Relationships: A Talmudic Perspective

In the mornings, the Stern Talmud Program has been studying the Jewish Laws of stealing, and what is the thief's relationship to his stolen property-- can he ever own it? Today, we read a Tosafot that said that he can, to a certain degree. A thief who has stolen in front of the owner is called a gazlan, and the Torah gives him an opportunity to rectify the theft by returning the object to the owner. However, once a person despairs from ever getting his object back, the relationship that he has from his property is lost. Ties are severed, and the robber can then sell the object, or move it into the domain of the Temple. These are rights that are usually exclusive to the owner. But the owner has given up on the object. Thus, say Tosafot, while the robber might decide to return the object to the original owner after he's despaired, that does not qualify as a true-corrective hashava that would be required by the Torah. By then, the opportunity has been lost. All he can do is give back the item as a gift, and the rights to selling and dedicating the item to the temple will be returned as well. But, say Tosafot, he is forever a gazlan.
For the last week, I've been creating an analogy between the laws of stealing and breaking up. In my mind, the break-up parallels an act of theft-- a removal of the self from what one was once connected to. After that point, the person is in a quasi connected state/quasi unconnected. It is only with despair and/or movement into another person's domain that one can truly break ties from the original person.
Following this analogy makes me wonder how we relate to our property as that compares to how we relate to people. Are the ties that bind us to people stronger? Weaker? Do we feel broken and lost if we loose a notebook? A pen? A shirt? A friend? Is it only the relationship to the item/to the person that we're mourning? Is it the item/person itself? Obviously, people have their own minds, and therefore cannot be considered quite the same as the item that we've lost. But when the lost item is picked up by another person, does that make us relieved that the item is being put to good use?
Before last summer, I was preparing a class about the mitzvah of hashavat aveida-- the commandment that we have to return lost objects to our fellow Jews. The preparation put me in a mindset that made me think about restoring things to their owners is a kind of metaphysical tikkun-- repairing something that is wrong in the world. I remember feeling that I had to retrieve a cd that I'd left somewhere, as a way of returning something that belonged to me-- not because I needed the cd so badly, but because, it is appropriate for people to be responsible for what they own, and that this was my property that I had to look after. Pirkei Avot might have referred to this when the rabbis said, Marbe kesef marbe da'aga-- the more money we have, the more we worry.
The Talmud calls the act of marriage a kinyan-- a kind of monetary transaction, which also makes me think that perhaps our relationships with people and with property might have more in common than we like to think. I don't have good conclusions on this point, but it's been on my mind for a couple of weeks, and so I'm throwing it out: anyone have any ideas?