I’ll let the question in the title stand as is. Interpret it as you wish.
I have my thoughts but I’d like to get a few responses first if you all feel inclined to indulge me.
Obsessed? Are we talking stalker obsessed? It IS all kindergarten at times; we may to annoy the object of our affection if we lack the correct social skills to treat them kindly and well…reminds me of a boy in grade school who would torment my best girlfriend…sometimes he’d be cool, sometimes he’d be a jerk. She thought he was being mean to her but I sensed otherwise. Due to her lack of self esteem, she couldn’t grasp the fact that he adored her. She considered herself unattractive and fat. She was not. Years later, thanks to Facebook, the truth came out…he had a mad crush on her for ten years through grammar and high school, but never said a word…
Nothing will come of that as they live thousands of miles apart and are married to others, but that bit of knowledge worked wonders on my girlfriend’s self esteem today. She now is reconsidering that perhaps she may have been her own enemy in certain situations.
Two people?
double checks
No idea if its friendship, arch-enemy or what, but it indicates to me the tip of some kind of relationship exists between them and is showing above the water line with an unknown amount of subtext underneath.
There are issues between them that need to be worked out, but I wouldn’t suggest casually standing around when they do.
Ex: “Hey, Gasoline? Let me introduce you to this person over here Fire. Now, I think you two have some talking to do…” :smack:
…then again a very controlled introduction actually is the basis for the internal combustion engine…
In love or in lust. I guess it could be “in hate.”
Obsessed could go a few different ways.
They’re just in love if they hear singing and there’s no one there.
Okay, I guess I should stipulate, when I say obsessed, I mean that in the form of: “OMG, I can’t live with out her/him” type of obsession. If that feeling is mutual between both people, is it just love?
Obsessed is weird and creepifying. It doesn’t signify any kind of healthy relationship to me.
ETA: With your addendum, it sounds like love. I’d need to know more, but I’d probably chalk it up to love and leave it at that.
That sounds like lust, not love.
No. Obsession is the same as infatuation - purely based on emotion and it will, in time, pass. Love is a conscious decision made independant of the emotions involved. Emotions - all emotions - come and go. There are times when emotions swing to anger and I really don’t like my wife (more accurately, don’t like an action she has taken), and she with me. The decision to love is what remains strong.
Trying to build love on emotion is like trying to build a house on the crest of a wave.
No.
My roommate and his ex were obsessed with each other, but it was one of those things where they were either screwing or fighting; there was little, if any, middle ground. Led to months of drama, and the isolation of most of their friends. According to them, they had the perfect love and nobody could ever understand because none of us have ever had that. Meanwhile, they broke doors, furniture, etc., whenever they had a “lovers’ spat.”
That’s not love, that’s unhealthy co-dependency.
He goes through this cycle on a somewhat regular basis. He’s currently on a new guy who, got dragged out of a bar for mouthing off to a group of people, and almost got jumped. The fourth “date” (after 1.5 weeks since they met), the new guy has already introduced my roommate to his mom. This won’t end well.
I think this is the point where we run into the problem of English. We have too many meanings for the word love.
What you describe is what I generally call infatuation. You can actually see how the brain chemistry is different for the first couple years of a relationship, and then it settles down a little. (The evolutionary psych types would say this is long enough to knock the girl up and get the baby out of infancy.)
After those couple of years are over, the nature of love changes. A lot of people seem to think that infatuation is real love and that it should last forever, but I just don’t see any real evidence of that. Couples who’ve been married for a long time can still be deeply in love, and would still say “I can’t live without her/him” but not in an obsessed manner (and certainly not with the OMG added 
).
Of course, some obsession is not even remotely love. Jealousy, manipulation, abuse, etc. may all show up as an obsession.
Actual obsession, I think is not love. Love needs respect and consideration. It’s a more rounded out affair with a whole host of feelings involved, including mellow ones. Obsession is just obsession though - you think about them and revolve your world around them to an extent out of your control. You might want to stop or slow yourself but you can’t. They keep getting in your head just by existing and your actions feel controlled just by their presence. You want to possess them in a way like swallowing them up and keeping them inside you. You might realize that it’s a problem and also kind of hate them at the same time for indirectly exerting so much control over your life. It messes with your head. Like dracoi says it can even evolve into jealousy and abuse.
A lot of people use hyperbole when in love though and don’t really mean what they say to the extent they say. When an obsessive says that they can’t live without a person it means it feels like they’re dying inside whenever they leave.
That may be, but if you reach the point where you think you can walk on air, you still need a parachute.
… But she *wasn’t *wrong – he was mean to her. You even described it as “tormenting” in the previous line. Just because he “adored” her doesn’t make his assholishness suddenly okay or even good. My entire middle school experience was filled with this shit. If I found out today that it was because they all liked me (or my early-developed boobs), I likely wouldn’t hold a grudge against them… but that doesn’t change the fact they, nearly single-handedly, made those years pure misery for me. They were the #1 reason I wanted to (and did) go to an all-girls high school (and I’m still incredibly happy I did).
Also, I guess it might not be obvious to you, but that same “tormenting” is often a huge part of why a girl’s self esteem plummets into the sub-basement.