Core Ideas

A. The Power of Self-Ascriptions of Love

• Self-ascriptions are powerful

• Self-ascribing love can change emotions, attitudes, and values.

o They can even be self-fulfilling.

• Self-ascriptions of love depend on what the person thinks love is.

B. Permissive Flexibility

• People can disagree about what love is, and yet both be right.

o Example: In love with a celebrity.

• Language shapes our conceptions.

o This suggests potential for conceptually engineering emotions, using language.

C. The Constraints of Thinking Straight

• Sometimes emotions occupy a borderline between platonic and non-platonic.

• In some cases, thinking of yourself as straight or queer affects whether you see your own emotions as platonic or non-platonic.

• Those judgements can be self-fulfilling.

• In some cases, these forces steer one’s sexuality.

o In some cases, person can make herself straight or queer, owing to her belief that she is.

D. Conceptual Tourism

• Conceptual tourism is trying on different interpretations and categorisation schemas.

• This can be empowering.

o Example: Protect against pick up artist's negging.

E. It is Better if More People are Queer

• Summary of reasons:

o What matters about a person? We should be attracted to character, not physical shape.

o Being attracted to character leads to more sustainable relationships and is more inclusionary.

o It is biased to exclude people from consideration based on gender. (Compare to only having friends of one gender.)

o If more people are queer, it is easier to satisfy preferences and find sympatico lovers.

o Diversity of experience and opportunities to learn.

o Epistemic benefits of diversity for society.

o Improves society's signalling conventions for romantic interest.

F. Cunning Linguistics

• Conceptions can encourage (or tamp down) queerness in individuals

• It is better if linguistic practices (gradually, over the course of generations) increase the prevalence of queer sexual orientations.

• Openness to being queer can help people become queer, through the self-fulfilling power of self-interpretation.

G. Curious or Queer?

• The terms “bi-curious” and “queer” illustrate how language might help to gradually increase the prevalence of queerness in a population.

o “Bi-curious” associations: A temporary phase, behaviour-based, public kissing, not “full sex”, default of heterosexuality; seen as a way of being straight.

o “Queer” associations: Emotional investment, relationship-building intimacy, stable orientation, not a set of mere actions.

• A person who sees herself as “bi-curious” might thus become straight. A person who sees herself as “queer” might thus become queer.

• Other terms: alterous attraction, quoiromanticism, greysexuality, abrosexuality, sexual fluidity…

Limerence

• Limerence is obsessive infatuation.

• I analyse it as an attentional addiction: Addiction to thinking about the person.

• I describe differences between love and limerence (section 10).

How does learning about limerence change your conception of love?

• A “transformative conceptual shift” transforms how you interpret the world, including how you interpret your own thoughts and feelings.

Three Examples:

(Note that I don’t endorse these claims; they are merely illustrations.)

i. Polyamory about Love

• Perhaps limerence is monogamic. We can only be limerent for one person at once.

• And (so the person thinks) love is not: We can be in love with more than one person at once.

• Learning about limerence makes space for polyamory about love

ii. Is Love Good?

• Limerence is unhealthy and is characterised by false beliefs about the person.

• And (so the person thinks) love is healthy and involves knowing the person truly.

• In the subsequent schema, limerence is blind; love is not.

iii. Addiction, Rumination, and the Unmet Need

• Limerence is an addiction to thought patterns.

• It is similar to non-romantic cognitive or attentional addictions.

• Perhaps, at core, limerence is a platonic tool for deep emotional processing.

Tripartite Clustering of Limerence Kinds.

o Romantic limerence, stemming from romantic unmet needs.

o Limerence for authority figures (bosses, teachers, virtuosos), from unmet needs for approval.

o Alterous limerence, from the unmet need for emotional processing.