Q&A with Clare Bohane

We’ve published an extra fiction story this week! We loved Clare Bohane’s “Limerence" and its very realistic yet empathetic take on modern love, which so often stretches itself over oceans and through computer screens. One of our editors, Rachel Walshe, discussed “Limerence” with Bohane, digging into its origin and, of course, love.

I thought this was a very timely story in terms of long-distance romance and cynical views of immigrants coming to the Western hemisphere. What was your interest in the topic or where did the story come from? 

The seeds of the story were planted when I asked a male friend of mine whether men get as obsessive as women do when they fall for someone—stalking their social media etc. His answer was a resounding — yes! That interested me greatly and I wanted to create a male character whose obsessive online stalking begins to take over his life. 

I worked as an immigration lawyer for many years and met couples where one partner was an EU citizen and the other was not and my job was often to help the non-EU citizen stay with their loved one. It was interesting to observe how this dynamic impacted those relationships. There are so many misconceptions about the reasons people emigrate and I wanted to create a story which showed the nuances of that. Romance is always a risk and so fraught with doubt. John allows doubt to take over in this story, as we see to his detriment! 

When people hit their late 20s/30s, they will have accumulated some emotional baggage. A lot of us hold onto regrets from relationships past— the ‘what ifs?’ What if I told them how I felt? What if we never broke up? What if I moved to their country? What if we gave our holiday romance a go in the real world? I think it’s very human and relatable to have thoughts like this. I wanted to write a story where we see characters struggle with these questions

I loved the title. John's life seems to completely revolve around María-Clara, even with the emotional and physical distance, in a way that as the story goes on the obsessive quality in the beginning takes a new turn. Was it all just limerence, do you think? Or is this the beginning of a love story? Was it important to you to differentiate between the two states of affection?

Oh, god, I think all love stories start with a bit of limerence! Falling in love is a type of madness, it’s all consuming, it’s insanity! If you are very, very lucky, the other person falls with you and you both settle into a more comfortable secure love. But this doesn’t always happen, unfortunately. Sometimes, it is one person out there on their own with the big feelings, having a tough time moving on.

In this story, which is John’s story, we see how the tiniest crumbs of information about María-Clara are enough to sustain his affections for her when they part, but we also see how detrimental it is to his mental health. We don’t see what is happening on her side, we can only guess from her silence that she is moving on without him. The truth is more complex as we see in the end. 

I hope that I’ve left the reader with enough threads to continue the story in their minds. Some friends of mine who’ve read it see John and María-Clara happily living in Cork; others have them falling apart when no longer in holiday mode. I have my own theory about how they fare, but I’ll keep it to myself and let the reader decide!

So interesting that you have a background in Immigration Law, there's definitely an authenticity to the story that made María-Clara and John's relationship feel embodied. There is also a real sense of place, both in Cork and Medellín, where the locations feel almost like characters in themselves, in how they emotionally feed into the character's state of mind. How do you conceive of place when you're writing? 

I thought a lot about where to situate the characters. As a proud Cork city native, portraying Cork in such a drab dreary way felt like a betrayal at times! But I wanted  to highlight the difference between John and María-Clara’s characters. With John, it is Cork in November; the trees are losing leaves, it is becoming bleak— the start of a long winter. John lives in a sparsely decorated home with few personal touches. By contrast, María-Clara lives in the ‘City of Eternal Spring’ as Medellín is sometimes called. Her apartment is vibrant and cosy with books, plants and a sun-filled balcony. Even the characters’ places of work are starkly different. John works in a sterile business park where all the office units look the same; María-Clara works in an art gallery surrounded by colour. Medellín is one of the greenest cities in the world; Cork is not —John jokes with her about the robotic trees that have been placed in Patrick’s Street. Both cities experience a lot of rain so there is common ground there despite the differences. To María-Clara, her city isn’t perfect either—the rain plays havoc with her hair for example and she references the lights of the poorer areas where John just sees mountains of stars.

This is very much John’s story and John’s perception of Medellín of course, where to him everything is more beautiful than his life in Cork. He idolises the city of Medellín in the way that he idolises María-Clara.

I actually loved that detail; María-Clara taking the rose tinted glasses off John when he thinks he's seeing stars. There's an interesting juxtaposition in the piece with perception versus reality. As you say, John idolises María-Clare and Medellín, but he's less enamoured with the way she presents herself to the world via the social media he devours to keep her as part of his life, her own idealised self. Sorry to be stuck on limerence but do you think that's a part of it? Our idealised version of the object of our desire must be more accurate than their own? 

I think one of the key things about limerence versus real love, is that with limerence, a person can ‘colour in’ or ‘make up’ positive attributes about the object of their desire. They become ‘perfect’ — almost devoid of flaws.  María-Clara is not perfect; we the reader can see that, but John cannot.

The relationship between limerence and social media is interesting.The version of María-Clara that she presents on social media unsettles John because it doesn’t chime with the version of her that he has created in his head. There are parallels with social media and limerence as social media is all about curated image and limerence also involves curating an idolised version of someone.

With real love, both parties see the imperfect, flawed person and love one another anyway. At the moment, in this early stage of their relationship, John has not moved past the idolising stage. He is insecure and deferential, anxious to please her, can hardly believe that she likes him too. If the relationship survives, it would be interesting to imagine whether John could move past this phase and how the dynamic between them would change if María-Clara is no longer on a pedestal.