Relationship Cycles For Love Addicts
Mazie Wingeier
As this Addictive Relationship Cycle progresses, anxiety over the level of closeness or distance drives both the pursuer (love addict) and distancer (avoidant) in a 'crazy-making, yo-yo dance'-- sooner or later, resulting in both partners feeling distressed, depressed, and miserable in the relationship, particularly if the love addict enters love withdrawal.
When a love avoidant senses the love addicts desire for closeness and intimate connection, it triggers their strong fear of intimacy-- for intimacy and closeness is equal to being engulfed, stifled, and controlled.
Love addict enters withdrawal-- quickly seeks out
another relationship and repeats the same cycle with another love avoidant; or medicates with another addiction to escape emotional pain-- at the same
time craving and obsession of ex-partner continues;
in addition to owning all responsibility for the failure of a relationship.
And it's important to keep in mind, even if the relationship cycle ends with one partner, the love addict and avoidant will move on to find another romantic relationship to repeat the cycle - unless one or both step into an effective recovery and healing process.
Rachael Pace is a noted relationship writer associated with Marriage.com. She provides inspiration, support, and empowerment in the form of motivational articles and essays. Rachael enjoys studying the evolution of loving partnerships Read more and is passionate about writing on them. She believes that everyone should make room for love in their lives and encourages couples to work on overcoming their challenges together.Read less
Love addiction, like many addictions, follows certain patterns. In the realm of love, sex, and relationship addictions, there are a number of interlocking roles and complimentary patterns of behavior. In this article, you will learn about these related roles. If any of these patterns or behaviors look a little too familiar, you may want to consider attending a Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLA) meeting.
In the final stage, the relationship sputters to an end. During this time the couple is separated, typically one of two things happen (or both): the players return to each other and start the cycle over again, or the players seek out other love addicted partners and start the cycle over again. With each progression through the cycle, the problems become more and more magnified, unless one of the players seeks out help and starts to get healthy. The problems intensify with each pass of a cycle because the feeling of abandonment after each break-up grows. As the number of abandonments increase, so does the desperation to kill the pain left in their wake with a new opiate, i.e. a new love addicted relationship.
Like with any addiction, learning how to break the pattern of love addiction can be challenging. You may experience feelings of withdrawal. With help, you can break the pattern and go on to form truly fulfilling and close intimate relationships.
Having a community of support when recovering from an addiction is key. Yet perhaps the most crucial part of the healing process is prioritizing your relationship with yourself. Take care of yourself by doing fun leisure activities, exercising, eating healthy, and surrounding yourself with people who love you. Focus on self-care to enhance the healing process.
A large part of their attraction toward Love Avoidants is that Love Addicts find an opportunity to heal the wound to their childhood self-esteem in people who walk away from them. If they can make an adult who withholds intimacy connect and fall in love with them, they can prove that they have inherent worth. Only a child can be abandoned; adults cannot. Healthy, mature adults have it within their capacities to deal satisfactorily with the vagaries of relationships without calling their inherent worth into question.
Do you feel that you are a love addict or love avoidant? Check out our Love Addiction/Love Avoidance workshop at our sister facility Rio Retreat Center. This workshop addresses the destructive cycles of both the love addict and the love avoidant, teaching individuals to practice self-love and self-care as they learn to find intimacy with healthy boundaries. To learn more about it, contact our admissions team for further details.
In addition to the negative consequences mentioned, love addiction can also lead to individuals who may become so focused on their romantic relationships that they neglect other areas of their life, such as work, friendships, spirituality, and personal goals. The fixation on the relationship dominates their world.
Love addiction is a condition characterized by an unhealthy and compulsive attachment to people, romance, or sex. Most love addicts will experience some or all of the following symptoms and characteristics:
Apart from individual and personalized coaching, we also provide 5-day relationship workshops at our love addiction retreat. This is an opportunity to take a deep dive into who you are, why you do the things you do, and learning about the actual action steps to change. The first relationship is the one with yourself. The Glass House. We can help you get on the right track toward a healthy relationship. Our love addiction intensive will make a huge shift in your life. You are worthy of relational health!
Ambivalence is a double-edged sword. It can give you time to think things out before you make a commitment. Love addicts, who fall in love so quickly, would love ambivalence. But in the hands of a commitment phobic or a confused person it can be a nightmare.
There are no easy answers to this dilemma. One can sort through their childhood for the origins of their ambivalence. Were their parental role models ambivalent? Do the chaotic relationships in their family of origin give them an uneasy feeling when the fall in love and fall into a relationship? Do they idealize relationships because their family was so dysfunctional? Do they look for the perfect partner because their family was so imperfect? At least one of these thing is at work. Perhaps all.
To solve this dilemma, I suggest that you research healthy relationships, get into a recovery program for love addiction and love avoidance, find someone who can love you and cherish you and then stay committed even when you think you are being smothered even when you are not.
This worked for me. I stopped idealizing unavailable men like my father. I found someone who I was attracted to but not obsessed with. I gave the relationship a chance and after a while fell in love. Today I am happily married to someone I would never have chosen for myself twenty years ago. We are a work in progress.
If your preoccupation with pursuing or being in love starts to challenge your ability to work, maintain relationships with friends and family, or take care of yourself physically, a good next step involves connecting with a therapist.
Men are much less likely compared to a woman to seek help or call a counselor when they are in crisis. Men too often hide in shame when they experience emotional pain. I want the reader to understand there are thousands, if not millions of males and females suffering in silence from love addiction. I am convinced men are as likely as women to become the obsessively dependent in romantic relationships, and women are as likely to be Avoidant; fearing potential closeness and intimacy in relationships. Love avoidance and love dependence are the opposite sides of the same coin and part of the saga of love addiction. How do men cope or display their love addiction issues?
A healthy couple strives for inter-dependence, having a healthy state of independence, not too needy, and not too unavailable/avoidant. A healthy state of independence is when a couple basically knows who he or she is and has an identity. And so they are able to give to a relationship without losing themselves. They allow a life outside of the relationship because of their love and individual respect for each other, rather than trying to control a person through neediness or avoidance because of unmet emotional needs.
Let me start by describing the characteristic traits of the typical love addict. For reasons of simplicity, I will call this one simply, love addict. He is the prototype of all types as it is the most recognized love addiction type there is. The love addict has an inner sense of emptiness and inadequacy. They are very much obsessed in life with finding, keeping, and constantly feeling loved. They think that someone else will make their life meaningful. They experience euphoric and magical feelings that make them think that they found their soulmate. Their identity is very much dependent on forming a relationship with a partner. They tend to see themselves as less than their partner, as they idolize them above and beyond. They are very much attracted and drawn to the emotionally unavailable avoidant love addict, who is unable to reciprocate. They live in a world of fantasies and they feel especially alive when that fantasy gets triggered. All of a sudden, life gets meaningful. Oftentimes, they are in huge denial about who their partner is as they have been making them up in their mind so much.
The typical love addict is focused on satisfying and pleasing the avoidant. It is a match made in hell. They maintain a false connection and they both avoid at all costs to be rejected or abandoned. In this way, the avoidant feels very special as it gives them a sense of being in control. Control feeds their grandiosity and enforces the sense of entitlement, the avoidant love addict thrives on. It also greatly provides them with a source of self-worth and meaning. The relationship between a love addict and an avoidant love addict is based on a push-pull mechanism. Normally, the love addict runs after the avoidant, who on the other hand, keeps running and is not giving in.
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