There is a distinction between sex addiction and love addiction. Then there is a combination of the two, referred to as sex and love addiction; a person who experiences both addictions is called a sex and love addict. This section will explore love addiction and compare it to sex addiction. A typical story about love addiction will also be included. The discussion concludes with resources for addressing love addiction: books, a 12-step program and specialized therapy.
Love addiction can be described as an addiction to “the five A’s”—attention, acceptance, affection, approval, and appreciation—derived from love relationships in which the love addict seeks a sense of control and avoids permanent or total commitments. The typical love addict not only receives “the five A’s” from love partners but to some extent seeks them unconsciously in their other relationships and in their interactions in general. In terms of romantic relationships, some love addicts thrive on the initial euphoria stage of new love relationships, while others form a committed relationship like marriage, but secretly have affairs that provide additional security. In these circumstances the addict can seemingly eliminate the unpleasantness associated with the normal relationship process and replace it with what seems like an ideal state. This is accomplished by leaving when initial euphoria fades into conflict (and finding someone else with whom to fall in love and thus renew the euphoria) or by having a “second partner” to idealize, to yearn for, and to whom to run as a refuge or comforter in order to avoid facing life’s ups and downs with one primary life partner. Love addiction has to do with an addictive pattern of establishing love relationships with specific people, in which the person and the relationship, time spent together, activities shared, and a focus on meeting the addict’s needs, as well as sex with the person, are all part of the appeal to the addict. While some of these same elements are normal in a healthy love relationship, love addicts can never find lasting fulfillment in any of the love relationships they form. In some cases the love addict has a series of seemingly committed relationships that may last for a few months or a year or more but ultimately end when the initial “love high” has run its course. The anxiety of being without a love partner, a provider of unconditional acceptance and validation, drives the addict into another intense relationship as quickly as possible. Or finding another partner may be the way the current relationship is terminated. This relationship style is standard among Hollywood stars who are accustomed to constant attention and constant stress.
Another type of sex and love addict, usually single, may have several love relationships with different people going on at the same time. Part of the high is the powerful feeling of being the preferred or exclusive love object of several people. Adrenaline rushes also keep the addict “up,” supplied by all the drama and risk involved in trying to keep the relationships hidden from each other. With this kind of arrangement the love addict never has to worry about being out of a relationship and can take his or her time in finding a replacement when one of the relationships gets too demanding or otherwise “crashes.” A frequent form of love addiction is when the addict is in a marriage or other visible, supposedly exclusive relationship that is not terminated but is in competition with another secret relationship. The hidden relationship can exist simultaneously, paralleling the visible relationship for many years, or it may be an “off and on” affair over the years due to geographic moves, or during periods when the primary partner is suspicious, or due to maneuvers the addict uses to keep the secret partner from getting too close or gaining too much control. In some cases the spouse or primary partner may learn about the affair but be unable to leave, and either continually obsesses about the other partner and whether they are as important as the other person or finally acquiesces to the arrangement with rationales such as, “I don’t like it but that’s just the way he is,” or “I have to stay for the children.” An underlying dynamic for the love addict in a long-term marriage and affair situation is unconsciously seeking fulfillment of different sets of unresolved needs from the two people. The visible partner usually represents a parental figure, who provides stability, structure and physical caretaking, much as a parent does for a child, while the addict relates to the other partner as if the person is a steady date with whom the addict has fallen in love. Married love addicts will even refer to the affair partner as “my girlfriend” or “my boyfriend.” The love addict's behavior in this kind of situation mirrors adolescence when the teenager spends as much time as possible with the girlfriend or boyfriend but comes home to mom and dad who provide the meals, the stability and even the inducement to do the chores. The love addict’s drive and focus is on what addictive love relationships can provide for the addict; he or she is limited in being able to reciprocate. That is to say that the addict’s giving can be unconsciously designed to illicit a response that meets the addict’s needs. The affirmation gained from others provides a sense of self that is lacking without external validation. This does not mean that the love addict intends to be selfish or is a conniving person. Such people are trying, at a level of which they are usually unaware, to make up for esteem and autonomy deficits that resulted from a lack of sufficient validation, love, and support as a child. The underlying issues for the love addict — insecurity and self doubt — often cause the addict to seek some of “the five A’s” in other areas of their lives besides their romantic relationships. Thus they can seek approval and acknowledgment through high achievement that began in school and continues in the work place. Or they can seek attention by being clever, wise or comic. Or they can unconsciously manipulate some of their friendships or other relationships so that the other person is motivated to validate the love addict and concede to his or her needs. Dynamics in the love addict's family, as illustrated in preceding references, are sometimes set up so that there is a subtle emphasis on the love addict’s needs; the “spotlight” is on the love addict, with the marriage partner sometimes in a deferential or subservient role. And the love addict’s parenting may be seriously lacking or subtly operating in such a way that one or more of the children revere the love addict and prefer this parent over the other. Note that the partners in preceding examples tend to be “addicted” to the love addict, similar to the way the love addict is addicted to the unconditional regard. The “official” partner may be frustrated over the years by the neglect and withdrawal and sense of being used but may also be powerless to leave, even when knowing directly or intuitively that there is another love partner. The secret partner almost always knows there is an “official” partner and feels agonized and powerless over the frequent and long absences when the addict “has to be with…her or him or the family,” but this person too is unable to leave. Click here for more information about partners of sex addicts. The issues for partners of sex addicts and partners of love addicts are similar. Sex addiction, by contrast to love addiction, usually is a preoccupation with sexual arousal and sexual release which often has little to do with who sex partners are, other than that they have desirable physical qualities, and requires no relationship. In fact, the sex addict often turns to solitary sexual activity involving no live partner (such as maturbation). On the contrary, to the sex addict, what counts is the charge he or she gets from the sexual rituals themselves and the images seen on a screen or in print or imagined in fantasy. These images provide the euphoria, whether it's an attractive stranger spotted on the street, models in seductive ads, an actor in a regular movie sex scene, or actors performing sex in a pornographic video. Or an on-line chat partner, or stimulating body parts Googled on the internet, or just the addict’s own fantasy of limitless variations of real or imaginary people and sex acts. Unlike the love addict, whose highs depend on specific people who are love objects and have little or even nothing to do with sex per se, the sex addict usually goes to great lengths to avoid any real relationship when pursuing the sexual high, in order to keep the focus on the sex itself, on which the sex addict’s high depends. Even when the married sex addict is having sex with a regular sex partner, it is common for the addict’s mind to be not on the partner but on material in the addict’s fantasy. Then there are some people who exhibit the characteristics of both a sex addict and a love addict. The addictive love/approval impulse prompts the dually addicted person to establish intense love relationships with particular love partners, and then respond to an addictive need for sex as a type of medication when the love relationship is not meeting the addict’s deep needs. A person with this addictive combination will enjoy the falling-in-love highs and can sometimes be content with the frequent sex that accompanies a new relationship, but sooner or later will pursue “extra” sex by developing secret sexual rituals (secretly masturbating while viewing Internet pornography or having virtual sex on-line, for example). There are times for this individual when the love addiction is the operant force and others when the sex addiction prevails, and times when both are operating. |
