The Many Faces of Obsessive Love in The Boyfriend

The Thematic Claim

In Freida McFadden’s psychological thriller The Boyfriend, obsessive love acts as a destructive engine that characters use to justify violence, manipulation, and murder. The novel systematically dismantles the romantic ideal of “love at first sight” by revealing how each major character—Tom, Daisy (alias Gretchen), and even Sydney—twists affection into a warrant for control. The story’s central claim is that love, when fused with possession or compulsion, becomes indistinguishable from predation.

Tracing Obsessive Love Through the Plot

Tom’s Adolescent Fixation

The prologue introduces Tom at age fourteen, narrating his love for Daisy from the playground onward. He confesses that his deepest fear is not rejection but the urge to strangle her should she ever be alone with him. This confession—delivered in the same breath as declarations of adoration—establishes a pattern: Tom equates intensity of feeling with a desire to dominate. In high school, his obsession deepens. After kissing Brandi Healey (a classmate who later disappears), Tom blames himself for Brandi’s fate and fears Alison’s exposure will end his relationship with Daisy. He tells Alison “I love Daisy. I would never hurt her,” even as he admits to himself that his dreams are horror-movie grotesque. Love, for Tom, is a trap: the more he loves, the more he is compelled to possess and eliminate rivals.

Daisy’s Protective Killing Spree

Daisy (later going by Gretchen) embodies obsessive love as a form of radical possessiveness. She admits to killing Brandi because Tom was kissing her: “I couldn’t have that! She was all wrong for you.” She also kills Alison, who threatened to expose Tom’s involvement in Brandi’s disappearance, and later murders Slug to frame him for her crimes. In chapter 62, Daisy tells Tom, “I like you … I love you … we can be together again,” while holding a gun on him. She treats murder as a favor meant to secure their future. Her love is a self-serving narrative: she eliminates anyone she perceives as a threat to her relationship, then expects gratitude. The same logic drives her present-day relationship with Randy, whom she stabs repeatedly while saying, “Now you don’t have to be jealous.” Daisy’s love is lethal because it fundamentally cannot coexist with any independent life outside the couple.

Tom’s Adult Double Life and Final Act

As an adult, Tom repeats his adolescent pattern. He dates Sydney while secretly carrying out domestic tasks for Daisy—maintaining her ant-farm obsession and disposing of evidence. He uses a burner phone to communicate with her, a symbol of the secret, obsessive bond. Yet in the epilogue, Tom’s love for Sydney manifests as a violent act: he kills Kevin, Sydney’s stalker, and sends her a lock of hair with the note, “Kevin won’t be bothering you ever again.” Tom frames this as a protective gesture, but the method mirrors Daisy’s—violence justified by affection. Sydney’s reaction is telling: she briefly considers reporting him, then throws the evidence away, choosing complicity over justice. The cycle repeats.

Character and Symbol Connections

Tom Brewer is the primary lens for obsessive love. He begins as an adolescent incapable of separating love from violent fantasy and matures into an adult who acts on that fantasy for “protection.” His love for Daisy never fades; even after learning she is a serial killer, he decides to keep her secret because “I love her. I have always loved her.”

Daisy Driscoll (Gretchen) represents the apex of possessive love. She murders anyone she perceives as a threat to her bond with Tom—Brandi, Alison, Slug, and later Randy—and then expects Tom to be grateful. She tells him, “You and I are meant to be together,” treating murder as a natural extension of loyalty.

Sydney Shaw is the object of Tom’s adult obsession but also a participant in its aftermath. Her choice to discard the evidence of Tom’s crime mirrors Tom’s earlier decision to protect Daisy. She, too, prioritizes a relationship over justice.

Symbols reinforce the theme:

• The burner phone (symbol page) represents the secret, illicit channel through which obsessive love operates—a hidden line to Daisy.
• The scrunchie (symbol page) is a fetish object that Tom holds onto from his teenage romance, literalizing his inability to let go.
• The ant farm (symbol page) suggests the controlled, miniature world Tom and Daisy attempt to create—a closed system where outsiders are eliminated.
• Blood and nosebleeds (symbol page) connect arousal to violence; Tom is aroused by Sydney’s nosebleed, and Daisy notes that “he loves to watch her bleed.”

Complexity and Contradictions

The novel refuses to present obsessive love as a simple villainy. Tom is sympathetic: his childhood trauma (killing his abusive father) primes him for a worldview where love and violence coexist. Daisy is charismatic and often seems to believe her own justifications—they are both victims of their wiring. The most troubling contradiction comes from Sydney. She began as a victim of Kevin’s stalking, yet she ends the book covering for Tom’s murder of that same stalker. The line between victim and accomplice blurs. The narrative asks whether any love, even one that begins in fear, can redeem violent acts.

Another complexity: Tom’s final decision to kill Kevin is framed as a rescue. He tells Sydney, “Kevin won’t be bothering you ever again.” Sydney feels relief before guilt. The book leaves open whether love sometimes justifies violence—or whether every such justification is a rationalization of obsession.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Question: How does Tom’s confession in the prologue establish the theme of obsessive love?

Answer: Tom admits he loves Daisy but fears that if they are alone together, he will strangle her. This conflates romantic desire with violent compulsion, setting the tone that love in the novel is inseparable from control and harm.

1. Question: In what ways does Daisy’s killing of Brandi Healey illustrate possessive love?

Answer: Daisy murders Brandi because Tom kissed her. She tells Tom, “I couldn’t have that! She was all wrong for you,” framing homicide as a personal favor and proving that her love requires the elimination of any rival.

1. Question: How does the symbol of the burner phone reinforce obsessive love?

Answer: Tom uses a separate phone to communicate only with Daisy, keeping their relationship secret from Sydney. The hidden channel mirrors the hidden, obsessive bond that persists beneath his present-day life.

1. Question: What contradiction does Sydney face in the epilogue, and what does her choice imply about the novel’s view of love?

Answer: Sydney finds the note from Tom confessing to Kevin’s murder. She considers turning it in but ultimately throws it away. Her complicity suggests that the desire to protect a relationship can override moral boundaries, repeating the pattern of obsessive love.

1. Question: How do Tom and Daisy both justify murder in the name of love, and what is the novel’s implicit critique?

Answer: Tom kills Kevin to protect Sydney; Daisy kills Brandi, Alison, and Slug to protect Tom. Both see violence as a proof of devotion. The novel critiques this logic by showing that such love destroys lives and never satisfies—it always demands one more victim.