TheAnxiousMystic

Relationship education

Limerence Test: A Free Self-Reflection

Twelve questions, answered privately in your browser. Before you start, one thing worth knowing: there is no validated limerence test — not here, and not anywhere else that claims one.

By The Anxious Mystic Editorial TeamPublished

A structured reflection, not a test

Twelve questions about the pattern

Private by design: your answers stay in this browser tab. Nothing is saved, and nothing is sent to our server. Closing the page discards them.

Answer for the last month, about one specific person. There are no right answers and the total is not a score against a norm — it exists only to show you the shape of your own responses in one place.

  1. 1. Thoughts about this person arrive without my choosing them, several times a day.
  2. 2. My mood for the day can be set by whether they contacted me.
  3. 3. I re-read or replay our conversations looking for meaning I might have missed.
  4. 4. I rehearse imagined future scenes with them that feel better than our real interactions.
  5. 5. I check their profile, activity, or messages more often than I would admit out loud.
  6. 6. Small ambiguous signals — a reply time, an emoji, a glance — feel highly significant.
  7. 7. I find it hard to recall their ordinary flaws without deliberately trying.
  8. 8. I have rearranged my time, route, or plans to increase the chance of contact.
  9. 9. The uncertainty about how they feel is more painful than a clear no would be.
  10. 10. Other relationships and interests have quietly shrunk during this period.
  11. 11. I feel relief when they respond, and the relief does not last long.
  12. 12. I have tried to stop this on my own and not been able to.
0 of 12 answered

Why there is no real limerence test

A validated psychological instrument requires years of work: item development, testing across large and representative samples, checks that it measures one coherent thing, evidence that it predicts something, and norms so a given score can be interpreted. Limerence has almost none of this.

Dorothy Tennov named the experience in 1979 and described its features from interviews. For roughly four decades after that, very little formal measurement work followed. The LQ-11 is a genuine step forward, but it was built on two self-selected samples — people who sought out a limerence study — which is a real limitation when the goal is to describe a general population.

This is not a reason to dismiss your experience. It is a reason to be suspicious of anything that converts it into a number and hands the number authority.

The features the questions are looking at

The twelve items above group loosely into four things people consistently describe. Reading them as themes is more useful than reading the total.

Intrusive thinking

Thoughts arrive unbidden and frequently. This is the feature most people notice first, and the one most often mistaken for depth of feeling.

Mood dependence

Your emotional state tracks their signals. A reply lifts the day; silence sets it. The swing is usually larger than the signal justifies.

Idealisation

Their ordinary flaws become hard to hold in mind. Gaps in what you actually know get filled with something better than the available evidence.

Loss of agency

Checking, re-reading, and rearranging your life around possible contact continue after you have sincerely decided to stop. This is the feature that most distinguishes limerence from an intense crush.

Things a high total does not mean

  • It does not mean the feeling is fake. Limerence is not the opposite of love and does not disqualify real affection. It describes a pattern of attention, not the worth of the person or the bond.
  • It does not mean you have a disorder. Limerence is not in the DSM. If your answers describe something compulsive and costly, that is worth discussing with a professional — but this page has not identified a condition.
  • It does not mean the relationship is doomed or destined. Intensity is not evidence about the future in either direction.
  • It does not tell you what they feel. Nothing about your internal state is information about theirs.

If it looked familiar

The most useful next question

Not how limerent am I, but is this the first time. A single episode under the right conditions is unremarkable. A recurring pattern across different people over years usually points upstream, toward how you relate to uncertainty and availability in general.

If the second sounds closer, start with limerence and anxious attachment. If you mainly want the loop to quieten down, how to get over limerence is the practical one.

When to speak to someone

Consider a licensed mental-health professional if the preoccupation is affecting sleep, work, eating, finances, or other relationships; if the intrusive thinking feels compulsive rather than merely painful; if it has persisted through several genuine attempts to reduce it; or if it is pushing you toward contact the other person has not welcomed. If you may harm yourself or someone else, contact your local emergency or crisis service now.

Sources and evidence notes

Evidence checked July 25, 2026. The questions above were written by our editorial team, informed by features described in the sources below. They are not drawn from, scored against, or validated by any published instrument, and we make no claim that they measure anything.

  1. Development and Validation of the Limerence Questionnaire (LQ-11)

    Marshall et al., Psychological Reports (2025). The closest thing to a research instrument for limerence. It is an early validation study built on two self-selected samples — a starting point for researchers, not a diagnostic tool for the public.

  2. Love and Limerence: The Experience of Being in Love

    Dorothy Tennov (official publisher page). The 1979 book that named the experience and described its recurring features. Our questions are informed by those descriptions; they are not taken from a validated scale.

  3. Treatment of Limerence Using a Cognitive Behavioral Approach: A Case Study

    Wyant, Journal of Patient Experience (2021). States plainly that validated screening instruments for limerence do not currently exist. We rely on that statement rather than claiming otherwise.

  4. What is the DSM?

    American Psychiatric Association (reviewed April 2025). Limerence does not appear as a diagnosis in the DSM. Nothing on this page can identify a disorder.