Conversations with a Couples Therapist

Are you obsessive in love?

1. What are the states of love?

To do this, it would be necessary to distinguish the infatuation of love, which are different things. We could describe falling in love as a hallucinatory and imaginary psychic state that occurs between two people in such a way that both stop feeling strange and feel united by the feeling that they have known each other all their lives, a kind of temporary madness, which on the one hand allows the reproduction of the species. It is more of an illusion, an encounter with an ideal. Love begins when that illusion falls, there is a disenchantment in which you see the other from their true dimension, the human one. There, at that point, two things can happen: either you abandon yourself or, what is more common, you begin to love, to give what you don’t have to someone you don’t have. You come out more of yourself and it has more to do with the word and pacts, you allow the other to grow. He transforms you, gives you energy, makes you more civilized… when you know how to love

2. How can you go from love to obsession?

It is not a question of go from love to obsession, but there are people who call certain demands love that have more to do with their neurotic state than with the true dimension of love. To do this, they must occupy the position of lover and loved one. There are people who do not allow themselves the exercise of loving. If you only enter the position of the demand, of the loved one, you are repeating a childish issue with the mother. The two positions have to be able to, otherwise, we are talking about relationships in which the demand is insatiable, where the other is made a necessary object and a suffocating relationship is produced. Humans need the verb to love, in fact, one cannot live in impossible illusions. Love is full of expectations and, like everything in human beings, it is something to learn.

3. What phases does this obsession have?

The person already has that obsessive structure in his way of loving, that way of understanding the relationship as if the other belongs to him. There is a tendency to cancel the other and ask them to give up for love but you have to be very careful, because maintaining this type of relationship is a matter for two, the two are united by an unconscious pact where each one plays their role. They are jealous of everything that takes away time to be with them (friends, family, work…) everything becomes a lover. But if the other resigns, revenge will come sooner or later in the sense that the person who resigns will hold the other person responsible. You may come to realize that you have lost so many things that kept you happy, joyful… that the relationship ends up breaking down or that it lasts over time and becomes a constant and suffering way of enjoying yourself.

4. How can we detect that we are obsessed with someone?

When your life becomes poorer: you stop being with friends, you don’t include new relationships, activities you used to like Now you stop doing them to spend more time with that person, you constantly think about him/her, every time he/she moves away for a moment you see it as abandonment, your life revolves around him/her, you can’t think about anything he/she doesn’t have. to do with him/her, in any project in which he/she is not included, you ask him/her to do things for you, in your attempt to like him/her more you do things that you don’t like, there is an attempt to isolate you with the other…

5. What feelings does love obsession awaken in the person who suffers from it?

Feelings of possession, of exclusivity where everything else is superfluous, where the world is impoverished if he/she is not there. It is believed that life no longer has meaning if that person is not by our side

6. Why does it arise? Is it necessary to have had a relationship or can it arise with a stranger?

It arises because that person has that structure in their way of loving, that is, they are inhabited by a thought about love as a possession. Just as one thinks it will reflect how one lives love, how you build your relationships. It does not have so much to do with previous relationships, if one does not learn to love, one unconsciously searches for the mother, that is, a search for what one had and what one believes is missing. We love as we have been taught, as we have not been transmitted, which translates into what is written (platonic love, prince charming, the courteous lady…) or what is the same, what is transmitted to us through ideology. That is why it is very important to know where I think about love and that it is something I can build. It is there to be exercised in the infinitive, like a plant that is fed day by day, and if we do not learn to love in a healthy way we can become very unhappy.

7. What are the most common practices or habits of the person who is obsessed?

You want to spend all your time with that person, you even give up your own growth everything seems little to you, you demand more and more and it is never enough, doing separate activities is experienced as a separation, every time it is delayed you interpret it as abandonment, unhealthy jealousy comes into play…

8. How can you put an end to this obsession?

It is important to highlight that it is in the couple where the personal disorders of each one, acts as a screen mode. This person also has an obsessive way of relating to other elements of the environment (work, friendship…). It is only by going to a psychoanalyst to help you transform that unhealthy way of relating from which you suffer, that we will not be able to put an end to it, because it is not because of the person, but because of the object toward which and around which we live. obsession, but is part of the structure of the person who suffers from it. Thus, there is a repetition compulsion, that is, the story is going to repeat itself with other people without being able to avoid it because it is not something conscious.

9. What role do new technologies play in love obsession?

Networks, social networks, internet… In a certain sense they can facilitate this degree of control towards the other, because the windows where you can look, where you can look out at surveillance, expand. It is a problem that is frequently consulted in therapy because sometimes there is an absence of limits in that sense (you look at messages, you ask for passwords, you spy on social networks…) which is not just another way to suffer or maintain that enjoyment. in the relationship.

10. How does obsession influence daily routine?

It can be disabling, because it makes you consume energy very powerful that can be used at work, socially, in creation… you isolate yourself from the rest and can even cause symptoms such as anxiety, anguish or delirium.

11. How does it affect the other person?

To the one who suffers from the attacks of the obsessive? When a person receives the attacks of the obsessive, he already maintains a relationship with him, so it is also a reason for consultation because in some way the two “fit” into the obsessive display It is a consent towards certain aspects that one unconsciously agrees with. Not every person is capable of being with anyone else, even if it seems paradoxical and they even maintain a conflictive love-hate relationship and are always thinking about abandoning them, there is some kind of enjoyment in that situation. Let us remember that there is a masochistic part in human beings.

12. What is the best method to nip obsession in the bud?

He therapist psychoanalyst of couples without a doubt because it will discover and translate into its true meaning what is at stake in each one and in the couple. Nothing is what it seems, and we see it every day, from people who complain about a situation but maintain it throughout their lives.

13. How long, on average, can this problem be overcome?

If you go to a couples therapist psychoanalyst you will depend on desire that it is kept in it and that it is maintained in the treatment. There are people who notice the results from the first session and are able to pronounce and allow themselves different phrases that transform the meaning, the position in the couple.