I Can’t Stop Thinking About Her

She was everything I ever wanted.

She was the most beautiful girl in the world in my eyes.

Everything she did was perfect. She could do no wrong.

I fantasized every day about how we would go on dates, laugh together, hold hands, cuddle, have sex, get married, start a family together, and grow old together. There was nothing in the world I could have possibly wanted more.

She was “the one.”

Was it love?

I certainly convinced myself that it was.

Whatever it was, it was one-sided. She said I was just a friend. But maybe she would change her mind one day if I proved my commitment.

No, it’s more than commitment. Something even greater and dedicated than that. It’s obsession.

So, one day, I asked my mom why she fell in love with my dad. I asked her what he did to win her heart. Her answer was something along the lines of, “He told me that I was the only woman for him, that he loved only me, that he could love no one else.” I interpreted this to mean that, in order to get a girl to like me or love me, I should become obsessed with her and only her, and to confess my undying love to her.

Of course, my mother left out the part about dating and getting to know one another since I was just a small child who probably wouldn’t understand all the intricacies of courtship. Unfortunately, I developed a habit of obsessing over girls, one after another, and convincing myself that I was absolutely in love with them even before getting to know them.

— Excerpt from Never Lonely: The Uncensored Guide on How to Attract and Be Loved by Women

The more I thought about her, the more obsessed I became.

Even though she never showed me the most intimate sides to her personality that she would only show to her boyfriend, I was convinced that I already knew everything about her.

I knew through my fantasies. I imagined our entire lives together already.

I imagined an idealized version of her.

It wasn’t reality, but it could become reality if I tried hard enough, right?

Someone told me that I had something called “one-itis.” I called it love. They said it wasn’t, though.

Guys with one-itis cannot possibly know enough about the women they’re obsessed with to actually be in love with them. By definition, you cannot know if you truly love someone romantically until you see the side of them in which you share romantic intimacy. In a word, it is simply desperation, not love.

Pickup artists had a crass prescription for this disease. If anyone had one-itis, the advice they were given would be to have sex with ten other women. There’s a lot to unpack there. Such an approach can be problematic if it leads you to objectifying women and treating them as nothing more than notches on your bedpost. However, intentionally shifting your focus away from an unhealthy obsession is absolutely necessary. Following this advice also had the benefit of shifting your focus toward a more holistic system of self-improvement (i.e. getting better with women overall), and away from the singular short term goal of dating one specific person. Pursuing such a short term goal would lead to no significant growth or maturity, after all.

When a guy has one-itis, he has an unhealthy attachment to an idealized version of the woman in his mind. This version of her does not exist in reality. It creates unrealistic expectations for what could be. If this guy puts himself out there to actually date human beings from various backgrounds rather than obsessing over a mental image of one person, he will give himself the opportunity to adjust his expectations of human relationships based on how people actually are, flaws and all. It will also temper or even eliminate his desperation, making him more attractive to women in general.

If your goal is to be in a monogamous relationship with one woman, it’s alright to love her and only her, but only after you have established something mutual with her. Any obsession before that is just delusional idealization. In order to avoid one-itis, you need to keep your options open and experience dating multiple people before making a mutual commitment, so that you don’t create any unhealthy attachments.

— Excerpt from Never Lonely: The Uncensored Guide on How to Attract and Be Loved by Women

When I was younger, I constantly obsessed over girls who didn’t like me back the same way.

I heard it all:

“I love you like a brother.”
“Let’s just be friends.”
“You’re such a nice guy and any girl would be so lucky to date you. Not me, though.”
“I wish I could meet someone like you. Not you, though, of course.”

Rejection after rejection, I told myself that I just needed to be persistent, to prove how strong my love actually was.

I would literally spend years obsessing over one girl until I started obsessing over someone else and getting rejected by her, too. It was a vicious unending cycle of unhealthy fixation after unhealthy fixation.

One day, I couldn’t take it anymore.

The rejection and loneliness were too much to bear. Obsessive thoughts were taking over my life. I needed a solution. I went into my “get laid or die trying” era.

I soaked up all the tips and tricks I could find about dating and seduction. I stopped being Mr. Nice Guy. I started to transform myself into Mr. Suave Seducer Guy.

It was awkward as hell at first.

Of course it was. Change is always awkward. You will always suck at a thing at first if you’re a beginner. In the end, though, allowing myself to meet and pursue various women instead of fixating on just one helped me to not only overcome my unhealthy obsession habit; it helped me become experienced enough to eventually be seen as attractive in some women’s eyes.

I let go of desperation. The rancid stink of desperation eventually left me, which allowed women to start feeling more comfortable around me.

I would have done anything to win back my first love.

In order to do so, I learned that I needed to become more suave, charismatic, confident, and smooth.

These skills don’t just come naturally, though. I needed to learn how to become these things through real life experience with as many women as possible. As one “guru” put it: “In order to get the one girl, you need to be able to get all the girls.”

That quote is a bit of a hyperbole for sure, but the truth behind it is that failing to prepare is preparing to fail, as they say.

In the end, I was OK with letting her go.

Why?

I grew. I experienced love in so much more depth than I ever could have imagined with women who were better for me.

I was able to let go of obsession and find actual love, which ended up being nothing like obsession at all.

In the end, love is not about obsession. Yes, love will make you want to make your partners happy. However, they want to make you happy, too (if they love you back, that is). And you need to respect each other’s wishes of wanting to make each other happy. This can only be achieved through a healthy, secure relationship that leaves your sense of self intact. The relationship should not follow the same patterns of drug abuse where other parts of your life fall apart just for the sake of maintaining the relationship. Instead, it should make you appreciate everything else in your life even more than you had before.

— Excerpt from Never Lonely: The Uncensored Guide on How to Attract and Be Loved by Women

I never would have been able to find happiness in this area of my life if I hadn’t broadened my view, if I hadn’t focused on improving my fundamental skills rather than focusing on just one girl.

If you’re stuck where I used to be, give a different approach a shot and see where it takes you.

Have you ever been obsessed with someone who didn’t like you back in the same way? What was it like? Let me know your experiences and thoughts in the comments!

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This post was previously published on medium.com.