Are you a love addict? Or are you emotionally unavailable? Love addicts give a disproportionate amount of time, attention, and value to the person to whom they are addicted. This value is above the value they place on themselves. The focus often has an obsessive element about it.
Love addicts have an unrealistic expectation for unconditional positive regard from their partners in the relationship.
Love addicts do not care for, value, and can even neglect themselves while they are in the relationship.
Love addicts will tolerate almost anything to avoid being left or abandoned. This fear comes from childhood experiences. Although they want to be intimate with their partners it is more like enmeshment than healthy intimacy. This is normally felt on an unconscious level.
Love addicts and those who are emotionally unavailable addicts are attracted to each other. Both have fears of abandonment. That is the common thread. Those who are emotionally unavailable go a step beyond, and fear control, enmeshment or loss of self. Those who are emotionally unavailable avoid intimacy and are hypersensitive to any feeling of being controlled or clung to. The love addict seeks enmeshment and is hypersensitive to any sense of abandonment.
Why are emotionally unavailable people and love addicts attracted to each other? The initial attraction occurs because of what feels familiar". What is familiar comes from things that were experienced during childhood. These issues DO NOT occur because of being in a bad relationship" prior to meeting you. These experiences are painful and very familiar, even if you do not consciously recognize it as such. Please remember that these childhood issues don't necessarily constitute abuse. They may also be in the form of an emotionally unavailable parent.
Love addicts and those who are emotionally unavailable are like magnets: they are attracted to those with the opposite issues. Just like perpetrator and victim. Just like sugar and warm water. Just like grass and soil. They are mirrors to the issues inside ourselves that we must heal to attract health relationships.
Neither of these types are usually attracted to non-addicted" people. When these types meet the non-addicted person, the response is normally a reaction similar to but they're sooo boring", theres just no chemistry", they just too set in their ways" or independent, we have nothing in common".
The other factors that contribute to the attraction, besides familiarity, is that love addicts are attracted to situations that hold hope that childhood wounds can be healed, and the fantasy that this relationship will be a fulfillment of the things that were not fulfilled within childhood.
Although this is a complex situation with much more to be said, the bottom line is that if we have found ourselves in one of these relationships, its time to stop the cycle, seek the help we need from a trained counselor, and not repeat the painful experience. If we choose to continue to give our power away to others, we find that the universe dresses up the perpetrator in a new and different outfit, making it appear to be an entirely different situation, and brings them right back into our lives again.
Dont go it alone. There is help available to take back your power! Find a good counselor. You won't be sorry!
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