News
Addicted To Love
Social isolation, we're told, is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. But the need for love can become an addiction.
Many people will find the concept of being addicted to love difficult to grasp, not least because love as an entity is intangible and ultimately indefinable. We know it should relate to and represent closeness, warmth, security, sensuality and intimacy.
According to America's National Council on Sexual Addiction Compulsivity, around 8% of all Americans can be classified as addicted to sex: that's 18-24 million people.
Sex and love are not the same, but they come together under the concept of "intimacy anorexia" in an inextricable mix.
People addicted to love often struggle to determine what they want or who they are, and instead of searching for this, they abandon themselves, electing instead to only have an identity in relation to being wanted by another person. The addict is "dependent" on a partner for validation, a pattern which may hold sufferers in abusive relationships, or lead them to coerce or bully their partner into satisfying their needs.
In place of intimacy you'll often find obsessive behaviours and risk taking, fear, confusion, paranoia of abandonment. When this dynamic leaves them inevitably dissatisfied, they may become frustrated that the relationship isn't perfect, anxious and paranoid that the partner will leave, displaying defensive or possessive behaviours.
But the difficult thing is to draw a line: when can we define these behavoiurs as morbid?
Many people will find the concept of being addicted to love difficult to grasp, not least because love as an entity is intangible and ultimately indefinable. We know it should relate to and represent closeness, warmth, security, sensuality and intimacy.
According to America's National Council on Sexual Addiction Compulsivity, around 8% of all Americans can be classified as addicted to sex: that's 18-24 million people.
Sex and love are not the same, but they come together under the concept of "intimacy anorexia" in an inextricable mix.
People addicted to love often struggle to determine what they want or who they are, and instead of searching for this, they abandon themselves, electing instead to only have an identity in relation to being wanted by another person. The addict is "dependent" on a partner for validation, a pattern which may hold sufferers in abusive relationships, or lead them to coerce or bully their partner into satisfying their needs.
In place of intimacy you'll often find obsessive behaviours and risk taking, fear, confusion, paranoia of abandonment. When this dynamic leaves them inevitably dissatisfied, they may become frustrated that the relationship isn't perfect, anxious and paranoid that the partner will leave, displaying defensive or possessive behaviours.
But the difficult thing is to draw a line: when can we define these behavoiurs as morbid?