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What if the intensity you’ve chased in relationships wasn’t love, but dopamine?

Amanda McCracken is an award winning journalist, endurance athlete, and intimacy researcher who was diagnosed with ADHD at 36, long after she had built a successful career.

From the outside, her life looked accomplished and disciplined. Inside, she struggled with distraction, emotional intensity, anxiety, and a lifelong pattern of romantic fixation. In this episode, Amanda shares how ADHD showed up quietly in her life, from trichotillomania and overthinking to using extreme exercise as a form of self regulation, long before she had language for what was actually happening.

The conversation centers on limerence, a psychological state of intense romantic longing marked by obsession, idealization, and emotional highs and lows. Amanda explains how limerence thrives on uncertainty, making it especially powerful for ADHD brains that crave novelty and fast dopamine.

Tracy and Amanda explore how rejection sensitivity, perfectionism, and trauma can blur the line between desire and self worth, and why many women mistake intensity for connection. Amanda also shares how chasing emotionally unavailable partners became an organizing force in her life, and how that pattern kept her stuck in fantasy instead of intimacy. She also had to confront a deeper truth: real intimacy feels quieter than fantasy.

Today, Amanda is married to a securely attached partner and is the author of When Longing Becomes Your Lover, a deeply personal exploration of limerence, ADHD, and what it takes to receive love instead of chasing it.

Resources:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-mccracken-4716373
Website: https://www.amandajmccracken.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amanda.mccracken.39

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EP. 363: The Dopamine Crush: ADHD, Longing, and Romantic Obsession

ADHD for Smart Ass Women with Tracy Otsuka