love-addiction

ADDICTED TO LOVE

" Love is all you need." For the person addicted to love, this becomes more than a popular lyric. It becomes literal truth. What is love addiction, and why are some men and women addicted to love? How can the problem be identified, and how can those addicted be helped?

A Psychological Addiction

Love addiction is a psychological addiction, a result of unfulfilled childhood needs. Children whose needs remain unrecognized may adjust by learning to limit their expectations. This limitation process may take the form of harmful ideas such as, "My needs don't count,""Getting close will hurt" and "I'm not worth loving." Such ideas do not satisfy childhood needs, leaving them still to be met later in life. As adults, addictive lovers remain dependent upon others to care for them, protect them and solve their problems.

Love addicts are characteristically familiar with desperate hopes and seemingly unending fears. Fearing rejection, fearing pain, fearing unfamiliar experiences, and having no faith in their ability--or even their right--to inspire love, they wait, wish, and hope for love, perhaps their least familiar experience.

Characteristics of Addictive Love

For addicts, love:

Is all consuming and obsessive.
Is inhibited.
Avoids risk or change.
Lacks true intimacy.
Is manipulative, strikes deals.
Is dependent and parasitic.
Demands the loved one's devotion.

Effects of Love Addiction

Addictive love is obsessed with finding the world in one lover. Their own growth and development having been thwarted earlier in life, addicted lovers attach themselves to their lover's identity. Often, this dependency results in their drawing unearned pride from their lover's accomplishments. Sometimes it leads to their demanding, for themselves, undeserved recognition for their lover's achievements.

Fearful of change, addictive lovers will stifle development of their own self, finding the ultimate security in believing they can become indistinguishable from their mate. Sometimes the fear of change is so great all individual development of abilities, interests, and desires is suppressed.Stagnation is a common characteristic of addictive love relationships.

The desperate need for security leads to emotional scheming. Addictive lovers are inclined to think that doing things for their mate will secure their love. The resulting opportunities for disappointment and resentment are sufficient to make such scheming futile. But addictive lovers are obsessed with impossible needs and unrealistic expectations. Love demands honesty and self-integrity. And it is a dynamic relationship, itself cultivating growth and change in lovers. The dependent, frightened attachments of love addicts are destructive to love.

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Typical Signs of Love and/or Sex Addiction Include:

Constantly seeking a sexual partner, new romance or significant other

An inability or difficulty in being alone

Consistently choosing partners who are abusive or emotionally unavailable

Using sex, seduction and intrigue to "hook" or hold onto a partner

Using sex or romantic intensity to tolerate difficult experiences or emotions

Missing out on important family, career or social experiences in order to maintain a sexual high or romantic relationship

When in a relationship, being detached or unhappy, when out of a relationship, feeling desperate and alone

Avoiding sex or relationships for long periods of time to "solve the problem".

An inability to leave unhealthy relationships despite repeated promises to self or others

Returning to previously unmanageable or painful relationships despite promises to self or others

Mistaking sexual experiences and romantic intensity for love

For a Love or Sex addict, the above signs or symptoms consist of pervasive patterns of emotional instability inevitably leading to isolation, heartache and loss. Not everyone who has engaged in one or two of the above has an addiction problem, many people may have their judgment skewed by a difficult person or situation from time to time in their lives.

However, when these situations become the norm, lived over and over again in some form or another, the diagnosis can be made. Love and sex addicts who are not in recovery, like any addict, do not learn from their consequences and mistakes. It is only when the pain of these behaviors and situations becomes greater than the pain and challenges of creating change, that recovery begins.

LOVE & SEX ADDICTION

Unlike the healthy person seeking partnership and sex as a complement to their life, the Love and Sex Addict searches for something outside of themselves (a person, relationship or experience) which will provide them with the emotional and life stability that they themselves lack. Similar to a drug addict or alcoholic, love and sex addicts use their arousing romantic/sexual experiences in an attempt to "fix" themselves and remain emotionally stable.

When love and sexuality are used as a way to cope, rather than a way to grow and share, partner choice becomes skewed. Compatibility becomes based on "whether or not you will leave me", "how intense our sex life is" or "how I can hook you into staying", rather than on whether you might truly become a peer, friend and companion.

Addictive relationships are characterized over time by unhealthy dependency, guilt and abuse. Convinced of their lack of worth and not feeling truly lovable, Love and Sex Addicts will use seduction, control, guilt and manipulation to attract and hold onto romantic partners. At times, despairing of this cycle of unhappy affairs, broken relationships and sexual liaisons, some Love or Sex Addicts may have "swearing off" periods (like the bulimic/anorexic cycles of overeaters). The addict believes that just "not being in the game" will solve the problem; only to later find the same issues reappearing when they re-engage in any type of potential intimacy.