Your Oneitis Is Stinking Up The Room

Your first love probably wasn't that great.

Men can fall in love many times. The only limitation is the length of time he’s alive. Yet some claim “men can only fall in love once.” Sadly, those men are holding onto the same model of world that they had when they were children: their experience is the only experience and therefore everyone elses’s experience. They only fell in love once. They’re talking about themselves.

These men live with a sad, self-inflicted, yet treatable condition. Let’s talk about ‘Oneitis.’

Google’s definition surprisingly states it perfectly:

Oneitis is an intense romantic obsession with a single person, or the belief that they're “the one,” even or especially when that person is unavailable.

All men with any female experience have a portfolio of L’s. Girls they fumbled the bag with. Times they’ve made an ass of themselves. But losing a special girl you can’t get back is much different. She moved on. She’s done with you. She’s with someone else now. You want her, she doesn’t want you. This causes a very specific type of pain.

This pain doesn’t fall within the realm of trauma in a real sense (sexual abuse by a family member, neglect, violence, abandonment). It also isn’t a temporary sting (you were insulted, you got rejected, your ego was bruised). It’s much deeper than that. The pain of heartbreak feels very close to someone you love dying. Heartbreak is synonymous with grieving.

I hate to use this therapy-by-numbers example, but I’ve lost enough people through death to validate the Five Stages of Grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.

Oneitis is when a man is stuck in the Anger-Bargaining-Depression phases of Grief. They avoid walking through the flames of the hardest stage, Acceptance, which requires facing yourself, and therefore never fully become men.

In this post I cover the various forms of Oneitis, the consequences of living with it, and what’s required to overcome it.

Do I Have Oneitis or Am I Just Being a Pussy?

A Missed Connection

Sometimes you see girl that’s so stunning she blew your mind and you’re still thinking about her a few days later. You regret not talking to her and now you’re romanticizing what could have happened if you did. You’re kicking yourself in the ass, but that goes away. If the girl doesn’t even know who you are, you don’t have Oneitis. You just need to get over it. It happens.

Projection

I’ll put on my Romantic Hat here and say that Oneitis doesn’t require a relationship to kick in. It can be caused by a very real and intense connection. It could be conversation you had. A night that unraveled itself into a date you didn’t see coming. Sometimes you just click with someone and the feeling of that connection stays with you for a very long time. But the feeling has to be mutual. You might have thought the connection was mutual but if it wasn’t reciprocated, then it wasn’t a connection. You misread or you believed what you wanted to believe. That’s not Oneitis, it’s a one-sided projection. It sucks, but it happens.