Limerence and love can feel identical from the inside, especially early on. The difference shows up in how each one handles reality.
Love can absorb information. It survives flaws, boredom, and ordinary days. Limerence filters every fact through one question: does this protect the fantasy or threaten it?
Love tends to steady with closeness. Limerence often does the opposite — it intensifies with distance and uncertainty, and can deflate the moment it is fully returned.
Ask what you are attached to: the person as they actually behave over time, or the version of yourself you become when they pay attention to you.
Neither feeling is shameful. But only one of them can be built on, and confusing the two is how people trade a real life for a loop.