Filling a bucket with holes

Hume Tumse Pyaar Kitna Yeh Hum Nahin Jaante Magar Jee Nahin Sakte Tumhaare Bina

Tumhe Koyi Aur Dekhe To Jalta Hai Dil

Badi Mushkilon Se Phir Sambhalta Hai Dil Kya Kya Jatan Karte Hai Tumhe Kya Pataa

Recently I was just listening to this song that haunted me for years.

If you have never encountered possessiveness in your life, you’re lucky for two reasons. One, you have not undergone that suffering. Two, you don’t have to continue reading this article; it’s not for you.

Possessiveness is like smoking; it burns both the ends. I strongly believe, possessiveness is one of the most undesired byproducts of love. People who are possessive ask ‘How can you love without being possessive?’ On the other end, there are people who say ‘If you’re possessive, you do not love.’ It depends on how you look at it; is it through your intellect or through emotions? Well, I have been both - a victim and a culprit - in the matter of possessiveness. And both the roles are equally difficult to play.

When someone is possessive about you, I interpret it in different ways: One, you are very important to them. Two, they have a sense of insecurity of losing you. Three, they may have an inferiority complex about themselves. Four, their ego is being hit hard. If you were never possessive about others, you will not feel others’ suffering of possessiveness for you. If you’re sensitive enough, you know that it hurts and you will start giving them confidence. You will start clarifying their doubts. You will start being transparent. You will make every effort to make them realize they are equally important to you. But possessiveness knows no logic. It’s a bucket with holes; you can’t fill it. They continue to be possessive about you.

You may be very honest at your efforts. You can honestly see only your partner in your dreams. But you become helpless when your partner starts complaining even when someone else sees you in their dreams! That’s how possessiveness progresses. That’s the point when you start feeling difficult answering questions. That’s when you feel the suffocation of love. That doesn’t mean they doubt your love. It neither means that they think you would get inclined towards others. It’s just the unreasonable insecurity that possessiveness brings. You will be tired of convincing, producing proofs and giving explanations. Relationship starts falling apart.

On the other hand, it’s even more difficult to handle your possessiveness about your partner. You know you love them and they love you too. Deep in your mind, you are confident about their love towards you. You are a sensitive person. You know you do not doubt their fidelity towards you; but situations make you so helpless and you sound like you doubt them. You want to let them free but you can’t. You understand deeply that they have their own space, their own priorities, their interests and their own world. But your heart wants them to make you their entire world. You just don’t intrude in their space; you start expecting only you in their times too. Even a many year old mundane acquaintance (just a friendship) of your partner starts hurting you. Unnecessary comparisons start! ‘Was he better than me?’ ‘Compared to me, would she be your right partner?’, ‘Did you like him more than you like me now?’ – No, possessiveness doesn’t let you sleep. But wait! Don’t jump the gun to concluding you are a sadistic doubting personality! It’s just your ‘Superego and Id’ at fight; your ego is constantly suffering to bridge them. Despite all their efforts, they fail to satisfy your ego. Again, it’s a bucket with holes. They get tired trying to fill it.

We do different experiments in the process of handling possessiveness. When others are possessive about us, there is nothing much we can do other than constantly giving them confidence by being transparent. People who are possessive are usually very loving, don’t give up easily. But if the person is insensitive, he or she converts his/her possessiveness into sadistic doubting. He or she chooses the easiest route of associating you with another person. It doesn’t make sense to hold that relationship anymore. It hurts to depart. But it hurts even more to be in that relation after love ceases to exist. It’s time to say goodbye.

But more challenging task is handling our own possessives towards our loved ones. To suppress your feeling of possessiveness, you start to associate yourself with someone else – just to show your partner that you have another option too. But that’s too stupid and doesn’t work. You are not trying to cover the holes in your bucket; instead, you’re just trying to pour water from a different pot. Another experiment is ‘avoiding your partner and trying to remain yourself’. Neither this works. If you could avoid so easily, you wouldn’t have loved so deeply. Next, you start feeling so guilty about your own possessiveness that you decide you would end the relationship. In you, that will start another guilt of going away from someone for none of their mistake. Then what’s the best way to overcome? Suffer till the validity period of your possessiveness gets over. Suffering the possessiveness is the best and the only way I have discovered so far. There are other different options to handle. But none of them seems to work. Give it its time. Possessiveness slowly fades away.

What does the time do? It either gives you so much confidence about yourself and your partner’s love towards you that you stop feeling possessive or the time lessens the intensity of your love towards your partner and the possessiveness automatically dies when love is not intense.