Love addiction is the intense urge to experience love, even when this causes you harm or challenges. Remember, you are capable of happiness and love, and a healthy relationship. Their life choices become focused on the search for this perfect relationship – from wardrobe choices to hours at the gym to doing hobbies that may not interest them. This search for immature love leaves a person in constant consideration of what “they” would want. Circumstances like these, and others, can lead to an adult life spent craving attention and reassurance. There is a longing for connection and security, but when it happens, it’s coated in fear and worry – what if it goes away?

Treatment for Love Addiction

• You don’t need a diagnosis of love addiction or love addiction withdrawal to address concerning or unwanted relationship patterns.
• AA contributed to the text based on his ideas and previous studies.

Since one of the hallmarks of this fixation is persistent, even all-consuming thoughts of love and relationships, Simonian advises finding other interests that you can focus your energy on. According to attachment theory, four main types of attachment describe how you view relationships and behave within them. These withdrawal-like symptoms are usually rooted in grief, DeMaria says, since the end of a relationship can feel like a devastating loss.

Some people need a sense of security and worth from another person.

• Not only that, but substance use disorders can be serious — even life-threatening.
• Yet, when their partners are perceived as distant or unresponsive, love addicts may spiral into a state of withdrawal, overwhelmed by anxiety, despair and yearning, which fuels the addiction and makes it even harder to break free from the cycle of obsession.
• Self expansion approaches may help drug and other negative addiction therapies, also.
• Addictive behaviors around love, sex, and relationships can be hard to overcome on your own.
• Maybe the next one will be different… better… satisfying… Maybe it will finally make me feel loved.
• On this type of theory, it might be harder to square love addiction with any genuine sort of well-being—especially on the “narrow” view.

Psychotherapy can be an effective method for individuals with problematic behaviors around love to learn how to better manage their trauma responses, especially in the presence of any triggers. “’Love addiction’ is a process ‘addiction,’ lifestyle ‘addiction,’ or a soft ‘addiction,’” says Sherry Gaba, LCSW, a psychotherapist and love addiction specialist in Southern California. To summarize, love will clearly be an important component of any plausible theory of well-being.

You continue “craving” someone who doesn’t feel the same way

They do not have a solid sense of self-worth outside of a relationship, so they may protect it to the point of their own self-detriment. The demands, expectations and emotional requirements we have on others are hard for anyone to live up to. The intensity of our needs often pushes people away, or when they do stay, we find that they simply are not capable of healing the deep, historical pain we feel. The cyclical craving, obsession, and disappointment is a defining characteristic of love addiction. The prescription seemed totally counterintuitive and left me feeling even more abandoned and alone.

Understanding and Preventing Teen Suicide: CAMS-4Teens™ as an Effective Treatment Approach

XX wrote twenty percent of the text based on her ideas and data from previous studies. AA contributed to the text based on his ideas and previous studies. LB wrote thirty percent of the text based on her ideas when you love an addict and data from previous studies and edited the final version. While 12-step groups do not work for everyone, Vare said there are quite a lot to choose from, including Sexual Compulsives Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous and many others. Pathological love, however, is thought to be a need to always be in love regardless of whether or not the situation or the person warrants it. Once you fall out of love with one person, you are immediately in love with another person as a replacement.