The Compulsivity of Love Addiction
By Dr. Randi Fredricks, Ph.D.
It can be difficult for anyone who is not a love addict to understand how love can evolve into a destructive pattern of addiction and compulsion.
Yet for someone who is a love addict, romantic love, sex, and intimacy are experiences most often filled with pitfalls, anxiety, and endless pain.
Living in a sometimes chaotic emotional world of desperation and despair, fearful of being alone or rejected, love addicts long for that special
relationship that will make everything alright.
Caught up in the constant search for a partner, the love addict's endless intrigue, flirtations, sexual liaisons and affairs leave a path of
destruction and negative consequences. Ironically, the love addict's response to these painful circumstances is usually engaging in even more
searching, creating an escalating cycle of desperation and loss. That's exactly what characterizes their addiction.
Often the love addict simple grows tired of a romantic relationship after the honeymoon period ends.
Bored and lisless, the love addict ends up pushing their partner away or looking outside the relationship for yet another new intensity or
"love" experience.
Unlike the healthy person seeking partnership and sex as a complement to their life, the love addict searches for something outside of themselves
(a person, place, ot thing) which will provide them with the emotional and life stability that they themselves lack. Similar to a drug addict or
alcoholic, love addicts use their arousing romantic/sexual experiences in an attempt to fix themselves and remain emotionally stable.
When love and sexuality are used as a way to cope, rather than a way to grow and share, partner choice becomes skewed. Relationships
are characterized over time by unhealthy dependency, guilt and abuse. When this happens, the love addict is convinced of their lack of worth and not
feeling truly lovable,
Love addicts will use seduction, control, guilt and manipulation to attract and hold onto romantic partners.
For a love addict, signs and symptoms consist of pervasive patterns of emotional instability inevitably leading to isolation, heartache and loss.
Typical signs of love addiction include:
Inability or difficulty being alone
Consistently abusive or emotionally unavailable choosing partners
Using sex or romantic intensity to tolerate difficult emotions
Returning to previously unmanageable or painful relationships despite promises not to
Constantly seeking a sexual partner, new romance or significant other
Missing important family, career or social events in order to maintain a romantic relationship
Mistaking sexual experiences and/or romantic intensity for love
Avoiding sex or relationships for extended periods of time
An inability to leave unhealthy relationships
Using sex, seduction and intrigue to get or hold onto a partner
Not everyone who has engaged in one or two of the above has an addiction problem, many people may have their judgment skewed by a difficult
person or situation from time to time in their lives. However, when these situations become the norm, lived over and over again in some
form or another, the diagnosis can be made. Love addicts who are not in recovery, like any addict, do not learn from their
consequences and mistakes. It is only when the pain of these behaviors and situations becomes greater than the pain and challenges
of creating change, that recovery begins.
References (To view, roll mouse over the "References" heading; to hide, click on the heading)
Book, P. (1997). Sex & love addiction, Treatment & recovery. New York: Lucerne Publishing.
Carnes, P. (1997). Don’t call it love. Minneapolis: Gentle Press.
Hyman, S. E. (1996). Shaking out the cause of addiction. Science, 273, 611-612.
Knauer, S. (2002). Recovering from sexual abuse, addictions, & compulsive behaviors. New York: Haworth Press.
Peele, S. (1998). The meaning of addiction. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Peele, S., & Brodsky, A. (1991). Love and addiction. New York: Signet.
Silverman, S. (2001). Love sick. New York: Norton & Company.
San Jose Therapy Counseling Psychotherapy psychotherapist therapist
