The Emotional Cycles of the Love Addict / Love Avoidant

Relationships between Love Addicts and Love Avoidants typically involve intensity, obsession, and compulsion which both parties use to avoid intimacy. The origins of this behavior is often rooted in less than nurturing or traumatic childhood experiences that may be traced back to a relationship with a parent. An addiction to love may not seem possible or dangerous, but it is a serious mental and emotional affliction that interferes with a person’s ability to establish healthy, genuine relationships.

Love Addicts use romantic relationships or pursue the rush to fall in love as a means of escaping reality or pain to numb, dissociate, or not feel. It is mistaking sexual or romantic intensity for long lasting love. They spend a disproportionate amount of time, attention, and value above themselves to the person they are addicted, and this focus has an obsessive quality. They may neglect to care for or value themselves while they’re in the relationship. They have unrealistic expectations for unconditional positive regard from the other person in the relationship. They are terrified of being abandoned and will do anything to prevent it.

Love Avoidants may feel afraid to love or be loved. It may be difficult to be intimate with other people, being terrified of re-experiencing some of the same pain and emotional traumas in their lives. They take great measures to remain emotionally detached from others. Love Avoidants may not actively avoid love itself. They do form relationships, but they are unable to allow themselves to be vulnerable with their partners. Often they are not aware or conscious of this behavior. They may feel overwhelmed by a partner’s emotional needs and find themselves turning to things like work, substances, pornography, or infidelity to detached from them.

If you identify with these characteristics, call me to discover a positive process for recovery and health in relationships.