The author's yearbook photo from her sophomore year of high school (1996).“I can’t stop thinking about him,” my client said. “I even daydream about our wedding.”She stared at me intently from across the coffee table where our two cups of peppermint tea sat untouched. When I didn’t respond, she lowered her voice and said, “I just feel like we’re meant to be together.”I’d been counselling this client long enough to know the “him” to whom she was referring was not her husband of 15 years. Instead, it was the much younger man she’d met two months prior at a yoga retreat.“OK,” I said, reaching for my mug. “Let’s try to figure out why this person has such a hold on you.”My client could have easily spent another hourlong session obsessing over “hot yoga guy” — which she’d done many times before — but I wasn’t going to let her. My job as a therapist was to help bring deeper awareness to her emotional experience and to identify what was simmering just beneath the surface, driving compulsive thoughts and behaviours. In this case — limerence.***Almost everyone, at some point, has experienced a romantic crush. However, unlike a typical crush, limerence is defined by obsessive ruminations, deep infatuation and a strong desire for emotio