Why Do We Keep Mistaking Obsession for Love?
How would you define love?
Pining, obsession, desire. That huge emotional charge, the undeniable chemistry. The kind you see in movies and read about in books, the kind that makes you think, “If love isn’t like this, it isn’t real.”
I used to feel that way. I chased chemistry wherever it was strongest, convinced I’d met my soulmate whenever I felt that flicker of recognition and desire. I loved the highs, the moments I felt dizzy, wanted, needed, so much so that they gave the lows meaning too - the times I’d overthink every word I’d said, wonder what I’d done wrong, try to plead my point of view.
It was hard to accept that chemistry and compatibility aren’t the same thing. When I first heard it, I refused it. There was no way. If my feelings were that strong, that deep, they had to mean something. They had to count for something. I thought, “If I can’t stop thinking about them, it must be real.”
And it was. Just not in the way I thought.
Books, films, and media have trained us to associate love with suffering, longing, possession, secrecy, and emotional chaos, because that is what stories know how to make look meaningful. A love that consumes. A love that burns bright and ends fast. We feel the intensity of it through the screen and think, “Wow. They must really love each other.”
The problem is that repeated exposure to this kind of story starts to distort what love looks like in real life. We become so used to huge highs and lows that stability starts to feel boring by comparison. Tell Me Lies comes to mind. We see Lucy’s physical illness and psychological decline, the damage a “love” like that does to her, yet people still insist it was love. That is the trick of it. Even when the damage is visible, intensity is still mistaken for depth.
I think people do want healthy love, but they misunderstand what it actually means. They want a love that feels deep. They want to be fought for, to be so important they’re never forgotten. But that is ego, not love.
This thought came back to me with the release of the new Wuthering Heights film. I’ve read Wuthering Heights once. For me, that was enough.
People call it a great love story. I actually think it is closer to a horror story. Or at least, that is what it felt like reading about two characters so cruel, self-involved, manipulative, and egotistical. I had no idea how people could read that and think they were in love. To me, neither character seems capable of real love.
When I saw people online romanticising Heathcliff and his love for Catherine, I started to wonder if I had read a different book. To me, he is one of the most disturbing characters I’ve ever read. Not only self-destructive, but destructive to everyone around him. He did not love Catherine, he wanted to possess her. And she wanted to be wanted.
Grand, consuming devotion flatters our idea of being uniquely loved. We imagine people going to the ends of the earth for us. Solely wanting us, overcoming any obstacle, destroying anything in their path to be with us. A grand declaration. But a love that consumes is a love that destroys, and a love that feels so strong, so destined, paves the way for excuses that let toxicity linger. Maybe I’m misunderstanding romance. But why are these the stories people cling to as their ideals?
The line between possession and love is often blurred. A need for possession breeds obsession. Every waking thought is taken up by the object of desire, by the need to claim and control. But once you have your shiny new doll, what do you do with it? It’s not love when you care more about what having someone reflects back to you than about the person themselves. That is ego, not love.
Heathcliff is driven by control, revenge, a sense of entitlement and, yes, desire. He cannot let Catherine be separate from him. That is not love. That is possession. Catherine wanted to be wanted, by Heathcliff and by her husband, though Heathcliff most of all. They were bound by something destructive, though they both called it destiny.
In reality, they are two people who grew up on unstable foundations, and real love between them would not have caused nearly so much chaos. But this is what happens when a feeling is treated as deep enough to justify anything. It begins to excuse everything done in its name.
When people believe a feeling is deep enough, they start to believe it excuses everything around it. Jealousy, obsession, cruelty, inconsistency, emotional volatility, control. If the feeling is strong enough, the behaviour begins to look understandable, even acceptable. People can hurt others too. Cheat, lie, manipulate. But if the feeling is “real”, it all gets folded back into the romance of it.
I’ve seen many people turn down stable love because it felt boring by comparison to the epic ups and downs. It failed to provide the rush of adrenaline that comes from constantly being on edge, on high alert. Without the ever-present need to prove something, fix something, secure reassurance, fulfil a need for validation, it could even feel empty. And so it is mistaken for lacking depth.
That type of obsessive love is a performance. It operates on the idea that being chosen equates to status. It places intensity on the same level as care, and care on the same level as intention. We see this intensity in “love”, and when it is directed at us, it makes us feel special. Often, it just makes us vulnerable, keeping us caught in an obsessive loop, hoping for more but never receiving it.
The danger in mistaking obsession for love is that we fail to recognise it when we are faced with it. When someone desires us, tries to control us, when we feel the inconsistency, we think it is just how love is. We think we are the ones not doing enough. That this is what we should accept. That this is what it means to care deeply for someone.
“Is it safe?” is usually a better question to ask than “is it love?” It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can have safety and love. But real love would never compromise your sense of safety.
It sounds poetic that someone would hunt to the ends of the earth for you. But would they stay and live with you? Would they bring you peace?
Why are these the stories people cling to as their ideals?