When love drives you off the trails: narratives of morbid love

Love is not only about joy and happiness but also about pain and disappointments. Love has been compared with disease and considered a pathological addiction, disorder, and obsession. Especially in medicine, researchers have been intrigued by this kind of morbid love. Similarly, psychoanalytical and psychodynamic emotion research has been dominating. However, socio-constructive and psychological behavioral approaches on how people experience love have been minimal. What kinds of difficulties do people associate with love at the level of behavior? The purpose of this article is to dissect Finnish people’s perceptions of morbid love. The data in this research were collected through two methods and phases: 35 students of the University of Lapland were interviewed through an open interview method. Then, the interview data were expanded by essays written by 46 students of educational psychology at the University of Lapland. The research approach was narrative research. As the results, narratives that crystallize the manifestations of bruising love are introduced: the narrative of the fear of intimacy and the vortex of love and the narrative of the fear of abandonment and clinging to the other. The key to stable love seemed to be self-respect and sufficient self-esteem.