Love addiction is a serious issue, and if there’s even a slight chance you might be struggling with it, you should definitely keep on reading.
Many people won’t give this much thought, but those who use love to replace all other shortcomings in their life deserve to find their happy ending.
Just like with addicts (to drugs, alcohol, etc…) it is possible that you, too, are using the idea of love as a replacement for something that you might be missing in life, but don’t want to deal with.
You get on this ‘’love train’’ and you keep pursuing it because getting off is not an option.
You’re scared where it would leave you, and you’re not sure how you’d function alone.
And this is why you use men to keep you busy and deflect your attention from serious shit that’s going on in your life that you don’t want to face just yet.
You are unable to connect emotionally with a man, which is why you jump from one meaningless fling to another and tell yourself that it’s love and that it’s totally fine. But it really isn’t.
Love addiction can take on a life of its own, and it can totally mess up your life by not allowing you to find time to deal with what needs to be dealt with.
You have a serious issue with emotional intimacy, and your love addiction is making it harder.
But there is so much more to it than that. Here are 4 signs that you are only using love as a fix to get out of having to deal with real life and real problems:
1. You have to be in constant contact with the person whose love you’re using as a fix
You always have your phone on you, and you’re constantly checking to see if his name will pop up on your screen.
If it doesn’t, you absolutely must text him, even if just to say: ‘What’s up?’
For you, it is inconceivable to not hear from him for a whole day. It makes you feel paranoid and anxious, and you simply need your fix.
You can’t maintain conversations with other people. You are so focused on getting a text from him that it’s hard to focus on anything else.
Your other relationships (with friends, family) suffer due to your obsessive need for your fix, and you don’t even care to remedy it.
All you want is him, and you don’t care what anyone thinks.
This is a clear sign there is something seriously troubling you on the inside, be that your unfulfilled need for a deeper connection or your fear of rejection.
Whichever it is, it is making you go crazy for the idea of love you think you have with this guy because you think it will magically make it all better. (It won’t.)
2. You live under a false belief that this other person is the solution to all your deeper problems
Just like with any other addiction, this one makes you think that your ‘’love fix’’ is the actual solution to your problems you don’t want to face head on.
You get lost in this supposed love, assuring yourself that it is going to make it all better. But it won’t.
You know how they say that the grass is always greener on the other side? Well this is your main issue.
You are chasing an elusive fantasy, all the while convincing yourself that it is within reach, but never really able to fully catch it to your satisfaction.
It only makes things better for that one particular moment. It never lasts.
It never makes you feel better once it goes away, and it leaves you in an even worse condition than before.
Lots of people struggle with being alone, and that is what makes them chase things to make themselves feel less lonely.
You are simply unable to be with your own thoughts because you know they will eat away at you, so you choose to cross over to love addiction in order not to have to deal with things properly.
3. You value yourself based on other people’s opinions of you
People who struggle with addictions are most commonly at a crossroads in their lives.
They are usually transitioning from one chapter of their life to the next one, and their opinion of themselves is at its most fragile during that time.
They aren’t really sure who they are and what their purpose is yet, so they choose to let other people’s opinions and impressions of them affect the way they see themselves.
This is a wrong thing to do, but it is also the main thing that sends you into overdrive and turns you to your type of addiction.
You think you deserve only as much as an irrelevant person deems you worthy, and that is the cause of your downward spiral that led you to this love addiction.
4. You will cross certain lines in order to keep that person even to the point of manipulating them
When a person is so adamant to keep a partner by their side, regardless of how far they’re willing to go, it is no longer love, but a destructive pattern of behaviour that has resorted in your toxic love addiction.
Resorting to manipulation and similar tactics means you’ve started treading on dangerous territory that will likely end up breaking apart from under you.
When your behaviour changes for the worse and you end up acting completely unlike yourself, it’s time to ask yourself what it is that led you to this point.
You have replaced love, honesty and respect with manipulation, lies and a controlling behaviour.
Instead of trying to find an emotional connection, you are jumping from one substitute to the other, not letting yourself experience being alone.
And that is precisely your main problem.
You have to learn to be okay on your own, in order to work on fixing your love addiction that will no longer make you desperately beg for your fix.
Only then can you heal and work on your recovery.
