Unhealthy obsession with a person

Symptoms, What It is, Causes, and More

What is obsessive love disorder?

“Obsessive love disorder” (OLD) refers to a condition where you become obsessed with one person you think you may be in love with. You might feel the need to protect your loved one obsessively, or even become controlling of them as if they were a possession.

While no separate medical or psychological classification exists for OLD, it can often accompany other types of mental health illnesses. Talk to your doctor if you think you or a loved one may have the disorder. Treatment can help decrease the symptoms while also preventing complications with relationships.

Symptoms of OLD may include:

an overwhelming attraction to one person
obsessive thoughts about the person

feeling the need to “protect” the person you’re in love with
possessive thoughts and actions
extreme jealousy over other interpersonal interactions
low self-esteem

People who have OLD may also not take rejection easily. In some cases, the symptoms could worsen at the end of a relationship or if the other person rejects you. There are other signs of this disorder, such as:

repeated texts, emails, and phone calls to the person they’re interested in
a constant need for reassurance
difficulty having friendships or maintaining contact with family members because of the obsession over one person
monitoring the actions of the other person
controlling where the other person goes and the activities they engage in

There’s no one single cause of OLD. Instead, it may be linked to other types of mental health disabilities such as:

Attachment disorders

This group of disorders refers to people who have emotional attachment issues, such as a lack of empathy or an obsession with another person.

Types of attachment disorders include disinhibited social engagement disorder (DSED) and reactive attachment disorder (RAD), and they both develop during childhood from negative experiences with parents or other adult caregivers.

In DSED, you might be overly friendly and not take precautions around strangers. With RAD, you may feel stressed and have problems getting along with others.

Borderline personality disorder

This mental health disorder is characterized by a disturbance with self-image coupled with severe mood swings. Borderline personality disorder can cause you to be extremely angry to extremely happy within a matter of minutes or hours.

Anxious and depressive episodes also occur. When considering obsessive love disorder, personality disorders can cause switches between extreme love for a person to extreme disdain.

Delusional jealousy

Based on delusions (events or facts you believe to be true), this disorder is exhibited by an insistence on things that are already proven false. When it comes to obsessive love, delusional jealousy can cause you to believe the other person has reciprocated their feelings for you, even if they’ve made it clear this is indeed not true.

According to a 2005 study, delusional jealousy may be linked to alcoholism in men.

Erotomania

This disorder is an intersection between delusional and obsessive love disorders. With erotomania, you believe that someone famous or of a higher social status is in love with you. This can lead to harassment of the other person, such as showing up at their home or workplace.

According to Comprehensive Psychiatry, people with erotomania are often isolated with few friends, and they may even be unemployed.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a combination of obsessive thoughts and compulsive rituals. These are severe enough to interfere with your everyday life. OCD can also cause you to need constant reassurance, which can affect your relationships.

Some people are said to have relationship OCD, where obsessions and compulsions are centered around the relationship. However, this isn’t an officially recognized subtype of OCD.

Obsessional jealousy

Unlike delusional jealousy, obsessional jealousy is a nondelusional preoccupation with a partner’s perceived infidelity. This preoccupation can lead to repetitive and compulsive behaviors in response to infidelity concerns. These behaviors resemble OCD more so than delusional jealousy. This can cause significant distress or impair everyday functioning.

OLD is diagnosed with a thorough evaluation from a psychiatrist or other mental health professional. First, they will interview you by asking you questions about your symptoms, as well as your relationships. They’ll also ask you about your family and whether any known mental health illnesses exist.

A medical diagnosis from your primary doctor may also be needed to rule out other causes. Since obsessive love disorder intersects with other forms of mental health disabilities, it’s not classified on the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

For unknown reasons, OLD affects more women than men.

The precise treatment plan for this disorder depends on the underlying cause. However, it often involves a combination of medication and psychotherapy.

Medications can be used to adjust brain chemicals. In turn, this can reduce the symptoms of the disorder. Your doctor may recommend one of the following:

anti-anxiety medications, such as Valium and Xanax
antidepressants, such as Prozac, Paxil, or Zoloft
antipsychotics
mood stabilizers

It can take several weeks for your medication to work. You may also need to try different types until you find the one that works best for you. Talk to your doctor about possible side effects, such as:

appetite changes
dry mouth
fatigue
headaches
insomnia
loss of libido
nausea
weight gain
worsening symptoms

Therapy is also helpful for all forms of OLD. Sometimes it’s helpful for families to be involved with therapy sessions, especially if obsessive love disorder stems from issues during childhood. Depending on the severity of the disorder and your personal preferences, you might engage in individual or group therapy. Sometimes a mental health professional will recommend both types.

Therapy options include:

cognitive behavioral therapy
dialectical behavioral therapy
play therapy (for children)
talk therapy

While OLD is gaining more attention, it’s relatively rare. It’s estimated that less than 0.1 percent of people have the disorder.

If you or a loved one has possible symptoms of obsessive love disorder, you should see a doctor. They may refer you to a psychiatrist to help determine whether you truly have OLD. You may also have another mental health illness.

When diagnosed and treated, OLD may have a positive outcome. The key, however, is to not quit therapy or treatment if you think you’re feeling better. Suddenly stopping your treatment can worsen symptoms, or make them return.

15 Warning Signs Of Being Obsessed With Someone

In This Article

Love has puzzled writers, musicians, artists, philosophers and psychologists since the beginning of time. Today, neuroscientists are also trying to understand what happens to a brain in love versus infatuation. What about you? Do you know the signs someone is obsessed with you?

As Margaret Atwood neatly describes in her metaphor: “I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.” Now, doesn’t that feel obsessive?

Being obsessed with someone definition

Having an obsession with someone is very similar to infatuation. Obsessive love is also superficial and comes with a constant deluge of thoughts about the object of desire. The ‘obsessed with someone’ definition is to be addicted.

The signs someone is obsessed with you can further develop into an obsessive love disorder (OLD). You won’t actually find this term in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Nevertheless, it is a very real experience that’s comparable to obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), as described in this table.

Just like OCD, Obsessive Love Disorder overwhelms you with intrusive thoughts. These usually cause extreme anxiety about, in this case, the relationship. Although, OLD shouldn’t be confused with Relationship-OCD.

In reality, Relationship-OCD is more about checking whereas OLD has a greater range of signs someone is obsessed with you. Again, Relationship-OCD isn’t officially a psychiatric term. Nevertheless, it does help people understand their problems.

Interestingly, literature is filled with various examples of the signs someone is obsessed with you. Take, for example, Nabokov’s Lolita, Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights or even Annie Wilkes in Misery if you want the extreme signs of being obsessed with someone.

Potential causes of obsessing over someone

Researchers can now confidently say that love is a form of addiction. As this article describes, we become hooked on the chemicals released when we’re in love. Of course, healthily grounded people don’t stay addicted.

Instead, they pass through the lust phase, onto the attraction and attachment phases in a natural flow. The brain creates different chemicals for each of those phases. If, on the other hand, your partner suffers from a mental disorder, you could also experience the signs someone is obsessed with you.

If you’re asking yourself ‘why am I obsessed with someone’, it’s worth noting that having a mental disorder sounds extreme. In fact, there is a wide spectrum of behaviors. According to the CDC, more than 50% of people in the US will have a mental disorder at some point.

Specific causes of obsessive love include childhood trauma, reactive attachment disorder, borderline personality disorder and perhaps also generalized anxiety disorder. All of these can trigger a fear of abandonment that might lead to obsessive love disorder.

Erotomania, or Clerambault’s Syndrome, is another possible cause, although it’s rare, but could lead to signs someone is obsessed with you. It’s actually a subset of Delusional Disorder where you believe someone you don’t know is in love with you.

Dealing with someone secretly obsessing over you

If you’ve noticed the warning signs of obsession, you’ll need to consider how to create distance. Depending on who it is, you might want to salvage a friendship. Either way, what to do when someone’s obsessed with you starts with compassionate and clear communication.

It’s hard not to get caught up when you see the signs someone is obsessed with you especially if you care about them. Try to remember that it isn’t your job to fix people and they need to find their own solutions and support system.

First, take stock of your emotions so that you can explain your boundaries and needs calmly and compassionately. Getting angry with someone who’s secretly obsessing over you will only make them defensive and deny everything.

Secondly, seek out positive, grounded people with many interests and hobbies. They’ll give you a benchmark as to what ‘normal’ behavior is. Moreover, they’ll reassure you when you feel guilty, a normal emotion when distancing yourself from obsession.

Love versus obsession

We already saw that love is a chemical rush but how do you stop the ‘obsession with a person’ symptoms? If you look at the stages from lust to attraction and then healthy attachment, dopamine and oxytocin seem to be the key ingredients.

This article describes the stages and also explains that dopamine affects the reward center of the brain. Oxytocin is then the love hormone that allows us to bond. An imbalance of these hormones keeps you in the infatuation stage. You’ll continue to search for things to be obsessed with.

So, what is the difference between love and obsession?

1. Intention

The difference between love and obsession starts with what’s the aim of the relationship. People who go into relationships to feel good about themselves and fill a void are more likely to end up obsessing over someone.

Conversely, healthy relationships have a strong foundation of support for both. Many misguided love songs claim they can’t live without someone or even breathe without them. That’s obsession, not love.

2. Boundaries

Look at the time you spend together as a clue for how to know if you’re obsessed with someone. Healthy love values both people as individuals while also ensuring the needs of the couple. Boundaries are important so you can be yourself. That way, your partner sees you for who you are and not as they wish you were.

If, on the flip side, you’re joined at the hip without time alone for yourself or your friends, you could be dealing with the signs someone is obsessed with you. Keep reading to the next section to determine if it’s you, your partner or a bit of both.

3. Emotions

Some of the obvious signs someone is obsessed with you are the outbursts of emotions. These could be anything from jealousy to possessiveness and control. An unhealthy obsession with a person leads to anxiety and stress which generally destabilizes emotions.

4. Irrational versus grounded behavior

What causes an obsession with a person is linked to some form of trauma or mental imbalance. With this in mind, it’s not surprising that the signs someone is obsessed with you involve erratic behavior.

This could include blaming you for cheating because you come home from work late. You could also find yourself justifying why you’re calling certain friends. Add to that, emotional tantrums and you’ll get the signs someone is obsessed with you.

5. Purpose

Watch other people for how to know if you’re obsessed with someone. Essentially, stable couples successfully move on from the infatuation phase because they build their relationship on a solid foundation. Common values are important as is the overall purpose to avoid the signs of obsessive thinking about someone.

So, is your partner your whole world or on the contrary, do you plan to grow and learn together?

15 ‘obsession with a person’ symptoms

What causes an obsession with a person can be summarized as possessive and intrusive thoughts. These thoughts urge you to behave irrationally, no matter the original trauma. That’s why many writers throughout the decades have called love a madness.

See if any of these signs someone is obsessed with you look familiar:

1. Jealousy

An obsession with someone quickly turns to jealousy because you have no other thoughts. Whereas delusional jealousy is the misguided belief that your partner is cheating, obsessive jealousy is that your partner could be cheating.

Jealousy usually comes with extreme checking of your partner’s whereabouts. This further fuels the unhealthy obsession with a person.

Related Reading: 15 Signs of Jealousy in a Relationship

2. Insecurity

Creating a single focus around one person often comes from low self-esteem and a fear of abandonment. So, the signs someone is obsessed with you include huge anxiety about the relationship.

3. Emotional manipulation

Obsession with a person makes you focus on your world only without regard for the other person. One of the more painful warning signs of obsession is when someone, often subconsciously, tries to manipulate you to their expectations and needs.

Have a look at this simple and informative video for examples of emotional manipulation:

Related Reading: 15 Signs of Jealousy in a Relationship

4. Checking up

How to know if you’re obsessed with someone means watching your behavior. Do you find yourself watching their every move on social media?

Perhaps you’ve bumped into them somewhere in town, apparently accidentally? Although, you know full well that you planned this. Add message bombing and you’re showing obsessive thinking about someone.

5. Excessive togetherness

As mentioned, there are phases we go through when we fall in love and it’s normal to want to spend every minute together at the beginning. Nevertheless, you should be able to find your individuality and other friends after a time. If not, you run the risk of showing the signs of being obsessed with someone.

6. Need for reassurance

We all need some external validation during our lives. Nonetheless, someone who can’t function without yours could be the difference between love and obsession.

After all, they want you to be theirs alone to feel reassured with no room for your time or needs. That only gives them more things to be obsessed with as their world closes in on you.

Related Reading: Seeking Reassurance in a Relationship? 12 Ways to Rest Assured

7. No other interests

Obsessing over someone takes up all your time and energy. It’s not just the world closing in but also their object of obsession becomes their world. The obsessor loses all enthusiasm for hobbies and friends and becomes overly anxious when separated from their infatuation.

8. Mismatched values

If you’re wondering “why am I obsessed with someone”, you might want to consider your values. When we fall in love with people vastly different to us, we naturally become anxious.

Deep down we know it can’t work but we persist and compensate by obsessing. We start doing anything to keep that person but actually, it’s signs of being obsessed with someone.

9. Obsessive thoughts

Believe it or not but intrusive and obsessive thoughts are common to everyone. The difference with someone who has an obsessive disorder is that they relate differently to the thoughts and believe them.

Most people can just laugh at them or ignore them. In contrast, an obsessive person will start displaying the signs someone is obsessed with you.

10. Overwhelming need to protect

Obsessing over someone is similar to hoarding an object such that the person belongs to you. This means that you’ll want to hide them from other people assuming that everyone is out to take them away from you.

11. Clingy

As you can imagine, the need to protect can quickly look like clinginess. That’s another major difference between obsession and love. In other words, love is about letting someone be the best version of themselves both independently and as a couple.

On the other hand, obsession means guarding your partner as if your life depended on it. You don’t let them breathe.

12. Controlling

Another one of the signs someone is obsessed with you is if they’re trying to change you and control your life. In a misguided way, they’re trying to keep you close to avoid abandonment.

Related Reading: Are You a Dominant Partner in a Controlling Relationship?

13. Strange surprises

Another disturbing difference between obsession and love is when they know odd facts about you that you’ve never disclosed. This shows they’re spying on you and, in extreme cases, doing background checks.

14. Accusations

One of the common signs someone is obsessed with you is that they regularly accuse you of cheating. This makes sense if you remember that at the core they’re afraid of abandonment.

Essentially, their intrusive thoughts nag them that you could be cheating. So, they project their insecurities onto you and play the victim.

Related Reading: How to Handle Psychological Effects of False Accusations in a Relationship

15. Can’t focus

Another of the clear signs someone is obsessed with you is when you notice they can’t focus on anything outside you and the relationship. Perhaps your friends comment that your partner only talks about you?

When does obsession fizzle out?

So, how long does obsession last? Sadly, an obsession can last for years without proper healing or distance. As previously explained, if the brain has a steady source of those love chemicals, it will keep coming back for more just like with any drug.

Without the source, the signs someone is obsessed with you will eventually dissipate within months or years, depending on the depth of the obsession. Unless the obsessor finds ways to heal though, the focus usually passes on to something or someone else.

Conclusion

The signs someone is obsessed with anyone are varied. These range from outbursts of emotion to controlling and jealous behavior with no respect for boundaries. The cause is either childhood trauma or a mental disorder with fear of abandonment at the core.

What to do when someone’s obsessed with you involves creating distance and boundaries with clear communication. Be compassionate and true to your values and goals in life and don’t be afraid to share them. How long does obsession last then depends on the situation and depth of the infatuation.

If these signs of obsession describe you then you’ll need to heal internally. Find a good therapist who will find the right approach for you to reconnect with yourself.

Either way, get support to discover fulfilling relationships without the angst. Don’t be like Jack Twist in Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain novel who says “I wish I knew how to quit you”.

Love as an Obsession: Causes and Solutions

What motivates a woman who floods a guy with letters, sticks out at his house in the pouring rain and eliminates all her friends because they tried to interfere? Approximately the same thing that pushes an alcoholic to a bottle, and sends a drug addict to search for a new dose. Love over the edge is also an unhealthy addiction.

Website editor

Tags:

Love

Relations between the sexes

Love

Unhealthy relationships

When Kira* fell in love for the first time, she fell head over heels in love. He became her first lover, and Kira, a freshman at that time, was literally obsessed with him, she just went crazy. How hard it was for her to come to terms with the fact that he already had an affair before her!

He used to date a school friend. That girl was red-haired, and Kira, having learned about it, began to wander the streets and look for red-haired girls in the crowd in order to understand what they have that she does not have. Worst of all, that guy seemed to be making her jealous on purpose. One day, he casually mentioned that that girl left him, and he suffered. At one time, he even kept a photo of the redhead on his desk. nine0003

One day the photo disappeared, but Kira did not experience any relief: now she was afraid that he would go to her “rival”. She was calm only when her beloved was sleeping peacefully in her bed.

Oh, this love obsession that made Tatyana turn pale in the presence of Onegin and threw Karenina under the train! If you have ever experienced strong feelings, you know this tremor that covers at the sight of an object of passion, the painful expectation of news from him, puppy delight when the long-awaited text message arrived, and two hours spent reading between the lines what he had mean by writing: "Hi, how are you?", and the absolute inability to think about anything else. ..

For the time being, this is normal. Any specialist will confirm that if all these feelings are unfamiliar to you, then you have never loved.

Blame evolution for everything: as soon as we meet someone suitable, we are ready to literally chase this person until we round it up. That's the way we are.

The Chemistry of Passion

In the early stages of love, you are drunk on dopamine, a substance produced by the body that is associated with pleasure, strong desire, and even addiction. Brain tomography has shown that when people look at photos of loved ones, there is a burst of activity in a certain small area of the brain, and you literally bathe in the hormones of pleasure. This is a brain reward system aimed at shaping desires, aspirations, forcing people to direct energy in the right direction. What scares me is the same area that is involved in cocaine addiction. Once activated, you are strongly motivated to get what you want, be it drugs or a loved one. Scientists have proven that romantic love can be as powerful as drug addiction. Researchers recall a woman who took 10 years to get over being dumped by a man. nine0003

MRI studies have also shown that the region of the brain responsible for anxiety is incredibly active in lovers. Therefore, we stand on our ears if our loved one does not answer messages / calls for a little longer than usual or is late for a meeting. Well, of course, something terrible happened to him, or, worse, he cheats. After all, his phone couldn’t just break, and a tire couldn’t have been punctured?

In addition to this, a mixture of hormones seethes in us, which makes the object of passion and everything connected with it incredibly sexually attractive. This mechanism also works vice versa: not only from attachment to sex, but also from sex to attachment, which is why we sometimes fall in love with a person with whom we were just going to spend the night. nine0003

Still, the most important thing in love affairs is not chemistry. Contrary to the urban legend that sexual attraction in humans is due to pheromones (as is the case in other animals endowed with a keen sense of smell), we are guided by a kind of “love map of the brain”: a list of things that we subconsciously look for in a potential partner (everyone has one's own: success, a certain physique, the timbre of the voice - what turns someone on). Human desire has more to do with who we're looking for and how they treat us than any combination of smells or hormones, researchers say. nine0003

In the end, there comes a moment when the phase of falling in love “I don’t eat, I don’t sleep - I keep thinking about him” flows into the phase “now I am able to notice his shortcomings”. For several years after the wedding, this dopamine-drug dependence on each other persists, but the manic obsession with the beloved gradually dissipates over the course of about a year. If this were not so, we would not be able to really do anything and think about anything except our love, and everyone would have died out long ago, like dinosaurs.

When love turns into a mental illness

For some people, however, this crazy love persists. Even if the guy lets you down all the time... and sees you less and less... or you start to find evidence hinting at his betrayal. What's even crazier is that a man's fickle attention can ignite a love obsession even in the heart of a well-balanced woman.

Svetlana, 26, met a guy just before her long-awaited departure to Spain, where she was going to do an internship and learn the language. “I instantly fell in love. We were inseparable, we wanted to live together when I returned,” she recalls. Sveta was even ready to cancel her dream trip. But the guy insisted - under the pretext of caring about her future. nine0003

She left and wrote him a love e-mail a day, sent a video about her life abroad. He never answered. But she didn't doubt his love for a second, even as she heard more and more alienation in his voice on the phone. The calls became less and less frequent, and finally he announced to her that it was all over, without any explanation. Instead of understanding what kind of guy he was and cutting him out of her life, Sveta boarded the nearest plane home, sobbing the whole flight. From the airport, she went straight to his house and started banging on the door, sobbing, until his brother opened it. The boy explained to the unfortunate woman that "her boyfriend" no longer considers her his girlfriend. nine0003

The main reason a healthy, normal crush turns into a painful obsession is when someone gives you a share of attention and continues to feed your feelings, but not so much that you feel confident in him, experts say. The “Yes – No – I don’t know – maybe” behavior model drives even quite sane people crazy. In other words, if you get a love drug in small doses, it only increases the addiction.

Are you prone to love obsession? nine0030

Most of us have such sins as trying to catch the eye of those with whom we are passionate more often and studying their pages on social networks up and down. But psychologists believe that certain personality types are especially at risk of falling prey to destructive passion. People who grew up in families where someone suffers from alcoholism, or who lacked parental care, are prone to chasing the unavailable.

Such an anxious person will assume that if the guy does not call, then it is her fault. At the same time, she feels like a half of a person while he is not around. People of this type can be quite happy, even when their feelings are not quite shared, because they are turned on by this "one step forward and two back" relationship, devoid of specific obligations. nine0003

Let's go back to Kira. Her relationship with that guy dragged on for four years, thanks in part to its dramatic nature. “We had very violent sex, as well as grandiose scandals right in the middle of the street. We parted and reconciled. Once I got so angry with him that I jumped out of the car on the move.

When relationships quickly become tense beyond measure, the thing you fear most will inevitably happen: you will simply scare away the person you love so madly.

How to break the vicious circle

The cure for love obsession is the same as for getting rid of any other dangerous addiction: try to enlist the support of others and quit your painful habit completely, abruptly and irrevocably.

But first, it is worth analyzing your own behavior: did the relationship develop at the speed of light at your suggestion? Your idol almost immediately became your whole world, despite clear signs that he is not the person you need? As soon as you understand what pattern you acted on, you will have a chance to change something for the better. nine0003

Next step: drop the object of your obsession in one fell swoop - no indulgence, no goodbye nights. Every time you visit his page on the social network, you get a dose of dopamine, and your addiction grows stronger, psychologists warn. Unfriend him everywhere, delete correspondence from your phone, put everything connected with him out of sight. Then renounce any contact with him and swear that you will not answer if he tries to contact you.

Ask your friends not to mention his name in your presence. If you can’t sleep or work and don’t get out of depression for weeks, try to contact a psychotherapist. The goal of therapy is to replace the irrational thoughts that you need someone to feel complete with a healthy view of love. nine0003

Kira's turbulent relationship ended when she discovered that her boyfriend had done what she feared most: sleeping with his red-haired ex-girlfriend. Kira experienced a disgust that cured her passion. She started dating more adequate guys and found a fiancé who was the complete opposite of her ex. They did not have any dramas, scandals and jumps out of the car. They soon got married. “I was not afraid to lose him - and I liked this feeling of closeness and spiritual comfort,” admits Kira. - In my previous relationships, I never really felt like a person. And now everything seems so stable and real. I never thought before that love could be like this. And now I know it." nine0003

__________

*Names have been changed.

Difference Between Love and Obsession

The main difference between Love and Obsession is that Love is a healthy emotion that is conducive to a relationship while Obsession is an unhealthy emotion that can destroy a relationship.

Love is a feeling of strong and permanent attachment to a person. Obsession or obsessive love is a negative emotion that can lead to extreme violent behavior. Although the negative and unhealthy feeling of obsession can be a lot like love at the beginning of a relationship. Therefore, we sometimes find it difficult to tell the difference between love and obsession. nine0003

Overview and Key Difference
What is Love?
What is Possession?
What is the difference between Love and Obsession?
Conclusion

What is love?

The concept of love covers a wide range of feelings and emotions. In general, love is a strong feeling of affection. This is a strong emotion that we feel towards a person who is close to our hearts. Feelings and emotions such as affection, sympathy, compassion and caring are often associated with love. When you love someone, you care about them very deeply. Moreover, you will do everything in your power to support the person you love and will support him or her no matter what. nine0003 Love for a lover

Love is usually a gradual process, as it takes time to get to know a person and fall in love with him. Most of us perceive instant physical attraction to a person as love (love at first sight). Moreover, when we truly love someone, we see more than just his or her good qualities; we can see the weaknesses and shortcomings of our loved one, but we love them despite all these shortcomings. Therefore, a person in true love will not expect everything to be perfect, but he or she will come to terms with the fact that things can go wrong and will work to improve the situation. Moreover, you will always feel comfortable and safe with your loved one. nine0003

Although we often associate the word love with romantic love, there are different types of love. In fact, it can refer to the feeling of love that exists in different relationships; for example, the love we feel for a sibling is different from the love we feel for a parent, but the love we feel for a lover is completely different from both of these feelings.

Love for parents

Classification. According to the ancient Greeks, love can be divided into four types: storge, phileo, eros and agape. nine0003

Storge - love for family and relationships
Phileo - warm, affectionate, platonic love (the love you feel for friends)
Eros - passionate love between lovers, characterized by desire and longing.
Agape — pure and ideal love, unlike eros

What is Possession?

Possession is the control of thoughts through a continuous, powerful idea or feeling. As we discuss the difference between love and obsession in this article, we will focus in this section on obsessive love or desire. Obsessive love happens when one person has an overwhelming compulsion to possess and protect another person to whom he or she is deeply attracted. This person also cannot accept rejection. A person who feels an obsessive love for another may feel unable to resist extreme behavior such as acts of violence against themselves or others. nine0003

Other behaviors. At the beginning of a relationship, obsession can look a lot like love. However, when one partner is obsessed with the other, the relationship can become more and more suffocating over time. The obsessive partner will feel a strong need to be with the object of their obsession every day. He or she will also want to know every detail of their partner's life; for example, where exactly the partner is and who he or she is with when they are not together. At the same time, destructive feelings enter the relationship, such as excessive jealousy, suspicion, and paranoia. nine0003

In addition, the possessed person may also try to control the partner's life and try to limit the partner's interactions with family and friends; he or she will also get angry when the partner decides to spend time with friends or family. In short, the possessed partner will feel the need to control the other's every thought and action.

Possession

The possessed person can often be verbally and/or physically abusive towards a partner. However, he may show remorse after the abuse and try to blame the partner for making him this way. In exceptional cases, the possessed may subject their partner to physical abuse, harassment, rape, or even murder. Overall, obsession is an unhealthy emotion that destroys relationships and lives. nine0003

What is the difference between Love and Obsession?

Love is a healthy emotion that promotes relationships, while obsession is an unhealthy emotion that can ruin relationships. This is the key difference between love and obsession. In addition, love is always associated with positive feelings such as affection, warmth, caring, attraction, kindness, and support, while obsession is associated with negative feelings such as jealousy, suspicion, and paranoia.

When a person is in love, he will not try to control his lover; he will always support her and will be with her in difficult times. A person who truly loves another will understand and tolerate the weaknesses and shortcomings of the partner and love him, despite these shortcomings. However, the possessed partner is always trying to control his lover; he/she will expect the lover to obey and do as he/she says. Moreover, the true lover will never feel threatened by the partner's love for family and friends, as well as other interests (work or hobbies), while the obsessive partner will always feel threatened. nine0003

In addition, an obsessive partner may verbally or physically abuse their partner. Moreover, the obsessed partner always suspects the lover of cheating, while the true lover will never do so.

Learn more