Dealing with "Oneitis"

A brother emailed me a while ago asking me how someone can get over oneitis, which is a term coined in the pickup artist community that refers to a feeling of infatuation or near obsession with a particular person, usually someone with whom you don't have a relationship and who does not reciprocate your interest. So what are you supposed to do when you're in that position? What are you supposed to do when there's, for instance, some sister that you are fixated upon and you can't stop thinking about you think that she's the one for you. Now, I'm not gonna even talk about how this could be allowed to develop in the first place considering the fact that you shouldn't really be interacting enough with the opposite sex that it could ever reach that point. But it's, of course, possible, even likely, that this kind of obsession is something that exists from afar, that you're trying to be a good Muslim, trying to lower your gaze, trying to not interact unnecessarily with the opposite sex, but somehow you have taken notice of this girl.

She's in your periphery and, well, she captivated you. It happens, especially when you're young. There's a few things to say here. First of all, of course, it's possible that the person you are obsessed with really is that great, really is that wonderful, really is that perfect. Unlikely, but it's possible.

There are some great people out there. However, your appreciation of incredible people should not necessarily or automatically become covetousness. Recognizing that someone is brilliant and beautiful and wonderful does not entitle you to their love nor to any rights over them nor does it even necessarily mean that you should have a relationship with them. They're a great person who exists in the world and you're aware of their existence and that such people do exist. It's good to know and that's enough.

Now what's much more likely, of course, is that the incredible person that you imagine them to be is a product of your imagination which you are then projecting upon the person that they really are who you don't actually know very well. That's what normally happens, and it happens even at the beginning of most marriages. There's a period in the first few years of most marriages, I think, in which both spouses are kind of disappointed in each other because their initial image of their spouse was over idealized. This is probably why most divorces occur within the first five years of a marriage because they don't hang on through that initial period of disappointment. But if you do hang on through that initial period of disappointment, you will generally find that the person that you're married to is actually better than the idealized image you had of them even if they're just a bit more complex.

The point is that the image isn't real and the feelings that you have for that image are a setup for disappointment. And the stronger the feelings are, the greater the disappointment will be and that disappointment can then morph into resentment, bitterness, and blame and that's very unjust. And this brings me to the next thing I wanted to say which is that having extremely strong feelings about a person is never really a good idea especially when they are not grown out of actual experience with that person or intimate knowledge about them. Strong emotions are unreliable and the stronger the emotions are, the more unreliable they are. They can flip very suddenly and dramatically in the opposite direction.

Loving obsession can turn into hateful obsession so quickly that it'll make your head spin. Just think of all of the angry, venomous things that people say about their exes, their ex husbands, their ex wives, their ex girlfriends, their ex boyfriends. These are all people that they used to love. Now the last thing I wanted to say about that is Islam came to free us from the slavery to creation in favor of slavery to the creator. Even if we're talking about your spouse whom you have lived with and loved for years, you'll still be alone on your Muqiyama.

You'll still be alone in the in the grave. You'll still be alone when you're being questioned. You cannot afford to enslave your heart to any man or any woman. When a man was so overpoweringly obsessed with his wife in the time of the Sahaba, he would actually be advised to divorce her, like in the case of Abdullah bin Abi Bakr and Atiqa because it can become unhealthy and detrimental to Yadin. Now, Abdullah and Atiqa, of course, did not end up getting divorced and that's presumably because Abdullah took into consideration the of his father and tempered his obsession with to some degree.

You can never let yourself become so fixated upon the gifts that Allah has given you that they become more important to you than the one who gave you the gifts. And again, I'm talking here about someone who is your actual spouse. So what about someone with whom you don't actually even have a relationship? This kind of obsession is not your right, and it's destructive. Now let me go back to what I said earlier about the disappointment phase that occurs in most marriages.

Successful marriages and the most fulfilling and nourishing marriages are the ones that are able to persevere through this phase when the husband and wife start to really learn about each other for who they are. And when you're able to do that, you discover that almost any person is lovable. Every human being can be wonderful once you understand them and approach them with compassion. Even their imperfections can be endearing to you and increase your appreciation for them. Almost any two people can love each other because all human beings are worthy of that.

And when love grows this way, it is stable, strong, rooted, deep, comforting, and healthy. I mean, let's be honest, the most important single factor in determining whether or not people get married is nothing but proximity. People marry the people they happen to be around, the people that they happen to meet. Unless you believe that all the soulmates of the world have been organized in such a way that they're all in geographical proximity to one another, you have to recognize that the person you love is just someone whom you decided to love, but not necessarily the only person you could ever possibly love in the world. People want to love and to be loved, and they choose a person with whom they decide to do that, a person in whom they choose to make that investment.

But the person they choose is not the only person who deserves it because everyone deserves it. So you shouldn't imagine that any one person is the only person for you. Now I'm not gonna go so far as to say that this is an un Islamic concept that there is only one person for you, but it is simply an untrue concept. Attica married again after Abdullah bin Abi Bakr and of course, Salama and in fact, all of the wives of the prophet were married before him except Aisha. That doesn't mean that their first husbands weren't right for them or that they didn't love them.

If it's possible to love again, and it clearly is, then it is possible to love someone other than the person that you love now or think you love now, the person with whom you are obsessed. And eventually, if you marry and stick with someone who is different from the person that you're obsessed with right now, your feelings for the person that you do marry will eventually eclipse whatever feelings you have right now for this other person, and your previous obsession with someone else will just be slightly embarrassing.