Love vs Obsession

The subtle distinction between appreciation and objectification

In romantic affection, there is a thin line between love and obsession. Both can be possessive, of sorts. Romantic love, if it’s to be meaningful, must be exclusive between two people. This isn’t puritanism — it’s how we instinctively want to behave if we are to grant meaning to our relationships. And these “progressive” open relationships are bereft of meaningful love and self-respect. Cuckolds are friends with benefits, taking turns, plus the responsibilities, and without the voluntary attachment of exclusivity. This makes it the stupidest deal there is.

Obsession, on the other hand, is also possessive but without exclusivity. You can obsess over someone — romantically, sexually, or both — and still obsess over others the same way. You need the object of your obsession to be yours, but you don’t want to be theirs in return, not really. You desire to have everything you obsess over, at the same time, even if it’s logically impossible to have them all.

Yet there are bigger, more meaningful differences between love and obsession.

Love

Loving someone, even when they’re not yours, inspires you to be better. Your affection, even if not returned, holds you to a higher standard. You feel sad if your love is not returned. Regardless, the person you love makes you want to be better, even if they can’t return your love. And by ‘better’, I don’t mean shallow nonsense like a gay, roided-up beach body, or sucking up to audiences to become an influencer or politician or networked freemason who’s sold his soul and dignity in exchange for meaningless preferential treatment. I mean that, the person you love, motivates you to be principled and good even when (especially when) nobody’s watching. It’s as if the one you love is watching, and that’s more than enough to drive better, stronger behaviour in you. It’s as if you want to be as gracious and virtuous as possible to deserve the person you love, to match them. Whether your appreciation of them is realistic or not is irrelevant. If you truly love them with purity, then the standard you hold them to becomes your own, too. Even when your love is not reciprocated, you are less likely to indulge in addictions, to surrender to your weaknesses, and to be undignifiedly mean to others.

When you love, you disqualify yourself if you’re not good enough for them; whether this assessment is realistic or biased is irrelevant. The fact remains that, with love, your self-interest is the other person’s well-being.

True romantic love comes with respect. For example, when you love someone, you feel ashamed to stalk them, even when you know you won’t be caught. Nobody knows, but you know; you know you disrespect them when you stalk them.

Love comes from a place of appreciating the person for who they are, while considering their self-interest above all else.

Obsession

Obsession objectifies the other person. You don’t want them; you need them. This means that, if you have them, you don’t appreciate them, and when you don’t have them, it’s agony. This is the fundamental difference between need and want. When you’re obsessed with someone, and you don’t have them, you become worse. You aren’t inspired to be better at all. When you obsess over someone, you don’t feel some urge to be better. You become resentful of your circumstances and feel entitled to them the way you are now — without having to be better. Even though you know you’re not good enough to deserve them, you still feel entitled to them as if you were good enough to deserve someone so great as to be worth obsessing over. This is unfair. With obsession, your self-interest is your gratification, disregarding what might be better for the person you’re obsessing over.

Obsession is disrespectful, not only in that it objectifies the other person, but also in your behaviour. When you obsess, you have no inhibition to stalk the other person, to lie to the other person, to ignore their interests and desires.

Obsession comes from a place of objectifying the person, valuing only them for their utility as objects, without considering what they might want. It disregards the other person’s needs and wants because it doesn’t recognise them as living beings with hopes, dreams, and feelings.

Conclusion

I’ve been noticing for years all the pickup artists and self-announced “alpha males” flaunting their little black books listing hundreds of sexual conquests, as if sluttiness were something not to feel embarrassed about. And when I was younger, I used to feel jealous of them, even admire them. And, for a while, I became just like them.

But I quickly realised that these people are condemned to only be able to conquer one cheap type of woman: the generic one, the mass-production woman who doesn’t put up much resistance because she has zero self-respect; the type of woman who will be conquered by others as easily (likely easier) than she let herself be conquered by them.

You brag about having bedded hundreds of women? Imagine what you are to each of them: also one of hundreds, another faceless meat-object, a circumstantially useful apparatus that, for a moment, gratified their animalistic urges, not of their choosing, no less. There is nothing to brag about in chain-eating McDonald’s. It’s embarrassing, really.

Lustful obsession is not the same as love.

Check yourself whether you’re exhibiting signs of obsession rather than love. It could be liberating and empowering to admit to yourself that it’s only obsession.