My insides were tortured for weeks, months maybe. I felt so rejected and no man had ever rejected me in the past, so I was dealing with feelings I hadn’t ever felt. The day he married Mary (they went overseas) I felt like it was a funeral. I tried to be happy for them, but I was so unhappy for me. Why? I had no claim on this man.

It’s called Obsessive Love

In healthy relationships, idealization helps people believe that perhaps they have found the person of their dreams. But healthy people give themselves a safety net called reality. They hope their relationship will work out but also recognize that it may not. Obsessive lovers, on the other hand, work without this net as they struggle for balance on romantic expectations. In the heightened reality of obsessive passion there is no room for doubt., this person will love them somehow, someway, someday.

That was where I was. I just knew that Jake must love me. How could he make love to me and cry with me and not love me? I would call him at work and pick fights with him, I would email him incessantly . When he would ignore me, I would call more and more no matter how angry he was with me. I didn’t care how HE felt. At that point it was all about me. I threatened suicide on more than one occasion. I had no idea what this was doing to him, and I didn’t care at that particular moment.

He and my husband drifted apart, mostly because I was consuming all of Jake’s time and energy.

Jake would later tell me that he had nightmares, couldn’t sleep, poor work performance due to the strain I was putting on him. I never meant to hurt him. I was just expressing my feelings, or so I thought.

I sought help from a therapist that told me there was no way I was in love with Jake, I became angry, but listened. She told me that I didn’t know him well enough to be in love with him. She asked me a series of questions “Have you ever been on a date with him?” No was my answer “Has he introduced you to his family?” again no was my answer. We talked at length through several sessions about why I have this obsessive love for him and how I can stop the destructive behavior, “Is friendship with Jake important to you?”. she asked me one day “Very much so, I think we are and can be good friends.”. “Then you must let go of your obsessive feelings and understand that though he MAY care for you, he obviously has no interest in a romantic relationship with you.” She gave me a list of books that dealt with the subject and I read them. I got a better understanding of why I felt the way I did and how it was hurting everyone I cared about, especially myself.

Today Jake and I are very close friends, but the friendship is wounded, and wounds take time to heal. I have made it very difficult for Jake to trust me. We are working on it and it is getting better, but it will be years before our friendship completely heals.

If you are experiencing obsessive love, I plead with you to get help. There is hope and healing after obsessive love.