Love is a beautiful feeling and gesture that we all desire to have in our lives. What about when it becomes an obsession and gets out of control. Today, we’ll discuss what is love addiction; its symptoms, causes, diagnosis, and treatment.
What is Love Addiction?
Love addiction is when a person becomes obsessive and fixates unhealthily with loving interests. Loving affection is a beautiful emotion that we all want to experience in our lifetime. In fact, we all strive to fall in love and be loved by someone. The manifestation of love could be in unhealthy ways like acting in an irrational and strange way that is harmful to themselves and their lover as well.
Loving obsession makes it difficult for a person to develop healthy relationships and maintain them over time. Usually, it’s common among romantic relationships, but the addictions could happen in any type of relationships like parents, children, friendship, or even strangers.
Loving obsession makes a person have unrealistic expectations and standards of love. When their expectations and standards don’t come true, then it aggravates the conditions. However, some people argue that love addiction shouldn’t fall under the category of mental health conditions. The others say that its symptoms are real.
It’s the unhealthy fixation of mind towards your partner and wants to keep them under your control. Just like any other form of obsession and addiction, the person would exhibit uncontrollable behavioral impulses. The addictive person could unlearn the unhealthy behavioral pattern with proper treatment and care plan. It would allow them to realize their attitude unhealthy and develop healthy connections and relationships.
Symptoms of Love Addiction
The symptoms of love addiction are different for different people. The most common symptoms of love addiction are stalking, frequent calling, obsessive compulsion, and unhealthy fixation. However, some of the main symptoms are as follows;
- Uprooted and lost feeling when you don’t have a lover
- Overly relying on your partner
- The relationship you have with your lover, prioritizing it on all of your personal relationships. In fact, you avoid your personal relationships with family and friends while being your partner.
- Obsession and depression when your lover doesn’t respond to your romantic interests
- Desiring to have a relationship with your partner when your partner doesn’t show interest in you
- Disappointed feelings when you don’t have a relationship with your lover
- Difficult to leave the unhealthy and toxic relationship
- Poor decisions based on your emotions towards your partner like cutting family ties, quitting the job, etc
- Obsessive thinking about your lover that disturbs your routine life functions
There could be a lot of other symptoms that we haven’t mentioned above. It’s because every loving obsession condition is different and people express their emotions differently. The severity of symptoms varies from mild to high. For instance, frequent calling may seem harmless, but restricting the lover’s movement, stalking, and controlling are harmful and dangerous symptoms.
Causes of Love Addiction
Many research studies were conducted to explain the trigger points and causes of the loving addictive condition. Recent studies have shown that genetics and the traumatic event could develop and trigger the condition. The pleasure feelings that you get when you’re addicted to alcohol and substance abuse, or when you’re in love; studies have shown the connection between both of them.
Researchers have developed a connection between substance abuse and being in love. People experience emotional reliance in both conditions like losing self-control, obsession, compulsion, mood swings, and craving. However, when you fall in love, dopamine is the chemical that your brain releases and that makes you feel good. Your brain releases the same chemical when you’re on substance abuse. Some of the main trigger points of love addiction are as follows;
- Childhood traumatic experience and living in it
- Experience of a traumatic relationship
- Emotional and sexual abusive past experience
- Low self-esteem issues
- Have gone through abandonment issues previously
Diagnosis of Love Addiction
Many psychologists and professionals are debating over the fact of whether love addiction is a mental health condition or not. It’s trickier to diagnose the love addiction than any other mental health condition. However, if a person experiences the symptoms of love addiction, then one should consult the therapist. The psychologist would ask your series of questions to determine whether it is nor not.
Researchers have developed “the love addiction inventory” framework for the diagnosis of loving addiction. The inventory consists of a lot of questions to evaluate the condition.
Treatment of Love Addiction
The treatment of love addiction is tricky and difficult because it doesn’t really under the category of mental health conditions. Therapists perform the diagnosis and treatment under trust and discretion. You have to approach loving addiction differently than any other type of addiction.
Psychologists usually prescribe mood stabilizers and antidepressants to treat the symptoms of obsession and depression in the loving addiction.
How to Deal with Love Addiction
The most difficult step is realizing the fact that you have an addictive problem. Usually, people don’t share their obsessive emotions with anyone or accept the fact that they have loving addiction. In order to deal with it, some of the following things that you should keep in mind are as follows;
Learn to be Alone
If you don’t have a lover or partner during diagnosis, then you should exploit this opportunity and learn to be alone. You should learn the trigger points of obsession, and make some improvements in your treatment before getting involved in any type of relationship.
Identify the Pattern
The addict would show the repetitive pattern of behavioral symptoms of love interests. You should analyze your previous relationship and try to see the pattern of your behavior.
Invest in Yourself
Your focus should be on yourself in terms of self-growth and loving yourself. The loving addicts usually don’t take care of themselves and their personal needs.
Depend on Friends & Family Members
You should share your obsessive thoughts and emotions with your friends and family members, and they would help you to process them.
Support Group
You don’t have to experience the whole condition alone. You should join the support network in your area or online that has gone through this experience. Talking with them would allow you tips and suggestions to deal with the challenges that you’re going through.
Conclusion: What is Love Addiction? Symptoms, Causes, Treatment
After an in-depth study of what is love addiction; its symptoms, causes, diagnosis, treatment, and how to deal with it; we’ve realized that love addiction is a serious condition. If you or any of your acquaintances are exhibiting symptoms, then you should follow the above-mentioned suggestions.
Ahsan is an accomplished researcher and has a deep insight in worldly life affairs. He goes Live 3 days a week on various social media platforms. Other than research writing, he’s a very interesting person.
