Addicted to Love? 5 ways to avoid relationship-breakdown-meltdown, by a recovering love addict.
By Dr Jemma Regan
I am a recovering love addict. I experienced this epiphany earlier this year after stumbling across literature on the web describing the symptoms.
With Robert Palmer lyrics bouncing in my head, I finally cracked the code to a lifetime of dysfunctional emotional relationships. I offer 5 coping tools on my road to recovery.
When we think of addiction, our perception is of ‘hard’ substances: alcohol, drugs, nicotine, sex, even sugar and food; to be addicted to love must be a soft, fluffy thing in comparison, but the reality is love addiction causes the same patterns of unhealthy behaviours: dependency, withdrawal, despair, anxiety, depression and is often motivated by the same triggers: childhood attachment styles and our childhood parental relationships, and is treated with the same 12 step-recovery programme as ‘hard’ addictions.
My responses to relationship breakdowns were more extreme than those around me. I felt deep despair, panic, worthlessness, anxiety, insomnia, and even suicidal.
Over the years, when each relationship broke down, these feelings developed with increasing intensity. Despite having a successful career, good health and strong social links, I felt I did not exist unless in a romantic relationship. This response was even to short term relationships, to people I did not love or had treated me badly in the relationship.
Whilst not yet recognised as a clinical, mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM, 2013), love addiction is characterised by deep feelings of low self-worth, craving love and fearing it in equal measure. The love addict often chooses emotionally unavailable (love avoidant) partners who repeat the childhood patterns of rejection, abuse, abandonment or neglect, creating a twisted feeling of security and validation in the love addict. In turn, the love addict can place too high expectations of the partner and become frustrated, angry and violent towards them when they do not ‘heal the hurts’ or ‘rescue them’ from the past.
Here are 5 ways I am overcoming my addiction to love:
Recognise the patterns from past relationships and breakups.
Once I was very honest about how I treated others in the past and how they treated me, it was easier to recognise the dysfunction present in my past relationships.
Take responsibility for your actions.
Recognising my behaviours and their motivations allowed me to take ownership and stop seeing myself as a victim. Once I distinguished the reactive ‘protest behaviours’ of the child within, I recognised a choice in my responses and was able to manage these in a healthy way as a mature, confident adult.
Practice self love
I developed a powerful, daily visualization technique which aims to heal and nurture the ‘unloved’ inner child. I imagine a photograph of me as an innocent 4 year old in a white, summer dress and hold on to that image whenever I am tempted to engage in self-destructive behaviour. I imagine cradling the child on my knee in a big, protective hug and telling her everything will be ok. I also imagine this child holding out a blue rose (my favourite colour!) as I hold out a blue rose to her; an exchange which helps me make peace with my past and present self.
Meet as many people as possible with the focus on making friendships.
Friendships are most important and allow us to see the breadth of choices available to us. I became trapped in single situations for fear of leaving the familiar. Take a deep breath and take that first step in to a new club / activity / exercise class. This may even mean joining a support group for love addicts.
Believe in healthy love.
Know that healthy love is possible, both between yourself and your inner child and between you and an intimate partner. Make a pact to yourself and your inner child that you will not settle for less. It is recommend to take six months out from any romantic contact during recovery; just as an alcoholic or drug addict would avoid these substances, so too the love addict should avoid forming new attachments until they have fully developed their own sense of self-worth, ensuring the next partner is chosen through want and not from need.
