April 25th of the year 2023 was the day that my life changed forever. For on that day, I walked into a 12 step group and admitted before others my addiction to love and desire to recover.
During the pandemic, fortunate enough to return to regular therapy, I dove deep into a variety of psychological self-help texts on everything from trauma, relationships, and codependency. The latter was a term that never made much sense to me, hard to explain, and left me questioning its validity to my struggles. I wasn't truly ready to admit my addiction until I came across a text describing further the struggle further with "love and relationship addiction". As I read through the pages of the book, a light grew brighter and brighter within, I was coming home to the fullness of myself and the awakening was causing a stirring of healing.
So, what is a 'love addict'? What does it mean to be 'addicted to love' and not related to the song?
Love addiction is characterized by obsession, compulsive behaviors, anxiety, and negative life consequences as a result of romantic interest. Love addiction is a form of dysfunctional love. Although it was first discussed in the 1970s, it has not been well studied.
Love addiction is characterized by obsession, compulsive behaviors, anxiety, and negative life consequences as a result of romantic interest. Love addiction is a form of dysfunctional love. Although it was first discussed in the 1970s, it has not been well studied.
The last 8 months have been the early days of my journey with sobriety, finally admitting to myself and another the depth of my addiction and how it permeated throughout my life, wreaking havoc on myself and those I valued. Friendships lost forever, relationships damaged, as I continued to act out putting myself in a myriad of precarious position, from financial lack, to late nights of sleepless anxiety, running after my 'beloved drug' in the pouring rain with only my socks as he storms away rampaging, begging for him to return, to feel the warmth of his love enveloping me with security, all this and more for the quest of that 'high' of acceptance. The truest desire for love unconditional never to be fulfilled.
However many times I found my heart broken, even the times I freed myself from a connection, and found my way back to stability of sorts, I never truly stopped to recognize these successes received, the pain overcome. However many goals reached, projects fulfilled, walking the boards in a treasured role, however inwardly rewarding, was never enough to quell the desire to be loved, accepted, fully and completely without condition. Always looking outward, although pretending not to be and afraid to ask, for validation never coming yet always seeking endlessly the quest.
In the early early days of my recovery, as far back as 2009, I would jokingly say that if I had an addiction, it would be 'relationship', as if only to discredit the reality of such a struggle. On my way, I'd continue, flitting about lost in the fantasy of desperation from one unrequited, one undeserving, another emotionally unavailable, disregarding all the red flags for the love of the distraction, the fleeting moment of the 'high', quickly fading.
Such a strange affliction to not find oneself addicted to a substance but something intangible. Yet, the same parts of the brain that light up for the addict that consumes alcohol or another substance are those in fact when I find myself attracted and drawn to a new obsession, a new high, a new distraction. Personally, the high of the attracted is the need to distract from the daily daily, sometimes dull, other times hard. Other times, its a pattern of fleeing from one disaster of a toxic relationship to another in hopes that 'this time' it will be different, 'this time' it will work, 'this time' he's my soul-mate, my Disney movie prince, the Heathcliff to my Catherine. Fleeing into yet another distraction was sometimes a tactic to flee from deeper intimacy and always seeing another as a high, a drug, and not another soul deserving of love themselves.
How does one recover from such an addiction?
To find oneself an addict of such in the culture abound with literature, movies, tv shows, plays, songs written over and over on that four letter word...Love. And, for me, one who has always found solace within the variety of arts, writing, acting, singing, listening to songs that reflect the stories of my life, inspiring my own creative pursuits, how then do you heal, no more to be ensnared, by something that is, in fact, a natural human need when applied for healthily.
Is it to commit 'emotional anorexia', to starve oneself completely of any such enjoyment that may lead to acting out?
This emotional starvation is just as equally unhealthy, a mask of healthy, when, in fact, another form of acting out instead of running towards, it's avoidance of love, hoping for self-preservation yet never receiving sanity and still devoid.
For me, recovery resembles that of any other affliction and addiction. I choose to actively include myself in my 12 step group as well as individual therapy, consume vast amounts of self-help and psychological literature including workbooks on my own and in group, actively seek out healthy connections and activities to replace the negative entanglements. Disentangling myself from my romantic addictions is not an easy feat, especially as I find myself now, with one that I truly care for yet know is not a healthy attachment for either of us. Break-ups are, in fact, difficult for all, yet for the addict in me, the anguish rips open the depth of my pain making it truly hard to even take that initial step needed. Constant questioning of how and why detract from the purpose of getting healthy knowing that this time replacing the negative entanglement with another will not be what's best leaving the cold, hard reality that within the deep pain is where I will find my serenity.
One step at a time, one breath at a time, one day at a time.
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