What is Love Addiction?

So how different is love addiction from that of a sexual one?  Basically, it is an unhealthy attachment to people and romance in an endeavor to fulfill unmet developmental needs.  Like drug addicts and alcoholics, "love" addicts establish love relationships, get high on the romance, develop a tolerance for it, and need ever-greater doses to keep going.  Love addicts can never find fulfillment and consistency in any of their love relationships thus, it is not uncommon for them to have several love relationships with different people going on at the same time.  For them, love is all consuming and obsessive, avoids risk and lacks true intimacy.

Like any other addict, "love" addicts search for something to mend their pain, fear and other uncomfortable emotions.  For these addicts, that "something" is people or a romantic relationship.  The search for people that remind addicts of their past is not uncommon.  The hope is that these new relationships will meet their needs in a way previous ones could not.  However, because these new relationships are "similar" to old ones the addict is rendered, once again, dissatisfied.

Psychologist and author, Brenda M. Schaeffer puts it best: "The paradox is that love addiction is an attempt to gain control of [their] lives, and in so doing: [they] go out of control by giving personal power to someone outside [themselves].  Addictive love is an attempt to satisfy [their] developmental hunger for security, sensation, power, belonging, and meaning.  Love addiction is very often associated with feelings of "never having enough" or "not being enough".  None of [them] got everything [they] needed in just the way [they] needed it in [their] developmental history.  ["Love" addicts] literally walk around with holes in [their] psyche and look for others to fill those holes."

Common symptoms of Love Addicts

• Constantly in search of a new romance or significant other

• Using romantic intensity to deal with stress or difficult emotions

• Frequently involved in abusive relationships or choosing an emotionally unavailable partner

• Missing out on important family, career or social experiences in order to maintain a romantic relationship

• Being alone is almost unbearable

• Returning to previously unmanageable or painful relationships despite vows made to self or others

• Feeling disconnected and dissatisfied in a relationship but frantic and alone if not in one

• Having great difficulty leaving unhealthy relationships despite repeated promises to self or others

Related Information

• Understanding Sex Addiction

• Sex Addiction Assessment - Self Diagnosis

• Sex Addiction Treatment