What causes love addiction? Usually, the root cause is a lack of important needs during childhood. This can be physical needs like food and shelter, or emotional needs like nurture, expression of love and praise, and safety. This can happen for a number of reasons ranging from personality differences between caretaker and child, caretakers who are absent because of illness, working long hours, or divorce. Failure to have these needs met in childhood affects self-esteem, often causing a fear of abandonment and deep need or fear of intimacy.
Love addiction can have different effects, depending on each person. For some, love addiction means a series of short, sometimes toxic relationships or frequent one-night stands. For others, the fear of being alone causes them to stay in unhealthy, codependent relationships.
Am I a Love Addict?
If your world is full of a sometimes chaotic, desperate need for emotional connection, fear of being alone or rejected, or often find yourself searching for that special someone who will make you feel whole by engaging in a series of relationships or holding on to relationships that are unhealthy, then you might have love addiction. One of the sad ironies of love addiction is you might pass up many chances for finding a good relationship because of these strong desires for finding “the one,” or a feeling that you can change someone who isn’t good for you.
You might suffer from love addiction if:
- You become obsessive over finding love or over an individual.
- You have difficulty thinking about anything but love or sexual fantasies.
- You equate love and relationships with your self-worth.
- Being in a relationship dominates your time over friends and family.
- Your relationships often lack real intimacy and you are often jealous.
- You become codependent easily.
- You or your partner (or both) use love as a form of control.
- You confuse sexually intense experiences with love.