Love in Times of Limerence
Are we killing our ability to love?
“The eros conquers depression.”
—Byung-Chul Han, Agony of the Eros
The Tinder abyss
If you believe the depths of Reddit (or any of your single friends, for that matter), modern dating has become a true abyss. Ghosting, breadcrumbing, love bombing, orbiting, gaslighting, benching, catfishing — if a future civilization were to excavate our archives, they might think they’d found a modern version of Dante’s Inferno. And yet, we move our tormented bodies through another circle of this hell.
Remember the promise of the Internet? The pioneers who believed in a decentralized, free society, where civilized people joyfully collaborate? Well, with dating apps, it seems like just another digital promise turned sour, despite the best preconditions: Today, we can reach anyone at any time. We can meet more people in a week than previous generations met in a year. And still, we end up in the abyss of Tinder & Co.
Why does love, in an age of limerence, feel increasingly out of reach? And more uncomfortably: why does it feel like we’re losing the ability to fall into it at all?
The marketization of intimacy
A widely accepted explanation comes from sociologist Eva Illouz, who argues that love has adopted the logic of the market. The breakdown of social class boundaries, intertwined with technological progress—especially in the form of dating apps—has dramatically expanded the field of possible partners. What was once shaped by proximity, coincidence, and social circles has become a near-infinite catalogue of profiles.
With that expansion comes a shift in behavior. When options multiply, commitment becomes more difficult. Each decision carries the implicit cost of all the alternatives one is giving up. The result is a subtle but pervasive transformation: we begin to approach love less as something we fall into, and more as something we evaluate, compare, and optimize. Or, to speak with Illouz, we’re witnessing the “penetration of the economy into the machinery of desire.”
Illouz is right about this. Anyone who has spent time on dating platforms recognizes the logic immediately. People blur into each other, conversations become interchangeable, and attraction is filtered through an ever-present sense that something—or someone—slightly better might be one swipe away.
And yet, this explanation, persuasive as it is, does not go far enough. I believe that the difficulty of modern love cannot be reduced to an excess of choice or the domination of an economic mindset within the realm of desire. I believe the Tinder abyss points to a deeper shift in how we relate not only to others, but to ourselves.
The rise of the psychological self
Consider how we talk about relationships today. Concepts like attachment styles, emotional availability, or trauma responses have moved from clinical contexts into everyday language. It is no longer unusual to hear someone explain a breakup in terms of anxious attachment or avoidant behavior. What was once the domain of trained professionals has become part of ordinary self-understanding.
This development is not, in itself, problematic. It reflects a broader cultural shift toward introspection and emotional awareness. The sociologist Philip Rieff described this figure as the psychological man: an individual who understands themselves primarily through their inner life, who seeks not salvation or duty, but well-being and balance.
In many ways, this represents progress. We are better at identifying harmful patterns, more capable of articulating our needs, and more willing to take responsibility for our emotional lives. But something else has changed alongside this: we have not only become aware of our psyche, but we have begun to manage it constantly.
Algorithmic introspection
This management is shaped not only by formal psychology but by a vast, informal ecosystem of advice that circulates through social media. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have turned psychological language into a kind of everyday currency. Terms like toxic, narcissistic, red flag, or green flag are used with increasing frequency, often detached from their original context.
Some of this content is grounded in legitimate insights. Much of it is simplified, exaggerated, or only loosely connected to established theory. But in practice, the distinction matters less than the effect: we are constantly being trained to interpret and evaluate.
Every interaction becomes a data point. A delayed reply is no longer just a delay; it becomes a signal. A moment of distance is not simply felt; it is categorized. We learn to scan behavior, to detect patterns, to anticipate risk.
The result is a form of algorithmic introspection. We do not simply experience relationships—we monitor them, often in real time, through a framework of learned concepts that promise clarity but often produce anxiety. And within that structure, something begins to recede.
The erosion of the other
The philosopher Byung-Chul Han has argued that the crisis of love today is not only a matter of too many choices, but of a more fundamental loss: the erosion of the Other.
To encounter another person as an “Other” means to face something that cannot be fully predicted or controlled. It involves difference, opacity, and a degree of resistance to our own expectations. Love, in this sense, is not simply about finding compatibility; it is about entering into a relation that exceeds our own frameworks.
But this is precisely what becomes difficult when every encounter is filtered through self-protection. When we meet someone, we do not approach them openly; we approach them with a set of criteria. We assess their behavior, measure it against what we have learned, and adjust our own responses accordingly. We do not meet them as they are, but as a possibility to be evaluated. And in doing so, we remain, in a subtle but decisive way, alone.
The stability paradox
This leads to a more uncomfortable hypothesis: What if the problem is not that we are too broken to love, but that we are too stable?
We have learned to regulate ourselves, to maintain boundaries, and to recognize patterns early. We avoid situations that might destabilize us, and we are quick to withdraw when something feels off. In this sense, we have become highly competent at managing our emotional lives.
But love is not a state that can be fully managed. To love someone is to allow the other to affect you in ways that are not entirely predictable. It involves a degree of exposure that cannot be fully controlled or preemptively secured. There is always a moment in which one steps beyond what is guaranteed.
Increasingly, we avoid that moment. We remain intact, but that intactness comes at a cost. The more we protect ourselves from being overwhelmed, the less we allow ourselves to be moved at all. What disappears is not the possibility of interaction, but the depth of it.
This is what I would call the stability paradox: the more effectively we manage our emotional lives, the less capable we become of entering into experiences that might transform us.
Love as recognition
This shift has consequences that extend beyond individual relationships. Philosophers such as Hegel and Honneth have argued that love plays a foundational role in the formation of the self. It is through being recognized—through being cared for and responded to—that we come to understand ourselves as individuals.
The earliest instance of this is the relationship between an infant and its caregiver. The infant is entirely dependent, exposed in every possible way. It cannot regulate itself, cannot secure its own survival. And yet, through this very exposure, it enters into a relation that allows it to develop a sense of self. Autonomy, thus, does not emerge in isolation; it emerges from a relationship in which one is, at least initially, not autonomous at all, but significantly exposed and vulnerable.
This dynamic continues, in more complex forms, throughout adult life. To love and to be loved is to participate in a process of mutual recognition in which both individuals are, in some sense, changed. It is not merely an addition to an already stable identity; it is part of how that identity is formed and reshaped.
If we lose the capacity to enter into such relations—if we remain at a distance, protected and self-contained—then something essential is weakened. Not only our relationships, but our sense of ourselves.
Breaking the surface
To love someone is not simply to understand them. It is to be altered by them. This is the aspect of love that modern culture tends to sidestep. We are encouraged to stay regulated, to remain within ourselves, to recognize potential harm early, and to withdraw before it can affect us too deeply. These are, in many contexts, valuable capacities. But they also shape how we approach intimacy.
We become careful. We observe ourselves as we feel. We adjust, correct, and, when necessary, retreat. In doing so, we maintain a certain continuity of the self. We remain, as it were, intact. But intactness is not the same as openness.
Without a willingness to be affected—without the possibility of being unsettled, even disrupted—love loses its transformative, its transcendent dimension. It becomes something we can integrate into our lives without being fundamentally changed by it. The more we succeed in protecting ourselves, the less we are touched by others. And the less we are touched, the less we love.
Interestingly enough, at the very bottom of Dante’s hell is not a raging firestorm; its innermost layer is a frozen lake, the entire absence of warmth and feeling. Sometimes I wonder if we’re slowly on our way there, boundary by boundary, green flag by green flag. In these moments, I’d like to say: Let’s break the ice, and fall in love—truly, hopelessly, mad and irrevocably, in such a beautifully messy way that only we humans can do.