Watching Obsession (2026) sent my mind down a rabbit hole. It made me question something about the women I have spoken to during my tarot sessions over the years. What if they were never obsessed with these men in the first place? What if someone had deliberately made it impossible for them to let go?
As always, I Love Inspiration is where I unravel the thoughts, questions and unexpected connections that films awaken in me. This time, a supernatural horror story took me somewhere between love spells, psychology, desire and the unsettling need to be worshipped.
What if you were never obsessed with him? What if you were simply under a spell?
Over the years, I have encountered many women in my sessions who struggle to let go of a particular man. It doesn't seem to matter whether he treats them well, treats them badly, disappears for months or openly admits that he has no intention of committing to them. Somehow, they remain emotionally attached, sometimes for years, even when they can no longer explain what they actually like about him.
I have always found this fascinating. What makes us so attached to someone who isn't necessarily making us happy? Why do we keep thinking about a person we have consciously decided to leave behind? And why does the desire sometimes become even stronger when that person rejects us?
I have even questioned myself on occasion. Do I actually like this guy, or has he put some kind of love spell on me? I know how that sounds, but people have been trying to influence love and desire through magical practices for centuries. And although I have always been fascinated by magic, I somehow never associated love spells with men.
I Never Imagined Men Casting Love Spells
For some reason, I always imagined women burning candles, whispering incantations and performing rituals to attract the man of their dreams. I never pictured a man sitting in his bedroom, lighting candles and saying abracadabra because a woman wasn't returning his affection.
The funny thing is that many of the occult books I have read were actually written by men. Yet somehow, in my imagination, that was different. I could picture a male occultist summoning spirits or studying ancient mysteries, but not performing a love spell because he couldn't handle a woman's rejection.
That changed when one of my clients told me a story that genuinely shocked me.
She had gone through her then-lover's phone when she stumbled upon a voice note he had sent to a mysterious man. In the recording, she heard her boyfriend complaining that despite having paid him a substantial amount of money to perform a ritual that would make her obsessed with him, the spell wasn't having the effect he had expected. Apparently, her devotion still wasn't quite enough.
He wanted more. He wanted her to become so consumed by him that she could barely breathe without him. He wanted every thought, every desire and every waking moment to revolve around his existence.
What made her story even more intriguing was that, in the tarot cards, it was clear to me that magic was involved. Her discovery seemed to confirm what we had already picked up during the reading.
She eventually visited a traditional healer several times, undergoing different rituals to release herself from the spiritual bond.
But what fascinated me most was something else entirely. Why would a man go to such extraordinary lengths to make a woman obsessed with him, only to cheat on her once he had secured her devotion?
If you wanted this particular woman so badly, why wasn't having her enough? Why pursue her love through manipulation, magic or whatever means you believed necessary, only to start looking elsewhere?
And then I wondered whether love had ever been the objective in the first place.
The Man Who Wants to Feel Like God
I suspect that for some men, the desire to be loved is overshadowed by something much more intoxicating: the desire to be worshipped.
There is an enormous difference between the two. Love requires vulnerability, reciprocity and the willingness to be seen as an ordinary human being, with all your flaws, insecurities and limitations.
Worship, on the other hand, places you above the person who adores you. You become the centre of their emotional universe, the person whose attention they crave and whose approval determines how they feel about themselves.
Imagine how powerful that must feel to someone who secretly doubts his own worth.
He may appear confident, seductive and completely in control, but beneath that exterior lives a man who fears he isn't enough. He wants to experience unconditional love without exposing the parts of himself that he believes might make him unlovable. Rather than risk genuine rejection, he attempts to secure devotion through whatever means are available to him.
And what could be more intoxicating than having a woman surrender her attention, her body, her emotions and her imagination to you?
I have always found it fascinating that a man who wants to feel like God seeks worship from the very being who has the power to create life. A woman carries that extraordinary ability within her, yet he wants her to look at him as though he is the source of everything.
Perhaps that is what makes her devotion so intoxicating. He doesn't simply want to be loved by her. He wants to feel more powerful than the woman whose power he secretly admires.
But there is a problem with wanting to be someone's God. Eventually, they expect you to perform miracles.
The Many Ways We Cast Spells
Love spells have taken many forms throughout history, from spoken incantations and petitions to spirits to rituals involving sexual energy creating energetic bonds through intention and intimacy.
But not every spell requires magic. Some are cast through psychology, particularly when uncertainty is introduced deliberately. Think of love bombing: excessive attention, declarations of love and promises of a future together, followed by sudden withdrawal.
When affection becomes unpredictable, we can become increasingly preoccupied with receiving it again. What begins as a desire for someone can quietly turn into an obsession with getting back the version of them we first fell for.
Obsession: When the Wish Becomes a Curse
This is what fascinated me about the movie Obsession. A man who cannot approach love from a place of vulnerability turns to a supernatural wish to secure a woman's affection. His fear of rejection prevents him from allowing her to choose him freely.
But when his wish comes true, her devotion becomes a burden. Suddenly, she is too demanding, too dependent, too emotionally invested. He wants space from the very woman he wanted to become consumed by him.
And here is where the story becomes particularly disturbing.
He wanted her attention, her body, her imagination and her unconditional devotion. He wanted to become the centre of her universe, but had little interest in discovering the universe that already existed within her.
What is the value of being desired by a woman when you have taken away her freedom to desire you?
The Woman He Created, Then Feared
Perhaps the real horror of Obsession isn't the supernatural wish itself, but the transformation of a woman into the embodiment of a man's unresolved desires.
Her fear of abandonment may mirror his own insecurity. Her need for reassurance reflects the validation he secretly craves. Instead of confronting those feelings within himself, he begins to condemn them in her.
She becomes needy, irrational, demanding and obsessive. The very qualities he wanted to awaken in her are now presented as evidence that something is wrong with her.
And isn't that a familiar story? Throughout film and literature, women whose desires become inconvenient are often portrayed as hysterical, dangerous or monstrous.
But what if she was never the monster? What if the woman he now describes as unbearable is simply the manifestation of everything he wanted her to become?
He wanted her devotion without her independence, her sexuality without her autonomy and her love without the responsibility of loving her back.
He creates the obsession, then punishes the woman for becoming his creation.
When the Spell Breaks
But what happens when she finally wants to leave?
The man who complained about her constant attention may suddenly become desperate to regain it. Not necessarily because he has discovered genuine love, but because her devotion had become part of his identity.
Without her admiration, he no longer feels like God.
There is another possibility worth exploring. What if no ritual was ever performed? What if we become attached to someone because they awaken an emotional pattern we already carry? The unavailable father, the affection we had to earn, the familiar experience of chasing someone who never quite chooses us.
Sometimes we become obsessed not with the person, but with the possibility of finally receiving the love we have been waiting for.
Perhaps that is what makes obsession so fascinating. Whether we interpret it through magic, manipulation or psychology, it raises the same uncomfortable question about free will.
And perhaps breaking the spell begins when a woman stops questioning why he no longer wants her and starts questioning whether she ever truly wanted him.
Because the most frightening thing about obsession isn't necessarily that someone can place a woman under a spell. It's that a man can manufacture her obsession and then convince the world that she is the monster.
With Love,
Mara Michels
ps. Stay Woke :)
