Words
The Joys and Pitfalls of Archetypal Attraction and Its Ugly Cousin, Limerence
Words.
Words are important.
They seem like such a simple thing, but they may be one of the most complicated things in our universe.
It can be argued that communication is what allowed us to evolve to the point where we are now. It is what took us from simple hunter-gatherers to a sophisticated technological civilization. Whether that communication happens through sign language, spoken language, written language, or some other form entirely, it is how we express our most important concepts.
Words are consequential.
They are the core architecture of civilization. They are how we move thought from one mind to another. Words helped carry human beings to the moon. Thirty years before that, words helped ignite a horrific conflict that engulfed most of the world.
Words have tremendous power.
They can inspire. They can lift someone from the depths of despair to the heights of triumph. Words are how we create meaning, culture, memory, love, harm, healing, law, faith, art, and identity.
They can make you feel safe.
They can make you feel afraid.
They move us. They terrify us. They can convey love, hate, faith, joy, sadness, and grief. They can start wars, end marriages, build nations, break hearts, and preserve memory beyond death.
They can carry the truth.
Or they can carry lies.
Words are the doorway to everything worthwhile, as well as everything vile and despicable.
Words can kill. Or, more properly said, they can create the conditions under which human beings justify killing.
But words can also inspire. They can convey love. You can fall in love with someone’s words. In fact, communication is how romantic love is nourished.
But love is not only words. Love is thoughts and feelings conveyed through action. Caring means taking actions that bear love, that convey love, often without words at all.
Still, even then, it is communication. We describe those actions with words.
Words tell us so much about someone.
I have fallen in love with people’s words.
But one has to be careful, because words can be deceptive. Words can take us down rabbit holes. A person’s public words are not always an accurate reflection of their innermost being.
That is where actions come into play.
Without action, the power of words lies mostly in how they make you feel, and feelings can be manipulated.
But someone’s words, their communication, can still be powerful.
I have fallen in love with people’s words many times. I have read books that made me fall in love with an author’s ability to communicate. That does not mean I am in love with the person, but certainly with their thought process, their ability to convey that thought to others, and the concepts behind the words.
That is a powerful thing. Sometimes it is difficult to separate that from the person. I think, in some ways, that is what starts people here down the wrong path.
I have heard so many people say, “This is not a dating app,” and it is not a dating app.
Far from it.
One should be able to come into this space and convey their innermost thoughts without having to worry that they are going to get hit on, pursued, or asked for a date.
Words can awaken archetypal attraction, and archetypal attraction can easily be mistaken for love.
Before I go any further, let me acknowledge something important.
The term archetypal attraction is one I am using to describe a phenomenon I have observed. It is not a formal psychological term, nor am I a psychologist or mental health professional. What follows is simply my own attempt to describe an aspect of human attraction that I have experienced, reflected upon, and, so far, have not found adequately explained elsewhere.
I would define archetypal attraction this way:
Archetypal attraction is the powerful pull we can feel when someone appears to embody an internal ideal, familiar pattern, or symbolic image already living within us. We are drawn not only to the person, but to what they seem to represent.
The idea shares similarities with established psychological concepts such as projection, idealization, and transference, but I believe it describes something subtly different. Throughout this essay, I use the term in that sense.
Now, there is nothing wrong with falling in love with someone’s words. It can be exciting, electrifying. It can inspire you. It can help you understand yourself. It can make you feel less alone.
The key is: what are you doing with that feeling?
Are you building yourself up? Healing? Seeing yourself in someone else’s experience? Or are you building a false archetype in your mind around someone?
Because there is a difference between loving someone’s words and believing you have access to the person behind them.
If I love your words, yes, it means I love part of you. Maybe even the most important part of you. It means I see your point. I see what you are trying to convey. I find value in it.
But it does not mean I am romantically in love with you. It means I see you in a way that feels important and sacred. I think that is where the trouble can begin.
Because when we read someone’s words, especially words written from raw, unguarded places, we can begin to feel as if we know them. Not just understand them. Know them.
We see their grief, their longing, their tenderness, their humor, and their wounds. We see the shape of their inner world, or at least the part of it they have chosen to reveal.
If those words touch something lonely, hungry, or wounded in us, it can become very easy to confuse recognition with intimacy.
There is a word often used for the more consuming version of this: limerence.
Limerence is not simply admiration, attraction, or even archetypal attraction, though I can see them being conflated. Limerence is a state of intense preoccupation in which another person begins to occupy an outsized place in our emotional world. It often carries a longing for reciprocation, a dependence on signs of interest, and a tendency to turn ambiguity into something it is not. A response becomes disproportionately meaningful. Silence becomes painful because expectation has outrun reality. Small gestures begin carrying the weight of imagined intimacy.
Archetypal attraction can be powerful without becoming limerence. While they occupy some of the same space, they are not the same thing. Someone can awaken a familiar pattern, longing, or ideal inside us without our believing they are destined for us. We can feel the electricity and still understand that much of what we are responding to belongs to us. We can enjoy the feeling without needing it returned.
The danger begins when we stop recognizing the difference between the person and the idea we have constructed around them. When admiration becomes fixation, the actual human being can disappear beneath the archetype. We are no longer responding to who they are. We are responding to the person we have created from their words, appearance, voice, vulnerability, and whatever private hunger they happened to awaken in us. This is where limerence can begin, and yes, it can grow out of archetypal attraction.
That difference matters. You can be deeply moved by someone without wanting a relationship with them. You can feel affection, admiration, or attraction without asking anything from them at all. But when every interaction becomes evidence of a special connection, when we begin believing access has been granted simply because resonance exists, we have crossed into something else.
In other words, recognition is not intimacy, just as admiration is not a relationship, and resonance is not consent.
Someone can write something that warms your heart and touches you, yet still owe you nothing. That is the part I think some people miss here.
This place, at its best, allows people to speak from the deepest rooms of themselves. That is sacred and needs to be preserved. But the danger of sacred things is that we sometimes mistake being moved for being invited.
We are not always being invited. Sometimes we are simply being trusted with a glimpse. Someone is trusting us to see part of them, sometimes even the most important part. That trust should make us careful. It should be handled with sacred care.
So yes, love the words. Let them move you. Let them heal you. Let them teach you something about yourself. Let them remind you that another human being is out there somewhere, trying to shape pain, beauty, memory, and meaning into language.
But do not mistake the doorway for a claim, or the glimpse for possession.
Do not mistake the ache in your heart for permission to reach for someone who has not reached back.
With all that said, let me step back for a moment and point out that I have made genuine, deep connections on Substack. I have met people here who have become genuine friends in real life, and I hold them dearly in my heart. But where we have to draw the line is in thinking that, just because you have read someone’s words, you are owed something from that person.
You are not.
Also, let me be clear: seeing yourself in someone else’s work is not permission to pursue them romantically, or to assume you are entitled to friendship. Friendship may be born out of genuine connection, but it is nurtured through trust built over time. It is not something you create entirely within your own mind. It is built through communication, connection, shared experiences, and real conversations, i.e., words.
Words matter.
They matter enough that we should treat them, and the people who offer them, with reverence.
Because sometimes, when someone shares their deepest words with us, they are not asking to be pursued.
They are asking to be understood.
Final word: I love all of you.
That does not mean I am in love with all of you. What it means is that I often see myself in your work. But I do not think you owe me anything.
I’m glad you’re here.
I’m glad to be here.
Let’s respect one another and keep on remembering…
SUBSTACK IS NOT A DATING APP.
i have fallen in love with writers to an obsessive nature. especially ones I share addiction stories with, like you Mike. -- what I love about Substack is we can purge our deepest vile sentiments more than tell people in our physical realities or families - much like the 12 step rooms - strangers but share a message so deep we feel connected. And like you say, there's some who take it a little too far. I'll send this post to those people (men). :)
Rudyard Kipling said words are the most powerful drug known to mankind. I concur.