Obsessive Love: When It Hurts Too Much to Let Go

Obsessive Love:
When It Hurts Too Much to Let Go

by Susan Forward & Craig Buck

ISBN-10: 0553296744
ISBN-13: 978-0553296747

Book Description

In this invaluable self-help guide, Dr. Susan Forward presents vivid case histories as well as the real-life voices of men and women caught in the grip of obsessive passion. Whether you're an obsessive lover or the target of such an obsession, here is a proven, step-by-step program that shows you how to recognize the "connection compulsion," what causes it, and how to break its hold on your life so that you can go on to build healthy, lasting, and pain-free relationships.

Reviews

Very helpful,
By A Customer
When I first got this book, I was so addicted to a person that I did not realize I was stalking him and invading his privacy. This book deals out some harsh truth in the beginning. At first I felt no sympathy for my painful ordeal and I couldn't read it. I would recommend reading this book after you have explored why you are the way you are and accepted that are obsessed or addicted to a person. Before reading this book, you might want to try How to Break an Addiction to a Person. That book is a little more sympathetic to how you feel and it helps you to understand why you are acting the way you act. Once you come to terms with yourself and your problems, read Obsessive Love. It gives clear concise directions on how to stop obsessing using behavior conditioning. The psychological techniques in this book really work because they do not focus on appealing to your logical mind but to your illogical emotions and thoughts. This book also provides some insight on how you got this way and it helps you to understand how the person you are obsessing over feels. That is important. This is a great book that really helps deal with a sickness appropriately. It is not a quick fix it is not cheesy. It deals you the truth and then tells you exercises to do everyday to help you deal with the pain. It takes work and dedication to make yourself a healthier person but with this book, you can do it.

Healing and Moving on...,
By A Customer
This book helped me break the Infatuation Cycles I had developed. It is written in a very concise and non-invasive way so as not to offend and make you feel...well...like a deranged and sick person. My behavior was deranged and sick, but after reading this book I made a determined and solid decision to move on AND not look back. I have not repeated my Obsessive Cycle since.

A Gem
By W. Kaplan "calyndula" (Wynnewood, PA United States)
I can't count the times I have pontificated by saying that I would never read or recommend a self-help book. Well I was wrong. "Obsessive Love..." is a gem of the genre, a truly insightful and helpful book for all ages.

In clear, thoughtful, and easy-to-read English, Susan Forward explains the difference between love--and obsession, quite a different animal altogether. Because it is written with a nonjudgmental attitude and the compassion comes through on every page, it allows the reader who may be caught up in such a relationship to take the first painful step: admitting that he/she is indeed caught up in this unhealthy situation.

The book then gives advice on how to break the attachment and to see the relationship for what it is--or is not. It is aimed at giving the obsessor his/her life back, and of course, the object of the obsession gains the same bonus. Those who are caught up in such a relationship often feel hopeless, helpless, and truly terrified at the prospect of ending a relationship that in fact may not even exist (or that exists no longer). Forward understands this, and does not try to explain it away. She simply guides the reader, quietly and firmly, if you will, through a series of steps that she says will help. And they do.

Letting go is never an easy process, and Forward does not pretend that it is. But her advice works, and leaves the obsessor with dignity and a sense of having come through a serious situation, and out to the other side.

I would imagine that this book would not help a truly psychotic stalker. I have recommended it repeatedly to friends who are locked into relationships that are obsessive and unhealthy, or that are over entirely. The advice has worked every time. I recommend this book to anyone who is grieving over a failed love affair, or a preoccupation with a person who does not reciprocate one's affections. If nothing else, this book will provide strong comfort.