Key Takeaways
1. Love Addiction is a compulsive focus on another person, distinct from broader codependence.
Many people have lumped love addiction in with codependence.
Codependence is foundational. Codependence is a disease of immaturity stemming from childhood trauma, characterized by five core symptoms: difficulty with self-esteem, setting functional boundaries, owning one's reality, addressing adult needs/wants, and experiencing/expressing reality in moderation. These issues hamper a person's relationship with themselves.
Love addiction as a symptom. While codependence is a broad problem, love addiction is a specific compulsive behavior where an individual becomes dependent on, enmeshed with, and obsessively focused on taking care of another person. It's a secondary symptom of codependence, often used to alleviate the pain of an unhealthy relationship with oneself.
Addictions blur reality. Powerful addictions, including love addiction, serve to medicate intolerable reality. A person with an addiction is likely codependent, and conversely, a codependent often has one or more addictive processes. Love addiction often becomes visible only after initial work on core codependence symptoms has begun.
2. Love Addicts are driven by childhood abandonment, seeking a "rescuer" and fearing being left.
Love Addicts usually didn't have enough appropriate bonding with their caregivers, and probably experienced moderate to serious abandonment or neglect in childhood.
Core characteristics. Love Addicts exhibit three main behavioral symptoms: assigning disproportionate time, attention, and value to the addicted person (making them a "Higher Power"), holding unrealistic expectations for unconditional positive regard, and neglecting their own self-care within the relationship. This intense focus on another person eventually makes them feel worse.
Dual fears. Love Addicts are consciously gripped by the fear of being left, tolerating almost anything to avoid it. Ironically, they also harbor an unconscious fear of healthy intimacy, often panicking and creating distance when closeness is achieved. This dilemma leads them to unconsciously choose partners incapable of healthy intimacy.
Fantasy of a rescuer. Childhood abandonment leaves Love Addicts with deep pain, fear, anger, and emptiness, along with a sense of worthlessness and helplessness. To cope, they fantasize about a "knight in shining armor" or "super-female" rescuer who will make them feel whole and safe. As adults, they project this fantasy onto partners, leading to repeated disappointment when no one can satisfy their insatiable desires.
3. Love Avoidants, shaped by childhood enmeshment, fear intimacy and control through distance.
Love Avoidants consciously (and greatly) fear intimacy because they believe that they will be drained, engulfed, and controlled by it.
Avoidance is key. Love Avoidants are characterized by three traits that lead to avoiding intimacy: evading relationship intensity by creating intensity in outside activities (often addictions), avoiding being known in the relationship to protect against engulfment, and using various "distancing techniques" to prevent intimate contact. They often conduct life from behind emotional walls.
Enmeshment trauma. Their conscious fear of intimacy stems from childhood enmeshment trauma, where they were drained, engulfed, and controlled by a caregiver's neediness. They learned that being relational meant caretaking out of duty, not love, and that closeness would lead to suffocation. This experience also led to an unconscious fear of being left, as their own needs were abandoned while they cared for a parent.
Distancing tactics. Love Avoidants use various methods to avoid intimacy:
- Walls: Using anger, fear, silence, artificial maturity, or pleasantness as barricades instead of healthy boundaries.
- Distractions: Staying busy with hobbies, sports, or media to avoid presence with their partner.
- Control: Manipulating money, power, or intimacy to maintain control and avoid being dictated to.
- Addictions: Focusing on outside addictions (alcohol, work, sex) to create intensity and avoid relationship intimacy.
4. Co-addicted relationships are a toxic "tango" of intense pursuit and avoidance, often mistaken for love.
Each partner is both attracted and repelled by the other.
The co-addicted dynamic. When a Love Addict and a Love Avoidant meet, they form a co-addicted relationship marked by cycles of intense positive and negative emotions, often mislabeled as "love" or "passion." The Love Addict pursues enmeshment, while the Love Avoidant seeks distance, creating a chaotic "tango" where each triggers the other's deepest fears.
Mutual attraction and repulsion. Love Addicts are drawn to the Love Avoidant's apparent power and familiarity of abandonment, hoping to heal childhood wounds and fulfill their rescuer fantasy. Love Avoidants are attracted to the Love Addict's neediness, which offers control and a sense of value, familiar from their caretaking childhood role. However, the Love Addict's pursuit triggers the Avoidant's fear of engulfment, and the Avoidant's distancing triggers the Addict's fear of abandonment, leading to a cycle of pain.
Cultural delusion. Society often normalizes this intense, chaotic dynamic, mistaking it for "true love." However, it's an addictive process where both partners are equally responsible for creating the toxicity. Neither is solely a victim; each abuses the other through their dysfunctional patterns, preventing genuine intimacy and mutual growth.
5. Recovery begins by confronting all addictions and disengaging from the co-addicted dynamic.
Arresting an addiction is simple to explain, although not always easy to do.
Phases of recovery. Getting out of the addictive cycle requires a structured approach:
- Address any apparent addictions outside the co-addicted relationship (e.g., alcoholism, eating disorders).
- Disengage from the addictive part of the relationship process itself.
- Enter therapy to release old, stored-up feelings from childhood abuse.
- Work on underlying symptoms of codependence.
Arresting an addiction. This involves four steps:
- Confrontation: Acknowledge the addiction and its symptoms in your life. This means breaking through denial, which often only happens when the pain becomes severe enough.
- Examination of Consequences: Identify the harmful results of the addiction for yourself and others.
- Intervention: Stop the addictive behavior. This means actively choosing not to engage in the compulsive actions.
- Withdrawal: Experience the uncomfortable physical, intellectual, emotional, or spiritual symptoms that arise when the addictive substance or behavior is removed.
Support is essential. Making it through withdrawal often requires consistent outside help from Twelve-Step programs (SLAA, Al-Anon, AA, NA, OA) or addiction specialists. In severe cases, medication may be necessary to manage intense emotional pain and prevent self-harm.
6. Putting a relationship "on hold" involves intentional detachment and resisting "bombing" for intensity.
Putting a relationship on hold doesn't necessarily mean separating or getting a divorce, although some couples do need a physical separation.
Temporary detachment. For highly toxic co-addicted relationships, putting it "on hold" means eliminating contact that leads to fighting, intensity, and painful feelings. Emotional interactions, criticism, and major problem-solving are minimized or eliminated, with critical issues handled by a third-party counselor. This temporary phase allows partners to focus on individual recovery.
Al-Anon's "Three Gets". To effectively detach, individuals should practice:
- Get off your partner's back: Stop obsessing about their actions and opinions.
- Get out of your partner's way: Avoid interfering or giving unsolicited advice.
- Get on with your life: Focus on your own recovery from addictions and codependence, taking adult responsibility for self-care.
Resisting "bombing". When the usual toxic intensity subsides, both partners may feel uncomfortable and tempted to "bomb" each other with anger or seduction to recreate familiar (even if painful) connection. Love Addicts might pick fights or act helpless; Love Avoidants might threaten to leave or offer to rescue. The key is to resist these impulses by closing your mouth, breathing, and using a "wall of pleasantness" – being polite and observant without engaging in the old patterns.
7. Withdrawal from love addiction is intense, requiring support and addressing deep-seated childhood trauma.
Withdrawal from an addiction to a person is an intense emotional experience, including pain, fear, sometimes anger, or some combination of these.
Facing the pain. Love addiction withdrawal is a profound emotional experience, activating both current adult feelings of being left and the accumulated pain, fear, anger, and emptiness from original childhood abandonment. This combined intensity can be crushing, leading to depression, panic, rage, or even suicidal/homicidal thoughts.
Journaling for awareness. A structured journaling process helps break through denial, acknowledge the addiction, and examine its harmful consequences. This includes:
- Describing how you assigned too much value to the person and neglected yourself.
- Identifying how you moved through the Love Addict's emotional cycle, from fantasy to compulsive action.
- Acknowledging the unrealistic expectation of consistent unconditional positive regard from others.
Detoxifying childhood trauma. During withdrawal, working with a counselor to "discover" and release old childhood emotions related to abandonment or enmeshment is crucial. This involves claiming both child and adult feelings about past trauma, allowing for a grieving process and modifying immature thinking. This deep work helps stabilize the Love Addict to tolerate the present pain.
8. Codependence recovery is foundational, healing self-esteem, boundaries, and self-care.
Codependence is a disease of immaturity caused by childhood trauma.
Two-pronged approach. Codependence recovery involves two distinct processes:
- Treating the cause (child abuse): This requires education about abuse, journaling about one's history, and a psychological detoxification process, often in group therapy. It means claiming and releasing old childhood feelings and modifying immature, toxic thinking.
- Treating the symptoms: This focuses on learning to value oneself (self-esteem), develop healthy boundaries, identify and share one's reality appropriately, practice self-care, and achieve moderation in expression.
Stages of healing. As individuals progress, they move through stages:
- Denial: "I was not abused," "I am not codependent."
- Blaming the Offender: "It's all my parents' fault," "I can't get well until my partner does."
- Accountability: Holding caregivers accountable for past harm and taking responsibility for one's own recovery.
- Survival: Experiencing relief from past trauma and developing personal power and self-care skills. This is often when re-entering a relationship becomes safe.
- Integration: Seeing how past experiences created one's spiritual path and character, fostering gratitude.
9. Correcting distorted thinking is crucial for both Love Addicts and Love Avoidants to foster healthy relating.
Our ability to face reality is directly related to our ability to have a healthy relationship with ourself...
Love Addict's shifts. Recovering Love Addicts must adjust several distorted beliefs:
- Unconditional regard: Shift from expecting constant unconditional positive regard from others to generating it from within and accepting that others may not always like their choices.
- Higher Power: Stop viewing partners as all-important, all-powerful, or perfect; recognize all people are imperfect and of equal value.
- Self-care responsibility: Understand that as adults, each person is responsible for meeting their own needs, not relying on a partner to do it.
Love Avoidant's shifts. Recovering Love Avoidants need to correct:
- Intimacy concept: Redefine intimacy as sharing reality with healthy boundaries, not as an engulfing, controlling experience.
- Sharing reality: Learn to get in touch with and appropriately share their own thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants, trusting that boundaries can protect them.
- Caretaking role: Release the belief that their job is to caretake their partner, and that a needy person is safe or controllable.
- Vulnerability as weakness: Recognize that displaying vulnerability does not diminish one's worth.
Accepting value differences. Both must learn to accept that partners will have different value systems (e.g., money, parenting, lifestyle). It's crucial to allow partners to operate within their own values, as long as it's not abusive, rather than trying to change them.
10. Re-entering relationships requires direct requests for intimacy and support, with detachment from outcomes.
In recovery, we enter a relationship with requests for two things: intimacy and support.
New relational skills. After significant recovery, re-entering a relationship means learning to make clear, direct, verbal requests for intimacy and support, while also listening and responding to a partner's requests. Intimacy involves sharing one's body, thoughts, and feelings without judgment.
Guidelines for healthy interaction:
- Show Up & Pay Attention: Be physically present and actively listen to your partner.
- Tell the Truth: Be rigorously honest, but also know when to keep information private by saying, "I'm not willing to discuss that."
- Ask for What You Need & Want: Clearly state your needs and desires.
- Let Go of Attachment to the Outcome: Make requests without emotional investment in the answer; a "no" is not a personal rejection.
- Celebrate Your Partner's "No": Accept that a partner may need to decline for their own self-care, without taking it personally.
- Note What You Get: Keep an inventory of "yes" and "no" responses to gauge relationship satisfaction, rather than focusing only on unmet needs.
Communication discipline. In conflicts, avoid blame, score-keeping, arguing perceptions, or threatening abandonment. Strive to communicate in four sentences or less, focusing on what happened and your feelings, without complaining, blaming, explaining, or justifying. This intellectual approach helps manage emotional intensity.
11. Healthy relationships are built on realistic expectations, mutual growth, and accepting imperfection.
I think all relationships have a similar, though not quite so lethal, element of risk or surprise that keeps them interesting.
Beyond perfection. Healthy relationships are not about finding a "perfect partner" or achieving "complete recovery." They are a continuous journey of improvement, accepting that both partners are imperfect human beings who will make mistakes and have disagreements. The goal is moderate comfort and progress, not constant joy or harmony.
Realistic expectations for conflict. Arguments and disagreements are inevitable and can be opportunities to practice setting boundaries and negotiating differences. It's unrealistic to expect rational discussions all the time; acknowledging and managing irrational emotional parts is key. The focus should be on seeing conflicts through to resolution, as long as the hurting phase remains within tolerable limits.
Acceptance and abundance. A crucial ingredient is acceptance – of oneself, one's partner, and the relationship's imperfections. As individuals grow in self-value and self-empowerment, they develop a sense of "abundance," making it easier to compromise and tolerate differences without feeling diminished. This allows partners to enjoy each other despite their differences, fostering a relationship based on mutual respect and self-care, rather than control or unrealistic demands.
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