When we fall in love and begin to love someone special, it is common to feel that we are “hooked” to that person. Sometimes we experience this as something exciting and a source of happiness, like when the experience gives rise to a relationship that little by little becomes consolidated, and sometimes we experience it as the complete opposite, something that can happen if the feeling is not mutual. or if dynamics of dependency or even psychological manipulation arise under the appearance of a loving relationship.
For all these reasons, it is not unusual to hear that love is a kind of addiction. What is true in this reasoning? Does addiction really exist to love or through love? Here I will give my point of view on the subject.
Addictions are a set of psychiatric and neurological disorders in which the person develops a strong dependence on the consumption of certain substances or the performance of certain actions, to the point that they experience clinically significant discomfort if they spend several hours or a few days without doing them.
This class of pathologies has a biological and a psychosocial basis On the one hand, as they consolidate in the body of the person suffering from the disease, the reward system of their brain is altered by the addiction, so that it reconfigures all brain activity so that the performance of the addictive behavior ( for example, drinking alcohol) becomes the absolute priority, and over time, the only source of motivation for the individual. On the other hand, addiction causes the person to internalize certain routines and habits that constantly expose the person to the temptation of continuing with that dynamic of behaviors (for example, replacing their lifelong friends with the company of other people with their same addiction), so even if you want to “disengage” from all that, the risk of relapse increases.
Although most psychiatric and psychological disorders put the person in a vicious circle from which it is increasingly difficult to get out, addictions are especially good at this, since as time passes the person runs out of options to break with that dependency: the withdrawal syndrome becomes very strong, and also each time you need to consume more or engage more in the addictive behavior to experience the same level of relief or momentary pleasure
The latter, which is a phenomenon known as tolerance, occurs because addiction leads the brain to transform itself to direct all physiological and mental processes towards the constant repetition of that experience that generates pleasure or well-being for a few minutes, so that exposing oneself to that kind of experiences no longer “shocks” or interferes so much with its operating dynamics, but rather fits better into them, thereby losing the forcefulness of the effect. This also explains the withdrawal syndrome; The nervous system becomes accustomed to being subjected to these floods of chemicals over and over again whether generated by the brain itself (in the case of addictions without substances) or supplied through drug consumption, so that withdrawing that “stop” suddenly causes everything to falter for a few days, the time necessary for neurons learn to relate to each other again in a more or less normal way.
Can a love addiction arise?
From what we have seen so far, love and the desire to be with the person we love have some characteristics that make them similar to the typical addictions that year after year lead thousands of people to seek therapeutic support to get rid of, for example. For example, a drug such as alcohol, cocaine or methamphetamine. Now… Can it really give rise to an addictive disorder without substance use, as occurs with the tendency to participate over and over again in games of chance (pathological gambling)? The answer is that, Technically, love addiction does not exist as a mental health disorder and this term can only be used as a metaphor or simplified explanation of a psychological problem of another type.
This is due to various reasons, but in summary, we could say that addictions are not just a dependency that generates discomfort, but a very specific type of dependency that generates discomfort.
Firstly, as we have seen, addictions generate an effect known as tolerance, by which the person becomes increasingly dependent on the addictive experience to the point that they abandon their social life and physical health. and mental. This does not happen with love: We do not need to spend more and more time or sacrifice little by little everything we have to be with someone for the simple fact of loving a person
In the same way, when we separate ourselves from it for a few hours or days we do not suffer the typical symptoms of withdrawal syndrome, which can become very intense and uncontrollable, both psychological and physiological in nature: tremors, skyrocketing stress levels, somatic alterations. , fatigue, in some cases fever, etc.
On the other hand, if by “love addiction” we understand the need to go through the experience of falling in love over and over again, the comparison does not work either. Addictions are about a very specific and objective action or experience: taking drugs or interacting in a specific way with an object or place. Instead, Falling in love is an experience much more based on abstract thoughts and context, and is not reduced to a type of place or objects with which to interact. And furthermore, practically no one would be able to consolidate an addiction to something relatively exceptional, because very rarely do we fall in love several times in a row in a matter of hours or a few days.
That time scale would hardly cause our brain reward system to undergo significant structural and functional changes, given that between one fall in love and the next, other types of stimulating situations would exert their influence on our neurons, modifying their way of interacting with others.
Does that mean that falling in love disorders cannot arise?
Not quite: Poor management of romantic relationships can facilitate the appearance of psychopathologies, but not in the category of addictions but of another type.
For example, in some diagnostic manuals a psychopathology is defined based on emotional dependence, and in addition, Borderline Personality Disorder is also known to often give rise to dynamics of dependence. What happens is that in these cases the problem itself is not love (naturally), but rather a whole series of fears associated with fear of abandonment and insecurities with oneself, which leads the person to seek emotional refuge in someone special constantly.
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My name is Thomas Saint Cecilia and I am a psychologist specialized in the cognitive-behavioral intervention model, very effective and versatile in the face of emotional problems. I attend in person at my consultation in Madrid and also online by video call.
