Obsessive love is characterized by obsessive or compulsive attempts to possess or control an individual, especially triggered (or even intensified) by rejection. Obsessive love can also be distinguished from other forms of romantic love by its one-sidedness and repulsed approaches. Rejection is the "ultimate nightmare" to an obsessive lover, who can not let go when confronted with disinterest or the loss of a partner.
Usually obsessive love leads to feelings of worthlessness, self-destructive behavior and social withdrawal, but in some cases an obsessive lover may monitor or stalk the object of their passion, or commit acts of violence. According to J. Reid Meloy, "Violent behavior toward self or others as the denoument of unrequited love is as old as antiquity."
Most obsessional stalkers who are not delusional had some type of a relationship with their victim (an ex-partner), and have personality disorders.
According to Robert Bringle and Robert Rydell, obsessive love is considered a normal phenomenon because the features shared with pathological obsessions (e.g. OCD, criminal stalking) are not usually extreme enough to warrant a clinical diagnosis.
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Comparison
The term "obsessive love" is also mentioned in reference to other concepts:
Mania love style
In the color wheel theory of love, mania is a possessive, dependent love style. A manic lover is insecure, jealous, and needs reassurances of being loved. A manic lover is unsure of who attracts them, so they may fall in love with somebody they don't even like and project unrealistic qualities onto them.
Among the other love styles, mania is most closely compared to eros, which is erotic love or love of beauty. An eros lover is also intensely preoccupied with their beloved, but they are self-assured. The eros lover is in search of an ideal; they tend to fall in love with somebody more of their preference, and in a less chaotic way.
Passionate love, romantic love, or infatuation
Passionate love is the kind of love felt in the early stage of a relationship, or for a potential partner before a relationship has occurred (which can be unrequited). Passionate love is a state of intense longing for another, which has an obsessional element characterized by intrusive thinking, uncertainty, and mood swings. Passionate love is commonly contrasted with companionate love, the gentler feelings of affection or bonding which take more time to develop.
Passionate love is a relatively broad concept which encapsulates and combines aspects of other more precise taxonomies, but while ignoring their finer distinctions (such as the distinction between eros and mania, which roughly correspond to passionate love when taken together).
Limerence
Limerence is a love madness or all-absorbing infatuated love (comparable to passionate love), commonly for an unreachable person. Limerence is said to be "a condition of cognitive obsession" where the person experiencing it spends much of their time fantasizing about their love object (called the "limerent object")—the kind of love Romeo and Juliet felt for each other. Limerence can impact day-to-day functioning and mental health.
Psychology
The problem with obsessive love is not so much a question of loving too intensely, but rather of anger over rejection, or feelings of abandonment. Susan Forward states that in her practice, she found four conditions which helped clarify when somebody is suffering from obsessive love:
John Moore describes the process of those who "confuse love with obsession" as a cycle of four phases he calls the "Obsessive Relational Progression":
Attraction, characterized by an initial overwhelming attraction to a new person, unrealistic fantasies, an immediate urge to rush into a relationship, and the start of controlling behaviors.
Anxiety, a turning point which usually occurs after a commitment has been made, where unfounded thoughts of infidelity, betrayal and fear of abandonment occur, resulting in mistrust, depression, anxiety, and the escalation of controlling behaviors.
Obsession, when extreme behaviors begin to overwhelm, resulting in obsessive surveillance, stalking, and possibly violence.
Destruction, where the partner flees the relationship.
Obsessive love may be related to the anxious attachment style. The mania love attitude (for obsessive, dependent love) has been correlated with attachment anxiety, and also the personality trait neuroticism.
The anthropologist Helen Fisher believed that "abandonment rage" (anger after a rejection) can be explained in terms of the frustration–aggression hypothesis, where rage is triggered when an expected reward is in jeopardy. Romantic love and rage are connected in the brain by similar circuitry; both involve arousal and energy production, and both drive obsessive focus and goal-directed behaviors. Fisher believed that ordinarily the evolutionary purpose of abandonment rage is to facilitate separation and the search for a new partner, although sometimes abandonment rage erupts into violence instead.
Stalking
Love obsessionality can in some cases lead to stalking, although stalkers also often have other conditions. Like falling in love, stalking is also described as a form of addiction. A 1999 study by Paul Mullen and colleagues classified 145 stalkers according to several kinds of groups:
Rejected ex-partners (41 of 145), who mostly had personality disorders, although 9 were delusional, 5 of whom had morbid jealousy. Rejected stalkers often had mixed desire for reconciliation and revenge, as well as frustration, anger, jealousy, vindictiveness, and sadness.
Intimacy seekers (49 of 145), who were attempting to establish an intimate relationship with their "true love", most of whom were delusional, and further classified as follows:
Those with erotomania (27 of 145), with a delusional belief their love was reciprocated.
Those with morbid infatuations (15 of 145), who did not believe their love was reciprocated but still believed a delusion of their eventual success.
Those who had personality disorders (7 of 145), but were not delusional.
Incompetent stalkers (22 of 145), who regarded their victims as attractive potential partners, but who were intellectually limited and socially incompetent instead of being infatuated.
The other 33 stalkers identified by the study had motives other than a relationship (e.g. broken friendships/family, sexual predation, or scaring a victim).
Limerence is another type of love obsession which is being compared to the others, but the motives and emotional foundations behind limerence are different from stalking. A person in limerence hopes for mutual feelings, and their mood depends on whether their romantic interest seems to be returned, whereas the motive for stalking is to force contact, control or punish a victim for rejection. Limerence can cause distress if it becomes too intense, but it's also a feature of early-stage romantic love for many people.
Neuroscience
Cultural references
The ancient Greeks called obsessive love "theia mania" (the madness from the gods). Greek mythology depicted it in stories such as Apollo and Daphne. In ancient literature, a frustrated lover was frequently depicted as violent and manic, involving murder or suicide. Such an example is Medea, whose obsessive love for Jason escalates to murder. By contrast, the depiction of lovesickness in the form of a depressed, melancholic lover is more of a cliché of medieval and modern literature, although it was present in ancient literature as well, and described by early physicians.
Obsessive love has been depicted in the movies Play Misty for Me, Fatal Attraction, Vanilla Sky, Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret, and Obsession, the television series You, and the novels Wuthering Heights and The Phantom of the Opera. The history of obsessive love in the cinema is explored at length by Dominique Mainon and James Ursini in their book Cinema of Obsession.