The reasons for obsession after rejection can often be traced back to the ego injury, as well as deep-seated, innate, or learned needs within us. This intense focus on the person who rejected us is not just emotional but rooted in our psychology.
These two emotional and psychological forces, when they are connected (and they always are when someone rejects us), make it very difficult for us to give up on someone who rejected us. Even when we see that they are unimportant or far below our level. That is why it is useful to understand how they work and where they come from.
Here, you can read more about the mechanisms used by the ego when we are in love.
Feeling Of Inferiority
Why do we associate the feeling of inferiority with love.
We all start in inferior roles. When we were kids, and until the age of 18 or even longer, we’re in an inferior position compared to our parents.
The feeling of inferiority is familiar to us, and that’s why it’s also acceptable that someone is more important than us.
To be precise, in some way, being inferior is something we recognize as love because our parents were our first love in life.
It could be said that we expect our love to be someone to whom we feel somewhat inferior.
So, love is partly composed of the feeling of inferiority towards another person.
- A little clarification on this: We remember from childhood how things will look. What will relationships with people look like, how will anger look, what will love look like, how should work be done, etc.
We literally look at our parents and make a psychological and emotional record, and because of them, according to that pattern, we later recognize what anger, love, etc. are. Everything that does not remind us of that is not love.
- This is obviously an over-simplified version, but it partially explains loving someone. The more similar it is to the suit from our childhood, the more it will suit us because we recognize it as love.
- A typical division in the parent-child relationship is that the child is inferior, and because of this, the superior person (in childhood, the parent, and later anyone who marks themselves as better than us) is marked as love.
And is there a more inferior role then when someone tells us they don’t want us?
In any case, the person who rejected us said they didn’t want us and thereby made themselves better than us. Because logically, only the better ones can reject the worse ones.
So let’s summarize all this in a few conclusions:
1. We know the feeling of inferiority and associate it with love.
2. When someone rejects us, they make us feel inferior, and we then associate that with love. Because of a similar dynamic with our parents in childhood.
3. We also recognize people who reject us as better than us. And we want those who are better than us to accept us.
📌 It is precisely for this reason that I recommend that people always consider the other person somewhat inferior to themselves. It could be in a way that you will earn more, exercise more than your partner, or be more successful. Or in a way that you will occasionally reject your partner. The third option is, of course, to “command” your partner. You seek things for yourself or insist on them.
The person will feel the same thing that they once felt from their first love objects.
The bottom line is that from time to time, they will have the opportunity to repeat the love situation that they are so used to throughout their lives.
If you make a person feel inferior, they might feel like they are reliving an old love story—one that mirrors their early experiences with their parents (since our parents were our first and greatest love for a long time).
- And although some will say that this is a game, it is not. This is a matter of knowing human nature and what drives people.
- This explains a lot about falling in love with powerful people, serious people, and people who do what they want, doesn’t it?
The Second Force Is Ego Injury
On the other hand, this is about the need for our ego to maintain our image of us as exceptional and worthy. The ego’s role is essentially to maintain a person’s image, and it uses various mechanisms for that.
- The ego is all of us (not what is traditionally thought of, pride and vanity. I am referring here to Freud’s ego.)
Different alarms go off when a person is rejected: Someone sees me as bad! Someone doesn’t want me. I am not good enough.
Because of these insights into oneself, the ego suffers. And the only way to comfort it is for the person who rejected us to deny it and say: I still accept you.
The way someone will defend their ego depends primarily on its strength.
If the ego is weak, because it was hurt many times or because it was hurt in a bad period of life (formative age, when we were formed as a person) in such a way that we did not receive enough dedication from our parents or that our parents rejected us – in that case, the ego needs to use many mechanisms. This phenomenon is often called an immature ego. The ego has not matured enough for a person to become secure.
Practically, it can be said that the more immature or weaker ego people have, the more they suffer and idealize other people. This leads to obsession.
- This does not apply to narcissists. They also have a very weak (unintegrated) ego, but at some point they decided/convinced themselves that they are better than everyone else. That is why they shy away from everyone who shows them that they are not.
The bottom line is that when someone rejects a person, their ego needs repair, and the best repair can obviously be done by the person who rejected them.
This is why we remain obsessed with the person who rejected us and wait for our chance to show them that we are not so bad.
And now let’s summarize everything in total so that you understand why we are obsessed after rejection:
- We recognize the feeling of inferiority as love.
- The ego is hurt and will do anything just to improve the self-image.
- Because of those instances, we will become obsessed after being rejected by a person.
What To Do With It?
Basic paradigm: Some emotional-psychological forces, not love for that person, motivate you. Although, of course, you recognize it as love and call it love.
You recognize the feeling of inferiority as love, and the ego wants you to be recognized as valuable.
The first thing you need to do is understand that:
1. Love doesn’t have to do with feeling inferior next to someone (it was related to your parents).
2. You, since you are now an adult and have choices, can unlearn what your love will look like.
- If this lesson confuses you, like: But I don’t want to feel inferior. That’s not the reason why I’m in love with that person. That’s because this is a complex and confusing lesson (although I’ve done my best to explain it clearly 😊).
Logical, conscious forces do not govern us.
We are governed by forces that are rooted in us and over which we have no control (at least until we become aware of them). That’s why we love people who make us inferior, and that’s why we reject and declare boring people who adore us and see us as significant.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Carl G. Jung
3. Just because someone doesn’t want you doesn’t make them better than you—neither more powerful nor more important. It’s just a twist that our brain does: It marks people who reject us as better than us.
4. See people for who they are despite your admiration for them. You will see that no one is so special that we become obsessed with them after they rejects us.
5. That person’s acceptance of you is not the only way to heal your ego injury. It is even dangerous to want that person to heal it, because they never have to do it.
6. You can heal your ego injury yourself by declaring that person worse than you (this is the fastest method). If you believe that someone who is worse than you rejected you, it won’t hurt you as much.
7. If you thoroughly strengthen your ego, no one’s rejection will soon affect you. You will see the reality. In fact, people are not that special; they often don’t reject us because of us, etc.
Also, reading these articles can help you to better understand yourself:
Hug you. Dee.