The Lover
The Archetype of the Lover is passionate and sensual. The Lover loves to love. Others may see them as sentimental and dramatic as their love for life can be intense. Lovers prefer to be in relationships so as to better experience and express their heart and feelings. But their love is not limited to romantic relationships. The Lover brings commitment and devotion to all they do as their passion and idealism is made manifest daily. They are very motivated to create lasting relationships of every kind. They love people and thrive on the connections that are possible. They need others to bring out the best in them. The Lover has an innocent passion that at first glance may be judged as naïve, but the developed Lover has a deep connection to soul and doesn’t allow loss, rejection and pain to deprive them of their sense of bliss and innocent delight in the world around them. The Lover wants to take a big bite out of life and experience all that it has to offer. They are eager and filled with enthusiasm. Big hearted, warm, full of feeling and insight, the Lover sees the world as a special kind of beautiful. They experience emotion as deeply and will take things to heart. They have a lot of drive and enthusiasm for life. The Lover sees everything as worthy and nothing is too small to be celebrated. They follow the guidance from their heart but do not dismiss the wisdom of reason. The fully realized Lover has learned to unite both heart and mind, inner and outer, soul and body. One of the great lessons for the Lover is the ability to surrender fully to the moment, to allow the expansiveness of life stretch their hearts without needing to cling to any of it. This brings peace and harmony to the Lover as they become conduits for connection and beauty to flow through them without needing to control it.
- Passion
- Sensual
- Surrender
- Hopeful
- Peace
- Generous
- Quirky
- Allowing
- Fierce
- Potent
The Obsessive
The Obsessive clings onto whatever they believe will incite the intense emotions they are addicted to experiencing. They fear rejection, betrayal and lack of reciprocation above all. Failure can make them bitter and disappointed. The broken heart is central to this shadow side of the Lover. Passion becomes suffering and pain. The Obsessive dreams and fantasizes and falls in love with the idea of something and has difficulty enacting it. The Obsessive fears disappointment and let-downs that are common experiences when the passion fizzles. When they become obsessed with something, they can literally love it to death. Destructive and smothering, they pursue what they love with such intensity that they burn out before they have had a chance to really begin. They can be fickle, loving something one minute and then forgetting about the next. Or conversely, they cling to their ideas, dreams and fantasies not able to yield to reason or practicalities. The Obsessive tries to control their feelings and experiences by forcing an outcome or trying to create a feeling where there is none. They can become obsessed with movie stars, songs, trends, certain colors, styles and even ideas. They live for the moment that never arrives and so they teeter on the brink of thrill and disappointment. They have a continued yearning that cannot be quenched. It is like torture. The more they grasp, the more they lose. It is painful cycle of excitement, hope and eagerness that quickly morphs into fear, fanaticism and disappointment. Unreliable, irrational and hectic their life is an explosion of frustration and unfulfilled dreams and needs. Their obsession is an addiction, as they become fixated on recreating the feelings of passion and intensity by whatever means they can. If the Obsessive is in a relationship, these relationships will usually burn hot and bright and then burn out quickly. They can go from calm and peaceful to angry and frustrated in short order. Their relationships are rocky, chaotic and unstable. They Obsessive wants to control and yet be controlled at the same time. They chafe at expectations but are consumed with their own expectations. The Obsessive is in emotional conflict and full of confusion.
A few words associated with the Obsessive:
- Controlling
- Impulsive
- Smothering
- Fanatical
- Disappointed
- Intense
- Emotional
- Unstable
- Irrational
- Hectic
A few examples of the Lover/Obsessive from history and literature include:
Marius from Les Miserable, the author Oscar Wilde, many secondary characters in Jane Austen’s novels, such as Marianne in Sense and Sensibility and Elizabeth Bennet’s younger sister Lydia in Pride and Prejudice, the author Ernest Hemingway, and Jay Gatsby, in The Great Gatsby.
