Infatuation in this context is just love not returned. I was really in love with a girl :oops: She was all I could think about. We went out together for a few months. I even learned to play the piano(poorly) to try and impress her.
When she dumped me I spent the whole time up to her music lesson a few hours later trying to convince her to change her mind. :cry: I never spoke to her again.
If the emotions felt were equal and balance if she felt the same way than...
I've always felt really bad about the obsession I had with this guy, because I think I did bother him quite a bit, but he just seems to ignore me though we've had perfectly friendly conversations since then. I always promised myself I'd never speak to him again, but then for some reason I'd speak to him again. I know, I sound like a creep. :roll:
Not really, that's exactly what I do/how I feel when I get "infatuated" :smile:. I don't like to acknowledge or talk about my infatuations a lot, though. Funny that :?
I tend to be on one side of the pendulum or the other. I'm either totally obsessed or completely indifferent. I still haven't found the middle except for some nice small moments here and there.
Greetings to all.
Infatuation; it seems to me that the vast majority of popular and standard songs, and a large slice of literature, would not exist without this problematic phenomenon.
Even so, it would seem that not everybody is liable to suffer its slings and arrows; some people seem to be immune (lucky them).
From the reading that I have done, it would seem that William Hazlitt (Libor Amoris), Stendahl (On Love) and Dorothy Tennov (Love and Limerence, ISBN 0-8128-6134-5) have all been there, done that.
Tennov's book is long out of print, but it does make fascinating reading. It would appear that the passage of time is, indeed, the only cure for this state; perhaps it persists longer in Aspies than in NTs, who may find it easier to "switch off" - or perhaps this is one of those areas that are unaffected by such categories.
Oh yes. I obsess over a girl for a couple of years, scare the *** out of her, and move on. Normally they give in to the attention, too. Never seen the point of casual sex and coming to like someone that way. All or nothing. Love or prostitutes.
When I read that I had an image that vernu might be like Harvey the rabbit. Did you see that film?
Didn't see the film but it sounds funny: My husband as a big chocolate brown bunny with long ears!
Alison
I don't know if anyone else feels this way and if it has anything to do with AS.
For me mostly I find that other people are obsessed with me, nothing breaks my heart more than breaking someone else's and I'm afraid I've done it too many times.
The thing is I seem to take things lightly and though I have pretty good memory, but when it comes to relationships if that person isn't in my sight most of the time, or at least I would see him daily I will honestly start to forget him.. how he looks, everything about him.
It's amazing that I would react totally different if I met that person all over again even if it was just after minimum 2 days being away from me.
Another issue is getting bored and wanting to move on to somene else, all this can seem very selfish and give me quite a bad reputation. If I ever got married I really fear that most.
If I had been obsessed with a person most of this behaviour wouldn't happen but I'm not focussed emotionally on anyone whether I'm in or out of a relationship.
To a certain degree obsessions and infatuations can happen to anyone, but I have to admit you've touched on something I worry about for my son. He's only 9 but he doesn't stop hugging someone even if they are battling their way out of it; he'll talk to and follow someone no matter how they try to avoid him; and so on. I worry so much about how all that will translate in his dating life someday. Hopefully he will learn to hear what others are saying. "No!" means "No!" A child can get away with a lot that a teen or man can not ... it scares me for him. He is so innocent about it all.
On another note ... as someone now in a solid marriage after many long years of failed relationships, I would like to share this:
If a relationship is meant to be, there will be no feelings of obsession. A true relationship will make you feel happy and secure, and will not make you long for something from the other person that they will never give you. Obsession in many relationships is a sign that the other person is not giving you what you need; the obsession represents your desire to change that, all the while subconsciously knowing that it isn't going to change.
I realize I am saying this as an NT, but I believe it to be true accross the spectrum. When you are secure in someone's affection for you, you will want to have it, of course, and will think pleasant thoughts of it when the person is away, but you won't feel trapped in a dark cloud of longing.
WOW! I am so glad i found this thread! I mean, i never ever knew others obsessed about other people! I thought it was something uniquely to me! I am so glad i am not alone. I think my obsessions with people may have started when i was a toddler, i'd walk up to strangers in church, and sit on their laps, hug them and rub their faces with my hand in an affectionate mannor... if they told me to stop, i would... but now, i find i obsess about my friends, and my support system. It's not a crush, or a sexual thing at all, but i tend to obsess over them... and think abotu them all the time... if i am driving home from somewhere and there happens to be more than one way, i will go by that persons house... just driving by, not really stalking them... but just driving by. it's weird. if i happen to see them, i don't stop to say hello, i just drive by.
I have a natrualpath that i am obsessed with right now. She's close to my age... only 2 years older than me, and she's awesome, i love her in a friendship type of way, but because i am so fond of her, i am always thinking of her... and i do the same thing with another friend of mine, and my worker... so i'm not entirely sure what to do :!:
My worker says it's not healthy to be so attached to people, and i try not to be, but i'm either completely obsessed with a person, or i don't think of them at all... i don't know where that healthy balance is that all my NT friends keep talking about... or even if there is one! :?: :shock:
I am always either obsessed (sometimes to the point of stalking) or completely indifferent.
I used to interpret my obsessions as "love" and everything else as "not love".
Fortunately--during a brief moment of good sense--I married someone I felt indifferent about rather than obsessed about. The marriage has lasted nearly 20 years, evn though I keep getting concerned because I don't think that I really "love" him "properly" (meaning I was never obsessed with him!) Through those 20 years I have been obsessed with several other men, but I always end up scaring them away before anything physical happens.
My longest running obsession with a single person has gone on for 26 years. For most of that time I simply obsessed about him from afar. Then I got the courage to tell him how I feel, and he confessed to also having had a bit of a crush on me since we were kids. I never would have guessed! So now we have been "flirtatious" friends for the past ten years (with much drama and many ups and downs in the beginning!) I am amazed that I have not frightened him off yet. Strangely, the better I get to know him, the less obsessed I become. He is shifting closer to the "indifferent" category...which for me is a very good sign. I'd rather feel indifferent and secure with his friendship than obsessed and fretful, staying up all night waiting for him to email me! :roll:
I wonder if that thing that leads to stalking, in the case of AS people, is really a proper
obsession or rather can be decomposed in conflicting desires. The desire to be accepted
by someone we like and the desire to avoid total humiliation.
I have crossed the line with a girl once (no violence and no touching), and then stopped
at the cost of breaking my heart. But why? If I had more to offer to her I could have
made a plan to show to her that I was worth, without crossing any line.
Maybe it is too easy to call it obsession. Maybe what I have done is a bad way of sending
the message "help me!", and she was not willing to receive it and do something, which is
her right to do.
...by the way, probably NTs live the same conflict. It is just that they can recognise it
(even subconsciously) and handle it better by faking their behaviour.
Faking is the key word. And to fake one needs self-control.
Yeap, I'm guilty of getting crushes on blokes as well. I can filrt and even pull a bloke as long as I don't really "like" him. However, if I really like someone, I seem to scare them off. Apparently it's not good to seem "too keen" on a man because it scares them away. I think that it is because they like women to be passive and to feel that they are the "hunters". The games that people have to play when dating are rather pathetic :roll: