives that feel almost, but not quite, formed.
Limerence is often defined as romantic fixation, an emotional limbo fueled by longing and projection. But this version is broader, more atmospheric. It’s a collective condition. A fixation on becoming. On what was. On what might be. On the fragile now.
We are living in the in-between. Between college towns that shaped us into ourselves and cities that are asking us to prove who we are. Between childhood bedrooms still intact—posters, yearbooks, old trophies—and apartments with thin walls and mismatched silverware. Between knowing people deeply and no longer knowing where they’ll be next year. Between being held by familiarity and craving the unknown.
This stage is delicate in a way no one warns you about… those damn early 20s! It is strange and tender and awful. There is beauty here, yes, but it is the kind that bruises when pressed too hard.
Apartments become holding cells for identity. They are temporary by design, yet filled with meaning anyway. Houseplants you hope will survive the year. Furniture is chosen less for longevity than for vibe. Art taped instead of framed. Everything feels provisional, including the people inside them. You are living somewhere, but not settled. Loving people, but not rooted. Building something, but unsure what it will become.
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Friendships, too, exist in limerence. You love each other intensely, almost desperately, because you can sense the impermanence. Every dinner feels like a major event. Every shared cigarette or late-night confession carries the unspoken awareness that this version of closeness may not survive distance, time, or change. You document everything because you can already feel the moment becoming a memory while you’re still inside it.
There’s a specific grief that comes with watching people you love become different versions of themselves—not worse, simply altered by time. It isn’t born from distance or resentment, but from love. Life continues, and with it comes a soft ache. You celebrate their becoming while quietly grieving the effortlessness you once shared. No one is at fault. They’re just growing up.
That’s the cruelty of it.
Childhood homes remain frozen, like museums curated by parents who don’t realize they’re preserving ghosts. You return and feel both comforted and alien. You are grateful it exists and unsettled by how little it fits you now. It holds a version of you that feels intimate but unreachable, like a photograph you can’t step back into.
This is the reality of limerence as a life phase: you are constantly aware of the passage of time. Hyper-aware. You feel everything as it happens and again as it passes. Nothing feels neutral. Everything feels like a last time or a first time or a rehearsal for something more permanent.
Past Lives (2023)
And yet, there is something holy about it.
To be in a state of becoming is to be porous. To let the world in. To not yet be calcified by certainty.
There is tenderness in not knowing, in choosing people and places without guarantees. In building a life from instinct rather than instruction. In loving hard despite the risk of change.
This limerence is a threshold and a fragile bridge between who you were and who you will be.. It asks you to sit with contradiction: to be grateful and grieving, excited and afraid, rooted and restless—all at once.
Someday, stability may dull this edge. The ache may soften. The urgency may fade. You will belong somewhere more fully. But you may look back on this time with a longing that surprises you. Because there is nothing quite like the intimacy of not yet knowing. Like loving people while they are still becoming. Like standing in the middle of your life and feeling it move around you.
