Do I own my love addiction?

Click here for the definition of love addiction. Breaking the chains of love addiction might be one of the most difficult battles to fight. True, there is no physical withdrawal from breaking love addiction. But the emotional effects of trying to break away are all but overwhelming. Love addiction attacks us at the core of our being. It touches our heart, the very seat of our emotions and affections. There may be nothing more powerful in our lives than the desire to love and be loved. That is why it is so important we take care of our hearts, and not go crazy trying to meet our deepest needs in ways that can be destructive for a lifetime.

Last week, we talked about the words of King Solomon when he said, Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life. How I wish each of us had heeded the words of the wisest man in the Bible. How many tearful nights and broken hearts could have been saved. There have been literally millions of people who have ruined their lives with destructive relationships, all the while thinking they had found love and sold their souls to keep it.

Some of the signs of love addiction are:

• finding it unbearable or emotionally difficult to be alone
• choosing partners who are emotionally unavailable and/or verbally or physically abusive

Mariah said, “I got out of rehab for heroin and replaced that habit with what I now know is love addiction. I had never heard of this term before tonight. I listened to your radio show, and realized that I am most definitely a love addict. My boyfriend is abusive, but I am a slave to him, and for the most part, I don’t care. I am terrified of being alone.” She is honest about moving from one addiction (heroin) to another (love addiction).

So what can we do to break this love addiction that’s not really love at all? Real love never destroys, but only builds up.

To break love addiction we must own it.
What do I mean when I say, we must OWN our addictions? According to the dictionary, one definition of to own is, to acknowledge or to admit. To break the cruel chains of love addiction, one must acknowledge and admit he/she is a full-blown love addict.

To break the cruel chains of love addiction, one must acknowledge and admit he/she is a love addict. That means there’s no denial, cover up, pretending, or head games with ourselves. It means to agree from the very core of our being that love addiction has taken over our lives. This is never easy to do.

Amy said, “I believe it is hard for people to admit due to the fact that they may not see it. Once they do that’s when their world comes crashing down. No one wants to believe they are with someone due to trying to run and/or hide from deep emotions.” When we own our addiction, we are saying some pretty tough things about ourselves.

3 Things that are not easy to admit when you have love addiction.

1. No one wants to own the fact their life may be sadly empty. 
   None of us want to admit that due to our past or bad choices we often feel dead inside and only have a sense of being alive when we have the excitement of a boyfriend/girlfriend.
2. No one wants to own the fact they were the victim of early abandonment when they were children.
   Almost all love addicts were in some way abandoned by their caretakers when they were young. Just the thought of being abandoned and not being able to do anything about it can lead them to panic, fear, rage, and despair.
3. No one wants to own the fact they have been living in a fantasy world.
   Most all love addicts live in a fantasy world, and in that fantasy there is someone who will rescue them or make them feel completely loved, protected, secure, and full of value. Healthy relationships are wonderful and a gift from God, but no relationship can meet all those needs. As I say to callers on my radio show, There is no Santa Claus, or Easter Bunny, and no boyfriend/girlfriend can meet your deepest needs.It is so very difficult to let go of your fantasies and admit they weren’t true and will never happen.

I have listed just a few of the facts we must own in order to break the chains of love addiction.

I’ve been talking about love addiction for quite sometime now. Believe it or not, I’m going to wrap up this subject pretty soon. I’ve talked about it longer than just about any other subject because I’m convinced that love addiction is the #1 addiction people face.

It may be hard to identify, but it’s consuming and destructive all the same. A love addict obsessively and compulsively tries to relieve or medicate the deep pain in their life through romantic relationships. Once in a relationship, they feel they can’t live without the other person and will do whatever they have to do to keep the relationship going. If that doesn’t work, they panic and will do whatever they have to do to get into a new relationship. 

I’ve been amazed at how many people have commented to me that for the very first time, they understand they are truly in a love addiction. I’m not really all that sure if I’m a love addict or not. From the list of symptoms that you gave I see that I have most of them. I really think I am though. It’s tough when you finally realize something like this. It’s tough to realize that you’re addicted to anything.(Jeannie)

I also received another comment where a blog reader realized they are a love addict. It’s like a light goes on in their head and a whole new world opens up to them. I have listened to your show and read the topic for this week for the first time tonight. After all of it I think I have realized that I too am addicted to love. Wow…it has put everything into perspective for me.(Emily)

Walking Away from Love Addiction

Last week, I talked about how we must own our love addiction and the lies that go with it. We must truly admit to ourselves we have believed lies which keep us from being set free from the frantic search of always needing a romantic relationship to feel whole. This is never easy, because it takes a lot of courage to accept that our beliefs have lied to us and played us like a fool.

Three things that are necessary, but hard to accept

• It is hard to accept that our self-esteem is so low that we often demand our partner be like a god and meet our every need.No one wants to feel helpless and end up all but worshipping someone who in the end will leave us behind. We were designed to worship God, not our boyfriend/girlfriend. Yet time after time, we are deceived into thinking somehow if we meet that next partner, they will be perfect and all our needs will be met through them.
• It is hard to accept we’re on an emotional treadmill which leads to nowhere but exhaustion. If you are a love addict, you will see your dating relationships tend to have a pattern to them. Stop and think for a while. How has every dating relationship that has failed you started and ended? You will see you have been doing the same thing with the same emotions, ending up with the same sad results, time and time again. But many of us have been running on the treadmill so long we don’t even realize we’re not going anywhere.
• It is hard to accept that love addiction leaves us confused about the emotions we carry for the other person. Almost every love addict confuses what is happening in the relationship with love. For example, most love addicted relationships are full of drama. Most love addicts confuse the drama of a relationship with the devotion of the other person. Just because there is a lot of excitement and drama taking place does not necessarily mean your partner is devoted to you. Most love addicted relationships also are very intense. The addict confuses the intensity of the relationship for intimacy. They are not the same, not even close. Other love addicts get heavily involved sexually with their partner. They think the deep emotion stirred by sex is really love. They confuse the sex they are having with their partner with a sense of security. The feelings of sex make them want to be closer and closer to their boyfriend/girlfriend, therefore feeling extremely secure. That of course is a lie. Sex without true commitment leads only to more insecurity, not less. Then one day they wake up and find out their partner is gone, and that sex is not the glue that held the relationship together.

Freedom from Love Addiction

In the end, once we have courageously and with great humility owned the lies that have held us in our addiction, we can come to the freeing reality that we don’t need another person to be fulfilled. While looking to God,  we can be fulfilled, have meaning, and have purposeful relationships without the confusion of love addiction.

First thing [you] have to realize is that no one can complete you until you are happy with yourself.
There is a fine line between lust and love and a lot of people have a hard time distinguishing the two. It’s not easy to break old habits, or to reinvent yourself, but no relationship you ever have will work out if you don’t find yourself first… you have to love yourself before you can really love anyone else.(keilah)

Do You Have A Love Addiction?

Love addiction is also sometimes called a relationship addiction, because it really has nothing to do with real love at all.

One of the main characteristics is the belief that a particular relationship or a specific partner will be “the one” to solve all of your problems and satisfy all of your needs. Relationship addicts repeatedly become involved in intense, enmeshed, codependent relationships, even when those partners or relationships are destructive.

Judging from my show, Dawson McAllister Live, at least three-quarters of the calls I receive deal with relationships. And most are related to relationship addiction. I hear from callers who are in terrible relationships, but they cannot even imagine not being with this person. The thought of living without them scares them.

So What Is A Love Addict?

Here are some signs of love addiction:

1. You feel desperate and alone if you are not in a relationship.
   The love addict obsessively and compulsively tries to relieve or medicate the deep pain in their life through romantic relationships. Once in a relationship, they feel they can’t live without the other person and will do whatever they have to do to keep the relationship going. If that doesn’t work, they panic and try to get into another relationship immediately.A girl called my radio show the other night. She said she was in love with a guy who treated her horribly. In fact, he got her pregnant, then beat her up so badly she miscarried the baby. She assured me she still loved him no matter what. I couldn’t talk her out of leaving him. Now that’s crazy.If some guy beat you up so badly it caused you to lose your baby, why would you want to go back to him? You wouldn’t, but then again you may not be a love addict. I told her she wasn’t in love. She had an addiction. She’s a tragedy, a love addict in denial. But the main reason she wants to go back to him is because she is terrified. She cannot bear being alone.
2. You crave the relationship and obsess about it constantly even to the point of losing yourself.
   Why do we use the word addict? Drug addicts, when they are thoroughly hooked, spend almost all their time thinking, craving, and planning to get the next high. They only live for the next high. Love addicts get their own high as well, but it’s a high off of another person. Like the drug addict, the love addict spends all their time and attention on the other person. They obsess over their partner and value them far above themselves. A love addict is totally consumed with their partner to the point of ignoring their own needs.
3. Hillary, in her own words, gets down to the issue of what a love addict is: “I completely change when I have a new guy- I’m overly nicer than I normally am, I bend over backwards for someone I’ve been dating for 2 days or 1 week, etc, and I do anything to make them fall for me just that much more. Once I feel them growing distant, I try that much harder. I become that clingy girl that everyone hates. But I crave love. Crave doesn’t even describe it. If I won the lottery, I would give up every last cent of it to be completely devoured by love.” -HillaryWhat is going on inside of Hillary that would cause her to be so consumed with another person and their relationship? Why would she bend over backwards to please this guy. She said it herself,
   she craves love just like an addict craves a drug and she will do anything to get it.
4. You believe your partner can heal you or solve all of your problems.
   Love addicts convince themselves their partner has the power to heal them. This is an impossible demand to be put on their boyfriend/girlfriend. How can their partner fill the deep hole in their soul and their cravings to feel loved and whole? In fact, love addicts are so desperate to connect with another person, they are willing to lose themselves and become completely attached to their partner.Psychologists have a big name for it. They call it, enmeshment. We become enmeshed when we use our partner to give us our identity, self worth, purpose, safety, and security. It comes when we want our boyfriend/girlfriend to provide us with a sense of being whole. Popular songs are full of phrases linked to love addiction and enmeshment. Such phrases as, “I can’t live without you” and “If you leave me I will die” and “I am nothing without you.”Caitlin explains enmeshment even better by her comment: “I have been very much addicted to love. After overcoming this addiction I realize the cause. I was trying to fill the void in my own heart with what I thought was love from other people. I had many scars and hurts from as far back as my early childhood and I was trying to cover them up, rather than deal with them. There is a special place inside of you that can ONLY be touched and healed with God’s love. Once you allow that to happen you will begin to see changes in every part of your life.” -CaitlinCaitlin, like many love addicts, was asking her boyfriend to be God. Thankfully, she eventually learned that she was asking the impossible. She discovered she could only be healed by God.

Only God can be God. Only He can fill the hole in our soul, yet there are millions of love addicts asking their partner to do something impossible for them.

If you are a love addict, don’t despair. Trust me, there is hope for you. TheHopeLine® offers many free eBooks that can help you uncover what is going on inside deep down. For example, if you have a fear of being alone, of not having a boyfriend or girlfriend, then this free eBook on loneliness can help.