I don't believe I've ever had the experience of someone I've obsessed over becoming super-obsessed with me, but that movie made me think about the many, many experiences I have had with obsessing over someone. The movie made me think about my experience with Sara in 1988. I see that as a turning point, a point where I started to come to meaningful terms with this tendency I have to become obsessed with unavailable, difficult women.
I sat there watching the horror unfold in that movie tonight imagining myself in that front row seat in my art history class and saying to myself, "What if I don't do anything about this situation but sit on my hands," or words to that effect, as Sara sat there one row above me in a seat to my left sliding her feet and crossing her legs while wearing a short dress and like that. My putting myself back there in 1988 as I watched that movie tonight allowed me get through the degeneration on screen to total horror and chaos.
I let Sara go when it became clear to me that she and her's were demanding I give of myself way more than I wanted to. The whole "What if I turned my back on love" approach to the situation allowed me to fully recognize when the part where someone such as her and her friends would make such a demand of me came in, and I demonstrated my lack of willingness to comply with that demand accordingly.
I can think of two other times where someone I totally had an obsession with demanded more of me than I was prepared to give, and I blew them off at that juncture. The last one is still so fresh in my mind. It happened in 2024 with that former cashier. I totally put myself out there to express my desire to get to know her better in October of 2021. I marched right up to her as she bagged groceries at her job, said, "Hi," and proceeded to invite her to a comic book event at a store the next weekend where I was to have a table selling my comics. She was very nice about it, I will say.
I thought I'd done plenty to get with her, and when she didn't show up at the comic book event or seem to have any desire to say hi to me or interact with me at her place of employment in the following days and weeks after I invited her, I stopped patronizing her grocery store for six weeks and joined an online support group for love addiction. I started to miss her after my six week absence from her place of employment, so I decided to go back to that store she worked at, but when I did I discovered that she didn't work there anymore, which was fine with me.
I was fine with her no longer working at that grocery store, because I thought she came from an adversarial place in regard to me from the start. I think I managed to clear myself of whatever bad things she'd heard about me in November of 2023, and in the spring of 2024, my place of employment-her former place of employment-seemed to vibe a visit from her. I greeted said vibe with, "What if I just blow her off?"
She came around, and I blew her off. It was easy to blow her off, because, in her merely showing herself to me but not saying,"Hi, remember me?" or making any other real attempt to reach out to me, I just saw her as demanding that I put myself out there all over again without really having to give anything of herself to me. In other words, Sara and her friends seemed to demand of me pretty much the same thing on 1988, and I made basically the same decision in both of those instances.
When I blew that former cashier off in 2024, I didn't know I was setting myself up for a lot of emotional angst and anguish in the form of hoping she'd come around again, but more on my terms. She never did. I was glad I could sort through all of those anguished feelings about her and the situation while she resided, for all I know, on the other side of the moon from me. I'm glad I got the opportunity to sort all of that out in her absence rather than in her presence.
The main thing I learned from the situation I found myself in with Sara in 1988 was how to set limits on what I would do to get with someone such as Sara, and in learning how to set limits, I learned a lot of self-control. The whole, "What if I turned my back on love," buddha I formulated and then proceeded to follow provided, for the first time in my life, a template for how to conduct myself should I ever find myself in a similar situation in the future, which I have, many, many times.
I remember telling a couple in 2009 that if I stopped the obsessive behavior towards someone, the obsessive thoughts about that person would also eventually stop. I guessed I'd internalized that lesson in my efforts in the early 2000's to quit smoking cigarettes. I thought about those cigarettes for a LONG time after I quit, but after all these years off of cigarettes, I certainly don't obsess on them anymore.
I'm not prepared to say that I've beaten my tendency to obsess of young, very attractive yet unavailable women to the same extent that I've freed myself from obsessing on cigarettes, but I will say that I'm prepared to leave the attractive, young women in my world alone and just go on my way. That experience with that former cashier is still way too fresh in my mind for me to say I've beaten romantic obsession, but I don't have a love interest right now, and I'm glad and grateful for that reality.
I sat there watching the horror unfold in that movie tonight imagining myself in that front row seat in my art history class and saying to myself, "What if I don't do anything about this situation but sit on my hands," or words to that effect, as Sara sat there one row above me in a seat to my left sliding her feet and crossing her legs while wearing a short dress and like that. My putting myself back there in 1988 as I watched that movie tonight allowed me get through the degeneration on screen to total horror and chaos.
I let Sara go when it became clear to me that she and her's were demanding I give of myself way more than I wanted to. The whole "What if I turned my back on love" approach to the situation allowed me to fully recognize when the part where someone such as her and her friends would make such a demand of me came in, and I demonstrated my lack of willingness to comply with that demand accordingly.
I can think of two other times where someone I totally had an obsession with demanded more of me than I was prepared to give, and I blew them off at that juncture. The last one is still so fresh in my mind. It happened in 2024 with that former cashier. I totally put myself out there to express my desire to get to know her better in October of 2021. I marched right up to her as she bagged groceries at her job, said, "Hi," and proceeded to invite her to a comic book event at a store the next weekend where I was to have a table selling my comics. She was very nice about it, I will say.
I thought I'd done plenty to get with her, and when she didn't show up at the comic book event or seem to have any desire to say hi to me or interact with me at her place of employment in the following days and weeks after I invited her, I stopped patronizing her grocery store for six weeks and joined an online support group for love addiction. I started to miss her after my six week absence from her place of employment, so I decided to go back to that store she worked at, but when I did I discovered that she didn't work there anymore, which was fine with me.
I was fine with her no longer working at that grocery store, because I thought she came from an adversarial place in regard to me from the start. I think I managed to clear myself of whatever bad things she'd heard about me in November of 2023, and in the spring of 2024, my place of employment-her former place of employment-seemed to vibe a visit from her. I greeted said vibe with, "What if I just blow her off?"
She came around, and I blew her off. It was easy to blow her off, because, in her merely showing herself to me but not saying,"Hi, remember me?" or making any other real attempt to reach out to me, I just saw her as demanding that I put myself out there all over again without really having to give anything of herself to me. In other words, Sara and her friends seemed to demand of me pretty much the same thing on 1988, and I made basically the same decision in both of those instances.
When I blew that former cashier off in 2024, I didn't know I was setting myself up for a lot of emotional angst and anguish in the form of hoping she'd come around again, but more on my terms. She never did. I was glad I could sort through all of those anguished feelings about her and the situation while she resided, for all I know, on the other side of the moon from me. I'm glad I got the opportunity to sort all of that out in her absence rather than in her presence.
The main thing I learned from the situation I found myself in with Sara in 1988 was how to set limits on what I would do to get with someone such as Sara, and in learning how to set limits, I learned a lot of self-control. The whole, "What if I turned my back on love," buddha I formulated and then proceeded to follow provided, for the first time in my life, a template for how to conduct myself should I ever find myself in a similar situation in the future, which I have, many, many times.
I remember telling a couple in 2009 that if I stopped the obsessive behavior towards someone, the obsessive thoughts about that person would also eventually stop. I guessed I'd internalized that lesson in my efforts in the early 2000's to quit smoking cigarettes. I thought about those cigarettes for a LONG time after I quit, but after all these years off of cigarettes, I certainly don't obsess on them anymore.
I'm not prepared to say that I've beaten my tendency to obsess of young, very attractive yet unavailable women to the same extent that I've freed myself from obsessing on cigarettes, but I will say that I'm prepared to leave the attractive, young women in my world alone and just go on my way. That experience with that former cashier is still way too fresh in my mind for me to say I've beaten romantic obsession, but I don't have a love interest right now, and I'm glad and grateful for that reality.
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