Are they lovers? Worse.

"I’m chained to my lover as he’s chained to me."

Is it just fiction?

Some relationships defy simple definitions, teetering between desire and destruction. These are the bonds where two people are so deeply intertwined that their connection becomes both enviable yet also dangerous. It thrives in the grey areas of connection, suggesting that the bond in question transcends affection and veers into obsession, rivalry, or enmity.

Think of Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff and Cathy, where love is less a feeling and more a violent destiny. As Cathy declares, “I am Heathcliff,” entwining their identities so thoroughly that they cannot exist apart. Their love transcends life, but it is not without carnage; it consumes not only them but everyone in their orbit. It is a tempest, a curse, a force of nature.

You could also argue that their contemporary counterparts Edward and Bella share a love that is willing to surrender to danger and even mortality. These relationships burn with a love that is all-consuming, primal, and so entwined with obsession that to love is to risk annihilation.

"I love you. You're my only reason to stay alive… if that's what I am".

They remind us that the line between ecstasy and agony, devotion and obsession, is perilously thin. It’s not simply "are they lovers?" but “are they capable of surviving it?” And sometimes, as these stories show us, the answer is no.

Similarly, the dynamic between Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty fits neatly into this realm. A dynamic that thrives on the tension between closeness and antagonism. While their enmity is undeniable, there is also a strange respect and mutual dependence. Holmes’s genius is sharpened by Moriarty’s equal cunning; without one, the other would lack purpose. Their relationship is not love in the conventional sense, but it is a form of intimacy born of obsession and mutual recognition. A partnership as much as it is a rivalry.

*I mean the chemistry between Benedict Cumberbatch and Andrew Scott is electric… I’m so glad I only started watching the Sherlock series this year instead of during my wattpad-and-tumblr fanfic phase because, honestly, the potential for spiralling into a deep fandom obsession would’ve been too real.

I am caught in a dipostic grasp.

As I think about these fictional dynamics, I’m reminded of relationships in my own life that felt equally intense and consuming. However, my longest and most complex relationship isn’t with another person, it’s with the elusive nature of sleep. It’s a dalliance that teeters between obsession and rejection, as though sleep and I are bound by something deeper and inexplicable, a connection both maddening and essential. In a poem I wrote called “The Insomniacs Lament” as I wrote I caught myself writing with almost romantic and adversial undertones. Below are three specific verses where I witness this:

9:00 PM

Let us begin by courting sleep,

Dancing in my white nightgown,

Wetting my lips with chamomile,

Massaging my wrists and temples with lavender.

Here, sleep is elusive yet desired, a muse or a partner I attempt to seduce with rituals and offerings. There’s an intimacy in these gestures.

12:00 AM

Restless with this pain, I am adipose and chronic with it.

The day has passed, and this is how I begin?

In body spasms and rhapsodies?

Sleep hovers above, she’s laughing and mocking me.

Sleep transforms from muse to tormentor, her absence a presence in itself. She is a spectre, untouchable, dangling just out of reach like a cruel lover who revels in my agony.

7:00 AM

I don't burst forth from a cocoon,

I slump, roll, and drag my buried nails in the carpet,

This reflection is of a girl I know all too well,

Caught in an endless despotic grasp.

By morning, sleep has won, but not with tenderness, rather, with dominance. The metaphorical lover has become a tyrant, leaving me hollowed, dragging myself into the day.

Are me and sleep lovers? Worse. There are nights I curse her absence with the same fervour that I fear her touch. Sleep and I are locked in a fraught embrace, a dance that feels at once eternal and entirely unsustainable. In the end, is sleep my salvation? or is she my curse? Perhaps both. Perhaps that’s the tragedy of it, to be bound so intimately to something that is so uncontrollable.

Finishing Thoughts

I wrote this post because I’ve realised that I used to heavily romanticise a love that consumed me entirely. A love where my identity was so enmeshed with theirs that it felt like we could never be close enough, no matter how much we tried. This wasn’t just my romantic relationships. It was this idea of a connection that was always teetering on the edge, constantly filled with questions that made it feel both thrilling and destabilising: Are we rivals? Enemies? Or are we bound by something even deeper, more profound, and more overwhelming? I think I craved that intensity because it felt like the only kind of connection worth having, even though it was as exhausting as it was intoxicating.

I don’t remember who said this, whether it was an Instagram comment, a scholar, or a family member, but I always hold onto the saying, “people are experiences, not possessions.” It has completely transformed how I view relationships. We can’t own another person, nor should we try to.

We aren’t entitled to any specific amount of time with anyone. We live and love in such a transient, impermanent world, yet when people leave us, the grief and loss can feel almost unbearable. I think about the friendships I once believed would last forever, the crushes I was utterly convinced I would marry. Each of them was a fleeting moment of connection, a part of the journey rather than the destination and while it’s painful to let go, there’s also something freeing in embracing this impermanence.

Are they lovers? Worse? They are something far more consuming, a force so entwined that when they inevitably lose one another, it will feel like a fracture too great to bear. They will unravel, retreating into the former versions of themselves, versions they are certain were incomplete and shallow without the presence of their counterpart.

But perhaps that’s the truth they need to confront, no person can make us whole. Take everything, every connection, every heartbreak as a lesson, as an experience that moulds and shapes who you are. We genuinely discover what it is to be whole within ourselves when we let go and survive.

As always, thank you for reading. I am planning to do more writing in the new year as we all have promised I am sure. Additionally, what’s your favourite example of a relationship that blurs the line between love and destruction?

As usual, I love to have a musical accompaniment to my Substack posts. I was going to make my own playlist, but here I found one by another, whose song choices were so perfect that I couldn’t replicate my own.