What happens when having a crush becomes debilitating? Tom Bellamy has the answer

Tom Bellamy's blog has been a haven for anonymous, agonised souls living with the condition known as “limerence’s” The condition is an infatuation with another person so debilitating it has been likened to an addiction.

There are limerents in the UK and the US ; in India and Germany ; in the Philippines and Singapore .

They are as young as teenagers and as old as octogenarians .

Bellamy believes that “ at least half of the population” experiences limerence, and that half of those again experience it to a detrimental degree.

Its catalyst is what Bellamy refers to as “the glimmer”, the first meeting between the limerent and their person, referred to in limerence parlance as the “limerent object”.