Love Addiction causing all the problems in my life

After reading the book, "Facing Love Addiction" by Pia Mellody, I've come to the conclusion that I am a love addict.

The clinical definition of a love addict is as follows: Love addicts are characteristically familiar with desperate hopes and seemingly unending fears. Fearing rejection, pain, unfamiliar experiences, and having little faith in their ability or right to inspire love, they wait, wish, and hope for love, perhaps their least familiar experience.

I have a strong emotional dependency on others, especially my lovers. I think it all goes back to my childhood, like many other psychological disorders. My Father was never around for me, and I never felt like he loved me or approved of me as his child. I honestly felt like he hated me and that I was a burden to him. I clung to my Mother and she showed me love and acceptance, while I supressed the unresolved feelings that I felt towards my Father.

When I became an adult and began dating, I sought out men who would continue the neglectful relationship that my Father had with me. One relationship lasted for almost 4 years, but it was awful, and I was terrified of leaving him, so when he ended up leaving me I crashed and burned. I lost 50 pounds, couldn't get out of bed, wouldn't work, and had no zest or enthusiasm for life. Can we say extremely low self-esteem? It was one of the most horrific times of my life and I don't know how I pulled through it. Anti-depressants and friends mostly helped me through. It turned out that he was even cheating on me during our relationship, and he ended up getting with one of our mutual friends directly after he left me. I was devastated.

The people I choose to date are love avoidants, people who are constantly busy, unaffectionate, and always use outside sources to distract themselves from the intimacy that normally develops in a romantic relationship. They are known to turn up the radio or television to drown their partner out, in order to avoid communication. When in conversation, they typically have little to say and can appear as uninterested. Love avoidants are consciously afraid of intimacy and subconsciouly afraid of abandonment, whereas it is the exact opposite for love addicts. The funny thing is, I think I am open to intimacy and encourage it, but obviously I am fooling myself.

I want to break this self-destructive pattern because if it goes untreated it can cause a person to eventually go insane. I am going to attempt the online meetings of SLAA to see if they can help me arrest my behavior. Yes, I said arrest, because they don't believe it is curable. I don't want to end up as an insane single person later on in life. If you have the same problems, let me know what you do to overcome your addiction.

All I know is that this is killing me inside and hindering my life from being healthy. Everytime another man comes and goes out of my life I feel a bit more unstable and incapable of living a normal life. I don't want to go to work or even take care of myself because I am so wrapped up in my emotions and feelings of lonliness, rejection, fear, and humiliation. It honestly makes me sick inside, to the point that I want to just hide away from the world. I can't reach my goals and I constantly procrastinate because I am always looking for my next love fix with another man. It sounds ridiculous I know, but I think a lot of people have this problem without even being aware of it.

I could use friends and support from similar people. If you have any tips, hints, or want to share your story with me, please do.

Thanks so much! -James

While I don't have experience specifically with "love addiction," I do have experience with other types of addictions and 12 step or (substance of choice) Anonymous groups.

I think anyone, addiction issues or not, can pick up some great tips for living from 12-step and "Anonymous" group concepts, I would also caution against adapting the "disease" model too strongly.

Yes, I said arrest, because they don't believe it is curable

While it may not be "curable," you can certainly learn to make better, healthier choices. All of us can. No matter if we're talking about eating habits, exercise habits, work habits, how we treat ourselves or choosing a partner.

For me, seeing myself as perpetually "sick" and having to be constantly "on guard" just didn't work. It was very limiting to see myself like that. Rather, I choose to see myself as whole and healthy albeit making some poor choices now and again But I learned to make better choices because of those previous poor choices.

Somehow, seeing it in those terms puts me in control....where as seeing it as "incurable" and as a "disease" means I'm at the whim of what are nothing more than poor choices.

I have read Pia Mellody's books and also have struggled, usually at the end and after relationships with some of the strong withdrawl symptoms that you're describing. I have chosen to not try to understand it in terms of powerlessness however, as my feelings are temporary. Just because we make attachments and feel massive pain when those are broken does not make us addicts. For a long time, I'd beat myself up over the months and months it took me to accept that relationships had ended (usually by my partners but not always) and yet I was still emotionally so tied to these women who wanted little or nothing to do with me. I've come to understand, the problem lies not in how I manage my emotions or come to feel so needy and desperate at the end of a relationship (which of course accelerates partners exiting them), but rather the choiced I make in emotionally unavailable or baggage ladden partners who aren't capable of relationships beyond the honeymoon phase. Years ago there was a group called SLAA (not sure if they are even around anymore). The discussion were a lot like this forum, although I recall they did understand the issues soley in 12 step terms. I still have their "big book" and it has some good stuff in it, especially the part on relationship withdrawl. Some of the stuff Pia Melody talks about are the very concepts that people practice here, especially NC after breakups. I know this thread is a few weeks old, but I hope you are hanging in there James. Yearning, withdrawl, denial, obsessive thinking are all a normal part of the grieving process after a breakup. This too shall pass!