obsession

Years back, I promised myself that I would never, ever chase after another human again. I understand that in our society, it’s customary for the man to seek out and court the woman. Likewise, it’s customary for the man to be persistent while the woman is expected to play it cool and brush the man off for a period of time — playing the lady card, or hard-to-get card. Sure, we don’t see much of this these days, thanks to all the twerking Mileys' of our generation, but nevertheless, when a man is really interested in a woman, the fact remains that he will chase after her.
Real men know what they want and will go after it until they get it. The problem with this is that most men and women don’t actually know what they want and if they do, falling for one another turns the majority of them into lovesick puppies — very hungry, lovesick puppies. If a man or woman does not get what he or she wants, they’ll only want it more. This turns into an obsession and all such obsessions end badly.
Summer going into college, I met a boy — so begins every hopeless love story. The more I got to know him, the more I liked him. The more I liked him, the more I wanted to spend time with him. Fortunately, he felt the same way about me times 50. He was going through a rough patch in his life, and because I have a thing for damaged goods (they make me feel less crazy), I look like the beacon of light in a dark rough, sea of isolation. He offered his heart to me on a silver platter. Everything he could do for me, he would. I was his princess, which was something I had never experienced.
For some time I wanted him in my life, but as I started college I wanted my independence. His previous physo bitch of an ex didn’t understand the term independence. His past needy, fucked up relationship was at the opposite spectrum of ours. He clang to me the only way he knew how… as a puppy. The problem was, the sex was incredible. What a needy, cute, fuckable, puppy he was. It was so good that although I didn’t want to date him, I couldn’t let him go, either. Although I didn’t always want him, I didn’t want anyone else to have him. He was mine and I was his, but everytime I fucked up he was willing to forgive me. His compacitly for loving me was endless. In the meantime, I had managed to fall for him. And so this began my obsession and a chase that has been ongoing for roughly a year.
I am going to save all the gloriously awful and painful details — “emotional roller-coaster” is an understatement — but my unhealthy obsession, and unwillingness not to get what I want, eventually broke down the barriers we had both put up. He fell for me and I had won my prize. Now, here’s the thing: While love isn’t always felt intensely, obsession is.
Obsession, once it grabs onto you, won’t let you go. It’s filled with elongated moments of intense feeling and emotion. Thoughts of what or whom you’re obsessing over fill your mind like a dark cloud and you’re unable to distract yourself for long periods of time. You wake up thinking of him or her, you think of him the whole day; you go to bed thinking of him and you dream of him. But once you actually “get” him, your mind no longer has a need to think of him constantly; you have him and are now fulfilling that mental stimulation by spending much more time with him.
The intense feelings inevitably subside and you are left feeling… normal. Let me tell you, after obsessing for a long period of time, normal no longer feels normal. You begin to miss those intense emotions brought on obsession once they subside. Even worse, if you’re inexperienced, as I was (in the emotional category), you mistake your obsession for love. And you find you’re self-saying I love you and not even knowing what it means to know love or feel it.
What makes regular obsessions profoundly intense obsessions is love itself; it underlies the obsession and fuels it. Not all obsessions are this soul wrenching, but if they’re combined with love, they’re nearly unbearable. When the obsession is removed, you fall into a sort of withdrawal. Obsessions like these really are a sort of addiction. When the obsession leaves you, you’re left feeling incomplete.
Here comes the sad part. Although you know that you love him, you don’t feel that you love him. Because the beginning of your relationship was so intense, it set the bar ridiculously high. Now, everything that you feel falls short and you can’t seem to convince yourself that you are, for certain, with the right person. As human beings, we experience things comparatively: Great experiences are only great if they seem great in comparison to other experiences.
You’re still convinced that the way love is supposed to feel is the way you felt during all that time you were chasing the boy. You masked your obsession as being true love and are now unable to redefine true love — at least in regards to this specific person. The relationship is ruined. You’ll never be able to build the relationship you need because your obsession rotted away at the foundation.
Chasing love never works unless it is for a very short period of time. The problem is, once you start chasing, you begin to enjoy the chase, so you chase for a bit longer. Then, it turns into an even longer lasting chase, which inevitably turns into an obsession. If you want to turn your whole world upside down, go ahead and obsess. The only upside of all the pain and stress is that you will come out of it as a better person. You might come out wiser and better off than when you first started chasing, but it isn’t guaranteed that you’ll come out at of the dark tunnel at all. So be warned, in the end you will be trapped in a serious relationship being seriously confused and detached, leaving you with the ultimatum of causing this pain again and again or staying in the emptiness of the relationship unwilling to tell your partner the truth. The truth that you doubt the love you thought you once had and the love he believes you both currently share.
Obsessions substitute our purpose. When the obsession is lost, our purpose in life is lost with it. But is the only solution is finding a better purpose?