An Early Warning Sign: Attentional Convergence Moments
Hi hi.
YMMV and IANAD.
Introduction
I want to talk about a certain feeling you can get in the moment when you see a particular person for the very first time. This is something I've realized in my self reflections recently and I've seen others post about similar phenomena in this sub. I've heard it described as a moment where "the rest of the world disappeared," or "they seemed more real than everything else," and in my case it was a feeling like "time and space somehow bent around them." In all cases I think it's more of a mental feeling than a spatial or sensory one, even though it's often easiest to describe in spatial/sensory terms.
I'm sure it doesn't happen to everyone who's prone to limerence as limerence can have very heterogenous causes, but my hypothesis -- if you want to call it that -- is there might be a certain psychological profile that this is more likely to happen to, and hopefully being aware of it could be a tool for us to avoid limerence before it gets out of hand. The reports are all from my own experience, but hopefully you can understand or maybe relate.
I've had two LOs in my life, and this experience (which I will refer to hereafter as an Attentional Convergence Moment, or ACM) has only happened to me twice in my life, once for each LO.
The Case For the Reality
I want to be clear up top that what I'm talking about is not a "love at first sight" phenomenon, and I'm not inventing the memory retrospectively based on later experiences, as I will explain in greater detail now.
Both times I experienced an ACM, my reaction was not one of attraction, either physical or romantic; I just kind of had a moment of "huh, that was weird." The first time it happened I actually forgot about it for a while. That LO was a coworker and she genuinely didn't register as anything other than an NPC to me for several months before I developed an interest in her and then fell into limerence. That's what I mean when I say it wasn't anything like love at first sight. It wasn't intrinsically attached to a conscious desire to get to know her or be with her (although it was very easy to add that baggage to it after the fact). I actually wasn't even remotely attracted to her physically until later when I formed an emotional bond.
The main reason I'm confident that it isn't a retrospective construct of memory is because of the second time it happened. That time, right after my moment of "huh, that was weird," I had a moment of "oh shit, that was just like what happened when I first saw LO #1." The fact that I definitively recognized it in that moment is my own evidence that it's a real psychological state that points to a real brain state.
Speculation On What's Happening Here
So again, not a doctor and especially not a psychologist. Just a schlub with some interest in this kind of thing who's trying to iron out a concept.
It's pretty well accepted that the human brain can process a huge number of sensory cues very quickly in the background, and most of that never makes it to the level of conscious thought. We can evaluate people based on qualities about them that we could never put into words. That's why sometimes we just "have a bad feeling" about someone, for example, and the odds are typically better than chance that that feeling is right even though we can't say why.
I think the reason that some people might first experience an ACM for someone they later develop limerence for is because they subconsciously notice very innocuous-seeming details (perhaps posture, eye movement, style of dress, tone of voice, etc.) that point to a very specific cluster of psychological traits, which the brain then extrapolates out into a profile that it finds interesting, again unconsciously.
Then, if we're in just the right (read: highly susceptible) mental state and presented with just the right interesting profile, our brain screams "pay attention to this person!" and our attentional system very dramatically switches from "floodlight mode" to "spotlight mode", moving from a pretty even spread across our entire surroundings to intense focus on this individual. The reason that we then consciously interpret it as an unusual moment and give it the descriptions I listed in the beginning (and other similarly strange ones) is because, consciously, we don't know why this attentional reorganization has occurred; this person isn't doing anything unusual, there's no danger, we have no rational reason to be alerted to them, so we naturally make up a description and story that fits our confusion.
That's how we go from bored and unfulfilled (or whatever the catalyst mental state might be) to seeing a specific person to "the rest of the world disappeared" in an instant, before we even have an actual interaction with them.
Relating Back To My Own Story of Limerence
Once again, your mileage may vary. This is just my own experience.
So as I said, I've experienced an ACM twice and both times I fell into limerence for the person afterward. For the purpose of this post I'll try to keep the anecdote to a minimum and focus on the connection to the broader picture.
Notably, both of these women had a lot of traits in common that are not shared by any of my ordinary romantic interests, and that I couldn't have consciously deduced by looking at them. None of these traits are all that uncommon on their own, but taken together it's extremely unlikely to be entirely coincidental. I won't list all of them but a couple examples are being a single mother to a young daughter, having very male-coded interests, and having been a scene/emo kid many years ago.
I think the connection here is that the commonalities I've noticed between them are like third or fourth order traits that either arose from or helped shape the same pieces of their psychological profile that my subconscious was able to pick out at a glance from their behavioral micro-signals. I can only guess about exactly what those pieces are at a fundamental level (maybe dishonest self-image, heavily burdened by responsibility, high-performing autism with a manic streak?), but I now understand that whatever they are they're the flame to my moth. That is the exact type of person who I would die just to amuse and who will never give me what I need.
Both times I experienced limerence I was already in an LTR. The first time, it blew up my life and I was at my lowest point for years after. The second time, I still didn't have a full understanding of what was happening but I had enough mindfulness and motivation (coupled with luck) to cut off contact and stop it before it became unmanageable. I'm sure you can guess which LTR I'm now happily married to and which one is probably still trying to cast curses on me to this day.
The second time could have gone very differently if I hadn't recognized the ACM and had that in the back of my mind.
Conclusion
One more time; say it with me: YMMV and IANAD.
I don't know if I'm ever going to experience an ACM again, but I now have rules for if I do. As long as I'm married interactions are limited to what's absolutely necessary to maintain professionalism. If I'm ever unfortunate enough to be single again I wouldn't be quite as strict as that, but I will carry around a huge bright orange danger sticker and slap it on their forehead whenever they talk to me. Either way I will never look them up online and I will never do or say anything just because I think they might like it.
If you're susceptible to limerence (which, you're here, so.) I would suggest you watch out for an ACM, i.e. any inner feeling when you see another person that reads like "the rest of the world disappeared", "space and time bent around them," etc. It could be an early warning sign that your brain is gearing up to go into obsessive overdrive.
And finally, if you've experienced anything like what I've described, please share. I'm honestly doing this mainly to help myself completely think it through, but I would also love to hear other people's stories of this if they're out there. Or just tell me I'm crazy, I'd love to hear that too.
Regardless, good luck, be safe, godspeed. 🫡