Love Addiction

No, when I talk about love addiction, I am not talking about the great Robert Palmer song - "addicted to love", love addiction is a real and heartbreaking condition that affects so many people. I wouldn't be greatest lover in the world when I do know a thing or two about love. I have been married for a very long time and I have some beautiful children to show as result of the love that I share with my wife. I think when people talk about love addiction that they are talking about how they cannot do without somebody, that they feel the need to be with them all the time or they can't think straight if they are not with them. I know that when a person falls in love for the first time, many young people will feel love addiction to a certain degree; this is only going to be natural.

As a teenager I remember the first girl I ever went out with, I should say the first girl that I ever felt a real attachment to. I would be really happy when I was with her, and I felt very depressed when I wasn't with her. I spent every penny I had buy her things and couldn't wait to see the look on her face when I gave them to her.

I remember being dreadfully disappointed if she didn't like the gifts that I had given to her or, if her reaction was different to what I presumed it would be. So, I would imagine that this is a form of love addiction. But it is an innocent form of love addiction; it is more approval addiction than anything else. The love addicted are generally not very clear thinking people they tend to be pretty one track minded focusing simply on the accession.

Facing love addiction can be very problematic for the person and their families and can really have a catastrophic effects on the individual's mind, in the long term as well as the short-term. I'm going to look at a few different areas of love addiction and sexual dependency which also is part of this whole. I would advice that you search as much as possible on the Internet to try and find solutions to your problems because I can only give a brief outline here on any of the issues. The first thing I'm going to touch on is approval addiction.

Approval addiction is a form of love addiction in that the person will always seek to gain the approval of others. Unfortunately we live in a society which is driven by approval. We are told from a young age that we have to approve of others and we have to do approved of by others. It is a natural process to seek the approval of people that you admire, from the peers that you are trying to emulate, but when this search for approval leads to an obsession, then you are having big problems. And you really have to ask yourself are you addicted to seeking out the approval of others. There are a few things that you can ask yourself to ascertain whether you are addicted to approval. If you are love addicted and you are dependent on someone else, you focus your entire energy on trying to win their love or gain their approval. You must ask yourself whether your self-esteem comes from others, do you need to have someone’s approval before you can feel good about yourself. Do you like yourself because of who you are, or are your feeling going to depend on you having a positive response from other people, especially the people with whom you are love addicted. Generally a person who suffers from love addictions is not very happy from day to day, they are only happy when they have the complete approval of the person on whom their love addiction is focused. The only way you can really crush this love addiction that you are going through is to love yourself, you must not be dependent on others for your feelings of happiness, you have to be able to look into the mirror and say that you like what you see, and you like what you see because of you not because of somebody else.

If you're trying to get over love addiction you may be forced into some difficult decisions. Should you go to therapy? That is going to be one of the hardest questions that you will ask because it actually relies on you stepping up to the mike and admitting that you are addicted to love. Now, being love addicted is like any other addiction, it's like being addicted to alcohol, or being addicted to smoking, or as we shall see later being addicted to sex. But it is more difficult because there is not an actual physical addiction, you can't detox from love addiction, it's all in the head, so I think it's harder to get over. Many times this love addiction seems to come to the surface during or after the breakup of a relationship, where one of the partners decides or feels that they cannot go on and live normal fulfilling lives without the ex partner by their sides. This can get very messy and does require the advice and counseling of love addiction specialist.

So what are some of the signs of love addiction? You must ask yourself if you are feeling isolated from your family and friends because of another person. If you have just broken a interrelationship, are you afraid of becoming involved in further relationships, are you afraid of rejection and abandonment, and consequently avoiding relationships because of this? Do you feel that the relationship makes you into a complete human being? If you are single and your feeling are very unhappy about being single, if you look at all your friends and because they have partners you will feel jealous and envious. This is natural to some degree but if you feel that you are not complete without a partner then you have a problem and you should try to find some help.

Now we go into a bit of a more deeper, and in some cases taboo, subject that is called sexual dependency. This level of love addiction can indeed be very, very destructive. Sexual dependency can have many different levels, from the need to be constantly reassured by having sex with a partner in order to feel like you are wanted, right up to different levels of sexual depravity. A lot of sexual addiction is characterized by shame and guilt. With the rise of the Internet there are many more porn sites available and people can become addicted to watching porn on a regular basis. They can also be a level of ritualization and compulsive behavior in sex dependency. There are three distinct levels of sexual addiction. The first one is the controversial level. This is where somebody is just acting out of the norm they are addicted to porn, they may be visiting cybersex rooms, and they may even have gone as far as having sex with strangers, or feeling the desire to meet strangers for the express purpose of having sex. The next level is the unacceptable level. This is the level of the exhibitionist, the flasher, it is also the level of the voyeur, and also this is where the person who makes indecent phone calls resides. The highest level of sexual addiction also has the highest level of sexual depravity. This involves criminal acts of rape, incest, and pedophilia. Different levels of treatment should be given to each level as is appropriate. As you can see, the last two levels have absolutely nothing to do with love addiction. It is purely desire, lust and depravity which is driving these people.

The recovery from the last level, the sexual depravity, is well above the scope of this article. I would advise anyone who is feeling any inclination to acts of this nature should immediately seek psychiatric help before it is too late and the lives of others are affected. But for the first two levels there is a lot of help available. First of all it is very difficult to reveal such a secret. There would always be the tendency in the partner, or friend, to want to dig deeper into this and to think the first thing that comes into their head, which will most of the time be fear. When you are seeking help, you may find that your location is a problem. Unless you are living in some of the major cities around the world, you will find it difficult to locate good helpful sources. The first thing you should do is to look on the Internet, you can do this without any embarrassment, with total privacy. Then you can contact some of your local health officials and see if there are any programs available in your area.

This is a fairly taboo subject and it has not been an easy one to write about. Love addiction can often be seen as a sweet, and often immature, feeling toward somebody. But it can also be seen with a certain amount of distrust to say the least. Approval addiction is easily treated by getting the patient to feel better about themselves. Sexual dependency will always take deeper understanding, more patience, and more time to solve. The next thing you should do in your search for treatments for love addiction or sexual dependency is to search around on the Internet.