The love addiction cycle is one that causes the partner to garner what are truly romantic thought processes, putting unreasonable expectations on an avoidant partner. With an incredible fear of being left or abandoned, the love addict will do whatever they need to ensure that doesn't happen.
The love addict's experiences intense emotional withdrawal from the fantasy and experiences depression, rage, panic and shame. The love addict experiences boundary failure, dependency, and has problems containing self in moderation.
Get Professional Support
Overcoming love addiction on your own can be challenging. It's best to seek professional help. Treatment will help you identify the causes of your love addiction, learn what triggers your behaviors, and teach you how to cope with any unhealthy thoughts or feelings.
Underlying Reasons
Genetics, trauma, and upbringing can play a factor in love addition and addiction in general. Love addiction stems from several places like low self-esteem, or other underlying problems. For example, a partner lacking self-esteem may lean on their partner to give them that.
The Avoidant Love Addict type is the partner Typical Love Addicts most commonly and repeatedly fall for in relationships. They become dependent on their partner's neediness and are only attracted to people who they can control.
Why do good people find themselves stuck in toxic relationships? Therapists often speak of something called “love addiction,” where a person craves the sense of fulfillment and validation that comes from being in a relationship, no matter how destructive.
With care and understanding and therapy-based treatment, even the most obsessive love addict can enjoy a healthy and fulfilling romantic relationship.
I believe love is mutual self-less giving that is based on a deep trust. The characteristics of addiction are craving of a person, severe mood swings if unable to feel secure in the relationship, inability to function normally, obsession of your partner and severe withdrawal symptoms if your lover leaves you.
It's common for love addicts to become love avoidant over time. These individuals are often attentive in their relationship but become cold and distant to protect themselves from becoming emotionally available to their partner. Love avoidants also lack emotional intimacy.
While love addicts require constant emotional reassurance and attention as proof of a loving relationship, the love avoidant person often feels that their love is proven simply by supporting their partner on an economic and physical level. For the emotionally avoidant person, love becomes an obligation.
If limerence is the psychological state of unfettered infatuation, love addiction could be the craving to re-enter that state as often as possible. It's getting a bit meta now, but the love addict craves the natural high of early limerence, and is trying to sustain the euphoria for as long as possible.
A large part of their attraction toward Love Avoidants is that Love Addicts find an opportunity to heal the wound to their childhood self-esteem in people who walk away from them.
Of the three insecure attachment styles, one is perhaps most at risk for love addiction, the Anxious attachment style. As children, many who develop an Anxious attachment often have caregivers who were hit-or-miss and highly inconsistent in their caregiving.
To recover, a love addict needs to learn what healthy love is. They also need to learn about their particular brand of dysfunction when it comes to their love addiction. That way, they can get their intimate connection needs met without falling into obsessive behaviors.
It's a learned behavior that often stems from growing up in a dysfunctional home. There is a fine line between love addiction and codependency. Codependency doesn't always turn into love addiction, but codependency is where love addiction stems from.
Love: Relationship deals with all aspects of reality. Toxic love: Relationship is based on delusion and avoidance of the unpleasant. Love: Self-care by both partners; emotional state not dependent on other's mood. Toxic love: Expectation that one partner will fix and rescue the other.
We become addicted to what gives us pain, like a toxic relationship, and subconsciously search for that next 'high'. We search for that experience of neurotic pain from our past, search for the old companion we'd found in self-loathing as we were children.
Because love addiction isn't a recognized form of mental health condition, there are currently no medications typically used for its treatment. However, if it co-occurs with other disorders such as anxiety or depression, your doctor could prescribe medication to treat symptoms of the co-occurring condition.
Although it's not true that too much love will kill you, it can lead to unhealthy—and at times damaging—dynamics between partners. For example, love may cause obsessive or controlling behaviors in some cases. You may also reach a point where your needs go unmet because you're so focused on your partner's needs.
People who are seeking addiction treatment often describe themselves as nonconformists. They consider themselves as fundamentally different from their peers due to their interests, values, and goals.
It may seem counterintuitive that someone addicted to love would cheat on a partner, but it happens more than you might think. Love addiction and cheating too often go together.
No single personality type sets someone up for addiction, but there are a few personality traits common among people who have a substance use disorder: an inability to handle stress, impulsivity, unaccountability and a lack of empathy.