Love/relationship obsession

[daverave1212]

Hi, I'm Dave and I've been obsessed with having someone to love for around 1 year. It started from a rejection and it got worse and worse. I started dating lots of girls and in the end I found a girl and we got together for a very short time. She was my first 'real' girlfriend and we broke up, which made me crave for someone to love even more. I'm still dating lots of girls but I can't find anyone and this is an obsessive thought. I literally can't think of anything else every day when I go to bed and during the day. I've been like this for like 2 months. I want to get over this obsession. I'm currently also seeing a therapist about hypochondria. I feel like I'm dying on the inside because there's nobody I can share my love with.
What can I do? Thanks!

[Fahrenheit]

This is a though one. The worst period of anxiety in my life began when I fell for my friend and co-worker, and I was truly a mess. For a year or more I rarely got a good nights rest, the anxiety that was initially fixated on my feelings for her just spiraled into a general sense of constant fear, panic, loneliness, insecurity, etc. The funny thing is, she was really open about suffering from anxiety, but I could never really talk to her about it, for obvious reason, and yeah.

First of all, appreciate yourself for the desire for a deep emotional connection with someone. That is a beautiful thing. However, no one person can be responsible for giving you fulfillment. We are social animals, so that need for connection is REAL and NECESSARY. But work on finding that connection in other places. Use that desire to delve deeper into your friendships, and befriend yourself as well. I know this is really hard, and I don't mean it is a way where you should expect yourself to not have that desire for a intimate relationship. Accept that that desire is real and valid and important, and then, simultaneously, throw yourself into your other relationships - with friends and family, with yourself, with you body, with your work, with your hobbies. Anything that connects you to something outside yourself (and inside, too.)

I rarely fall for people, and with my friend/coworker I really fell hard. I think I may have loved her as best as you can love someone who doesn't return your feelings. I think love is an active thing, and so in some ways, even though unrequited love is still love...it is una-ctualized love, because really being able to engage in love means building that relationship with someone, together, as a conversation and not a monologue. And that is what made is so hard for me, feeling like I had a lot of love, but no way to act it out, no where for it do go...so the best I could do was take that and try to plant it somewhere else.

Alongside that, having mental health issues simultaneous with those feelings really had me feeling a loss of a sense of self...and I think, since you need to be emotionally self-sufficient for love to be healthy, it is good to ask the question, what kind of person do I what to be? What would it take for me to feel attractive and worthwhile, NOT for someone else, but for MYSELF, and work on becoming that person. You aren't throwing out your desire for connection, but you are molding yourself into someone who is ready for that connection.

Remember that life is a delicate balance between our undeniable need for emotional connection with others, and our ability to rely on ourselves. For a lot of my life, I relied on self-sufficiency because I was afraid of being vulnerable with others. That experience blew that out of the water and forced me to come to terms with my deep need for other people, BUT, in doing so, it also made me realize how much I needed to work on being able to be enough for myself. I hope that makes sense and that at least something I have said is of practical help or of comfort to you.

You are not alone. Good luck.