Love Addiction

Some people are actually addicted to love, believe it or not.  Rather, they are actually codependent on another person in their life and they confuse this with love.  Now this gets pretty tricky because you really cannot tell a person that they do not love someone else, as they will get angry and shut themselves down to further ideas.  In fact, they might very well love this other person but they are also in an unhealthy relationship and they are still codependent.  The behaviors and their emotional motivation for the relationship are not healthy and therefore they actually do have a love addiction.

The type of person I am describing is almost always in a relationship.  If they break up with their significant other then they will almost always find themselves in another relationship of some sort almost immediately.  This is simply the way of the love addict.  They cannot stand to be alone in the world so they instantly will cling to whatever person happens to be available.  In their mind they will rationalize to themselves that they are actually in love, when in fact all they are doing is filling a dependency.

Can you be addicted to love just as if it were drugs or alcohol?  Absolutely.  In fact, a person might even experience withdrawal symptoms after a break up.  They will become restless, irritable, discontent, and demanding if they find themselves single again.  Some people in this situation will become practically manic until they can find another partner.  This is an emotional need as well as a psychological problem. 

What is really happening with love addiction is that the person is trying to find themselves in another person.  They want to be the person that they attach themselves to.  A lot of times this happens because of their past.  Some people like this were abused as a child or have had a past relationship in which they were abused or neglected.  They go from this unhealthy situation to being emotionally damaged and seeking the love that they know they deserve. 

The only way love addiction can really occur is if someone has low self esteem.  If they did not suffer from low self esteem, then they would not display these types of codependent behaviors and they would not seek to define their self through their relationship with another person.

Self esteem is all about feeling good about yourself and respecting yourself independently of any relationships you might be in.  If you do not value yourself very highly as a person, then you might fall into the trap of trying to feel good about yourself by being in a relationship.  If you do this then you will feel a temporary boost in self esteem when the relationship first starts.  It feels good to fall in love and you will be on cloud nine for a while.  But if you suffer from low self esteem then you will eventually sabotage the relationship because you will be clinging to the other person and you will need their love in order to define yourself and your happiness.  This is not a sustainable relationship because you have to be able to define your own self and create your own happiness without depending on the relationship to do it for you.  If you do so then that is an addiction to love and you will not really be happy in the long run.  Instead you will be obsessed over maintaining the relationship and hoping that nothing changes in the slightest, because if it does you know that it will send you off the deep end because you are emotionally unbalanced. 

If you find yourself in this situation and you believe that maybe you do have love addiction, what can you do about it?  Is there any action that you can take? 

Yes there is.  First of all, if you are in an unhealthy relationship, your first move is to end it and become single.  This is a challenge in itself but it is necessary if the relationship does not have long term potential.  You might have to get honest with yourself in order to determine this.

If you become single then your challenge is to create a new life for yourself such that you can be content and happy without being with someone.  If you can do this, then you will be able to pursue a healthy relationship at some point and find a real loving relationship. 

In my opinion, the only way to do this is to build up genuine self esteem.  I would recommend that you do this by taking action every day and creating new goals and purpose in your life.  Affirmations might be helpful for some but in the end everyone who creates real self esteem in their life will do so through taking action.  What are your goals?  What do you aspire to do with your life?  How can your talents and strengths help you to serve others?  If you can answer these questions and start living with real purpose, then you will feel better about yourself and find meaning outside of romantic relationships.  It is only then that you can finally have a healthy relationship with others.