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Los Angeles Love Addiction Treatment

Love addiction, which is not to be confused with sexual addiction, is best described as the repeated, compulsive seeking of a relationship or romantic experience despite negative social, psychological and/or physical consequences.

It can mean loving someone who is totally unavailable or obsessing about a potential mate. Some love addicts get caught in toxic relationships or exhibit a love addiction codependency. Love addiction and codependency often go hand in hand as love addicts will do anything to take care of their partners – in the form of enabling, rescuing, caretaking – in hopes that they will not abandon them.

Or put another way, according to Pia Mellody, author of “Facing Love Addiction,” a love addict is someone who is dependent on, enmeshed with, and compulsively focused on another person. There is an obsession and they will go through life with unrealistic hopes for love that are fueled by underlying fears of abandonment, rejection and pain. With love probably their least familiar real experience, a love addict has the need to control the relationship. Often confusing sex for love, they will use sex to manipulate the relationship or they will use it as an exchange for feeling loved.
Love addicts allocate an unbalanced amount of time, attention and value to the person that they are addicted to (i.e., their “qualifier”), and this focus usually has an obsessive quality.

Love addicts have unrealistic expectations for feeling love, which is experienced in the following ways:
as consuming and obsessive;
as inhibited;
as avoiding risk or change;
as lacking true intimacy;
as manipulative and dependent;
as demanding the loved one’s devotion.

While they are in or recovering from an addictive relationship, love addicts will tend to neglect to care for themselves, placing the importance of the relationship over themselves. (read more)

Outcome of Love Addiction Therapy in Los Angeles

Love addiction therapy leads to a better understanding of oneself, higher self esteem and a healthier love connection with others. Through the diligent help of our love addiction therapists in Los Angeles and a commitment to alter behaviors, recovery from love addiction is possible.

Love Addiction Treatment

Love addiction manifests in a person’s life when they become dependent on the object of their love. Whereas sex addicts are addicted to the “high” of being aroused, love addicts are addicted to the “high” of feeling in love. Their love addiction can take the form of putting others needs before their own well-being, trying to control others so that they can get their needs met, often at the other’s expense.

A key way to identify dependent love is how the person feels when the other shows disapproval. In love addiction, when the love object threatens to leave, either physically or psychologically, desperate behaviors tend to escalate. Dependent love is always self-serving and a way to avoid looking more deeply at oneself.

The excitement most people feel when they meet a person they are romantically interested in is a normal part of the bonding experience. However, a love addict pushes this excitement to euphoric levels by engaging in compulsive fantasy, imagining ideal love, feeling instant closeness and a complete connection. This euphoria is the “drug of choice” for the love addict. This is their high; which is commonly accompanied by poor decision making because love addicts believe relationships to be closer and more meaningful, particularly in their beginning stages, than they actually are.

As a result, love addicts may commit to a relationship much sooner and more intensely than that relationship can in reality tolerate. This leads to engaging in behaviors that are too early and inappropriate for the relationship, such as having sex, moving in together, committing to partnership or marriage, and commingling money, to name a few. These developments frequently lead to problems in the relationship, which the love addict has difficulty attributing as a result of their own poor boundaries and decisions. The problem is either externalized and blamed on the shortcomings of their partner (i.e. “it’s his/her fault, not mine”) or all the blame is assumed as it is internalized and attributed to their own worthiness (i.e., “if I were a better lover, then this wouldn’t have happened,” etc.). Either way, the actual problem is never addressed and the cycle is eventually repeated.

Overcoming love addiction includes looking at obsessive tendencies and the addiction to fantasy as a way to avoid pain and past hurts with a compassionate love addiction therapist. Through an extensive sexual/relational history, pains of the past and traumatic relationships are identified and explored. As part of the love addiction treatment, boundary plans are constructed to clearly identify the persons and places that lead to and encourage destructive behaviors and relationships. Through our love addiction support groups, healthy coping mechanisms are identified and put into place for support as well as learning essential self-care habits, including how to self-soothe and stay in the present.

Outcome of Love Addiction Therapy in Los Angeles

A better understanding of oneself, a higher self esteem and a healthier love connection with others. Through the diligent help of our love addiction specialists and a commitment to alter behaviors, recovery from love addiction is possible.

Wondering if you are love addicted? Take a Love Addiction Screening Test

Group Therapy for Sexual Addicts