You know you are becoming possessive when you start discussing a lot more about your friend’s relationship with others, than your relationship with him. Your questions become more prone in that direction. Whom did you meet today? Why her? For what you smiled at him? How many times did you call him? What do you talk for 40 minutes? Why did you give a gift to him? Do you get angry with her too? Can I read that SMS? What did he tell? You today? The discussions become more and more about your friend’s relationship with the other, and less and less about your friend and you.
Progressively your possessiveness will get claustrophobic and you will try to control what your friend does with. It will stop being a mere discussion and you will develop an urge to control your friend’s relationship with others. Remember, the gardener who is overprotective of his plant will destroy the plant. Too much possessiveness will one day destroy the relationship. Two pillars have to say apart to steadily hold the roof; if the 2 pillars come too close to each other, the roof will come crashing down. Relationships flower in freedom, but shrink in bondage. A man was holding a bull the rope and he was that he had enslaved the bull. True, the bull can never run away from him; but little did he realize that neither can he run away from the bull. Your slave enslaves you. You are possessed by what you possess. The freedom and spontaneity of both, the person you are possessive of and your own self, are so much restrained, that there is no more life in the relationship.
Possessiveness belittles relationships. When a person shrink his entire personal world so much that he just has this one relationship to hold on to emotionally, he becomes possessive of that particular relationship. His entire emotional strength comes from that one relationship and hence he does not want to share that relationship with anybody else. Like a piece of wood when held too close to your eyes blocking even the sun from your sight, people hold the relationship they are possessive of so close to themselves that it make them oblivious of the rest of the world.
Possessiveness is psychological suffocation. Every other relationship that walks into your life is seen as an unwanted trespasser. Every act gets monitored; motives are assigned; every gesture is noted; an explanation is demanded for everything, and every moment gets analyzed. Deep affection turns into desperate longing, and this in turn creates pain from within. Tears of love into tears of craving. Despite the fact that the relationship is still on, when possessed with possessiveness, you feel like an emotional orphan. Why? The other person has become your world; but for the other person, you are one more figure in his world.
Possessiveness and complete trust can never coexist. Unconditional trust is the only antidote to possessiveness. Trust your love and believe that what is yours can never be taken away from you. And what is not yours will never stay with you. Love, affection and care have no diminishing value. So, please do not reduce people into commodities by saying – if others have you, then I cannot have you. All of us can bask in the sun and nothing of the sun will ever be lost. I can tell you with personal authenticity, what is yours will remain yours even when it is not with you.