Love Addiction

Constantly chasing “the one”—no matter what…

Marcos* was 36 and unmarried. He sat in front of me on the verge of tears while he explained the collapse of his recent relationship. “She was perfect,” he said. “Do you think she’ll come back?”

The “she” he was speaking about was a married woman of 44, who had been the most recent person to break his heart. Even after she ended the relationship, Marcos called and texted her frequently. He even wrote some poetry and mailed it to her. Although she didn’t respond to any of this, Marcos’s every thought seemed to be about her… all topics in therapy directed back to her.

This wasn’t a new experience for Marcos. He had been in and out of romantic relationships since he was 15. He had never married or had children, and this filled him with regret.

Although desperately longing for her return, he admitted to sleeping with six different women at the time, none of whom he was particularly interested. “She’s the only one I want,” he said.

It’s so easy to ignore the warning signs…

As we explored this recent relationship in detail, Marcos eventually admitted there were times that she had seemed “a little distant.”

She had been critical of Marcos’s career success and was on and off about her commitment to her marriage. Marcos relayed his confusion: “She said she was going to leave him and I would be like, ‘Yeah, great!’ And then a week later it was like she never even had said that!”

With work, you start to see those same behavior patterns.

As therapy progressed, Marcos began remembering more details about all of his past relationships.

In some cases, he noted that they didn’t seem to find him attractive enough, as they went from frequent sex in the beginning to rejecting most of his sexual overtures. He then became “bored” and initiated encounters with other women, sometimes even before ending the relationship he was in.

In other cases, the women he was “very into” broke up with him, citing his inability to commit to the relationship. Or he found out they were cheating on him, in which case he ended the relationship himself.

There’s always something deeper behind the “love seeking.”

Through therapy, Marcos was able to connect these patterns with a past history of emotional neglect and inconsistency in his childhood. He was able to grieve the loss of his mother, who, when he was only 2, had remarried a man who demanded all of her attention—to the point of even being jealous of the relationship Marcos and his mother shared. Ultimately, Marcos was forced to move aside so that his mother could remain involved with her new husband.

As he grieved the loss of his mother, he began to understand that he was looking for someone to love him… and with whom he could feel safe without the fear of abandonment.

Insight is what lets you move forward…

Marcos was astonished to realize that his “boredom” in relationships was really the fear that he would be left, accompanied by the negative belief that he was not loveable.

This insight was what enabled Marcos to move forward with dating and relationships in a healthy way. Six months later, he met a woman who was emotionally available and his newfound ability to love enabled him to commit to this relationship.