Love vs. Obsession: Are You Loving Too Much?

It has been my experience over the years that a substantial number of romantic relationships perceived in intuitive readings are those in which an individual is either desperately trying to get someone to love them or they are desperately trying to keep the love of a partner by focusing an inordinate amount of their attention on them.

In both cases, what I essentially perceive is "obsession." Neither, realistically speaking, has a thing to do with genuine love.

When we obsess over our own emotions, we are, intuitively speaking, expressing ourselves on an extremely selfish level. We aren't loving those we have feelings for because we want them to be happy, even if it means they choose to live those lives without us. The kind of "loving" we're focused on expressing is basically designed to make us happy by doing everything we possibly can to get these individuals to share their lives exclusively with us.

And we will often go to some extraordinary lengths in order to try to make that happen.

We romantically chase, pursue - at times, even physically stalk - those we profess to "love." When we engage in relationships with new partners, we tend to be so possessive in our manner of "loving" that they inevitably run for the door to escape what they perceive to be an extremely oppressive and, essentially, unloving atmosphere.

When they leave us, we continue to chase them and may even harass them with phone calls and letters. We appear in desperation at their doors at all hours of the day and night. We confront their new partners in jealous rages, intent on venting our emotions while making the lives of those we profess to love miserable in the process. We may even attempt to ruin their careers, reputations and the families of the objects of our affections as a form of retaliation for not being loved enough in return.

We might go so far as entertaining fantasies of killing the one we profess to love in order to prevent him or her from sharing a life with someone else.

This is not loving. On the intuitive level, this is emotional obsession in its most dangerous and destructive form, so far removed from genuine love that we can't even catagorize it as obsession due to the level of psychosis involved.

When we genuinely give love to others, we selflessly put their happiness ahead of our own. We feel their pains, their sorrows. We also respect their own right to freedom, should that man or woman choose to exercise that right. We extend ourselves beyond our own wants and needs to encourage our partners to enjoy rich, full lives for themselves, risking the possibility that we won't be active participants in their lives in the future.

We want these individuals to be genuinely happy as they live their lives - with or without us - because we are capable of truly loving them that much.

Falling in love, however, is an entirely different story. When we "fall in love," we are experiencing the magnetism of attraction at its most powerful level. We literally feel the urge to mate and be coupled with that individual. This magnetism is an initial stage of loving, but it is far from reaching its final and most meaningful stage. Falling in love only draws us toward an individual with whom we may develop a relationship in the future, but the future depth and substance of that relationship won't have a thing to do with sexual attraction experienced in the here and now.

Consider that when we fall in love we feel entranced, dazzled, and downright captivated with that individual who attracts us so intensely. We feel drawn, consciously or not, to selfishly gratify a deep, inner longing for physical unity with another who characterizes an ideal mating partner for us at that particular time. There's no denying our basic nature to be sexual beings, no matter how technologically advanced civilization may have become. Human beings are drawn to one another essentially to mate, propagate, and, in general, proliferate the species. It's basic human nature, after all.

Loving, on the other hand, is an entirely unselfish act in emotionally extending ourselves beyond our own wants and needs. Through such loving, we recognize that our loved one is a wholly separate person who is traveling his or her own individual path in life without our needing or requiring them to be there for us at any given moment.

When we say, "I can't live without this person in my life," we aren't expressing love but instead, extreme dependency on another individual. We are obsessed and parasitic in the way we feel about that individual. We have focused the essence of our lives on the lives of our partners and are basically feeding off them as they pursue their own happiness in life.

We virtually have no identity for ourselves when we live this way. We are so focused on that partner and what he or she does in an attempt to be happy that we have no idea what it means to make ourselves happy. We are, plainly speaking, living our lives through the lives of others, which is a very unhealthy way to live.

Genuine love will never grow from such an unhealthy way of life, only greater dependency and deeper unhappiness is fostered in the end.

If you worry that you might be obsessing rather than truly loving your partner, ask yourself these questions:

Are you afraid to allow the one you love the space and freedom in which to pursue his or her own goals and dreams to grow and develop as a wholly separate individual?

Do you respect the privacy of the one you love or do you feel so insecure about the relationship you share that you feel driven to be a participant in every facet of their lives?

Are you overly suspicious of your partner's relationships with others - family members, coworkers, and friends - and scheme to destroy these relationships so he or she will ultimately "belong" only to you?

Does the thought of your partner leaving you fill you with such fear that you think, "I can't ever let that happen"?

I urge those who are yearning to better understand the difference between genuine love and obsession to pick up a copy of "The Road Less Traveled" by M. Scott Peck, MD. This book directly parallels the teachings of Personal Prophesy in terms of what constitutes truly healthy, loving relationships.