Obsessive Fixation After a Narcissistic Relationship: Why Can’t I Stop Thinking About Them?
You know the relationship hurt you. You know you need peace. So why does your mind keep going back to the person you're trying so hard to let go of ?
By Dr. Bindu Babu
You wake up thinking about them.
You wonder whether they'll text.
You replay the last conversation in your head, sometimes changing your own words and imagining what you should have said differently.
You check your phone.
Maybe you look at their social media even though you promised yourself you wouldn't.
You wonder what they're doing. Who they're with. Whether they miss you. Whether they've moved on. Whether they'll come back.
You tell yourself:
I'm not going to think about this anymore.
And somehow, a few minutes later, you're thinking about them again.
Then comes the question that can carry so much shame:
Why am I so obsessed with someone who caused me so much pain?
Sometimes what feels like obsessive fixation after a narcissistic or emotionally unhealthy relationship isn't simply about how much you loved someone.
Your mind and body may still be trying to make sense of a relationship built around powerful cycles of reward, uncertainty, stress, attachment, and relief.
And understanding that can change the way you see yourself.
Why Obsessive Fixation Can Feel So Powerful
Think about the beginning.
The attention.
The messages.
The affection.
The compliments.
The intimacy.
The feeling that someone finally saw you in a way nobody else had.
During rewarding experiences, dopamine is involved in motivation, anticipation, reward, and learning. Affection and intimacy can also engage bonding systems involving oxytocin.
Your brain begins associating this person with something emotionally significant.
Then the relationship changes.
The attention disappears.
They become distant.
Cold.
Critical.
Unpredictable.
Suddenly, you're no longer simply enjoying their affection.
You're waiting for it to come back.
And that waiting matters.
When affection becomes unpredictable, you may become even more focused on the next moment of connection.
The text.
The apology.
The I miss you.
The night when everything suddenly feels like it used to.
This is part of what psychologists call intermittent reinforcement—when a desired reward comes unpredictably rather than consistently.
You don't know when the affection will return.
So you keep watching for it.
And even after the relationship ends, part of you may still be waiting.
Sometimes you're not obsessing over the person as much as you're craving the emotional reward, connection, and relief your brain learned to associate with them.
Your Mind Is Still Looking for an Answer
Then there are the questions.
Was any of it real?
Did they ever love me?
How could someone who loved me that much treat me this way?
Why did they change?
Was it something I did?
Who were they really?
Relationships involving gaslighting, blame shifting, disappearing, contradictory behavior, or emotional manipulation often don't end with a neat explanation.
They can end with confusion.
And the human mind doesn't like unresolved stories.
There is a psychological phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik effect, which describes our tendency to keep unfinished or interrupted experiences mentally active.
A confusing relationship can feel like an unfinished story.
So your mind keeps returning to it.
You replay conversations.
You search for the moment everything changed.
You examine messages.
You wonder whether you missed something.
You keep trying to find the one explanation that will finally make everything make sense.
But sometimes there isn't one perfect answer.
And eventually, the search for closure can become another way the relationship continues occupying your life.
You may be waiting for the person who confused you to become the person who finally explains everything to you.
And that answer may never come.
Which Version of Them Was Real?
One of the hardest parts can be trying to reconcile two completely different experiences of the same person.
There was the person who adored you.
The person who made you feel chosen.
The person who listened, held you, pursued you, and perhaps made you believe you had found something extraordinary.
And then there was another version.
The person who withdrew.
Dismissed you.
Blamed you.
Made you question yourself.
Or hurt you in ways you never imagined the person from the beginning could.
Your mind is left holding two truths that don't seem to belong together:
This person made me feel deeply loved.
And:
This person deeply hurt me.
That psychological discomfort is often described as cognitive dissonance.
And so you keep thinking.
Which one was real?
Maybe the question isn't which version was real.
Its accepting that both behaviors were part of the relationship you actually experienced.
And healing may require seeing the whole person—not only the version you keep hoping will return.
Why You Still Want to Reach Out
This is also where trauma bonding can become part of the fixation.
If the relationship repeatedly moved through pain, distance, reconnection, affection, and relief, your mind and body may have learned a powerful pattern:
Pain → longing → reconnection → relief.
So when you're hurting after the relationship ends, the person you instinctively want to reach for may still be the same person who caused much of the hurt.
You may know contacting them could reopen the wound.
And still want to do it.
You may type the message and delete it.
Block them and then want to unblock them.
Tell yourself you're finished and then desperately want to know whether they miss you.
That contradiction doesn't necessarily mean this person is the love of your life.
Sometimes it means your mind and body haven't yet learned that relief no longer has to come from the person who created the pain.
How Do You Begin Getting Your Mind Back?
Not by demanding that you just stop thinking about them.
The harder you fight every thought, the more defeated you may feel when another one appears.
Instead, begin noticing what is underneath the thought.
When you want to check their social media, ask:
What am I hoping to find?
When you want to send the message, ask:
What am I hoping they will make me feel?
When you're replaying an old argument for the hundredth time, ask:
Am I trying to understand something—or am I still trying to create an ending that never happened?
And when you find yourself remembering only the beautiful moments, gently remember the entire relationship.
Not just the beginning.
Not just the person you hoped they would become.
The whole relationship.
Because sometimes you aren't thinking about someone constantly because they are the love of your life.
You may be thinking about them constantly because your mind has not yet found its way out of the cycle.
And perhaps healing begins when the question slowly changes from:
How do I get them out of my mind?
to:
What has kept them there?
Because once you begin understanding the reward, uncertainty, unanswered questions, trauma bond, and hope underneath the fixation, something begins to shift.
You stop judging yourself for still thinking about them.
And you begin taking back the emotional space they have occupied for far too long.
The goal isn't to forget that you loved them.
It's to reach a place where remembering them no longer makes you lose yourself.
Dear Women
If you saw yourself somewhere in these words, Dear Women is my weekly letter about relationships, healing, self-worth, and finding our way back to ourselves.
One letter. Once a week. From me to you.
About Dr. Bindu Babu
Dr. Bindu Babu, MD, PhD is an author, speaker, and advocate for women's healing and empowerment. Her work focuses on helping women understand unhealthy and narcissistic relationship patterns, rebuild self-trust and self-worth, and reconnect with themselves after relationships that have left them questioning who they are.
Through her writing, Dear Women weekly letters, and private work, she explores relationships, emotional healing, self-love, consciousness, and the journey back to yourself.
Her message is simple: healing is not only about what happened to you—it is about who you choose to become next.
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