Love addiction. How to get rid of love addiction.

In this article I will talk about love addiction. What is it based on? And how does it differ from healthy attachment?

I’ll tell you what scenarios are used to build dependent relationships, including relationships with “love predators.” Who and why can consciously provoke us to become dependent on them.

How does a love addict experience “withdrawal” when he decides to break up with the partner who is the object of his addiction, or when he moves away.

And most importantly, I’ll tell you how to get rid of love addiction if you get into it. And learn to build a healthy relationship with a man, based not on dependence and suffering, but on healthy affection.

Love or Addiction

Love addiction is characterized by an insatiable need for love, exorbitant demands on a partner, as well as pathological jealousy, and there are also other signs.

• healthy love relationships presuppose the presence of personal space, their own interests, their own circle of friends for each of the partners who treat each other with understanding and respect;
• with love addiction, the feelings of men or women are really intense, but the nature of their occurrence is not in the desire to know each other, but rather in despair. A person, left alone, no longer perceives himself as an integral person, feels dependent on his partner, and there is no emotional comfort. The addict is tormented by disorientation; there is no reason to live. These are signs of a destructive condition.

The key problem of building a relationship with an addicted person is degradation, as well as the lack of personal growth of both partners. What, according to dependent women or men, is love is actually a destructive, frozen relationship where there is no real intimacy, the illusion of love is not paramount, and the addict’s partner only provides him with confidence and calm.

How to get out of a painful relationship?3

Sometimes this is not very easy to do. Even if a person realizes that his relationship with his partner has long since cracked, he is afraid to break up. Such fear arises because a person does not want to be alone. But it’s even worse when, after a breakup, one of the partners avoids the relationship in the future only because of the fear of being in this situation again.

Often victims of painful relationships turn a blind eye to boorish behavior on the part of their partner, put up with unacceptable conditions and lose themselves in it all.

In order to get out of a painful relationship, you need to work on your self-esteem. After all, most often this is where the problem lies. To do this, you need to not allow yourself to be treated without respect and without taking into account your interests, to exclude rudeness and rudeness in any form.

If you can’t stop this, you need to part with such a person, quite possibly for some time.

In order not to be burdened by thoughts about the correctness of the decision, you need to fill your soul with new impressions. It is quite possible that the relationship with this person will return, but will be built in a completely different way. They will be based on mutual respect and consideration of each other's interests.

If a relationship does not bring joy and there are signs of pain in it, it is better to figure it out immediately, without delaying it for later. The longer such a relationship lasts, the greater the habit and ingrained feeling of guilt for everything that the partner does not like.

First of all, you need to love yourself and raise your self-esteem, get rid of the instilled feeling of guilt. Only in this way can you regain respect for yourself as an individual.

The social essence of love addiction

Since the end of the 20th century, a belief has taken root among psychiatrists about the dangers of romantic TV series, romance novels, as well as other products of pop culture, which carry the message of romantic-drug relationships.

Literary sources often glorify that love, which is precisely an example of addiction. An example is the relationship between Vronsky and Anna Karenina, Carmen and Jose, Laura and Petrarch, Romeo and Juliet, where the authors show us the complexity of supposedly true love with humiliation or numerous obstacles, anxiety, suffering, and lack of prospects.

A similar message is conveyed by most love songs or TV series, where the main characters suffer from infidelity, betrayal, overcome almost insurmountable obstacles, and as a result extol love addiction as soon as they get what they want. Since childhood, people see only these examples, forming a stereotype about suffering, unhappy true love.

Because the disorder is not widely known among women or men, addicts very rarely seek psychological help. Prevention involves informing the population about the differences between addiction and true love

How to get rid of attachment?

Time does not heal such psychological dependence. A person attached to anyone does not perceive life adequately and acts irrationally. If the addiction arose due to a love relationship, then getting rid of it is not so easy. This is explained by the fact that love is a strong experience, “the highest pleasure.” This is why difficulties arise. A person subconsciously does not want to give up this feeling. And who would refuse? Especially if the relationship ended recently, the memories are fresh, and the loss is unusual.

How to get rid of neurotic attachment? The algorithm is like this:

Focus on current events. As soon as an attraction to the object of addiction arises, at the same moment turn your thoughts and attention to what is happening at the present time. Enjoying life here and now is the most important thing for achieving harmony with the world and your own self. The skill of switching attention to the current moment of life will eliminate most problems. At the moment of digging through your memory, you are living in a past that no longer exists. Calculating what will happen in 10 years - in the future, which does not yet exist. This is fantasy and... Real life is happening right now, at this very moment. After thinking about the object of emotional attraction, answer the question: “What do I want?” It happens that we interpret it incorrectly. If you are honest with yourself, the answer will be: “I feel an inner, emotional emptiness. I need to fill it out. Apart from attraction and dependence, I have nothing to fill the void with.” This is proof that the person to whom there is an inexplicable attraction does not need you as a person. It is advisable to find something to fill the inner emptiness and apathy. These are things that help personal growth: books, a new business, a passion, a hobby. Do what brings you joy. Once you fill the void and eliminate boredom, the attachment to the person will decrease or disappear forever.

Everything seems simple, but it was not so! Attachment is an insidious feeling. Often we don’t want to get rid of it at all, but living like this becomes unbearable. What to do?

Forms of love addiction

Among men and women, love addiction can take the following forms:

1. The addict tries to replace his emotional territory with the environment of his partner in order to maintain affection, which leads to a lack of his own individuality. Masochistic tendencies often occur.
2. The addict takes over the psychological territory of the partner along with his personality. There is over-control, causeless jealousy, and a dependent person creates the illusion of ideal care.
3. The addict aggressively destroys the emotional territory of the partner. There may be tendencies towards sadism, the individuality of the partner is completely suppressed.

Causes

First of all, it is worth mentioning the psychological risk group, which includes people susceptible to love addiction. Such men or women are characterized by a fear of abandonment, being left alone, a reluctance to make decisions on their own, as well as excessive sensitivity to criticism. There is a lack of self-confidence, a tendency to concentrate on shortcomings or downplay one’s own merits.

There is a high probability of another addiction - nicotine, food, drugs or alcohol.

Among other reasons, it is worth noting the following:

• low self-esteem among women or men forces one to plunge into dependence and thereby restore spiritual emptiness;
• dissatisfaction with your own life can provoke a desire to escape from reality, which becomes the cause of addiction. According to the addict, the voids in one’s own life can only be filled through interaction with a partner;
• unloved inner child. This reason may be due to an insufficient amount of positive emotions in childhood, the child was not given enough tenderness, care, love, therefore, as an adult, he strives to get all this through addiction;
• the internal conflict between feelings and reason is caused by the desire to receive positive emotions on the one hand and the desire to prohibit them on the other.

How to get rid of attachment to a man: ways

Personality development

A confident woman is not only distinguished by her success. She is generally not inclined to become very attached to anyone, much less to a man. A man is designed in such a way that he is interested in setting a goal and striving to achieve it. He feels the need to woo his chosen one, to gradually win her over. Otherwise, he loses interest and switches to another, brighter object.

Developing her own individuality allows a woman to remain interesting and in demand during the entire time she interacts with a man. The man, in turn, admires the girl’s inaccessibility and does everything to make her pay attention to him. How to develop your own self-sufficiency? First of all, give up the idea of ​​feeling sorry for yourself. There is no need to constantly demonstrate to others, and especially to men, how much you suffer. If you are interested in a specific person to whom you feel a strong attachment, first step back a little, find something of your own, some interesting activity or hobby. Be inimitable, bright and bold. Don't let this attachment develop into addiction.

Find hobbies

Every person is interested in something, something particularly fascinates him. There is no need to be like those people who have limited their small world to everyday things and shun everything new. So you will not be able to feel the real taste for life. You can get rid of oppressive attachment only when you yourself determine the boundaries of your interests. Who knows whether you will need that same person later. Suffering for someone is the most thankless task. If only because men do not appreciate and do not notice those who run after them.

Independent character

You can get rid of attachment if you strictly follow the word given to yourself. You must promise yourself that no more man will make you suffer and humiliate yourself. There is nothing worse than when a woman does not realize how undignified her behavior is. Don't become a pathetic slave in a relationship. Don't offer yourself, don't insist when they don't want to know you. Independence in character is formed through fruitful work on oneself. It will be difficult at first, but you need to try to fight attachment. Work hard - you help yourself. An independent woman is always self-sufficient and beautiful. So why not start devoting some time to your appearance every day?

Any strong attachment can destroy individuality and interfere with the holistic development of the individual. When a woman does not love herself, those around her will not appreciate her: neither relatives, nor friends, nor colleagues.

Eleanor Brik

Attachment is a strange feeling of need to communicate with a person with whom you do not have a loving, mutually beneficial or material relationship. On the one hand, it will seem that there is nothing negative about attachment to a person, but on the other hand, the desire to see and hear the object of dependence can develop into a real obsession.

The problem is that attachment is a form of destructive dependence on external circumstances.

Gradual development of love addiction

Love addiction can develop as follows.

1. A feeling of euphoria occurs after the first meetings with a partner. At first, the addict feels inspired when communicating with the object of desire, but pain when he is not around. Among women, individuals who adhere to this model of behavior are more common.
2. Next comes the stage of discrepancy between reality and the desired. The partner no longer meets the parameters of the ideal; there is constantly too little communication with him. What brought joy yesterday no longer evokes positive emotions. The result is the destruction of ideals, since it’s bad without a partner, but not better with him. The immediate anticipation of the meeting is the most joyful period of this stage. Afterwards, the dependent person becomes disappointed and then strives to make his partner fit his own ideal. Most often, disappointment, despair, desire for revenge, anger, jealousy, fear of loss, and guilt are manifested.
3. Often relationships of this kind become smoldering. Final breaks, after which happy reunions take place, turn into a vicious circle lasting for many years. Against the prevailing background of loneliness, misunderstanding, resentment, pain, as well as depletion of vitality, only short-term, rare outbreaks of euphoria appear.

Consequences

Love addiction is more common among women. Over the course of their lives, they spend several years depending on one or another on different people, flattering themselves with hopes of finding an ideal soul mate and true love.

Among men, the consequences of addiction to romantic relationships in the vast majority of cases manifest themselves somewhat differently. Having experienced pain once, they are disappointed in love, strive to avoid such experiences, and try with all their might to keep the situation under control. On a subconscious level, they begin to take revenge on the opposite sex, seeking love, taming a partner, and then abandoning them without reason.

Over time, this behavior among men becomes conscious; they strive to avoid the mistakes of the past. As a result, a man is unable to experience sincere intimacy, get to know himself through relationships, or gain energy for self-realization or creativity. The reason for this is the deprivation of vital energy, depletion of potential due to love addiction.

Having experienced love of this kind once, a man (less often a woman) no longer believes in love, which can really give energy, peace, harmony, and the desire for self-realization. If an addict feels calm and joyful with a partner, these emotions become insufficient, since there is no tension or thrill. The addict begins to behave like a drug addict, looking for more and more repeated meaningless connections.

Signs of a painful relationship

• The partner constantly arranges “competitions”. In a relationship, there is constant comparison in all respects and the guy tries to prove in a private conversation or publicly that he is better than his other half. At every opportunity, the partner asserts himself at the expense of the other.
• Instilled sense of guilt. The partner constantly blames his significant other for everything that does not happen the way he intended. In his opinion, his loved one is to blame even for things beyond his control, to blame for everything he does.

• Criticism in all areas of life. No matter what a girl does, no matter how hard she tries, she will always be criticized by her partner. There is no point in proving that your partner is wrong, since there will always be new reasons to criticize. Typically, such people do not perceive criticism addressed to them and hear only themselves.
• The desire to change the other half. Normal relationships mean that people accept each other for who they are. If a partner constantly compares his companion with someone else, talks about what needs to be done to achieve the ideal in his eyes, the relationship is already clearly unhealthy.
• Total control. In this case, the partner tries to control all areas of the other person's life. He definitely needs to know where the girl is, what she is doing and with whom. Even meetings with friends are controlled under the pretext of care - dropping and picking up. The partner needs this only to know all the details.