Confusing Love With Obsession: When Being in Love Means Being in Control

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Love is great. You’ve finally found someone who finds all your little quirks endearing, and who you can share your spit with.

Confusing love with obsession : when being in love means being in control / John D. Moore. —3rd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-1-59285-356-4 ISBN-10: 1-59285-356-0Controlling another person involves a great deal of energy. If we wish to be truly honest about our addiction, we must recognize our specific tools of control and accept responsibility for having employed them. Self-examination, as with any task that has us look inward, can be a difficult and painful process. It doesn’t happen overnight and may take years to accomplish fully. Much of what we experienced as children has been repressed so deeply within our hidden selves that no amount of therapy is going to successfully draw out all of our suffering. We do, however, have a responsibility to ourselves to seek out that which is buried inside. Why? Because our strong need to control another person eventually destroys the very life that we so desperately wish to preserve—our own. Our relationships with our partners, our children, and ourselves are dependent on our ability to become truly self-aware. The person we are today is the direct result of the person we were yesterday, and Enduring physical and/or emotional abuse, believing that a partner will one day see that she is “hurting you and the relationship” Staying in an abusive relationship and believing that “If I show enough love, he will see how destructive his behavior is” Confusing verbal abuse with love, believing that “You only hurt the ones you love; that’s why he calls me those names, you know” Confusing physical abuse with love, believing that “When he hits me, at least I know he cares” Being all-consumed by a relationship in its early stages could also be a sign of obsession. Being completely engrossed in someone isn't necessarily a red flag that your partner is abusive, but it isn't a good sign either. The character that I personally identified with is Nancy. I can relate to her situation because it easily relates to that of my sister, and her character might as well be my sister herself – their actions and analysis of situations is very similar. When my sister met her current husband, she was intensely in love with him and soon, within one month, began to forgo her interests for the sake of their ‘relationship’.

Well, there are a number of traits and characteristics that are part of the dynamic. Confusing Love with Obsession Characteristics PRIMARY TOOL OF CONTROL: Alcohol and other drugs Age: thirty-four. In a two-year relationship. Both parents were alcoholics. Demanding that a partner abandon friendships that predated the relationship. Guilting a partner into spending time with us, rather than his friends. “She’s not your girlfriend, you know” is an example of such a control tactic. Punishing a partner by becoming emotionally or verbally abusive if she does spend time with a friend. For whom have I labored? For whom have I journeyed? For whom have I suffered? I have gained absolutely nothing for myself—I have only profited the snake! The relational dependent person sinks into depression given that the relationship fails. The person blames her/himself for the collapse of the relationship, and may seek revenge on the partner by physically harming him/her. Due to low-self esteem arising from abandonment, the relational dependent person engages in self-destructive behaviors such as substance abuse, inebriation, and binge eating. In this final phase, the relational dependent person is considered to be at risk of suicide.

Paul E. Mullen, Michele Pathé, and Rosemary Purcell, “The Management of Stalkers,” Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, no. 7 (2001): 335–42, apt.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/7/5/335. O ruler of the gods, if I have deserved this treatment, and it is your will that I perish with fire, why withhold your thunderbolts? Let me at least fall by your hand. Is this the reward of my fertility, of my obedient service? Because I recognized that addiction often runs in cyclical patterns, it was important for me to create something that people could “see” as a way of gauging their own behaviors. And so I created the Obsessive Love Wheel (OLW) as a demonstration of Obsessive Relational Progression (ORP). You are the one doing the controlling—not me!” “You are just saying that so you can get what you want.” “You really don’t mean what you are saying.” “You are making me act this way.”