When no contact is impractical, the aim is to make necessary contact professional and reduce the optional behaviors that keep the preoccupation occupying your day. That may mean fewer personal messages, less checking and clearer boundaries around time together. These are practical starting points, not a proven treatment protocol or a promise about how quickly feelings will fade.
The meeting invitation contains six names. You notice one. A routine query arrives and the morning improves; the reply you send takes rather longer to compose than the question warrants. By the end of the day, the work has been accompanied by another, private occupation: interpreting a colleague.
There is nothing inherently remarkable about being attracted to someone at work. The difficulty begins when attention stops feeling like something you can allocate. A conversation is replayed on the journey home. An online status becomes an event. You volunteer for a project and have trouble admitting, even to yourself, why.
Advice to stop all contact can sound sensible until you remember the shared roster, the client deadline or the job you need to keep.
Name the difficulty without making it your identity
Limerence is a term for an intense preoccupation with another person, usually accompanied by a strong wish for reciprocation. The useful question is less whether your experience earns the label than what it is costing: concentration, sleep, other relationships, professional judgment, time you wanted to spend elsewhere.
Research is developing, but remains limited. A 2025 study introducing the Limerence Questionnaire examined two samples and identified dimensions concerning intense attachment needs and neglect of self and others. That is progress in measurement. It does not establish that every workplace crush is a condition requiring treatment, or that a questionnaire can determine what a colleague feels.
Nor should the label become a glamorous explanation for conduct that disregards someone else's wishes. Private longing and public behavior are different responsibilities. You may not have chosen the first feeling; you still need to respect the person's boundaries.
For a fuller discussion of the experience itself, see Is It Love or Limerence?. Here, the question is how to get through a working day with less of it organized around one person.
Separate the job from the additions
Before considering drastic changes, make an honest inventory of contact. Some interactions belong to the job: the handover, the weekly meeting, the decision only this colleague can make. Others have been added: checking when they arrive, extending a conversation after its purpose is over, finding an extra reason to ask their opinion.
The distinction is not always neat. A workplace also has friendships, ordinary kindness and a social life. You do not need to become conspicuously cold. The point is to recognize where “I have to see them” has expanded into “I have to maintain every opportunity to see them.”
Consider three columns on paper: required contact, optional contact, and private checking. Write down what actually happened over a few working days. Include the ten minutes spent rereading a message as well as the message itself. This is a personal inventory, not a clinical scale.
Choose one change you can keep. Use the normal project channel rather than a personal message. Leave a meeting when it ends. Stop visiting a profile that has nothing to do with your work. A small boundary maintained consistently is easier to evaluate than a dramatic declaration followed by a week of exceptions.
Make contact ordinary again
Professional contact works best when it has a purpose, a proportionate duration and a natural end. You can be pleasant without adding emotional intimacy.
Suggested wording might be: “Could you put that in the project thread so everyone has the update?” Or: “I need to get back to this deadline; thanks for clarifying.” If personal messaging has become habitual: “I'm keeping evenings clear of work chats. I'll pick this up tomorrow.”
None of these statements requires a confession. None makes the colleague responsible for a private struggle they may know nothing about.
Where an adjustment to work is genuinely needed, think about what a manager needs to know to address it. That might be a problem with concentration, a conflict of interest or a request about reporting arrangements. The appropriate route depends on the circumstances and workplace policy. If there is unwelcome attention, retaliation or a power imbalance, seek advice through a suitable support or workplace channel rather than trying to manage it as a romantic puzzle.
The checking that follows the meeting
Necessary contact may last fifteen minutes. The analysis afterward can occupy an afternoon.
This is where a practical boundary often has to extend beyond the encounter. Notice the sequence: a friendly remark, a search for its meaning, a reread of old messages, a temporary feeling of certainty, another question. The details will differ, but observing the sequence gives you somewhere specific to intervene.
You might close the chat after answering the work question, put your phone away for a defined task, or write down the thought and return to the document you were editing. These are ways of protecting attention; they do not require you to prove that you no longer care.
A published treatment case study by Brandy Wyant described improvement using cognitive-behavioral methods, including work on compulsive rituals. It concerned one person, so it cannot establish effectiveness for everyone. It also should not be converted into a do-it-yourself instruction to seek more exposure to a coworker. A clinician can help assess persistent intrusive thoughts and decide what treatment fits the wider picture.
Be careful what you ask disclosure to accomplish
The urge to tell the person can be powerful. At last there would be an answer. At last the private intensity would be acknowledged.
Before speaking, consider the job you want that conversation to do. Are you making a respectful invitation between two available adults on an equal footing? Are you hoping they will reassure you repeatedly? Are you handing over distress that they have not agreed to manage? A subordinate may have very little freedom to receive a superior's romantic disclosure, however gently it is delivered.
An answer may settle one question without settling the preoccupation. Rejection can be followed by renewed interpretation; reciprocation can create further complications. If the main purpose is relief from an unbearable internal state, discussing the impulse with someone outside the workplace is a useful first step.
If either of you is partnered, the situation also involves people who are absent from the office. Our article on limerence while married explores that set of responsibilities in more detail.
Give the rest of life specific space
“Focus on yourself” is difficult advice to follow at four in the afternoon when the person has just walked past your desk. A more manageable version has appointments and names attached to it: dinner with a friend, an exercise class, a piece of work that will be finished before you check your phone.
Avoid turning every alternative activity into a test of whether you have forgotten them. You can go for a walk, think about them and still have gone for a walk. The relevant question is whether more of your time is becoming available for things you choose.
If closeness and uncertainty have become tangled repeatedly in your life, limerence and anxious attachment may offer useful context. It describes one possible connection, not a required explanation for every reader.
The Limerence assessment can help you organize what you are experiencing. Seek professional support if the preoccupation is persistently distressing, interferes with functioning or makes respecting boundaries difficult. Do not wait for an especially dramatic incident to justify asking for help.
Reflect on your limerence patternFor now, progress may be undramatic: a meeting attended, a necessary email answered, an afternoon in which the person was present without becoming its entire subject. That is something you can build on while keeping your job.
Frequently asked questions
Can limerence improve if I still work with the person?
It may be possible to reduce its impact while maintaining necessary professional contact. Distinguish required work from optional checking and intimacy, set workable boundaries and seek help if the preoccupation is disrupting your life. There is no guaranteed timetable.
Should I tell a coworker I am limerent about them?
You do not owe a colleague a disclosure of every private feeling. Consider consent, power differences, workplace policy and the likely effect on them. If the purpose is to obtain reassurance or relief, discuss that urge with a therapist or trusted person outside the workplace first.
Do I need to quit my job to stop limerence?
Not necessarily. Start by considering changes to optional contact and checking, professional support and any appropriate adjustments to working arrangements. Leaving may be a considered option in some circumstances, but it should not be presented as a universal cure.
Is a workplace crush always limerence?
No. Attraction alone is not enough. The term is generally used for a consuming preoccupation involving longing for reciprocation, intrusive attention and, in more distressing cases, interference with everyday life. An assessment can support reflection but does not diagnose you.
Sources and further reading
Workplace scenes and suggested wording are illustrative. The practical boundaries described here are editorial guidance, not a validated treatment program.