Love Addictions

Tatiana Khodakova

“It is impossible to be together as well as being apart” (Maxim Leonidov) 

A relationship in the style of “it is impossible to be together as well as being apart” is a relationship in which we suffer more than we are happy, in which we care about the relationship rather than enjoy it. “Relationships need to be worked on” is a phrase that is usually used by partners (usually one of them), which serves as the first warning sign that the relationship is developing according to the principle of dependence.

In our cultural space, there are many myths about love in relationships that we learn in fairy tales, in real stories through our parents, in songs, in romantic films, in fiction, and which we ourselves create in our heads through our fantasies about a wedding and marriage. And most of these stories suggest the further development of love dependencies.

Here are some examples of beliefs that serve as the basis for the formation of dependent relationships:

• To be close means to lose yourself.
• My husband/wife should not know about my shortcomings. 
• I should be a support for my partner, so I can’t be weak. 
• We should never quarrel.
• If something is wrong, it’s only my fault. 
• We should trust each other completely in a relationship. 
• We should not have secrets from each other. 
• We should instinctively guess the desires of our partner. 
• We will be inseparable, we will do everything together. 
• We should only have mutual friends. 
• We should have a common hobby. 
• We should always have great sex. 
• My husband/wife is the most important person in the world. 
• I should not ask my partner for help, etc.

Based on beliefs similar to those listed above, a “romantic picture” is formed in the head, which will “steer” and force us to do what dependent relationships develop from – to distort reality.

So, love, or emotiona dependence is a type of destructive interpersonal relationship in which one person idealizes another, trying to merge with him into a single whole and experiencing severe suffering when it is impossible to be together. In other words, love addiction is a state when mood, feelings, appetite and even vitality depend on another person.

Love addiction, drug addiction, alcoholism, gambling addiction, workaholism and so on are all things of the same order, they are addictions. Creating dependent relationships is most often women’s stories. By our nature, by our culture, by the way we are raised, we women are more prone to falling into love addictions.

It does not mean that men are more independent, but that they often have other objects of dependence. For example, workaholism is the same love addiction, though not for a woman, but for work. As well as alcoholism is the same love addiction, in which one “loves” alcohol, etc.

In situations of love addiction, a person goes through the same cycles, feels the same symptoms that are experienced in cases of other addictions.

The most well-known symptom that an addict experiences is “withdrawal” (the same as withdrawal syndrome – physical and mental disorders that develop in patients with drug addiction and alcoholism some time after stopping taking drugs, alcoholic beverages or reducing their dose).

In cases of love addiction, when the object of dependence is “removed”, a person feels “withdrawal”, which is felt physically as pain and a lack of something important. Due to the inability to withstand withdrawal symptoms, dependent relationships become cyclical – here we break up, and here we are again together, and so on in a circle.

In both drug and love addictions, the first thing you need to do is to distance yourself from the object. So far, we are not talking about breaking off relations with the person with whom you have developed a love addiction. Detachment means leaving (at the level of awareness) this strong connection in which we exist with our partner. Step out and look at the relationship from the outside. We can continue to live together, but at the same time I can step back and see what you really are. Because the root of love addiction is a distortion of reality. Step out of the “merger” with your partner and see what is really in our relationship? And then, perhaps, a “romantic boy” of 26, “searching for himself”, may turn out to be a slacker and a loafer, an infantile person who chooses a relationship, where everything is provided for him. Or, if a woman takes an honest look at a man who has such a “stressful” job, connected with managing people and involving heavy drinking during negotiations (because that’s the way it’s done), then there’s a chance she’s living with an alcoholic.

The distortion of reality in dependent relationships begins very quickly, almost from the first minutes of meeting. For example, you met a man, spent several hours with him and went home. If you continue to think about him for a long time, then for some reason this person has become the center of your world – you cannot switch your thoughts to your own affairs, you fantasize about the further development of your relationship, you begin to ask yourself questions like: “Did he like me? Did I say too much? What did he think of me? Would he like to see me again?”

Such a manifestation is the first bell that alerts you to a tendency to build dependent relationships.

Why does this happen?

Because in dependent relationships we reproduce somehow the model of relationships in which we lived when we were little.

There is something called an unfinished gestalt or the Zeigarnik effect. In short, the essence of this phenomenon is that we remember unfinished actions and completed ones are forgotten, i.e. if we did not finish something, we will remember it – this is how our psyche works.

If in our childhood,when communicating with our parents and being in relationships with them, we did not receive what was important and necessary for us, then relationships similar to these will become super important and super significant for us, and therefore dependent. It will seem to us that without these specific relationships we can not exist and live without this person, and it’s all because he is similar to our parents. Similar not externally (although there is an external similarity), but by similar feelings that we experienced in primary relationships in childhood.

For example, in our childhood, our father could be distant – this is the most common story in our cultural space. Distant in the sense that he could be a workaholic or an alcoholic or simply an emotionally cold person. Such fathers do not establish emotionally fulfilling relationships with their children, in which the daughter (if we are talking about women) would feel accepted, loved, and admired just because she exists. And the catch is that, growing up, we do not look for a person who is able to give us all this, so that we could accept it and the psyche would be satisfied. The psyche does not work like that! We look for a person who will be just as distant, as the father. 

The meaning of gestalt (completed action) is not to receive care, attention and love from a person, but to finally achieve it from the one, who is emotionally detached from us.

The information that this is exactly the kind of detached person in front of us is read in the first minutes of meeting. The information can be different – it is what we say, and how we say, and how we sound (intonation), and what we do and how we do it, i.e. we convey a verbal and non-verbal message to other people. Thus, from the first minutes of meeting, we can imagine what the relationship will be like in the future.

Let’s take an example where a girl at a party accidentally bumps into a man at a bar, and he immediately “swores” at her. By the end of the evening, she goes to his house and stays with him. She chose a man who gave her a specific message about how he would treat her: “I will be rude to you, I will humiliate you, and you will take care of me.” 

The normal girl’s reaction would be to distance herself from him, but his behavior is exactly what she needs, because her parents treated her exactly the same and she has an “unfinished” experience, an unclosed gestalt, which her psyche is finally trying to complete to calm down.

Thus, the girl chooses such a specific man, develops a rather traumatic relationship with him, naturally, without achieving anything from him, since it is impossible to receive love and acceptance from someone, who is not capable of such manifestations. And she needs exactly such a person, because he is like her father.

Another example, when everyone behaves well at a party, except for one, who gets very drunk, gets into trouble, is rowdy and tries to get into a fight. And there will definitely be someone nearby, who will protect him. Someone saw this behavior pattern and “hooked” on it easily. Some girl with an unfinished gestalt of an alcoholic father, who needs to be protected from his mother’s scolding, will instantly react to the “message” and find herself in a tough “bond” that may not let go for many years. And in order for the “bond” to hold, a distortion of reality is needed. Because no one in their right mind thinks, “Oh, he’s like my alcoholic father, who I never saved, so I’ll stay with him for the next ten years, and I won’t save him either, and I’ll move on.” No one thinks like that. So to stay in that relationship, we have to distort reality.

And how can we distort reality? For example, a girl will think: “I can change him.” Because this is her need – the need for him to change and become a different person, and then she will finally start getting from him everything she has so long and passionately wanted.

And here another illusion appears – “nobody could change him before me, but I can, because I am special, I am so kind and smart and I know so much about this topic. I will send him to therapy, I will “cure” him.”

As we can see, a distortion of reality occurs, namely:

Self-distortion — belief in your uniqueness, capable of changing another person.

Partner’s distortion

• he drinks because he has difficulties at work or because he has a delicate mental organization and he cannot refuse his friends;

• he is so strong and brave, that’s why he “swore” at the party, which means he can protect me too;

• he is so aggressive on the outside, but inside he is a “calf” with blue eyes, he just hasn’t found the right woman to open his heart yet, and it will be me;

• he doesn’t work because he is an unrecognized genius, who hasn’t been appreciated yet, etc.

Context distortion

• He only comes home after midnight five nights out of seven, because he has a job, where he usually stays late, and I trust him;

• He only drinks beer, eight bottles a night, but that’s not vodka, which means he’s not an alcoholic;

• He doesn’t beat me every day, only when he’s drunk;

• He doesn’t earn much, but as his wife, I have to support him, etc.

ALL ADDICTION IS BUILT AROUND AVOIDING FEELINGS

And if I don’t want to play these games anymore, then I’ll have to accept and live through the fact that my parents will never love me the way I want them to, or that they’ll never understand me, or that they’ll never need me, or that dad will always love the bottle more than me…

These are painful feelings, and in order to get out of a dependent relationship, I’ll have to face them and live through them. There’s no other way. Another thing is that it seems to us that these feelings will kill us, but that’s not true. It seems to us that the pain we’ll experience, when confronted with this reality, will be unbearable, but that’s not true either. This pain can be lived through and it ends. It’s easier to live through it in the process of psychotherapy with the specialist’s support.

FEAR OF THIS PAIN IS THE REASON FOR DEVELOPING LOVE ADDICTIONS

It is easier to build dependent relationships hoping that the gestalt will not have to be completed, that I will not have to face these feelings and I will do everything to continue to hope that this is possible. 

Otherwise, the loss of hope will deprive me of support. And this is true – for some time it will deprive me of support, but this is not fatal, because support is illusory.

So, in order to be in a dependent relationship, we distort reality: the perception of ourselves, the perception of the other and the perception of the context. And in this distortion of reality, we lose the sense of “norm” and “not normal” and begin to believe that the norm is what I can stand, i.e. if I can withstand it, then it is normal.

In order to formulate criteria of the norm, we need to rely on reality or on the context that we know – on what we lived with our parents. If the father, for example, beat the mother, then domestic violence will be the norm. And the woman will tolerate it as long as it is bearable, until, for example, he beats off some of her organs. The criterion of bearability becomes the norm:

• as long as I earn money for myself and the children, it is normal that he does not work;

• as long as he has not taken everything out of the house, it is normal that he steals money from my wallet;

• as long as he has not had a heart attack, it is normal that he smokes three packs of cigarettes a day, etc.

To feel normal, we also need to rely on reality, and reality is distorted.

So, in order to stay in a dependent relationship, we “cling” to what was in our relationship in the parental family. We “stick” ourselves to it tightly, because it gives us hope that we will finally be able to complete this gestalt and not experience the pain of losing hope. In order to stay in such a relationship, we distort our reality, the reality of our partner, our context and lose sense of what is normal and what is not.

In order to understand what is happening in reality, we need, as already said, to distance ourselves.

So, the first thing you need to do is step back and look at the situation from the outside. Give yourself the opportunity to call things by their proper names: call a drinker an alcoholic, a parasite a slacker, someone who disappears at work – a workaholic, someone who cheats on you – a cheater, etc.

The second thing is to regain the right to take care of your own life first and foremost.

After all, dependent relationships are relationships in which we primarily invest and do not take. These relationships require servicing the partner, constantly solving his problems. Dependent relationships are relationships of self-sacrifice in the sense that for the sake of these relationships we tend to sacrifice much of what filled our lives before them.

If I put my partner’s needs and desires first, then this shows my need to be needed, i.e. I am ready to be needed at the expense of my feelings, emotions and desires.

The need to be needed originates in the same parent-child relationships, when the girl did not receive confirmation of her value, did not feel it and when her need was the only option for her parents to pay attention to her.

This usually happens in dysfunctional families, where there is someone who drinks, cheats, disappears at work, etc. In such families, children do not receive strong targeted emotions, that are directed specifically at the child – tenderness, joy, admiration, etc. In dysfunctional families, there is no energy for such care for children. And then children receive strong targeted emotions in one of two ways: they become “problematic” and receive irritation and hatred in their address, or they become needed – mom’s helpers, dad’s favorites. These are options when a girl spends weekends with her father in the garage, distorting the reality that she likes it, or runs home after school quickly to help her mother with cleaning, or when she is constantly engaged in reconciling parents who are always arguing with each other. And in this way she begins to receive at least a little of what she needs.

This need to be needed persists and is further manifested in the fact that we begin to build relationships not with those people who are interesting to us, but with those who need us.

It is worth paying attention to another distortion that is of key importance – when fear and pain are mistaken for falling in love. We are talking about a purely physiological “deception”. When a person feels in love, he experiences certain sensations in the stomach, sometimes called “butterflies in the stomach”. Fear is felt there – in the stomach. These are different sensations in nuances, but for a person who is inclined to distort reality and suppress their emotions, these subtleties in sensations become inaccessible.

For example, a girl broke up with her partner three years ago, because he beat her up, accidentally meets him on the street and her insides “turn over”. This is a signal that she is in pain and afraid to see him, but since she is prone to distorting reality, she may think: “Oh, my feelings for him haven’t cooled down yet!” It seems paradoxical that we confuse fear and pain with falling in love, but if we are prone to addiction, then we are very good at distorting reality.

It is on the basis of such distortions in sensations that relationships return to cyclicality. Here she left him, here she even went through “withdrawal”, here she even began to recover and here they met again. She became scared and in pain, she does not want to go back to this, but she has an “unfinished gestalt” and an unconscious need to complete it, and she thinks: “Oh, my feelings for him haven’t cooled down yet, maybe it’s worth reviving everything and this 20th time everything will turn out differently!?” And now the “old song about the main thing” is back in the repertoire…

As mentioned above, the first thing you need to do is to distance yourself, and the second thing is to take care of your life.

Taking care of your life means:

• Learning to hear your needs;
• Recognizing your true emotions and rebuilding social connections, because a person in a codependent relationship often finds themselves without friends;
• Rebuilding the ability to protect yourself;
• Regaining the opportunity to do something that interests you.

If a woman decides not to play these addictive games anymore, she will need a period of rehabilitation, and to recover she cannot be alone, she needs social connections – people who can support her. If she is going to leave an addictive relationship, she should go to a ready-made rehabilitation environment. Because if she broke up with him and is left alone, then the logical result is to go back, because she will face her fear of loneliness and the feeling of uselessness. Therefore, it is important to create an environment in which you can live a full life regardless of whether you have a partner or not – because now I have a favorite job, loyal friends who support me in any case.

And the third thing that needs to be done is to return to the problem that is being avoided.

A dependent relationship is a way of not solving the problem in the relationship with parents, a way of not noticing what is happening to me when I am not in a relationship.

DEPRESSION LIES IN THE DEPTHS OF DEPENDENT RELATIONSHIPS 

There is a problem that may be related to me and my relationship with myself, or it may be related to my parents in situations of violence, indifference, which I experienced and it is painful for me to come into contact with it, it is unbearable to come into contact with it and it is easier for me to come into contact with what dependent relationships bring. If I get rid of dependent relationships, then I will be forced to return to the core of experiences that pushed me into these relationships. Dependent relationships can be hellish, but whatever they are, they are not as painful as the problem from which I run away in them. Of course, all this happens on an unconscious level and is related to suppressed feelings. In depressive states, a person feels depressed, which means that he suppresses something – some feelings, some experiences that he cannot come into contact with. Usually this happens because in the parental family he was deprived of the right to emotions. Sometimes this is done directly, for example, girls are forbidden to get angry, and boys are forbidden to cry. But there are more subtle prohibitions. For example, a mother looks upset, the child comes up to her and asks: “What’s wrong? Why are you upset?” The mother may answer: “No, everything is fine. It seemed to you, I am not upset.” This manifestation is called cognitive dissonance, when what I see and what I hear do not correspond to each other – either one or the other is not true. Either I was wrong in my feelings, or my mother lied to me. What will the child choose? Of course – I was wrong. And since I was wrong, I will not feel it anymore. Messages for a child that it is wrong to feel this way, that you saw the emotion incorrectly – these are prohibitions on emotions that we grow up with and which turn into a whole complex of suppressed feelings.

These suppressed feelings prevent us from understanding our own emotional sphere, we grow up as if we do not feel anything. And when we don’t feel anything, we feel like we’re not quite alive. When anger is unavailable to us, for example, then joy is also unavailable to us, since it’s impossible to suppress one emotion, but not another — the entire emotional sphere is suppressed.

In order to feel alive, we need emotions, and when they are suppressed, then in order for us to feel them, they must be very strong. And dependent relationships provide just such feelings. Because from the first date, after which I “got hooked”, I can already worry and think about why he didn’t call back, and I will worry very much!

Love addictions can be mortally dangerous, since the stress level in such relationships is very high — after all, only with “off-the-scale” emotions can a person feel “alive”.

In order to heal from addiction, the third thing you will have to do is return to your suppressed feelings. It seems difficult and painful, but only after that does what is called a return to adequacy in the relationship occur. If you live through the suppressed feelings, then the gestalts are completed, and there is no longer a need to choose partners with whom you need to repeat this over and over again.

After healing, a woman begins to be interested in partners who previously seemed boring, because a healthy partner does not give strong stressful emotions, he is healthy – he does not need this, he will take care of calm, harmonious relationships. Dependent people, on the other hand, find partners who are ready to provide healthy relationships uninteresting, they say about them: “He is good in every way: he loves, and is attentive, but there is no thrill – he does not excite …”

With a healthy person, neurotic throwing is impossible, which allows you to perform an important function – to activate suppressed feelings. But with a healthy person, it is possible to enjoy the relationship, and not endlessly work on it.

So, dependent relationships are the “cherry on the cake”, this is the “tip of the iceberg”, and at the core are suppressed feelings and emotions that arose in relationships with the immediate environment in childhood. And returning to these inner feelings (which we have been trying to avoid for many years) and, finally, living through them makes us free from any dependencies, including love ones.

(The article used materials from A. Dolganova’s lectures)

Translated by Maria Zayats
Main photo by Tom The Photographer

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Love is not a need or a cold shower for the mind

Love is unconditional, relationships are not

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