I was truly limerent in the beginning of our relationship. I just wanted to be with her, to listen to her talk, to talk, to breathe in her scent, overwhelmed with sexual desire for her, all the while thinking she'd never go out with me, much less go to bed.
I hated it. She was a classmate in a class that was critical to my future, and I wanted to focus on that, not on being in love.
Funny thing, though, in our talks - an hour after almost every class, 4-5 days/week for months, we got to know each other. We came to see each other for who we were (pretty much, at least). We came to want the best for each other. We supported each other in achieving our goals. I wanted her sexually, and I was in awe of her mind and her approach to academics. She thought highly of my mind. We came to love each other.
But that limerence persisted, and I did not trust it. Our relationship started with lust, and I knew it was not going to last long. The way we started made it very hard for me to understand that I might have been in love, which I hated, but we loved each other, and that boded well for our future.
Fast forward 44-45 years - d-day - from some angles, she still took my breathe away. From some angles, my knees still went weak. Still limerent after all those years.
I'm apparently an outlier, but here's something to consider:
I always feared that I would fuck up our relationship by cheating. There's a movie called The Man who Loved Women (the original version from France). I could see myself doing that, but I loved plainsong....
My solution was to program myself to stay in lust with her. It wasn't hard. I still notice beautiful and/or sexy women. It's just that when I recognize thoughts of sex, I immediately associate them with my W. If I notice a sexual fantasy, I place my W into it and exile all other women.
Now she's 74. She doesn't look as good as she did 30-40 years ago. (Neither do I.) But she looks good to me. That's probably due in part to self-hypnosis - but it's gotta be due in part to love, too.
Someone posted that maybe some of us are monogamous by nature and some not. I agree, and I believe that's part of what kept me faithful, too.
But I believe above all that we can program ourselves to stay in lust with our partners, even as we change physically and emotionally.
JMO, of course.