Love addiction

*Sacred Love Versus Profane Love* (1602–03) by Giovanni Baglione.

Love addiction is a human behavior in which people become addicted to the feeling of being in love. Love addicts can take on many different behaviors. Love addiction is common; however, most love addicts do not realize they are addicted to love. Love addiction can be treated with various recovery techniques, most of which are similar to recovery from other addictions such as sex addiction and alcoholism, through group meetings and support groups.^[1]

' Addictive love is an inclusive term in that it includes "addicts" and "co-addicts", "co-dependents", and "love avoidant"'.^[2]

History

The modern history of the concept of the love addict - ignoring such precursors as Robert Burton's dictum that 'love extended is mere madness'^[3] or Mr Shandy's recommendation of 'losing a few ounces of blood below the ears, according to the practice of the ancient Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the appetite by that means'^[4] - go back to the early decades of the twentieth century. Freud's study of the Wolf Man highlighted 'his liability to compulsive attacks of falling physically in love...a compulsive falling in love that came on and passed off by sudden fits';^[5] but it was Sandor Rado who in 1928 first delineated the characteristics of '"love addicts"...in their continuous need of supplies that give sexual satisfaction and heighten self-esteem simultaneously'.^[6]

However it was not until the Seventies and Eighties that the concept came to the popular fore. 'At least two of the three major hall-marks of the 1960s - sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll - have in the 1970s become problems that require care and cure'.^[7] Stanton Peele opened the door, almost unwittingly, with his 1975 book Love and Addiction; but (as he later explained), while that work had been intended as 'a social commentary on how our society defines and patterns intimate relationships...all of this social dimension has been removed, and the attention to love addiction has been channeled in the direction of regarding it as an individual, treatable psychopathology'.^[8] Thereafter in the Eighties, 'thanks to Robin Norwood's Women Who Love Too Much, "love addiction" for women became popular', ^[9] and has scarcely looked back since.^{[editorializing]} Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous and Susan Peabody, in her book Addiction to Love, were the first to use the actual term "love addict."^{[citation needed]} Variations of love addiction, such as "Ambivlent Love Addict"]] have become further popularized by Susan Peabody in her book Addiction to Love and illustrated through the Obsessive Love Wheel by John D. Moore in his book Confusing Love with Obsession.

Process

The normal process of falling into love addiction begins when a person begins to feel sympathy with another person after going through an initially innocent moment of attraction and automatically idealizes the other to the point of divinity. The individual is then blindly attached to the other person, becoming incapable of making a realistic analysis of the situation; they may project all kinds of illusions onto the other person, believing them to be the only one that can bring happiness. This process can be very quick. There are, however, those who never go past this stage of blind love,^[10] and remain 'addicted to people, sucking on them and gobbling them up...parasitism, not love'.^[11]

Obsession can be considered the primary symptom of any addiction. In love addiction, the individual's insecurity gives rise to an obsessive attachment to the object of their affection. It typically manifests as an insatiable hunger that distorts the person's perception of reality and often results in various unhealthy behaviors and suffering.^[12]

The Addictive Love Relationship

Like other addictions (drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, work, and the list goes on), the dependency to a person (their object- drug of choice) allows love addicts to feel alive- a sense of purpose- and to gain a sense of meaning and self worth in the world: they are driven by 'a fantasy hope that the drug of choice - a person - will complete them'.^[13]

'Most love addicts start out attempting to meet some known or unknown emotional need, then become dependent on the intoxicating feelings'^[14] of being in love itself. Unfortunately, 'as in the case of drug addicts, "love addicts", too, may become incapable of getting the desired satisfaction, which in turn increases their addiction'.^[15]They often feel a burning, passionate love that gives and gives, destroying their sense of humanity when they lose the person they've given to, sometimes causing them to feel and act out revengeful.^[16] The love addict suffers a lack of bonding as they did in children, including an inability to give and receive affection, self destructive behavior, problems with control, and lack of healthy long term relationships.^[17]

Love addicts commonly and repeatedly form an addictive relationship with emotionally unavailable Avoidant partners^{[citation needed]}. The Avoidant partner is compulsively counter-dependent – they fear being engulfed/drowned/smothered by their love addict partner. They enter relationships with emotionally closed-off individuals who will let nothing and no one in, which makes intimate relationships impossible. Behind their emotional walls, hides low self-esteem and feel if they become truly known (display emotional intimacy) - no one would ever love, accept, and value who they are. Avoidants are attracted to people who have difficulty thinking for themselves, having healthy emotional boundaries, or taking care of themselves in healthy manners- the love addict.

Love addicts and Avoidants form relationships that inevitably lead to unhealthy patterns of dependency, distance, chaos, and often abuse. Nevertheless, however unsatisfactory the relationship, 'love addicts hang on and on, because it is what they know'.^[18] Familiarity is the central engine of their relationship. Each is attracted to the other specifically because of the familiar traits that the other exhibits, and although painful, come from childhood.

This cycle encompasses a push-pull dance full of emotional highs and many lows where the one is on the chase (love addict) while the avoidant is on the run. They both engage in "counterfeit emotional involvement. Healthy emotional intimacy is replaced with melodrama and negative intensity- ironically creating the illusion of true love, intimacy, and connection - usually on an unconscious level. As a result, 'their relationships, although seemingly dramatic in their intensity, are actually extremely shallow'.^[19]

Love withdrawal

With addiction comes inevitable negative consequences. In his book, Surviving Withdrawal: The Break Up Worbook for Love Addicts, author Jim Hall explains in detail the process of love withdrawal and how the negative consequences of love addiction can vary. Depending on the level or extreme of ones love addiction, negative consequences can range from violence (to others or self) to increased feelings of shame, depression, impaired emotional growth, chronic emptiness, loneliness, loss of intimacy and enjoyment in life^{[citation needed]}.

The consequences of addictive loving are most revealed as the love addict experiences withdrawal symptoms when a relationship ends, or when a relationship is perceived as falling apart. This is when withdrawal of being with one person is experienced at its most intense level. When a break up occurs, an addictive lover longs for the attachment and apparent loving feelings of the lost relationship, as much as a heroin user craves heroin when the drug is no longer available. This longing may result in extreme debilitating pain, obsession, and otherwise avoidable destructive and/or self-destructive behaviors.^[20]

Cultural examples

In A Spy in the House of Love, the heroine Sabrina is said to have seen her 'love anxieties as resembling those of a drug addict, of alcoholics, of gamblers. The same irresistible impulse, tension, compulsion and then depression following the yielding to the impulse'.^[21] As a result, she has subsequently been described as 'feeling like a "love addict" enslaved to obsessive-compulsive patterns of behaviour'.^[22]

P. G. Wodehouse features in The Inimitable Jeeves 'a character called Bingo who on about every third page meets a wonderful new woman who is going to save his life and is better than any woman he has ever met before, and then of course it flops...a new burst of life, but it does not last'.^[23]

Saint Augustine - 'to Carthage then I came, where a cauldron of unholy loves sang all about my ears'^[24] - has been interpreted as being, 'fundamentally, what one might call a "love addict"', with a disturbing tendency 'to invest all of himself in relationships and to "forget himself" in the intensity of his affection'.^[25]

References

^ *Bireda, Martha R., Mike Link, and Peter Roberts, Love Addiction: A Guide to Emotional Independence (Minneapolis: New Harbinger Publications) p. 5
^ Brenda Schaeffer, Is It Love Or Is It Addiction? (2009) p. 1
^ Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (New York 1951) p. 769
^ Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (Penguin 1976) p. 565
^ Sigmund Freud, Case Studies II (PFL 9) p. 273 and p. 361
^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 387
^ Lennard J. Davis, Obsessions: A History (London 2008) p. 174
^ Quoted in Bruce E. Levine, Commonsense Rebellion (2003) p. 242
^ Levine, p. 242
^ Timmreck, Thomas C, "Overcoming the loss of a love: preventing love addiction and promoting positive emotional health" Psychological Reports 66 (1990) 12-14)
^ M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled (1990) p. 111 and p. 104
^ Timmreck, p. 15
^ Schaeffer, p. 61
^ Schaeffer, p. p. 110
^ Fenichel, p. 388
^ Hart, Greg. Unrequited Love: On Stalking and Being Stalked a Tale of Destructive Passion. Short Books, 2003.
^ Davis, Charlotte. A Search for Love and Power: Women, Sex, and Addiction. 1989. Tecknor and Fields.
^ Schaeffer, p. 69
^ M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled (1990) p. 106
^ Jim Hall, "Surviving Withdrawal"
^ Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love (Penguin 1986) p. 36
^ Anne T. Salvatore, Anaïs Nin's Narratives (2001) p. 67
^ Neville Symington, Narcissism: A New Theory (2004) p. 56
^ Quoted in T. S. Eliot, The Complete Plays and Poems (London 1985) p. 79
^ Judith C. Stark, Feminist Interpretations of Augustine (2007) p. 246