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It's a toxic addiction.
By Shannon Bradley-Colleary — Written on Nov 12, 2022
“I know I need to end this relationship, but I texted him three times yesterday. Why did I do that? What’s wrong with me?”
This is a common refrain from many of my clients. These are loving, considerate, intelligent, and often very successful people. Yet they struggle with the ability to leave emotionally abusive relationships and even end up chasing a toxic partner they broke up with.
Why is it that many people don’t act in their own best interest in relationships? The answer is: love addiction.
It’s a real thing. As real as an addiction to drugs, alcohol, or gambling. It affects the brain the same way, with shockwaves of dopamine, oxytocin, and the opioid hormone that trigger the pleasure center of the brain.
Who is at risk for love addiction?
Alexandra Katehakis, Ph.D., MFT, CST, CSAT says:
“People generally become love addicts due to a past history of abandonment from their primary caregivers. love addicts usually recognized as children that their most precious needs for validation, love, and connection with one or both parents were not met. This affects their self-esteem dramatically in life. It results in a conscious fear of abandonment and an underlying subconscious fear of intimacy. To a love addict, intensity in a relationship is often mistaken for intimacy.”
A Love Addict’s parents may not have physically abandoned their child, but they may have been emotionally remote, withdrawn, or openly critical.
If you feel like this might be you and are curious about the signs you're addicted to love, I’d like to address one mental habit that makes you “text him three times” when you intellectually know you need to let go and get out.
You constantly think about, obsess about, or try to figure out the object of desire, even when you know it's no use.
When the Addictive Brain is threatened or triggered by the removal of the drug/love interest and faces the excruciating pain of withdrawal, it will do anything to get that drug back. It will kick into overdrive, thinking unceasingly of the object of the Love Addiction.
There are 7 sneaky triggers the Addictive Brain uses to keep the constantly-thinking-about-him cycle going, which can lead to relapse. To replace the triggers, I’ll give examples of healthy antidotes below, along with the signs you're addicted to love.
Here are 7 signs you're dangerously addicted to love:
1. You're in denial
This can sound like: "I know that he cheated, but maybe he’ll change?" Or, "He says he loves me. I should just believe that, even though he’s critical and inconsistent, Maybe if I just try harder things will change."
2. You romanticize love
"It isn’t love unless it’s full of peril and passion" or, "He did take me out for my birthday that one time. It’s really hard for him to do things like that because he had a difficult childhood."
The Addictive Brain has selective memory and often tortures us by thinking about the “good times” in the relationship. These “good times” are often what happened between the sheets. Because there’s no so good as the volatile, unpredictable, inconsistent kind where you don’t feel entirely safe. That’s just Dopamine City.
The antidote for Denial and Romanticizing: Write down all the bad times, sparing yourself no sad detail.
This might seem like self-torture, but if you truly want out, sit down and write about every disappointing, painful, and even humiliating thing that occurred in the relationship and how it made you feel about yourself.
I have a client who discovered her fiance was cheating on her. She contacted the woman he’d been with and asked her if she’d be willing to tell her every detail of what happened. The other woman was happy to comply as she too had been duped into thinking she was the only one.
I know this is an extreme example of jumping into the mouth of the wolf, but it helped my client shed her denial and the romanticizing that kept her going back. Each time she thought about contacting him or replying to his texts and calls, she forced herself to reread his hurtful behavior and knew she deserved better than that.
3. You bargain
This sounds a little like: "I can just use him for a hookup. I won’t get hooked again." Or, "I’ll just see him one more time to give him a piece of my mind."
The antidote to Bargaining: Break down the cycle and learn how it ultimately feels when you give into your addiction.
When you find yourself trying to justify going back (and I suspect this isn’t the first time), write down what the results of going back have been in the past. Do you see a pattern or repetitive cycle? If so, write down — in detail — how the pattern works, step by step.
It might be something like:
- He’s mean, critical, and maybe unfaithful.
- You finally have had enough and break up with him.
- He begs and begs and wants you back and saying he’s changed.
- You go back.
- The cycle repeats.
Sometimes seeing the scaffolding behind the facade of a relationship can help us stop bargaining with ourselves that things will be different this time; that he’ll be different or you’ll be different. Because without a lot of time apart and individual work toward recovery, it will be the same.
4. You're fearful
This might sound like: "What if there’s nobody better out there?" Or, "I’m too old to start over," or giving into a million more fears!
5. You justify
This might sound like: "I’m going to do a little detective work to see if he’s suffering as much as I am." Or, "I just want to see if he put his profile back up on J-Date." Or, "He wasn’t even that good-looking. I’m a lot more attractive than he is."
6. You have a victim mentality
This might sound like: "He told me I was the 'love of his life.' How could he treat me so badly?" Or, "How could he be so mean?" Or, "I never get the good guys."
The Addictive Brain is very sneaky with these three. It gets our general anxiety ramped up — the way drug addicts feel anxious when they need a fix — and the only way to briefly relieve the anxiety is to connect with our love addiction object.
The antidote to Fear, Ego, and Victim Mentality: Mentally walk yourself through the process of the aftermath of giving in to these triggers.
I have a client that wants desperately to break free from her guy and is the one who initiated the breakup, based on his history of using her and cheating on her. She occasionally relapses and texts him due to fear she’ll be alone forever; the ego that wants to know if he’s suffering too and victim mentality that really, really needs him to apologize for his cruel behavior, hopefully on his knees in abject misery.
So I walked her through the process of relapse. We discovered that she feels general anxiety building up when she hasn’t communicated with her object of love addiction for a day or two. The anxiety becomes acute, so she texts or calls, even though she intellectually doesn’t want to.
After she’s left the text or message her anxiety is relieved. She can breathe again and feels much better until time passes and he hasn’t responded. Then the anxiety begins to build again, only this time, it’s worse because he hasn’t responded and the need for a fix is more powerful than before.
7. You isolate yourself
This is a big one. If we’ve spent all of our mental time thinking about our love addiction object, we rarely have any time, mental or emotional space to nurture other healthy, supportive relationships with friends, family members, co-workers, or some kind of mental health community.
The antidote to Isolation: Connect, connect, connect.
When you find yourself isolated in your addiction, get to recovery meetings. They can be 12-Step or any type of recovery you feel comfortable with. But don’t think going to meetings should feel easy and comfortable at first; they might be initially scary. Get on your own team and out of your comfort zone.
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Shannon Bradley-Colleary is a writer of films, books, and several teenaged/young adult journals. She is the author of To The Stars: A Novel