How to understand whether love or addiction is between you?
“He loves me, he’s just like that...”
Making excuses from your partner is the first sign that you have become addicted. Your affection in a relationship arose because of time together, because of pleasant moments, mutual friends, but look at your relationship more broadly, in the totality of all components.
Initially, think about whether your feelings have stood the test of time and difficulties. Analyze your story. Were there any betrayals? How did you feel? Try to simulate a situation when failure overtook you, you found yourself in a difficult situation. Will your partner do everything to help you, will he “break himself into a piece of cake”? If he pretends to help for the sake of decency, then this is not your man. Love is confirmed by actions, do not ignore this “school” truth.
“I can’t share what I feel with him.”
There are several other factors that will indicate your love. First of all, it is sincerity. In a relationship, you should never be pressured. Without trust and intimacy, you won't get far. Instead of love and strong relationships, you will get banal cohabitation or neutral communication - and nothing more. Or vice versa: your person is always ready to listen to you, come to your aid, help with valuable advice from the heart - take care of such a partner.
Love has passed - have the tomatoes wilted?
If your passion subsided too early, you have no desire to spend time together, you would prefer to invite friends over to go to the movies together, this may indicate the beginning of a banal attachment. You are afraid that your old life will end, changes scare you - this is normal! Everyone wants stability, but harming your life by being afraid of new things is definitely not the best solution.
“We decided to live separately for a bit so that everything would work out”
Don't fool yourself. The decision to live apart does not come to happy couples. Do you constantly quarrel, do not find a common language even in trivial matters and still believe that love is alive, and it is not affection that keeps your relationship afloat? The likelihood that you will be able to restore your previous warm relationship is very low.
Of course, you will now object that you often feel good when you are together, and everything is already getting better. Are you sure that these are not surges of nostalgia for past feelings? And any careless word will not cause a protracted quarrel? Imagine what will happen in 5 or 10 years. Are you ready for such a relationship? If you honestly answer yourself that you are ready and confident in a similar response from your partner, say that you are doing everything to improve the relationship, congratulations: this is not just affection. If there is even a shadow of doubt that you are ready to spend time on such a relationship, you are considering the option that there will be a new crush or love in the future, then now you are dependent on the relationship, nothing more.
Read on the topic: The Trap of Dependency in Relationships
Consequences of unresolved addiction
When the situation is unresolved, the sick person develops destructive outcomes of pathological relationships.
In women they manifest themselves::
- Excruciating years of painful suffering with the loss of the meaning of life without a loved one.
- The willingness to give everything for the one you love.
- The lack of complete happiness against the backdrop of life’s small and rare joys.
In men the following are detected:
- The tendency to take control of everything.
- The desire for unconscious revenge, manifested by the establishment of casual relationships, humiliation of other women (a manifestation of hidden revenge).
- Fear of loss.
- Manipulative departures from a loved one, aimed at causing her addiction and at the same time enjoying the victory.
Both women and men, after the loss of a loved one, begin subconscious substitutional searches, which in most cases lead to “pseudo-love” due to the inability to forget what was lost. Addiction manifests itself in many ways and its victims are not only those who suffer from it, but also the people around them. It is of course impossible to consider all the options in a short article.
How to get rid of love addiction?
99% of people asked this question to one degree or another: some at school in a fit of unrequited love, others at a conscious age, suddenly realizing that they were unhappy in their marriage. In such situations, specialized help from a psychologist will best help. Even if you have already realized that the person next to you is a stranger to you and you do not want to be together, leaving such a relationship is not always an easy task.
You think: “I can’t live without him, we have so much in common, our whole life!” Of course you can. The main thing is determination. If you leave, don't leave yourself in doubt. Understand that the life model you are in is not the life you want. This is the only way that attachment in a relationship can be destroyed. And this is the only way to overcome your addiction to love and relationships in which you are unhappy.
Where does addiction come from?
Article on the topic
10 steps to optimism
Addiction often stems from unresolved problems in the relationship with one of the parents, usually the parent of the opposite sex. This puts very strong pressure on the psyche, and a person in adulthood unconsciously looks for an object to which to direct his unexpressed feelings.
Therefore, in a dependent relationship, the other person is essentially absent. He is forced to play someone else's role, often without even realizing it. Meanwhile, nothing happens to the dependent partner’s feelings because they are misdirected. On the one hand, a person experiences strong emotions, but on the other, nothing changes.
What should you be warned about?
Many people often make the same mistake - they engage in excessive introspection. In particular, they are trying to create a problem for themselves out of the blue. They wonder whether they have love or addiction, they dig inside themselves, although everything lies on the surface. If you are confident in your feelings and that they are mutual, and are ready to do anything for your partner, then you do not need any methods of self-analysis. Just live in this moment and live happily.
Sometimes even dependence on love can be useful, but the further development of the relationship still does not always depend on you. And the thoughts “I can’t live without him” put you in the situation of a loser in advance and will definitely not save you from love addiction. You can do anything! It doesn’t matter whether infatuation, love or addiction is driving you at this moment.
Chapter 1. The influence of childhood
The nature of love
Inside every child is an “emotional vessel” that is waiting to be filled with love.
Ross Campbell
In childhood, a person is almost completely helpless, and his parents act as gods for him, in whose power it is to reward and punish. The psychological development of a child largely depends on his contacts with his parents. In the first years of his life, he develops basic trust in the world. Parental unconditional love makes him understand that he is needed. If one of the parents is emotionally unstable, this cannot but affect the development and psyche of the child. Without parental love, a child is not capable of full development. Such children are much more likely to get sick and lag behind in development, and later suffer from neurotic personality disorders.
At the beginning of the 20th century, 9 out of 10 orphans in orphanages died from malnutrition before the age of 1 year. There were no external factors to explain this mortality rate. There were no problems with food and hygiene. It was discovered that these children died from a lack of love and affection, since affection affects the biochemical processes in the child’s body. Orphanage workers began to show them parental affection, take them in their arms, lull them to sleep - and the mortality rate among children decreased by 90%.
This approach to raising children was largely influenced by the results of an experiment called “The Nature of Love,” which was conducted by University of Wisconsin professor Harry Harlow in 1950. In his experiment, he used monkeys, since this type of mammal has a nervous system structure that is most similar to ours.
In the first hours of life, baby monkeys were taken from their mothers and placed in separate cages. In isolation, the cubs showed affection and affection towards the towels that covered the floors of their cages. If the towel was taken away, the cubs reacted nervously and behaved aggressively.
The experiment consisted of four stages.
At the first stage, the monkeys were divided into two groups. Two surrogate mothers were created for them. One was made of wire, and the second was a warm mannequin with a built-in electric lamp. In the first group, the wire mother had a feeding bottle, and the warm mother did not. In the second it’s the other way around. As a result, monkeys from both groups spent more time with a soft and warm mother.
At the second stage, changes were made to the experiment. The first group received a wire mother, and the second group received a rag mother. Both mannequins had feeding bottles. The behavior of the monkeys from the first group was different. They were more likely to experience nervous tension, spend less time with their mother, and showed signs of autism.
At the third stage, the mother's role in comforting the child was tested. The cubs were frightened by observing their reactions in a stressful situation. In a moment of fear, all the monkeys ran to the rag mother - touching her, they calmed down.
At the final, fourth stage, “evil mothers” were constructed - also rag and warm, but at the same time they threw off their cubs and threw them away from them. The monkeys continued to return to them and tried to apologize with plaintive sounds.
As a result, conclusions were drawn that after 90 days of isolation, mental disorders develop in the baby that subsequently cannot be corrected. In humans, such disorders develop after six months of isolation. Having matured, they cannot establish contacts and behave aggressively, especially towards the opposite sex. The parental instinct is completely suppressed, and they become unable to care for their own offspring. They behave aggressively with their children, ignore their needs, and show cruelty, even to the point of murder.
Some parents of that time did not consciously show love to the child, since it was believed that he simply did not need it and “all this was empty calf tenderness.” This point of view was based on the view of psychologists that the baby is not interested in love and perceives its parents only as a source with the help of which it can satisfy its needs for warmth and food. Therefore, despite the cruelty of the experiment, its contribution to psychology is priceless! He refuted the view of the founder of behaviorism, John Watson, on raising children, as well as Freud's hypothesis that sex is a primary need. In experiments, monkeys' need for relationships, contact and touch dominated over the need for sex.
Psychoanalyst Rene Spitz was one of the first to systematically study how the psychology of infants matures and develops. He identified the consequences on the development of a child when he is separated from his mother and social isolation, and also pointed out the direct relationship between the child’s mental disorders and the mother’s attitudes.
As a result of his research, Spitz came to the reasonable conclusion that a lack of maternal love inhibits the intellectual, emotional and physical development of the child. He withdraws and lags behind in development. This is expressed in poor speech proficiency, retardation in movements, emotional exhaustion, apathy, weight problems, poor resistance to disease, and social phobia.
The environment shapes a fragile consciousness
If a child is surrounded by criticism, he learns to blame.
If a child sees hostility, he learns to fight.
If a child is ridiculed, he learns to be timid.
If a child is treated fairly, he learns justice.
If a child feels safe, he learns to believe.
If the child is accepted and treated friendly,
he learns to find love in this world.
Doris Lowe Nault
Children from prosperous families grow up to be self-sufficient, psychologically mature individuals who effectively solve their problems and easily overcome difficulties. By a prosperous family, I mean one where the child received love and affection, and was also taught to take responsibility for himself and his life.
Children who for some reason feel a lack of parental love and care are taught from childhood to earn love. In circumstances when a child feels unloved, he makes a subconscious conclusion that as a person he is bad, no one needs him and therefore does not deserve love. After all, adults are smarter and stronger, which means they know better. A child does not have the ability to independently form an image of himself - his parents form him. A child cannot determine for himself whether he is good or not. His parents inform him about this, from whom he most wants to receive love, affection and care.
If, in response to his needs, he receives indifference from his parents, then he develops the attitude “nobody needs me.” In the future, a person with such an attitude will constantly experience anxiety. In his attempts to reduce it, he will cling to people so as not to be alone and again not experience the feeling of abandonment and uselessness.
Usually, parents who show indifference to their children are in a state of deep depression, and they have no strength for anything. The child is unable to recognize the reasons and often takes full responsibility for the fact that his parent is unhappy. It seems to him that he is the cause of everything, that the parent is oppressed by the very fact of his existence. This creates a guilt complex for one’s own life. A person with a guilt complex tries to be needed by someone in order to justify himself to himself for his own life.
All this is laid down in childhood, in which every disliked child chooses a strategy for his behavior.
Three strategies for unloved children
Every child is born a deity and then degrades to become a human being.
Simone de Beauvoir
When a child finds himself in an atmosphere where the basic needs of love and acceptance are not met, then he tries to adapt. Due to the inability to express his feelings, he chooses one of three defensive strategies:
1. To please parents, the child becomes a good boy. This is an ideal child who does not need to be raised, since he raised himself. An excellent student, an example to others. He can be proud of him, he can be looked up to, everyone can appreciate him... except his own parents. Such children live in constant tension and spend a lot of effort to meet and justify the expectations of their parents, teachers, and subsequently their bosses. They rarely achieve personal autonomy, independence, and throughout their lives they are guided by some kind of authority, in whom they see a parent.
2. Completely opposite behavior is rebellion. The child becomes a bully, gets into trouble, humiliates the weak in order to compensate for his own inferiority from the fact that he is not loved. May begin to steal, which indicates an internal protest against the behavior of adults. He does for show what is forbidden. He tries to amuse those around him with his antics. But behind all this behavior lies a desperate attempt to gain attention. The child wants to show others (and first of all his parents) that he is funny, brave, strong, and therefore there is something to love him for.
3. A child may withdraw into himself and try to become invisible to others. Such children are neither seen nor heard. They do not create problems and want to be forgotten about their existence. They create their own inner, ideal world and go into fantasy. As they become more and more immersed, they subsequently experience a sharp resonance with reality. Their peers do not take them into account, because such children do not contradict anyone and do not learn to defend themselves and their interests in conflicts that inevitably arise among children. Having grown up, they lead a mediocre life and rarely achieve success in their own realization.
Serving love
Corrupted people are those who have no love.
Bernard Show
From childhood, a child learns to earn the love of others. This habit undermines self-esteem and makes one prone to self-sacrifice. As an adult, a person may continue to curry favor with parents who will trample on his self-esteem instead of gratitude. He will do this in the hope that someday they will give what he so needed from them since childhood. At the same time, a person may simply not realize that his parents are not capable of love or simply have not learned to express it correctly. He can continue to seek love from them until he turns gray, and all because he has in his head the image he created of the ideal parents he always wanted to have. And he believes that if he does everything that is wanted and asked of him, then through his efforts he will prove that he is good and can be loved. And as a reward, these demanding and harsh people will turn into those ideal and loving parents. Then he will be happy because he will know that he is good and deserves love. He is convinced that if other people love him, it means he is valuable, needed, can be happy and enjoy life, whereas in reality people love and are drawn to those who love themselves, who feel good alone with themselves, who are completely self-sufficient. Those who try to earn love are often used by the environment for their own purposes, without ever getting what they were striving for. If a person cannot be loved, then he tries to at least be needed. A habit of reliability in helping others is developed to the detriment of one’s own personal interests.
The tendency to curry love can manifest itself in the inability to build psychological boundaries, in being undependable to others while ignoring one’s own needs and perfectionism.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism is an essential characteristic of mechanistic thinking. He does not admit mistakes, uncertainty, uncertainty, unclear situations are avoided... But when applied to nature, this inevitably leads to error. Nature is imprecise. Nature does not act mechanically, but functionally.
Wilhelm Reich
An authoritarian parenting style breeds perfectionism in a person. Then the individual sets very high goals and, not achieving them, becomes depressed, while not paying attention to what has been achieved. A perfectionist ignores the result if it is imperfect, as a result of which it becomes difficult to derive joy from what has been done and achieved, because almost all results are written off, because by the standards of the perfectionist they are not good enough. Perfectionism influences in such a way that a person loses a real objective vision of the world. The inability to enjoy the hard work of one's work leads to low self-esteem and depression. Perfectionism often turns into procrastination - when a person puts off a task until later because he is afraid of doing it imperfectly.
Perfectionism is one of the ways to earn love. The inner child of a perfectionist tries to prove that he is doing everything right and deserves love and attention. For a perfectionist, an imperfect result means the possibility of losing the love of others. And behind this lies the fear of upsetting parents.
A perfectionist places high demands not only on himself, but also on others, which worsens relationships with them. He does not think about the fact that others are not obliged to meet his personal standards. Their opinion is not taken into account. By driving others into his framework, a perfectionist encroaches on their personal freedom. As a result, over time, people may turn away from the perfectionist.
It is important to note that perfectionism is formed through conditional parental love.
The difference between unconditional love and conditional love
Where love rules, there is no desire to rule, and where power reigns, there is no love.
Carl Gustav Jung
Unconditional parental love is necessary for every child. Receiving it, the child feels that his parents love him regardless of successes and failures. No matter what he does, no matter how he makes mistakes and falls, such a child never forgets that his parents love him, that they need him. This knowledge gives the child confidence, strength and joy. With their unconditional love, his parents let him know that he is okay.
By receiving this type of love, children will not fall into the trap of an inferiority complex, and if they find themselves in a difficult life situation in the future, no matter how bad they feel, they will never think about suicide. Unconditional love sows self-respect in the child’s soul, the ability to give warmth and build strong relationships. In a family where there is unconditional love, difficulties are easily overcome.
Many parents give their children care, but few give them unconditional love, which cannot be earned or controlled. Mothers are more likely to show unconditional love, but, alas, not all. If a girl was treated poorly in childhood, this may cause her maternal instinct to atrophy and such a parent will be able to offer only conditional love to her own child.
Conditional love makes the child understand that he is not valuable in himself and can always lose the love he received for something. From this, the child subconsciously feels that his parents do not love him, but are using him to realize their ambitions, which they could not realize in their lives, and now they want to be realized through him, or simply enjoy power, thus compensating for their inferiority complexes.
The message of conditional love is simple: “you will do what I need, and I will love you for it.” When a child does something against the will of his parents, he may hear: “go away, you’re bad, mom doesn’t love you anymore, and don’t cry - no one likes a crybaby.” Such parents try to train their child using the child's need for love. For the purpose of education, violence, ridicule and ignorance are used (which is psychological violence).
These parents need a reason to show love for their children. Often this is caused by a child’s illness. The latter feels indifference, but as soon as he gets sick, his parents immediately devote time to him, show care and affection. When the parents behave again, the actions become fixed in the child’s psyche. He concludes: “Nobody needed me, but as soon as I got sick, I received the love I cherished. This means that in order to be loved, I need to be sick.” If the attitude is fixed, then the person subsequently practices this method of receiving love in adulthood on a more permanent basis, becoming chronically ill and incapacitated. It is pointless to treat such people without deep psychotherapy - they will still continue to get sick, since they have a hidden benefit from this.
