Love Addiction: What Is It? Who Gets It? and Why?
By Dr. Brenda Schaeffer
Obsessive, dependent, erotic love often is a misplaced attempt to achieve the fusion we so deeply desire. We want to end the feelings of isolation caused by our learned restraints against true intimacy. Aroused by the experience of love, one often is willing to suspend those restraints in order to merge with another. If the merger is dependent and immature, the result is love addiction. Life energy is directed on the pursuit of gratification rather than growth. If mature, the love will grow and expand. As Erich Fromm said, “This desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerful striving in man. It is the most fundamental passion, it is the force which keeps the human race together… Erotic love…is the craving for complete fusion. It is by its very nature exclusive and not universal.” Without agape, universal love of others, it remains narcissistic.
What is love addiction?
Real love is not addiction nor is addiction love. Love addiction is any immature attachment to people, euphoria, romance or sex in an attempt to get needs met. It is a reliance on someone or something external to the self in an attempt to heal past trauma, get unmet needs fulfilled, avoid fear or emotional pain, solve problems, fill our loneliness and maintain balance.
Why love addiction is so common?
Psychology
Psychologically, love addiction is an attempt to satisfy our developmental hunger for security, sensation, power, identity, belonging, and meaning. It is often associated with feelings of “never having enough” or “not being enough.” None of us got everything we needed and we subconsciously walk around with holes in our psyche wanting to be filled. At the base of love addiction is a violation of trust. Because of the betrayal of trust we both want and fear closeness. Since we are meant to be in relationships we have no choice but to figure out a way to be involved with others. Love addiction is the answer.
Culture
We do not become love attacks living in a vacuum. Our obsession with love, sex and romance pervades every aspect of popular culture from romance novels to song lyrics, and even great works of fiction, poetry, drama and art. Culture idealizes, dramatizes, and models a dependency that suggests we cannot live without another person, sex or romance. We become dependent almost unconsciously.
Biology
When it comes to love we are neuro-chemically vulnerable. Biology provides us naturally with the three sensations of pleasure--arousal, fantasy, and satiation--as a way to experience life to its maximum. These three planes are controlled by hundreds of brain chemicals that we are only at the beginning stages of understanding. Without these chemicals we would not have the ability to appreciate our own human nature and the earthly gifts.
Seven Steps to Getting Out of Love Addiction:
Why get out of love addiction? The biggest reason is that it limits and stunts our growth as a human and spiritual being. We use and abuse self and others .
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