Do I Suffer From Love Addiction? 6 Signs That Identify Love Addicts
What is addition to love? How is it different from romantic love? Discover what the causes and characteristics of this addiction are and how to deal with it through psychology.
Apparently being addicted to love does not seem like a negative thing, in fact, it has a poetic point that at first seems beautiful. However, suffering from this love addiction It can be highly self-destructive and harmful, like any other drug or addiction worth its salt.
The love addiction, like any other addiction, makes the person decenter themselves from their dissatisfactions, unwanted aspects of their identity or negative life situations, thus focusing their attention on the addiction itself, in this case, love. That is, it would be like a camera lens that zooms in on a detail, ignoring the rest of the landscape.
There are scientific studies that have shown that the areas of the brain that are activated when someone is in love are the same as those that are altered when someone consumes some type of drug. Thus, it can be said that the love addiction It is another type of drug since the reward circuits are activated in the same way, a feeling of euphoria is generated, sudden changes in mood occur, appetite decreases and fear or fear of the loss of what generates that sensation appears.
Furthermore, when people are love addicts recurrent obsessive thoughts occur with the aim of continuing to have the drug (love in this case) and a denial of the negative qualities of the person, exalting the positive traits, thus producing an alteration of reality.
All this that I am explaining is actually what happens when we fall in love, and that does not mean we become obsessed with love. But when these love symptoms They end up being too intrusive in your life, perhaps you suffer from this love addiction.
Symptoms of obsessive love or love addiction
There are a series of symptoms of addictive love that can tell you that you are really part of the love addicts. According to psychologists, the main signs are the following.
1. Search for the falling in love stage
As we already know, love has different phases and the first of them is falling in love. That phase is the “addictive” phase, in which we seem like other people because we only think about that someone we desire, we are as if blinded and emotions are on the surface. This phase is what generates addiction to drugs. addicted to love Thus, this person will seek again and again to be in this phase and when the relationship has stabilized, boredom will occur and they will look for another person with whom they can feel the same way again.
2. Relationships are brief and intense
As a consequence of the previous point, people who suffer from a love addiction They do not have long-lasting relationships, but rather brief but very intense ones. They tend to be relationships in the style of romantic movies or after-dinner soap operas, so the mood is greatly altered by falling in love but also by heartbreak and a romantic breakup.
3. Infidelities may appear
This incessant search for the adrenaline of flirting and seduction can lead to infidelities, since there is an impulsive and poorly reflective component produced by the search for sensations and the immediate reward circuit. On many occasions this addiction to obsessive love ends up causing the person to seek to fall in love with people other than their partner in order to live a life. romantic infidelity with them to relive the phase of falling in love.
People who suffer from this obsessive love addiction They are not usually demanding in terms of the qualities that the couple must have. In fact, many times they don’t even question or consider what they want their relationship to have. The only requirement is to be able to experience that roller coaster feeling. So much so that on some occasions they can have a double love relationship because these feelings are their medicine for self-love and to feel really full.
5. There is an intense fear of loneliness
When a relationship ends, it usually doesn’t take many weeks until they start a new relationship. The love addiction It is something that leads the person to never be alone, since being alone would mean thinking about himself/herself and perhaps he/she would have to face things that he/she does not like about him/her. As long as there is someone to think about, you don’t think about yourself.
6. There is a total abandonment of one’s own life
When they are in a relationship, everything revolves around her. They leave aside friendships, family, their own hobbies, routines… Everything changes and is abandoned. It’s a constant all or nothing gamble. This fact also reinforces that one should not spend long periods without a partner, since that would mean rebuilding the entire autonomous life that was abandoned. This addiction to a person or rather to obsessive love It ends up harming many aspects of the life of the person who suffers from it since they only live for those sensations.
Sometimes people with these symptoms of obsessive love don’t perceive themselves as having a problem. But the reality is that living with love addiction It ends up greatly damaging both relationships and the person who suffers from it. Therefore, these people must get out of this situation either with the help of a mental health professional or through their own tools.
Is being addicted to love the same as having emotional dependence?
The answer is a resounding no. Yes, they share traits, but the main difference is that the emotionally dependent person clings to someone in such a way that one could say that he or she suffers from a person’s addiction, whether the relationship is good or not, or whether one is in the phase of falling in love. that is, a stabilized couple relationship. However, the love addicts What he is looking for is that feeling of the first phase and it usually costs him little to change his partner, many times because he falls in love with another person while still in the previous relationship and changes without great sacrifices.
What is the origin of love addiction?
Generally the origin occurs in early childhood. People who develop both emotional dependence and love addiction They are usually people who during childhood did not receive a secure attachment from their main caregivers and a relationship of love and care did not occur on an emotional level. Thus, the feeling is of abandonment, not necessarily physical but emotional, the person experiences recurrent invalidations and feels little loved and valued by their main caregivers, developing in adult life the need to fill that void that their parents did not fill through search for romantic love.
What can I do if I suffer from love addiction?
Like any other addiction, it is very difficult to quit without professional help. It is best to go to a psychologist or psychotherapist who specializes in treating these issues and who has a preferably systemic and/or constructivist orientation. The treatment about love addicts It should focus on discovering the origin of the emotional lack and working on it as well as developing resources that provide the person with skills for self-care, repairing their social, family, hobbies, etc. area and improving their self-esteem and self-concept.
