When Love Addicts Fall For Sex Addicts
By John M. Grohol. Posted on .
- Lack of intention or commitment
Sex addicts substitute the intensity, superficiality and seductiveness for any real investment in the relationship or in the future. Lacking intimacy skills they don’t confront the partner about anything, don’t negotiate, and often avoid talking about their needs and wants altogether.
The love addict cannot tolerate the requirements of real intimacy either such as being open to confrontation, being willing to admit to being imperfect or wrong, or allowing the addict to be imperfect. Since the sex addict lacks the ability to be real and work on a relationship, the basic unavailability of the sex addict a good fit.
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As Patrick Carnes has said:
“Love addicts consciously want intimacy, but can’t tolerate healthy closeness, so they must unconsciously choose a partner who cannot be intimate in a healthy way.”
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The love addict partner is unconsciously drawn toward a relationship in which there is intense romanticism (at first) but which cannot lead to a stable grown-up relationship. In the long run, the love addict will be subjected to disappointment, deception and episodes of abandonment by the person they love. Yet they will often continue to be “hooked” on the fantasy.
