Don't Call It Love Addiction

A couple of weeks ago I posted a podcast about addiction and mentioned the term “love addiction.” I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on that and want to circle back because in every instance, the term “love addiction” was used to describe something that isn’t love.

Surviving to Thriving is about helping earthlings live in loving, balanced, connected relationship with themselves, each other, and the universe, and “love addiction” is a survival issue, not a love issue. In today’s podcast I will explain the 3 things that love addiction is not, and tell you what it is so that you can recognize it and heal it if it’s within you.

In return I ask that you share the podcast, subscribe, or post a comment as that is a way to give me a virtual high five and keep that love chain going. Thank you.

Okay, so the first time I heard the term used was from a fellow therapist. Now “love addiction” is not an official diagnosis. And because it’s not an official diagnosis, there isn’t just one definition, so it could mean absolutely anything depending upon the intention of the speaker. In this case, the therapist meant sex addiction not, love addiction.

Reason number 1 to not call is love addiction is that Sex is not love, and what some people are referring to when they say “love addiction” is sex. Sex is the act of intercourse. It can be done without any love at all. It’s done transactionally in prostitution. It can be used as a way to relax, destress, and get to sleep. It can be done when you’re bored. The words we use to talk about sex as a society aren’t particularly lovely. I don’t know when the last time I heard someone refer to it as “love making” but it’s not common, so I think it’s pretty clear that sex is not love.

Reason #2 is that when some people refer to love addiction, what they are talking about is sex addiction. Love addiction is not sex addiction.

Sex addiction is a compulsive, destructive behavior where the person who has it might masturbate for hours at a time. They may look at porn for hours at a time. As with any addiction, they think about sex constantly - when they are going to get it, how, and with whom. Most people make love and then are satisfied for a while. With a sex addict, there is no satisfaction button that says, “stop.”

Sex addicts may get off on having risky sex, so doing it with people who are forbidden - like their boss’s wife or the next door neighbor. They will do it in high risk places like a public park or public bathroom. Sex addicts might sleep with multiple partners at the same time - sometimes that means sequentially and sometimes it literally means at the same time. As with all addictions, there are no boundaries. It’s compulsive. It’s like they have no choice. Even if they don’t want to, they do it anyway. 

All addiction is about survival at first. It’s about trying to fill that hunger for human connection that was not met in early childhood. When we are young, we have only one way to communicate, that’s through crying. We have a few ways to feel satisfied - that’s cuddling and sucking. So, when we cry because we’re hungry, wet, tired, or uncomfortable. If someone comforts us and meets our needs, we feel safe. We internalize that as “I’m good. I’m loved. Everything is alright. I’m okay, and you’re okay.”

If we don’t get our needs met consistently, we try to meet our own needs in the only way that we know how - and that’s through sucking. This is why some kids suck their thumbs or hang 

on to a pacifier. They are seeking comfort and that comfort comes from outside ourselves. When we are older, this becomes a search for approval, affection, drugs, alcohol, gambling, food, or sex. 

The thing we want isn’t those things. They just scratch an itch. The thing we want is love, belonging, and safety. Since we’ve learned to seek it outside of us, we’re always searching for it, and there is never enough.

Once we get fed up with never getting what we want no matter how hard we try, addiction becomes a death wish. If I drink enough, maybe I will crash my car into a tree and it will all be over. If I eat enough, maybe I will have a heart attack and die. If I have sex with the wrong person, maybe I will get HIV and die. 

Addiction is also a way to say, “See, I told you I was worthless. Go on and reject me. It’s what I expect anyway.” So, when someone does something so disgusting that you have to turn away out of self-preservation, that quote unquote rejection is just a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Don’t kid yourself. At its worst, addiction is suicidal. It just takes a long time to die, and it’s death kind of by proxy. If you fall asleep with the car running and asphyxiate, you can call it an accident. If you get shot up in a drive by as you’re trying to get drugs, you are killed by someone else - but really, it’s a death wish. It’s a way to say, “I give up. It’s never going to get better. I am never going to be loved.” 

I think when we’re honest about everything, we can begin healing. There is a lot of truth in the saying, “The truth will set you free.” So, reason #3 to not call it love addiction is that love addiction is not about the compulsive act of seeking affection. I said the term in the “Breaking the Addiction Habit” podcast and I think I might have been misunderstood. What I said is that quote unquote “love addiction” is insecure attachment. What lies underneath is the desire to be seen. Before you can love me, you have to see me.

So what’s an unhealthy attachment style? When kids are small and helpless, they don’t have words. They don’t have power. When they are really small, they aren’t mobile, so their ability to help themselves is limited. They depend on adults for everything - for their very survival.

So, they need to be liked. If you like me, you will feed me, play with me, clothe me, and snuggle me. If you don’t like me, don’t notice me, and don’t care about me, I could die. It’s really that simple. It’s so simple that even infants get it. A baby of only a few months old will learn not to cry if his cries get no response. It’s the saddest thing ever to see a baby that doesn’t cry, but that child has learned that no one is coming. He has to take care of himself, and that’s what he learns to do.

Or another way that this can play out is that the child figures out, “If I can make you happy, you will take care of me… or at least not hurt me.” So, they learn to take care of their parents. By “taking care of their parents” I mean things like mom and dad are arguing and mom goes into her room crying. The baby comes in and tells mom it’s going to be alright or does something funny or cute to make her smile. Or if dad comes home from a hard day at work complaining, the son may offer to give dad a back rub to make him feel better. Sometimes the caretaking means cooking and cleaning before they are really old enough to do the job. Now, kids should do age appropriate chores, so I am not saying they should be coddled, I’m just saying that if it’s extreme, they may be overdoing it.

This kid is a people pleaser. He’s pleasing to be liked. He wants that approval. Whether he’s being cute, helpful, smart, or a good listener, he learned to put mom or dad’s needs first. He learned that his needs don’t matter. And if he wants to survive, he’s going to have to keep doing this. So, he becomes a rescuer.

Another way that this can develop is if the parent is critical and judgmental. So, let’s say that all the child’s needs are met. They are clothed, fed, and snuggled, but the parent is perfectionistic and let’s the child know when things are not perfect. You know, kids have a hard time with simple things like tying their shoes and coloring within the lines. They are not that coordinated yet and everything is brand new. So, they are going to make mistakes. And if mistakes are not permissible, it creates a lot of anxiety. 

So this kid may appear as perfectionistic, high achieving, or may not try at all. Either way, it’s a response to the criticism. In one manifestation, it’s as if the child is saying, “I WILL please you” and in the other the child has given up and said, “I can’t please you.”

It may not show on the outside, but on the inside they are berating themselves and feeling rejected and unloved because they are not good enough. And they want love. They want to give love, but they are too afraid of rejection to be vulnerable enough to receive it. So, they may put up a wall and reject you before you can reject them. Or maybe they are just cold and don’t seem to want or need a lot of company or affection.

No! Belonging and affection are HUMAN NEEDS! We’re not defective for wanting to be seen and to belong. We all need that for healthy development and  a sense of purpose and fulfillment. But this person is so convinced that it’s just their personality that they aren’t even searching for it anymore.

When I hear of a child referred to as an “old soul,” that’s a huge red flag that the child hasn’t had a childhood and has had to care for the parent’s emotional, and sometimes physical, needs. Kids don’t want to hang out with adults if other kids are available. They don’t want to hear about mom’s emotional troubles and soothe her worries. They’d much rather play outside with other kids than to sit alone quietly underneath dad’s desk while dad is working. That’s not their personality. This is learned behavior. This kid has learned that they can’t have what they want and they’d better behave in this way or risk being abandoned or disapproved of.

I want to spend a few minutes on what is called “emotional incest” because this would also fit here. Emotional incest is when a parent and child are closer than they should be. The child hears adult concerns and about adult themes and is forced to play the role of intimate confidant. They may hear negative things about they other parent, dating stories, financial worries, or even sex stories. So the child is more like a lover than a child. And the parent justifies it because they say the child is “mature” and an “old soul.” This is a gigantic boundary violation that is traumatizing for a child. Your child is not your best friend. I’ve had many clients with this issue, and because they feel special and loved from having all that attention, it can feel like betrayal to say no and set a boundary. For many, it doesn’t even occur to them because that has just been their lives and they don’t know any different.

Another way that this can happen is if mom is overwhelmed with something when the kids are little, so maybe there are a lot of children and some of them get lost in the shuffle and don’t get the attention that they need. Or maybe it’s a single parent household and there isn’t time after work, getting dinner on the table, and trying to keep the house clean for individual attention. 

Maybe the parents are sick - either mentally or physically - and can’t give the child attention. This child may be the parent’s caregiver or just left alone to fend for himself. Either way, they are emotionally and physically neglected.

Another way that this hunger can happen is if the parent is inconsistent. So, one day the parent is generous with presents, attention, and hugs. You go out shopping, have a lot of fun, and everything feels wonderful, and the next day, dad’s in bed wanting to be left alone and complaining that everyone is so loud. Or maybe mom is storming through the house yelling and throwing things out the window. And the kids are just trying not to get hit. Or it could be that resources are inconsistent. You have a warm, clean home for a while, and then you’re couch surfing. You have a trendy clothes and get to go on field trips for a while, and then you’re shopping at thrift stores and eating hotdogs and beans. Life is what is it, but inconsistency can make kids feel threatened. The things we experience as children teach us whether we are lovable or not, and whether we can feel safe or not. Inconsistency is not safe.

Death, divorce, or abandonment can set up insecure attachment as well. This is definitely about the fear of abandonment and in the case of all of these things, there is a literal abandonment. When you’re little and your caretakers just leaves - even if it is unavoidable, unplanned, and with a really good reason, the emotional impact on the child is the same. I don’t say this to guilt trip anyone into staying in an abusive relationship. I say this because it’s true. Everything has consequences, and that is sometimes one of the consequences of divorce or abandonment.

Another less common way that insecure attachment starts is from parents who are emotionally cold. I’ve had lots of clients who have said that their parents were fine. They provided them with everything they needed. They had opportunities, the right clothes, and things that you’d expect to have as a child, but their parents just kind of ignored them. Maybe they weren’t people people. They were cold, awkward, or whatever, and just didn’t give the child physical warmth, smiles, hugs, or validation. If they did give support, it felt more obligatory than heart felt. 

This is devastating to a child. It can feel like they are raised by wolves or robots. It’s hard to develop community, trust, and comfort in that type of environment. You know we all think that our parents are the ones who are supposed to love us most of all. Whether that’s a fair ask or not, it’s just archetypally , hard wired into us.

When we read a fairy tale where the mom does something to harm the child, it absolutely has to be a step mother because no true mother would do such a thing. The Mother archetype is just too strongly hardwired into our psyche to violate that. And the Father is the good man who brings home firewood, food, and protects us from wolves and demons. If he is not that, there must be something wrong with us. That’s how children think.

We can only give what we have. If you’re parents didn’t have it, don’t blame them. If you’re an adult, that’s not your stuff to carry. Maybe they heal and maybe they don’t, but they don’t have to heal for you to. 

Everyone comes into this world innocent, then something happens to destroy the illusion that the world is safe and love filled. And that thing sets up the wound that ends up being the thing that will either make us or break us. For example, most of you know of Chiron from Greek mythology, right? The wounded healer?

Well, Chiron was a centaur, which is half man and half horse. This Titan, Chronus, saw a beautiful nymph that he wanted to rape - I know. Greek mythology is full of stories about gods raping women. It’s disgusting. Anyway, he turned himself into a horse, ran her down, raped her, and impregnated her. He then was never seen again. Nine months later, she has this half-horse, half man baby and is so appalled that she abandons me.

Chiron is days old and is abandoned by both is parents. How horrible is that? Well, he’s in luck because the sun God, Apollo, takes a shine to him and adopts him and raises him as his own. Apollo gives me many gifts and teaches him many things. Chiron grows up to be famous in the arts of warfare, medicine, and music. He was the teacher to many of the famous Greek heroes including Achilles, Asclepius, and Jason. 

Anyway, one day some centaurs were causing trouble with their wild, beastly ways. Hercules was trying to fend them off by shooting them with poison arrows. One of the arrows went astray and grazed Chiron in the thigh. Since he was immortal, he could not die and had to live with the agonizing pain daily. As an act of mercy, the gods allow Chiron to die and place him in the sky forever as the constellation, Centaurus. 

Now a lot of people think that Chiron’s wound came from the poison arrow, but it wasn’t. It was his childhood wound of abandonment and rejection. He had to overcome that shame, and the fact that he was a centaur - because all other centaurs were drunk, rowdy, trouble causing beasts. Apollo’s love, favor, teaching, and gifts would have meant nothing if Chiron held on to his childhood wound. Chiron had to learn to separate himself from his story so he could be who he is. 

Are you starting to see now why “love addiction” is such an inappropriate term for what I’m talking about? What I am talking about is the effect of parental neglect of a child’s emotional needs. No blame. It is what it is, and they can’t give what they didn’t have, and clearly they didn’t have it. Just saying that you can’t be addicted to something that you need for survival. Nobody gets addicted to air. We all need air. You can’t get addicted to shelter. We all need shelter. And love is an emotional need.

To call this “love addiction” sounds to me as if wanting love is wrong. It’s not wrong. It’s human. And the love is a part of the puzzle, but this is really about identity. Who is being loved? Who is belonging? It’s me! 

We all need to belong, to feel worthy of love, and to stand up and say, “I am here! I matter” and to have that statement received and acknowledged by another human being who sees your worth regardless of your story. THAT”S what was missing in people who are people pleasers and are always seeking someone to save or for someone to save them.

Now, let me switch to astrology for a moment, remember Chiron is a constellation, right? Well, Chiron is in Aries. Chiron is the energy of the wounded healer. Aries is the energy of “I am. I exist.” So, now is the perfect time to heal that original wound. It’s the thing that is in shadow, the thing you hide even from yourself, so if you want to heal it, you’re going to have to get honest. Ask your unconscious or your body because your head doesn’t know, I promise you that.

But you’re going to have to do this yourself. You can’t blame your parents, or wait for someone to save you, if you want out of this cycle. Lots of people have gone the “Save me” route before our generation and that’s why we have so many parents who didn’t have what they needed to give to their kids. It’s an epidemic. 

Let me get more specific. If you are searching for money, a beautiful spouse, a title, an achievement, a spouse, or something like that to save you and give you an identity thinking that that will take the hole inside away, it won’t. You have to accept yourself with all your warts and stand up and say, “I am” before you can really accept someone else’s love because you will feel like a fraud until you do. You have to do this for yourself before you can feel the love inside of you and feel nourished by it. And that is an act of growing up. People will tell you growing up is about learning how to make money and pay your own way. That’s the outside stuff. The inside has to grow up, too.

We all have to grow up. It’s just a natural part of life. Our parents tell us what they believe and what they want for us, and then we have to decide whether or not that is what we want for ourselves. The world will tell you who you are. You have to decide whether or not that’s true. 

And if you have an attachment issue, I can tell you that you’re living someone else’s script because you’re a slave to acceptance and approval. Unless and until you have done something hard to prove to yourself who you are, that you are lovable and you can love yourself, there is no one in the world with enough love to fill you. 

You have to love yourself first. That was Chiron’s task. To know and love himself despite the experience that those who were supposed to love him most didn’t. There is no “getting over” the story of his conception or being abandoned by his mother because she thought he was hideous. But Chiron could find beauty in his imperfections and then give this compassion to others. When we can do this, everyone becomes lovable and love is everywhere. That’s the thing to realize. Love was never in short supply. You don’t have to chase it or hoard it. When it’s in you, it’s everywhere and endless.

And everyone is flawed and perfectly okay just as we are. If Chiron’s mom didn’t know that about herself, how could she be expected to see it in him? It’s not her fault. It’s not his fault. It just is. So, don’t give your parents or lover more power than you have. They don’t have the right to decide who you are or what you’re worth. YOU have to decide that. Then you tell the world through the way you show up. 

Everybody has the same task. We all have to figure out who we are and find the love inside. If your parents were stable, loving, warm, had great boundaries, and provided well for you, it’s going to be easier, but it’s still not a piece of cake. Remember I said you have to do something hard to prove it to yourself. There is a podcast in season one where I talk about the call to adventure. This is what I’m talking about. 

We get this invitation to find ourselves and if we don’t take it, we stay stuck in smallness and sadness. Every Hollywood blockbuster follows this storyline formula of starting in a place that is normal for us, so it may not be great, but it is what we know. Then something happens. The road diverges and we have to pick a path. It might be a gigantic thing like someone dies or there is a natural disaster, or it could be a tiny thing that we didn’t notice the significance of until later, but we have to choose which way to go.

If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, that moment for Sansa could be when she chose to stay in King’s Landing rather than go to the Hound. If you’re a Hobbit fan, it was when Bilbo decided to go with the dwarves. If you are a What’s Eating Gilbert Grape fan, it was when Arnie and Gilbert joined the RV caravan. It’s the moment you either leave everything familiar behind or you stay.

You don’t know what is going to happen. You have no guarantee that you will survive. You can’t go back, and yet you do it anyway. That sets you on an adventure where you have to prove yourself to yourself. And if you do that, you will claim your identity and know that you are love. This adventure ALWAYS includes facing your innermost fears. You have to conquer those fears to claim that identity. So, it’s not just about leaving home and establishing your own household and family. 

We don’t have a warrior culture and we don’t know what it is to be a warrior, so most of us don’t do that. It’s too frightening.

So, to put a sacred wheel spin on this, let’s go back to the Yin and the Yang symbol. If I have too much Yin and I keep feeding it, it will turn into Yang and balance it out. Excess Yin leads to Yang. Same is true of excess Yang. So one way to heal what ails you is to move into it. Embrace it. Accept it. Avoidance just kicks the can down the road and you never figure out that the demon you are running from is you. You’ve got to get to know that beast and tame it.

What could Chiron do about his conception? Nothing. He had no power there. What could he do about his mother’s shame of him? Nothing. He couldn’t run from that or change it. But he could embrace it and make it a part of his story. You see, we all need a problem or a foe to have a great triumph. When the handsome prince slays the dragon, he becomes a Hero. He couldn’t do that if the dragon weren’t threatening the village or the princess. 

We all have to be the Hero of our own lives. It’s what we’re here for. The way that you coped as a child isn’t working now. It’s keeping you trapped in that childhood fear and that place of want. If you want to get out, you have to do something different. You have to prove yourself to yourself and become the hero of your own life. So, don’t wait for someone else to change. Don’t wait for prince or princess charming to come save you. Save yourself.

So, is love addiction a thing? No. It’s not an addiction to yearn for love. Love is a birthright. We all need love to live, but I wouldn’t confuse sex with love. I wouldn’t let others treat you any kind of way to get their attention because that’s not love. You have to love yourself first, have good boundaries, and let them know that you are worthy of respect. We respect what we love, right? 

The original name for this phenomenon is attachment disorder. I think that works a lot better because that’s what it describes. When you were little, you didn’t form a healthy attachment to people because your caregiver didn’t give you what you needed. So you didn’t feel safe, didn’t learn that you were lovable, and didn’t learn to love in healthy ways. 

You’re not ruined for life. All of those things can be learned now. It starts with a safe place. This is going to be really hard to do if you don’t have a safe place and healthy people around you to learn from. If you live in a home where there is screaming, accusations, control issues, and boundary violations, you will be too focused on survival to do any healing. Those are two different stages and you can’t do both at once. Survival is always primary.

And you can’t do it effectively if you are surrounded by people who are just as lost as you because it’s the blind leading the blind. If nobody has the skills, how will you learn them? So, if you want a safe place where you will be seen and accepted as you are, head on over to my private online group. There are two sections. The free community is for earthlings who want to live in a loving, balanced, connected relationships.  We hang out, talk, and get to know other people.

It is a place where you can learn to see and enjoy people for being just who they are. It’s also a place where you are welcome to do the same.

Then there is the Academy, which is a paid site where you can help yourself get out of survival mode, if that’s where you are, then learn how to cope, then be yourself, then move into a place where you can have healthy relationships with others, then learn how to vibe with the whole universe. The link is in the show notes. You’re welcome to come on over.

So, I’ve referenced many past podcasts in this one. If you started with one and didn’t see how it fit within the sacred wheel or your life, now maybe you do. Everything is connected. It creates a road map that can give you the confidence to keep going. 

When I’ve heard people talk about “love addiction” what I see is a person who wasn’t well nurtured as a child. They cried and were ignored. What they need is safety and acknowledgement. They need to be seen as a person. When two people feel safe enough to really see each other, love flows naturally. It’s within us all the time. We just have to stop withholding it. This is about survival, not some pathology. 

It reminds me of story I’ve shared before, but I’ll tell the short version again. When I was about in maybe second or third grade, my family was out for a walk by the river on Easter and my brother fell in or went in. He cried out, and I went in after him. I grabbed his hand, but couldn’t drag him in. I yelled at him, “Stand up!” and he did. And we both walked out together. 

He could have easily saved himself. It wasn’t deep. He just wasn’t on his feet and he was panicking. That’s what it is like for someone with attachment disorder. They are yelling for someone to save them when all they have to do is stand up. So, stand up. I know it feels unsafe, but feeling unsafe isn’t the same as being unsafe. You’re safe now. Stand up. Feel the love inside that is you.

When you have love in your heart, you don’t have to chase it or hoard it. It’s impossible to be addicted to it because you know there is plenty. And love doesn’t look like endless compliments, agreement, sex, or all attention all the time. It’s warm, calm, full, and sweet regardless of what is going on outside of yourself. Yeah, there is nothing wrong with you for wanting that. I wouldn’t pathologize wanting love or validation, but we can have ineffective and hurtful ways of getting it.

So to recap, the first step is to cultivate safety, that’s surviving. Second step is to train for the journey ahead, that’s coping. The third step is to find yourself, that’s Vibing. After that you are ready for loving others because you aren’t needing them to fill you up. That’s tribing. And after you can feel the love inside of you and genuinely connect to people, you can extend that out to other earthlings and have a spiritual connection, that’s thriving. That’s what we do here at Surviving to Thriving.

Thank you all for being here. I’m Laura Giles. See you next week.