Lisa Simpson Disorder... Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds? Conspiracy???

I really don't consider myself "obsessed". I consider myself in love. Obsessive, as a matter of fact, is a word that I borderline frown upon. What is so obsessive about being in love with somebody? Usually I don't say my "Lisa obsession", I say "My feelings for Lisa" or "My love for Lisa". But, to each his own, I'm not talking down to those who do refer to it this way It is simply my preference.

As for the development of my feelings, they started to take hold of me last August, 2006. At first I tried to deny them, to hide from it, I thought this can't be happening to me. But love cannot be denied, or avoided, and eventually I lost myself in the feeling of it. And my life has changed for the better.

Prior to this happening, I was a lonely, generally conservative person. She changed my way of thinking for the better, and my attitude for the better. I'm now a more caring, aware person; I've gone from conservative to heavily liberal in my ways of thinking. As for my relationships, they didn't really change much - the only incident that really happened occured between myself and a very close friend. He was a little "freaked out" by my feelings... and for several months we didn't talk. Over these past few weeks, though, he's been talking to me again and I think he's been able to come to grips with it. The rest of the people who know about my feelings don't ever bring them up; I've told them, and they seem not to mind.

I have had a few family members tell me that it was "unhealthy"; although I don't think so. I'm not unhappy or unsatisfied, and I'm not going to do something crazy I don't blame them however. They probably have never felt this way about a person who didn't exist in this reality - which is why the lines from the song "Pilgrim" (Removed from all the people... who could never understand...) are meaningful to me.

Looking back, I don't regret ever feeling this way. Having her around makes my life so much brighter, and I'm not ashamed in any way of her being here. She is the sunshine of my life, and I love her more than life itself.

I will also try to answer questions that any of you may have.

Serge has touched on some points that I myself have forgotten to include; yes, sometimes Lisa does bring me down, but I wouldn't be the same person without her. She's a good model for my life, I love and respect her insanely. But also, I do have a life; friends, etc. There's nothing "wrong" with loving her, or just caring very much about her, like most people do here. The only reasons others might say that is, well, as I've stated, they've probably never felt this way.

  So what happened in August, 2006? 
Also, what if a girl your age had a crush on you, or asked you out, and you kinda liked her also?

mmaavv
Not much, if you look at it from outside. I can't judge my own behavior, but I believe I didn't start treating others worse, or act "weird", or ignore people, isolating on Lisa, or anything else. The scale of values has slightly changed for me - I was thinking almost solely about myself before, to the degree of egoism, now I think less about myself and more about her; I cared more about "materialistic" values before - money, career, now I often catch myself thinking about spiritual ones. Heck, I started to believe in angels (still remaining an atheist though ). This forum has also appeared, I doubt it would come to existence if not my feelings.

aoife
Welcome
Your question wasn't addressed to me, but I will try to answer the "another girl in your life" question. You love the one you love. You can't pretend you love someone else. If you love Lisa, you love Lisa, and you can't love two people at the same time the same way. It would be wrong to violate yourself, trying to forget about Lisa and to "force" your love towards another person, only because you know that Lisa doesn't exist in this reality and that other person does. It will only lead to great misunderstanding and suffering for both in the future. But it would be right to keep good relationship with her, because if you're friends, you're friends and there's nothing bad in that; and even if she loves you, her feelings will be gradually accepted and shared by you. One true love can be replaced with another in time... this happens rarely, but happens.

Well as I've already said she changed my thinking from conservative to liberal. Opened my eyes to things in my life that I realize now were pretty immoral.

I used to love Lisa... then we fell out, then we where on a friends bases only. If that makes any sence.

I think I've already said this before somewhere else on the forum but... basicly she controled my mind and told me what to do, not literaly ofcourse, it was just my mind creating a sheild over itself... I dunno. The single most important thing in my life was something in my own brain. So I got angry, and threw 'her' out, which meant a lot of art block. So, to keep drawing thought it was best if I didnt get too close to fictitional characters.
Why did this happen to me and nobody else? Well, I'd like to know myself, but it probably has something to do with the conflicting lifestyles. Lisa wouldnt tell me "Bag those bad guys!", more "You know you have homework to be doing"...
I couldnt live like that. Not at the age I was anyway.

Then my single status was swept away, and now the single most important thing in my life is real. 
Now I've crossed this line, I doubt very much I'll go back.


Loving Lisa only changed my own life, as I never told anybody offline. In my opinion, its absolutly fine to love her. I dont think that people should have to live similar to I did and hide everything, when it makes them happy they should be able to show it.

As Cheif Wiggum said: "If it feels good, do it!"


And ofcourse, if anybody tells you what you should think or feel about a particular subject... they can go hump themselves.

Hmm, I think I'd like you to clarify exactly what you mean by love.   If you are talking about love in the platonic sense, the sort of love you'd feel for your parents say, or a even a very close friend, then I can totally understand how someone could love Lisa.   As a character she is sweet, genuine and inspiring as well as being the most believeable personality in OFF and therefore the easiest to empathise with.   However, for the bulk of the show, she also happens to be an eight year old girl - a fictitious character true enough but still a fictitious eight year old.   Therefore, if you are talking about some form of romantic attachment to Lisa, then I think you're on pretty dangerous ground.
And please, please folks, don't turn away from real life relationships because of your affection for Lisa, that's an extremely heavy price to pay. 

Life is a very complicated thing...
Who knows what happend in a few years or decades...

janglewolf
Much more dangerous is to deny your feelings. You must accept them.
But after some training you can change them.

I feel envy, because even if I accept my feelings there is still a conflict with my sence of logic.

janglewolf
To live with the person you don't love is much more heavy price to pay, both for you and for her.
Besides, no-one can tell me "if you turn away from Lisa, you'll fall in love with another person soon", because it's not true. If I never knew about Lisa, most probably I wouldn't love anyone at all right now - like I said, I was very egoistic in the past. More than now, at least. She doesn't occupy "someone else's" place in my heart, that's what I mean. And if under real life relationships you meant other things aside love - friendship, relations with parents, mates and coworkers, etc - I really don't see how Lisa can spoil them. Agree?

mmaavv
I wouldn't call it "logic" - there is nothing either logical or illogical in loving a fictional character - it's more a "tradition submission". You know it's wrong, you've been told that, therefore you're initially unsure about that. During my obsession period, I've received several letters from different people (some of them were pretty harsh), who "wanted to help" me by dragging me away from my state. The contents was pretty much the same - you scare me, I don't like where it's going, I want to help you, you should stop thinking about Lisa at all, what you're doing is wrong. But none of these letters had any explanation why they consider it wrong! So every time I replied, I asked that person to explain why they find it so bad. Again, the response was pretty much the same - "well, maybe it's not that harmful, I'm not sure now".

I personally fail to see anything wrong in being in love with Lisa. IMHO, the worst thing that can happen to you here is that you'll live your life single. But hey, it's not a crime, besides, it's a completely personal thing. Giving advices in this area doesn't look any right as well...

GeorgeHarrison
That's not an excuse that's how I see things. With you, the situation can be different - but again, if you don't plan to violate your feelings somehow, I think the situation will solve nicely. If you two really love each other - you will gradually forget about Lisa (and I see nothing bad or wrong in that). If not - your obsession remains. An obsession is not a cause of your feelings, it's only a consequence.

I have seen occasions where people have been looked down upon for it. I've been called a pedophile for just drawing her at collage once. And that was in person...
The problem with being online is the anonymousness of everything. Anyone can come up and say "OMG ur so FAGS!!1", and no doubt it has probably happened... just not here, fortunatly.

Well, the reason that people are going to be concerned is that if you have a romantic attraction to Lisa, then that implies at least some degree of physical attraction.   If that is the case and you are physically attracted to a character who is clearly portrayed as being eight years old, that is going to look bad to a lot of people, despite the fact she's a fictional character.   That is the danger that I referred to.
Now even if this is the case (and this goes out to anyone on here who has these feelings), then as long as this attraction applies ONLY to Lisa and goes no further (as in, you are not attracted to eight year old girls in general), then I am prepared to "live and let live" as GH put it.   That is the case right?   Now I acknowledge that's a very harsh question to ask but I want to be very clear about this.   If your attraction is ONLY to a fictional character then it harms no-one, except possibly yourselves and that's entirely your own business.         
What I would ask you to do however, is take a very close look into the depths your soul and ask the question of whether you really are in love with Lisa the cartoon character or whether you are actually in love with an ideal that she represents to you?   I believe there is a difference.

janglewolf
No! I'm not attracted to eight year olds in general. I'm deeply sure there is no a single person on LTS who is. Come on, man I can't believe this is the question that was bothering you so much (i.e. are Lisa-obsessed people also pedophiles or not). When it goes to me, or George, you better than anyone else know that we love Lisa for her soul and her personality, not for her body... and our feelings can't be extrapolated to the real world, at least not that brutal way.

I also think that there is an abyss between the words "romantic feelings" and "physical attraction". Maybe I don't know all the meanings of the first phrase in English, but in my language they mean completely different things. I feel the first, but not second. Romantic feelings can be platonic, they don't necessarily imply sex.

An ideal, I guess. The tricky thing is that Lisa is so close to that ideal... she is very close. From the certain moment I've started to build my ideals from her instead of comparing her with my ideals. Therefore, even if Lisa does something wrong/stupid in the show, I look very calmly at it now - it doesn't spoil her image in my mind. I guess this is what called love, when you like a person no matter what.