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Many people are confused by the label of love addiction. Love addiction describes a deep, unmet longing that drives people to desire a relationship to make the pain go away. In this respect, love addiction is similar to other addictions since it involves obsession, cravings, and withdrawal.
Despite its recognition in popular and some academic circles, love addiction is not formally recognized as a clinical diagnosis in major diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5. Some experts argue that the term “addiction” may be problematic due to its association with substance use disorders and the potential for stigmatization. Instead, terms like emotional reliance or affective dependence are sometimes preferred to describe the obsessive and compulsive behaviors associated with love addiction.
If you are feeling shame or uncertainty because you fear this label increasingly describes you, you aren’t alone, and you aren’t stuck. With the right support, it is absolutely possible to heal and create healthier connections. We hope these successful love addiction recovery stories will inspire you to take the first step toward happier relationships.
Why Am I Like This? The Love Addiction Recovery Story of PIVOT’s Founder Lori Jean Glass
I was thirty-seven years old and in a therapist’s office, brokenhearted over another romantic relationship that had fallen apart.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to go on.
I was labeled a love addict and told that I was incapable of giving or receiving love. My behavior towards love interests was controlling, and my expectations were unrealistic. I had to accept that love addiction was the thing that had derailed me.
That diagnosis didn’t make sense to me, however. My relationships didn’t feel loving; what I felt was a constant and intense longing to be loved. How could I be addicted to something I was so unfamiliar with?
In fact, I was starving for romantic love… hoping it would finally give me that sense of self-worth and belonging that my heart was hurting for. It had been a longing for…. as long as I could remember. As an adult, I thought that a romantic partner or a love interest might heal the breach in my low self-esteem, although it never quite worked out. But I kept trying.. and trying… and trying. This translated to me becoming a “stage five cling-on.” I couldn’t be alone and always had to be in a relationship.
So, when I was told I had love addiction, it confused me because the “cure” I was given was to not draw attention to myself, stay out of relationships for one year, and attend a “love addicts” group to listen to others share their stories of relationship addiction.
This prescription seemed totally counterintuitive and left me feeling even more abandoned and alone. What I always wanted was to love and to be loved, and now I couldn’t ever have that… because I was addicted to love. Would I have to stay away from love like any other addict would from any other addictive substances? The idea of addiction to love made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be loved. I couldn’t be trusted with love. Love wasn’t safe for me.
As a behavioral and mental health professional, I set out to find answers that made sense. I focused the energy of my early career on the meaning and treatment of love addiction… I worked hard to understand it. After extensive research on the topic, taking a deeper look at the effects of unhealthy attachment, and working alongside my gifted staff of therapists and healers at PIVOT, I came to understand an important reality. Love itself is not addictive. This truth changed everything.
Through sustained and concentrated effort, I learned how to be responsible for my emotions and stand in relational alignment. I created this term to describe a state where your mind thinks in alignment with how your heart feels, and you have the courage to take healthy action with your feet. It allows you to achieve a verticality that is honest, ethical, and authentic to who you are.
Once I found the inner strength to turn my life around, I developed and extensively tested the PIVOT Process, an evidence-based approach to achieving relational freedom. In the years since then, I have helped many, many people write their own love addiction recovery stories. It’s a journey that requires courage, determination, and a belief in your own worth.
Learning to Love Myself: Larissa’s Love Addiction Recovery Story
I truly thought that one person was going to change the way I felt about myself and my life.
In an interview with my wedding videographer, I openly stated that my husband was “my adonis” and “my knight in shining armor.” Yes, it is on record. I truly believed that he would be the one person who could save me. Poor guy. He never stood a chance at fulfilling my fantasy.
Sadly, he wasn’t the first to experience this intense passion. I would consistently and anxiously seek emotional validation from every guy who came into my life. I was overly dependent on them and felt like I needed to be with them all the time. I needed them more than I needed myself. My world got very small, and their approval of me equaled my self-worth. That’s a tough way to live, especially because in most of my relationships before I got married, I experienced some form of emotional, mental, or physical abuse.
Why did I have to lose myself to gain a false sense of self-worth? Why did I have to compromise my mental and physical well-being to get an ounce of their attention? Why was I waiting for their phone calls or making late-night drives by their house to spy on them? Who goes to someone’s house at two in the morning to enter a dark bedroom just to see if that person is asleep in their bed and not with someone else?
Even when they told me they loved me, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. I was never enough. That feeling stayed with me into my marriage and family life and created a lot of conflict, drama, and trauma. My marriage was filled with more demands on my partner and less love and connection. I was even addicted to the need to be loved by my children. I was laced with depression, anxiety, and, at times, suicidal ideation.
It was the suicidal ideation that brought me to my knees and forced me to get help. In the depths of my despair, I realized that I didn’t know what true love really was. How can the pursuit of love be so damaging? Why did love hurt so much? I was in so much pain, and I knew that I needed help. I needed to understand this obsession with the idea of love and why I couldn’t ever really feel it.
I found a wonderful therapist who gave me so much strength and hope, but that feeling of “not being loved” never went away. It took another 10 years before I was introduced to the work of PIVOT.
When I found PIVOT, I found the answer. I had been seeking a fantasy of love. Coming from a childhood of confusion, attachment issues, emotional neglect, and having had several sexual abuse experiences, I developed a hard-core belief system about love. Someone who loves you will take away the pain. Love will take away the pain of feeling like something is wrong with me, that I don’t matter, that I am not enough and that I am very much alone.
The euphoria of meeting someone new and believing in the fantasy of marriage did that. It took away the pain momentarily. It’s much easier to focus on someone else than it is to focus on oneself. That stops working. Trust me. I was conditioned to believe that someone else’s love was ALL I ever needed. Their love wasn’t enough! His love wasn’t enough! Gaining an understanding of the impact of those messages on me, of being less than, not mattering, not being good enough, feeling alone, and how love is supposed to fix you, was the beginning of my journey.
Having the ability to repair those thoughts and emotions allowed me more space to heal. Healing is allowing me to learn more about my beautifully unique self. This internal shift I learned from PIVOT is teaching me what love really is.
Love is more than just a feeling. It’s the action of trust, compassion, and positive regard. The reason why I didn’t feel loved was because I wasn’t being loving to myself. I had so many expectations of myself and so much self-disregard, I actually put more distance between myself and others.
I’m now working on more appreciation, gratitude, and acceptance. I’m not going to lie and say I love all of me. Hell no! I’m working on that. I’m a work in progress. I won’t say it’s easy or it’s been overnight. I will say that I am my own “knight in shining armor” these days, thanks to PIVOT.
What Can You Learn From Love Addiction Recovery Stories?
As you read these stories of love addiction recovery, you may see parallels with your own life. What do you have in common? What about these stories resonates with you?
Though love addiction is a descriptive phrase, a more accurate term is attachment dysregulation. This is because the conditions that cause this pattern of behavior often originate in childhood with your earliest attachments. Abuse, neglect, and unmet needs may cause deep attachment wounds—the survival patterns adopted in response lead to the cycle known as love addiction.
For healing to occur, early attachment wounds must be identified, and you must learn healthier ways to cope. While each person’s healing journey to healthy relationships will be different, several things must happen along the way.
Love Addiction Recovery Steps
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Steps to Recovery |
Essential Actions |
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Recognition |
Before you can begin the journey to love addiction recovery, you must acknowledge that there is a problem. Recognizing the signs and symptoms in your life should be a red flag and an indication that it’s time to seek help. This awareness is the first step towards healing. |
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Deep Self-Reflection |
The crucial next step to true healing involves a thorough self-examination. Through this process, you will learn about yourself and your attachment styles. You will begin to understand where your relational trauma began. The painful wounds underlying love addiction often have their origin early in life, however. Identifying them will require a deep dive with a skilled facilitator. This self-reflection is a key part of the healing journey. |
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Healing Relational Trauma |
To break the cycle of love addiction and begin the recovery process, you must address and understand your early attachment wounds. Increasing self-awareness and boosting confidence will set you up to achieve healthier relationships in the future. |
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Action Steps Forward |
The final step in the healing journey involves taking supported steps forward. An action plan for future relationships mapped out by experts in the field is absolutely essential. Having an accessible toolbox with ready-to-use tools will help you to deal with and rebound from life’s uncertainties as you seek love again. |
Undertaking the love addiction recovery journey with help from a seasoned expert provides the support you need to heal past traumas and attachment wounds and move toward healthy love in the future. A relationship coach will help you identify your survival patterns and replace them with healthy, sustainable actions. You will learn to set reasonable boundaries and hone your communication skills through the process. But most importantly, you will realize that you are worthy and capable of finding secure, fulfilling romantic love.
Begin Your Healing Journey With PIVOT
If you are ready to confront survival patterns that have you trapped in the cycle of love addiction, PIVOT has answers. With high-impact options that include relationship coaching for individuals and couples and love addiction retreats at the Glass House in northern California, we have a solution for you. Our personalized and highly customizable process can meet you where you are and help you find a path forward. Reach out today at 1-855-452-0707 to begin writing your love addiction recovery story.