In Love—Lust--- You're Addicted

What the world generally refers to as love is an intense emotionality combining physical attraction, possessiveness, control, addiction, eroticism, and novelty.

We often say ‘love’ when we really mean, and are acting out, an addiction-a sterile, ingrown dependency relationship, with another person serving as the object of our need for security. Perhaps, love is much more commonly an addiction than believed.

When someone is addicted to love, this person develops an unhealthy attachment to the passion and enthrallment of the beginning of a relationship.

The individual may have a long history of short romantic relationships; ending the relationship when or shortly after the excitement dwindles. This results in ever increasing negative consequences in the individual’s life.

Another way someone can exhibit problematic behaviour in regard to love is being addicted to an individual. Although the term co-dependency is overused, true co-dependency is an unhealthy attachment to another.

Although this can happen with any relationship (mother /child is a common dynamic in co-dependent relationships), it is most common as a partner dynamic. In a co-dependent relationship one partner (or perhaps both) depend on the other for his or her positive emotions.

Many who have these types of addiction may never notice it. Their co-dependency or their short-lived relationships are accepted as normal. If the above authors are correct, many people who suffer from love addiction are completely unaware, and actually believe what they experience is normal and healthy.

Some argue that all love has an aspect of addiction to it. In her TED Talk, Helen Fischer states that love has many of the components of addiction, including tolerance, withdrawal, and craving, as well as the singular focus addiction usually takes. By her estimation, we are all addicted to love in some respect at some point.

There is a difference between everyone being addicted at some point, and addiction and associated behaviour causing detriment in ones life. In his classic book, “Love and Addiction”, Stanton Peele identifies criteria that can help determine if the relationship is an addicted one or not.

"Does each lover have a secure belief in his or her own value?

Are the lovers improved by the relationship? By some measure outside of the relationship, are they better, stronger, more attractive, more accomplished, or more sensitive individuals? Do they value the relationship for this very reason?

Do the lovers maintain serious interests outside the relationship, including other meaningful personal relationships?

Is the relationship integrated into, rather than being set off from, the totality of the lovers’ lives?

Are the lovers beyond being possessive or jealous of each other’s growth and expansion of interests?

Are the lovers also friends?

Would they seek each other out if they should cease to be primary partners?" 

Disclaimer: The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensue discussion or debate.  

Thank you …Wonder whether you’re in love or in lust ?

Whether your obsession about someone is a sign of love or addiction?

Whether you’re staying in a troubled relationship because you’re addicted or in love?

It’s complicated, and lust and love and addiction don’t always exclude one another. Endless analysing doesn’t help or change our feelings, because we’re often driven by forces outside our conscious awareness.

Initial attraction stirs up neurotransmitters and hormones that create the excitement of infatuation and a strong desire to be close and sexual with the person.

These chemicals and our emotional and psychological make-up can cause us to obfuscate reality and idealize the object of our attraction.

Time spent in fantasy fuels our craving to be with him or her. This is normal when it doesn’t take over our lives.

When it’s purely lust, we’re not too interested in spending time together without sex or the expectation of it.

We don’t want to discuss real life problems and may not even want to spend the night.

Fantasies are mostly sexual or about the person’s appearance and body, and we aren’t interested in meeting the person’s needs outside the bedroom – or maybe even inside!

Want to add word or two? 

Sex releases oxytocin, the love chemical that makes us want to nest with our partner. As we get to know our lover, we may want to spend more or less time together, depending on what we learn.

At this juncture, our brain chemicals as well as our attachment style and psychological issues can lead us to become co-dependently attached through a romance or love addiction that feels like love, but is more driven by our need for the chemical rush to avoid feelings of abandonment, depression, and low self-esteem.

Your comment ….? 

Excitement and desire may be heightened by intrigue or our partner’s unpredictability or unavailability.

We may remain attached and even crave our partner, but our discomfort or unhappiness grows.

Instead of focusing on that, our hunger to be with him or her takes centre stage, despite the fact that disturbing facts or character traits arise that are hard to ignore.

We may feel controlled or neglected, unsafe or disrespected, or discover that our partner is unreliable, or lies, manipulates, rages, has secrets, or has a major problem, such as drug addiction or serious legal or financial troubles.

We stay and don’t heed our better judgment to leave. Increasingly, we hide our worries and doubts and rely on sex, romance, and fantasy to sustain the relationship.

Out of sympathy, we might even be drawn to help and “rescue” our partner and/or try to change him or her back into the ideal we “fell” for. These are signs of addiction.

But lust can also lead to true love as we become attached to and get to know our sexual partner, and lust doesn’t always fade. I’ve seen couples married for decades that enjoy a vibrant sex life.

However, true love does require that we recognize our separateness and love our mate for who he or she truly is. There’s always some idealization in a new relationship, but true love endures when that fades.

As the relationship grows, we develop trust and greater closeness.

Instead of trying to change our partner, we accept him or her.

We want to share more of our time and life together, including our problems and friends and family.

Our lover’s needs, feelings, and happiness become important to us, and we think about planning a future together.

When the passion is still there, we’re lucky to have both love and lust.

Love and co-dependency may coexist or be hard to differentiate, because co-dependents idealize and often happily self-sacrifice for their partner.

When differences and serious problems are largely ignored, minimized, or rationalized, it looks more like co-dependency, because we’re not really seeing or loving the whole person.

Facing the truth would create inner conflict about our fear of emptiness and loneliness. Similarly, when our emphasis is on how our partner makes us feel or how he or she feels about us, our “love” is based on our self-centred, co-dependent need.

Healthy relationships and co-dependent, addictive ones have very different trajectories.

Healthy partners don’t “fall in love;” they “grow in love.”

They’re not as driven by overwhelming, unconscious fears and needs: