Are you head over heels in love with a guy and can’t seem to wrap your head around the reason? Does your behavior make you worry you may actually be obsessed with him? In this article, we explore 13 possible reasons why this may be so.
However, before we get into it, it is imperative that we’re both on the same page as to what obsession means. Many of us have a massive crush on someone, and just because it refuses to disappear when we expect it to, we give it the wrong term. Obsession is not a child’s play and shouldn’t be thrown around carelessly.
In this context, it may mean you think you’re hopelessly in love with someone and feel a compulsive need to manipulate and control them and everything around them to show them you do. This kind of love is unhealthy and destructive, and you may become abusive, depressed, or perceive other people interacting with them as a threat to you.
Their well-being isn’t a priority per se to you in this situation, and neither is yours. That being said, let’s get right into seeing why you may be feeling the way you do, shall we?
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For some people, someone they like being out of reach only increases their appeal to them. Some can’t stand the idea of not having anything they want in any area of their life. But romantically, it is quite common among women to obsess over guys we can’t have.
Not being able to have him may mean he’s out of your league (maybe a celebrity), taken, or just not interested in going out with you. He may have even rejected you outrightly, but that only seems to boost the attraction factor.
If this is your current predicament, experts say it’s because this type of rejection stimulates the part of your brain linked to addiction, motivation, reward, and cravings. Interpreting it as these things might be why you can’t stop thinking about him.
An extension of the above is when you obsess over a guy who treats you like crap. He may not say no to you, in fact, you may be in a relationship, but all he ever brings you is pain. Yet, something about the allure of the ‘bad boy’ keeps you going back to him. It’s likely you’re simply obsessed with his character and you’re not in love.
You know he’s emotionally unstable, yet you make up all forms of excuses for him because he can be ‘good for you.’ I’m no shrink, but I’ll bet his approval has become like cocaine for you. If you can just get a fix, maybe it’ll hold you for a little longer, and he’ll come to his senses? Well, here’s a spoiler: he most likely won’t. So, it’s best to stop seeking approval.
If the above point hits a nerve, it may no longer be just a case of you consciously trying to remain with him. You may have developed a sort of codependent relationship with the idea of what you have with this person. Hence, the need to make the bad boy good (and not just for a weekend) might be what has driven you to obsession.
You may figure love is your motivation for falling into such a pattern, and you may be right. But you should know a healthy relationship doesn’t thrive on codependency. In fact, it probably points to low self-esteem on your part and may also be a symptom of Borderline Personality Disorder.
If he’s the best you’ve ever had one way or another, obsession is an all-too-easy pattern to fall into if you don’t catch yourself on time. It’s worse if you no longer have access to him because then your brain goes into overdrive spinning perfect versions of him to make up for what you miss. If that’s the case, you have to remember that there’s plenty of fish in the sea.
Is there any chance you may be addicted to what you gain by being associated with this guy? Is he the kindest soul you have ever encountered? Is he so generous to you or other people around that you’ve convinced yourself you could never do better?
Is it his looks, or could it be the way he makes love to you that flicked a permanent switch in you? If you said yes to any of these, maybe, you’re not really in love with him, but with the way he makes you feel in real life. Remember, true love has no obsession.
The way commitment issues are a thing for some people, so could attachment be for you. Like many things that manifest fully in adulthood, it begins with the type of love and attention you had as a child. If you formed a less than wholesome attachment to your parents or guardian probably because they were mostly unavailable or abusive, it’ll have a direct impact on your adult relationships.
If you formed an insecure attachment style based on a constant fear that your parents will separate and leave you, that might explain your current situation. That fear may have developed into anxiety, causing you to overcompensate when you fall in love with someone by obsessing over them.
A common effect of attachment disorders, as explained above, is an intense fear of abandonment. Asides from those that stem directly or indirectly from your relationship with your childhood caregiver, you could also develop this issue in other ways.
For instance, if someone you dated who meant the whole world left you for no apparent reason, you may have interpreted that as not being enough for anyone. If it happened early on in your mental development, you might have shaped your subsequent relationships after this, thinking you have something to prove before others can stay.
Like the child above who fears her parents might leave, you may find yourself holding on a little tighter than is healthy to anyone you fall in love with so they don’t go too.
That brings me to my next point: can you tell the difference between love and obsession? Do you find yourself habitually invading the privacy of people you love in the name of how you feel about them? Have you ever felt the need to beat another woman up for so much as complimenting your man? The answer to these will further help you understand why you’re obsessed with him.
Does your whole life suddenly start revolving around a guy as soon as you meet him? Do you find yourself tracking your man’s every single movement both in person and on social media? Do you get depressed (not sad) as soon as the attention or validation of the object of your affection wanes? Do you threaten to hurt someone or yourself if they leave you?
If these and similar behaviors are how you feel and express yourself in love, I’m sorry to break it to you, but that is something else entirely, not love.
Maybe your boundary issues don’t only pop up with people you develop feelings for. The major difference between love and the dreaded ‘O’ word is that one doesn’t know when or where to stop. If the concept of limits is alien to you, you won’t know where to draw the line with yourself, let alone when it comes to someone else.
This may contribute to you mistaking fixation for love because you don’t know any better. Do your loved ones usually complain about your obsessive attitude or worry about you going in too deep, too fast into something, anything, but mostly romantic relationships? Make sure you do an inward check, and you may just find the problem is from within.
Use this tool to check whether he actually is who he says he is
Whether you're married or have just started seeing someone, infidelity rates are on the rise and have increased over 40% in the last 20 years, so you have all the right to be worried.
Perhaps you want to know if he's texting other women behind your back? Or whether he has active Tinder or dating profile? Or worse yet, whether he has a criminal record or is cheating on you?
This tool will do just that and pull up any hidden social media and dating profiles, photos, criminal records, and much more to hopefully help put your doubts to rest.
Fear and insecurity lead us to believe that we are not worthy of love, and plunge us into a deep sense of inadequacy, therefore we cannot afford to express ourselves. Instead, we tend to make an extreme sacrifice in an attempt to adapt to someone—the only possibility to be loved and saved.
The other person, obviously, does not even perceive everything that is happening. You simply invest yourself with a series of idealizations and expectations that you must constantly pursue, creating an obsessive love.
Emotional emptiness leads many people to desperately search for love and acceptance, with the false belief that they can only be happy if they are reciprocated by the person who is the object of their obsession. They then create an illusion that takes them further and further from the truth and that generates suffering and disappointment.
If you feel like you relate, or it sounds like what you’re going through, I’ll advise you to get some help. A visit to a therapist or even a chat with a loved one will work well to help you make sense of it all.
Quite relative to the previous point. If you’re a needy person, you continue to keep your partner at the center of your life with the illusion that everything will change.
You might assume that finally, your partner will realize the mutual need, the love that inextricably unites you, and that every effort you gave will be rewarded. But the reality is different because you are truly not doing more than feeding your love obsessions.
If you have generally felt bad about yourself even before you met this guy, you likely went into the relationship without recognizing your own dissatisfaction with yourself and the critical points present.
In a relationship, you will continue to convince yourself that you are not “enough”. The requirement for your partner to reaffirm your own security will remain unanswered, leaving more room for every single insecurity to come through.
Another viable reason to explore would be how much you have going for you personally apart from this guy. Were you in a long-term relationship with him and took the “his win is my win” mentality a little too far? It is not uncommon to become overly attached to something or someone when you’ve invested a lot into them.
If all your achievements have to do with your relationship with him one way or the other, that could be your answer to why you’re obsessed. It could also be a result of a long-held resentment from an acrimonious separation.
Either way, work on making a conscious decision to stop obsessing about what you’ve lost or stand to lose. The good news is, it’s never too late to rebuild your sense of self, it just won’t be easy.
You know what else could make you feel like this guy is all you’ve got going for you?
If he met you at a low point mentally. And I say this with no iota of judgment or condescension because the best of us have been there. When you have personal struggles you can’t seem to describe or think wouldn’t make a difference if you could, then someone comes along and just gets it, it’s hard to let such a person go.
This can easily cause you to slip into codependency, and even though you may be out of the woods by the time the relationship ends, you may never truly get over them. Not for as long as you see them as your savior anyway.
If this is you, an excellent way to start putting them behind you or at least learn to love them appropriately is to get professional help.
Erotomanic delusions are another possible reason you’re unable to stop obsessing over someone. The condition is a disorder, albeit an uncommon one. It is characterized by an inability to tell fantasy apart from reality. Often, a symptom of a more severe mental health illness like Schizophrenia or Bipolar Disorder, it can make you believe someone is deeply in love with you when they’re not.
This is a little more complicated than being unsure of someone’s feelings for you. There could be clear evidence that shows they aren’t, they may not even know of your existence, but the disorder will have you convinced you’re in a loving relationship. But before you freak out, you should remember it is a rare condition, and there’s a pretty high chance you don’t have it.
You suffer from unfounded fear of loss. A bit of healthy care should be natural, but panic is not an option. Unfounded and excessive jealousy can also be signs.
What does that have to do with you obsessing over a guy? Hear me out. Obsessive-compulsive disorder can present itself in several ways, from a need to maintain a perpetually clean environment to an irrational need for control.
This condition can also present itself in the way you approach your relationships. However, unlike the other points we’ve discussed, your fixation works quite differently with ROCD. It makes you question your feelings for the object of your affection as well as how they feel about you.
You may not be able to stop obsessing about whether or not they’re the right person for you and may need to be frequently reassured of their love. If you end up losing the person because of these uncertainties, it may cause you to obsess over them.
There is a psychological term for most of the points on this list, it’s called Obsessive Love Disorder (OLD). This may be the long and short of the reason you can’t seem to wrap your mind around your obsessive love for this guy.
Many of the points I’ve mentioned are actually causes and symptoms of this condition, which, by the way, is yet to be fully accepted as a mental health illness.
OLD can indicate other mental health conditions, as opposed to being an isolated illness. In any case, the frequency of occurrence is relatively low, with the National Library of Medicine estimating its prevalence to be under 0.1%.
According to Healthline, OLD symptoms may include having obsessive thoughts about the object of your affection with an overwhelming attraction to the said person. The condition may also make you extremely jealous when they interact with other people as it causes you to become super-possessive of them. Others include low self-esteem, disregard for boundaries, wanting to control them, and threatening to harm them or yourself if they leave.
Having OLD may cause one to obsess over people you get into a relationship with or even strangers sometimes. Mental conditions like erotomania, OCD, and attachment disorder can also make one obsess over another person. Then there are the other things like having a score to settle, boundary issues, low sense of self, and the likes.
If you obsess over guys who treat you nicely and are kind to you, it may be because you lacked that growing up. But if you usually obsess over guys you can’t have or who are mean to you, you may have low self-esteem, have very little going for you, or an underlying mental condition.
To stop obsessing over someone, you first have to figure out why you do it. Do you find yourself living in your head more than in reality? Are you usually more fixated on people you barely know, or is your issue letting go of those you do? Consider finding out the source of the problem by seeking professional help.
An obsessed person inclines on the extreme of two strong emotions (love or hate) for their object. They usually run with idealized ideas and can be so intense in their display of it that it becomes a cause for concern for the person on the receiving end.
I hope you found this post enlightening. If you’re here, it means you’re probably already on a path to healing. Whatever your reason for obsessing over someone is, remember it’s never too late to stop and regain your sense of self. Goodluck! Before you go, though, kindly leave a comment and share the article if you gained from it.
Utilize this tool to verify if he's truly who he claims to be
Whether you're married or just started dating someone, infidelity rates have risen by over 40% in the past 20 years, so your concerns are justified.
Do you want to find out if he's texting other women behind your back? Or if he has an active Tinder or dating profile? Or even worse, if he has a criminal record or is cheating on you?
This tool can help by uncovering hidden social media and dating profiles, photos, criminal records, and much more, potentially putting your doubts to rest.
When we crush on someone or we have recently broken up with someone we love, it can be hard for us to move on mentally. Many of us will fixate on a person and think of them all hours of the day. However, obsessing over someone can be an unhealthy mental state to be in. It stops you from moving on and finding love elsewhere, plus it can mean you spend a lot of your time living in a dream world as opposed to reality.
But how do you stop obsessing over someone? Here, we look to answer that question that so many people struggle with and need to get help to stop obsessing and start moving forward. So if you are wondering how to stop obsessing over someone after a relationship ends, try reading through our 17 tips to help you quit those obsessive thoughts and help you lead a much better life right away.
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Here are our tips for how to stop obsessing over someone. Try employing a number at the same time to materially improve your chances of moving on quickly.
If you want to know how to stop obsessing over a guy, one of the quickest ways to do so is to delete their number from your phone. In doing so, you are limiting the amount that you can contact them with the ease that your cell phone gives you. It is a quick win because it can help break your habit of trying to contact them as often as you do. Breaking that habit is a key way of stopping being obsessed with someone as it interrupts your thoughts and your current way of thinking.
One of the ways that we encourage an obsession is by looking back at pictures we may have of the person that we are obsessed with. To stop those thoughts, it can be really helpful to erase any picture you have of both of them. Even more crucially, erase any pictures you have of them with you. The very act of erasing them is mentally helpful and in the future, it can stop you from looking at images of them that encourage your obsessive thoughts.
Social media is not a great place for those that have a crush which is bordering on obsession. It means we can spend too much time poring over a person’s social media for any clues as to what they are doing or how they are feeling. To stop this, unfollow them on social media so that you cannot be reminded of them when you come to check your accounts’ news feeds. That reminder stops you from moving on, so unfollowing them is one of the best and easiest things you can do.
If you have been in a relationship with a person you are currency obsessing over, you may have many mutual friends. In the period where you are trying to eradicate any thought of them from your mind, it can be helpful not to see the mutual friends you have in common with someone. The temptation to ask after your ex can be too much in addition to those very friends being reminders of what you did have with your ex in the first place.
Staying in the same place you’ve been for a while can actually seriously hinder your ability to move on from a person who is now your ex or that you are crushing on. Going away on vacation can be a great way to stop obsessing as getting away from it all gives you a new stimulus to keep your mind occupied in new ways, as well as simply giving you some much-needed perspective on your life.
A key method to moving on from an ex or getting over a crush is to start dating other people. Realizing that there are other people out there that can make you happy is a fundamental and crucial way to get on with your life and get it to a place where you are content and fulfilled. When we are obsessed with a person we so often forget that there are other people out there just as, or more than, capable of making us happy.
When you are obsessed with a person, it can have a detrimental effect on other parts of your life. To stop this from happening, take a proactive stance to focus on yourself for a period of time each day, every day. This can be doing meditation, taking an exercise class, indulging in a new hobby, or simply taking a bubble bath.
One of the reasons that people often have obsessive thoughts about another person is that they do not have the confidence or respect for themselves to move on. They think they cannot survive without their crush or their ex as they don’t have enough belief in their strength to live without them. Take the time to build up your confidence and realize that your life can be complete without your ex or crush.
Setting a big target such as ‘I am never going to think about my ex ever again’ sets us up for a fall. When we fail, we beat ourselves up over our failure making it difficult to move on. Instead, take every day at a time. Try not to think about your crush or ex for a morning or a whole day at first. And, if you don’t manage that, congratulate yourself on the time that you did spend not thinking about them.
Keeping yourself busy is a key way to keeping your thoughts free of obsession and clearing your mind. When you are busy, you don’t have the capacity to think of your ex which can help break the perpetual cycle that obsession can be. Staying busy then creates more things to keep yourself busy with in the future too so that when you do stop for a break, enough time should have passed that you can think about your ex in a far healthier way than you have previously.
One of the reasons that obsession can be so unhealthy is because we have not been realistic in how we are thinking about our ex. We remember them with rose-tinted glasses, or if we have a crush, we don’t see any of our crush’s bad points which means our obsession gets out of control. Instead, keep in mind that your ex or your crush is human with flaws that are just as crucial to concentrate on as their good points.
Having an obsession is an unhealthy habit. It is important when moving on from a person or crush to start a new healthier habit instead, therefore. So, for example, instead of checking your phone all the time to see if they have messaged you, pick up your phone to start reading the news or listen to music or podcast.
Having an obsession is a very indulgent habit. For that reason, it can be very unhealthy for our mental health which is important to remember when trying to move on. Stopping obsessing over someone is easier to do if you keep the bigger picture in mind. If you know that in the long run you will be happier and lead a better life for moving on from your obsessive thoughts, then it can give you the right encouragement to break this vicious cycle.
In addition to deleting your crush's number from your phone or unfollowing your ex on social media, it can be a good idea to have a total digital detox to help us move on from our obsession. The reason being is that we are all so connected through the use of our mobile phones, that we have created many bad and unhealthy habits that make us forget how to live our lives without an internet connection. Break that habit and take time out from your phone and you’ll help break the habit of obsessing over your ex with your new outlook on life.
Realizing what you have that is good in your life can be a key way to stop thinking about another person all the time. We so often, when are obsessed with an ex or crush, fixate on how they can make our lives better and make us happy, all the while forgetting what we have in our lives already that can keep us content.
It can be so easy to forget why you broke up with a person in the first place. While they may have broken up with you, the relationship was clearly not working for it to get to a place where one of you wanted out. Remember that and the reasons why you got to that place to help you looking back on the relationship with rose-tinted glasses.
Finally, get out and start living your life and creating new, wonderful experiences that are separate from your ex or from your crush. In doing so, you will realize that your happiness by no means depends on them being a part of your life at all. This helps you create a far more positive outlook on life that is irrespective of what your ex or crush is up to.
Obsessing over someone, in particular, is very common. It comes from looking at that person with rose-tinted glasses so that you do not see them realistically. They become almost a fictitious version of themselves that you can see no wrong in so that you end up having obsessive thoughts.
It can be hard to stop obsessing over someone, but it can be done if you take some proactive steps like the ones that we suggest above. Try employing a number of them at a time to help up the chances of stopping intrusive thoughts impeding your ability to get someone off your mind.
It can be very common to become obsessed with your partner to such a degree that you no longer have a healthy relationship anymore. If one of you is obsessed with the other, the relationship can be imbalanced. Take a time out and focus on yourself for a while.
If you are worried that your obsessive thoughts are actually an obsessive love disorder, it can be helpful to seek outside, professional help. Go to a doctor to see what your options are and in the meantime, try to concentrate on yourself in terms of your physical and mental health.
Use this tool to check whether he actually is who he says he is
Whether you're married or have just started seeing someone, infidelity rates are on the rise and have increased over 40% in the last 20 years, so you have all the right to be worried.
Perhaps you want to know if he's texting other women behind your back? Or whether he has active Tinder or dating profile? Or worse yet, whether he has a criminal record or is cheating on you?
This tool will do just that and pull up any hidden social media and dating profiles, photos, criminal records, and much more to hopefully help put your doubts to rest.
Romantic obsession is when you are either obsessed with someone or obsessed with the idea of love or being in a relationship. The latter means that you are determined above all else to be in a relationship, and of all the things in life you want, your main goal is to find a long term partner.
Matters of the heart are incredibly sensitive and so often when we fall in love with a person or crush on them, we can start to focus on them in a way that can easily turn into an obsession.
Obsession, however, can be an unhealthy state of mind to be in, so it is a good idea to try to break the habit of obsessive thoughts as soon as possible. Try using one or all of our recommendations above to help you move on as quickly as possible from your crush or your ex. It will help you start leading a happier life overall.
Utilize this tool to verify if he's truly who he claims to be
Whether you're married or just started dating someone, infidelity rates have risen by over 40% in the past 20 years, so your concerns are justified.
Do you want to find out if he's texting other women behind your back? Or if he has an active Tinder or dating profile? Or even worse, if he has a criminal record or is cheating on you?
This tool can help by uncovering hidden social media and dating profiles, photos, criminal records, and much more, potentially putting your doubts to rest.
