How to tell the difference between obsession and a commitment to love.

Mindy and Mark split up 3 months earlier. Mark moved out of their shared apartment and into his own place about 10 miles away at that time. Mindy drove by Mark’s new apartment every night. Sometimes Mark left his  blinds open and
Mindy watched the shadows move around the furniture and light from Mark’s TV.

Sometimes Mark's blinds were closed. This triggered panic in Mindy who presumed Mark had closed the blinds for privacy because he had a woman over. On the blinds shut evenings Mindy drove around the parking lot of Mark’s complex looking for cars that could belong to whomever the mystery woman was upstairs in Mark’s bed with
him. 

On one of these surveillance outings, Mark noticed Mindy when he went to get
his brief case from his car.

“What are you doing here?” Mark asked, obviously irritated and insistent about receiving an explanation.

Mindy thought quickly and told Mark that their cat, who now lived with Mindy, was in need of medical intervention.

“Why didn’t you just call?" Mark asked. He then added snidely, "Besides Tabitha is
your cat. You don’t need to ask me about treatment decisions for her.” “

"She is our cat!" Mindy declared.

“Mindy, you had her for four years before we even met!” Mark corrected.

“Well, she became our cat and now I don’t know what to do because the vet says her allergies are really bad and
that she should live in an apartment without carpeting, which describes your apartment exactly!”

“Don’t come here." admonished Mark, " I will talk to you
tomorrow.”

Mark walked away.

Mindy cried.

She hated herself for going over to Mark’s and watching him from the parking lot.

"You fool!  No wonder he doesn’t want you! No one does and no one will!” “I am never doing that again!” she swore to herself.

The next night Mindy "needed" to see Mark. She told herself that she couldn’t help herself. She wouldn’t go back to the parking lot but she could park at a trailhead at the park and hike around to where Mark played Tennis on Tuesdays.

He would never see her. She asked herself, "What harm could it do?"

Do you non-stop wonder about what your ex is doing?

Are you fixated about how your ex is passing the time?  Do you plot how to get them back?

Is your body vexed by craving their love?

The path of obsession rarely intersects with the path to healing and even more rarely ends at the experience of renewed deep love.

The pain and heartache of loss calls for reflection, turning inward, time and grieving. We know that kindness to self is needed.

These feelings of pain from loss are qualitatively different from obsessive compulsive energy, which often arises from deep seeded attachment wounds.

The origin of the attachment wounds is the experience of not having certain needs for security and caring by our caregivers met by them when we were children.

The failure to have our needs met in the present triggers feelings of abandonment from the past to arise in the present day.

As adults we seek healing from childhood wounds by searching to connect with someone who will fill the needs for which we have experienced gaping emptiness.

We unconsciously seek resolution for our need to feel loved and to feel acceptance, as we have since we were young. We are drawn to what's expected and comfortable, even if it feels familiar and causes pain. The potential partner who seems to be like the parent  who failed to nurture us offers a potential cure to the early wound. Finally we have found our own person and the relief floods in.

However, it is precisely because this individual has attachment qualities similar to the parent's that makes resolving the pain of childhood through this relationship particularly challenging.

Instead of receiving the love we seek and deserve we receive hurt, neglect,
intermittent kindness, mixed signals or abandonment. This similar feeling triggers the
losses from childhood. The ex represents the loss.

As children, we had to pour our attention outward at another person.  in order to survive. When we were children our caregivers were necessary for our survival.

If we keep looking to another to heal our wounds and know our feelings as adults, we
are codependent.  We think we must try to control something or someone external to us in order to be worthy.

In a situation like this, the healing path intersects with caring for yourself, turning inward, and connecting with your power.

"Is this me?" you wonder.

 Is there something else other than this person driving your obsessive behavior?

Call upon your inner child.

What does that inner child need most?

Who wasn’t there for you?

Who broke your child heart and left you feeling lonely and afraid?

Let your obsessive holding on be a flag drawing you to understand the healing and love
you need from you!

You need to be seen by yourself.

This is the medicine of heartbreak.

Remember who your are at your core.