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Therapy Denver - Love Addiction, Avoidants and Types of Love Addiction


Love addicts and avoidants form relationships that inevitably lead to unhealthy patterns of dependency, distance, chaos, and often abuse. Familiarity is the central engine of the love addiction. Each is attracted to the other specifically because of the familiar traits that the other exhibits, and although painful, come from childhood. When the two addictive lovers come together --- a common and predictable relational process is ignited. Rference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_addiction

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This cycle of love addiction encompasses a push-pull dance full of emotional highs and many lows where the one is on the chase (love addiction) while the avoidant is on the run. They both engage in "counterfeit emotional involvement. Healthy emotional intimacy is replaced with melodrama and negative intensity- ironically creating the illusion of true love, intimacy, and connection - usually on an unconscious level.
Love withdrawal is when with love addiction comes inevitable negative consequences. The negative consequences of love addiction can vary. Depending on the level or extreme of ones love addiction, negative consequences can range from violence (to others or self) to increased feelings of shame, depression, impaired emotional growth, chronic emptiness, loneliness, loss of intimacy and enjoyment in life. In the extreme- love addiction certainly causes more murders and suicides than any other addiction.
The consequences of love addiction are most revealed as the love addict experiences withdrawal; when a relationship ends; or when a relationship is perceived as falling apart. This is when withdrawal of being with one person is experienced at its most intense level. When a break up occurs, love addiction longs for the attachment and apparent loving feelings of the lost relationship, as much as a heroin user craves a their heroin when the drug is no longer available. This longing is a form of emotional withdrawal, resulting in extreme debilitating pain, obsession, and destructive behaviors where they would likely never participate.
The types of love addiction are:
* Obsessed love addiction: This type of addiction comes with the inability to live independently from another person, or a feeling of possession.
* Codependency addiction
* Relationship addiction: This can represent itself as an addiction to the idea of having a relationship instead of a person. There are two types: those who are constantly in and out of relationships and those who will not let go of a bad relationship for the sake of having a relationship.
* Narcissistic love addiction
* Ambivalent love addiction
* Satutory love addiction
* Torch bearers
* Seductive withholders
* Romance addiction: This can represent itself as an obsession over romance itself, including, but not limited to adventure and passion. People suffering with this type of love addiction worry about romantic rituals such as dates, dinner, sex, and everything else that has to do with a passing romance. This can often be a representation of the person's individual fantasies. A typical example is the legendary Don Juan. Love addiction will seek seduction and conquest, but quickly tire of it.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928.

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