Victims of Passion

Love as addiction

(published at Medium.com 07/10/2020 https://medium.com/@contact_97126/victims-of-passion-87b491a4bec0)

A successful woman

Jane works for a big multinational company in Paris. Her father is from the USA and her mother is French, so even though she was born and raised in New York, it was easy for her to accept a job offer in Paris, her second homeland. This happened almost three years ago.

For the past few months, I have been working with Jane in a series of therapeutic coachingsessions. It is a kind of coaching that I usually do over the internet or telephone for clients from other countries who need to reexamine their internal dynamics in everyday life, as well as cope with mental conditions such as anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, and fixations.

Jane came to me at the insistence of two of her friends, who were concerned about her professional decline and mental health. After years of being remarkably successful in her career, she was now a wreck: She did not go out of her house for days. She usually slept till noon and thus missed work. But even when she did finally get to her office, she was barely able to follow what was happening around her. She seemed aloof and often desperate.

Jane had confided in them about the deadlock she had been in for the last year or so: This composed and successful woman had fallen madly in love with a younger man, a rising consultant in the firm at which she worked. She met Lucien by chance at a company meeting. He courted her vigorously and she was flattered. Over the next few weeks, he cast an unprecedented net of seduction around her. He even invited her on a trip the very first weekend after they started dating. Since Jane was a rather reserved and modest person, it was a surprise even to herself that she followed this young stranger. The relationship began and her life became a living torment. Lucien would subject her to a series of psychological challenges: He would leave her waiting for days or even weeks for them to meet, as he claimed that he was extremely busy and did not like to be bothered when he was working or when he had other commitments. He would promise that he would come by her house later in the evening, but he rarely did. Sometimes he would invite her to professional or social gatherings, but once there, he would not pay any attention to her. He demanded that they hide their relationship in the company at which they both worked because he intended to be a successful CEO and did not want his love life to interfere with his career. At the same time, though, he would court other women in their workplace, excusing his behavior by saying that this was “part of the game”. He asked her to help him by using her countless connections with high-ranked executives in the firm, something that Jane carried out dutifully. He even asked her to lend him money for a new car, and Jane obliged. When his friends visited from abroad, he asked her to take care of them. In the several days she spent showing them around beautiful Paris, he showed up only a few times, pretending that he had more important things to take care of.

A polite phone call, a night they shared once a month in her apartment, a flower he left at her desk at work, the nice words he would sometimes whisper — all these were enough for her. She could then forget those endless nights without him, those countless evenings that she spent crying while she waited for him or when he canceled their date at the very last minute, those endless hours of work she spent to help him at the company.

Jane is sure of only one thing: If Lucien left her, she would die. She is fully aware that he is playing her around. She knows very well that she fell in love with a narcissist who manipulates her. She understands that because of him, she has lost track of her dynamic side. Nevertheless, she feels that life without him is simply not worth it. She would endure anything for just a little bit of his time, when and if he would ever want to. Several weeks might pass from one date to the next, but she prefers rare meetings to imagining a life without him in it…

So what happened to this smart young woman? How did this highly successful professional reach a point at which her life did not have any meaning without her loved one?

Relations of Passion

These relationships resemble a “grand amour.” However, they often end up being a serious disorder for one of the two partners.

In such relations of passion, the object of our desire transforms into an object of need. What is the difference? When we desire something, it is unpleasant, but ultimately okay not to have it. However, when we need something, we cannot survive without it. Think of water, food, and the like. We need those; we don’t simply desire them. This is exactly what a passionate relationship feels like.

In such a relationship, we tend to idealize our partner. We regard some of their characteristics as values of enormous magnitude. Therefore, we feel we cannot be deprived of these. Moreover, we idealize the power that our partner has on us. In some cases, it seems as if they have a power of life and death over us.

What is strange, though, is that despite everything, we are still in a position to see their flaws and even express criticism. Nevertheless, this is not something that hinders our passion or affects it in any way: We feel mesmerized and certain that they hold an overwhelming power over our soul. What actually happens is that our need for the other person is almost compulsive (or at least this is how it feels inside).

At the same time, we feel as if we are not responsible for our choice. Passion simply happened to us. Thus, we are passively subjected to it.

Our loved one becomes our sole source of pleasure. Nothing else could give us joy in life. Friends, hobbies, travels — everything is insignificant to us. However, what we feel inside is not joy; it is mental pain. Immense pain is the dominant feeling we have, since the other person is not there as much as we need them to be. They do not acknowledge our efforts to please them or all the trouble we are going through for them. Nonetheless, the pain does not make us reconsider our relationship. For us, “suffering equals love.” Unconsciously, this becomes our motto.

Moreover, since our partner is our sole source of pleasure, we find ourselves in a dangerous zone: If our partner leaves, then we might reach the point at which it feels necessary to terminate our lives…

Now or never

A common characteristic of all individuals who enter relations of passion is their relationship with pleasure (either physical or mental). Pleasure for them is permeated with an inner agony: They unconsciously believe that pleasure will not be given to them, that life or people will deny them any kind of joy. This is why it is now or never for them.

What does this mean? When they experience any kind of pleasure with someone, be it sexual or sentimental, they want to hold on to it at any cost because they feel that they will not find it again. Thus, these well-composed, normal people end up behaving as if they are addicted to some kind of drug: They live in agony for their next dose. They feel tormented without it, but they fully enjoy only with it. Their “dose” is a meeting with their partner.

When an individual goes through such a deeply entrenched mental agony in their relationship, “how to…” or “5 ways to…” tips are simply not effective. It is futile to guide them using these strategies. Let us not forget that they are individuals who are very smart, like Jane, and more often than not successful. However, there is a dark side in them, one that they do not even recognize. And this is the side that they must face, instead of wasting their lives for a passion that has nothing to do with love.

https://medium.com/@contact_97126/victims-of-passion-87b491a4bec0