Relationship Cycles For Love Addicts
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Relationship Cycles for Love Addicts: How to Break the Pattern of Unhealthy Attachment
Love addiction is a condition where a person feels a compulsive need to be in a relationship, often with someone who is emotionally unavailable or abusive. Love addicts tend to idealize their partners, ignore red flags, and sacrifice their own needs and interests for the sake of the relationship. They also fear abandonment and rejection, and may cling to their partners or chase them when they pull away.
Love addicts often attract love avoidants, who are people who fear intimacy and commitment, and who use various distancing strategies to avoid emotional connection and vulnerability. Love avoidants may come on strong at first, but then withdraw or sabotage the relationship when they feel too close or dependent. They may also have other addictions or affairs to distract themselves from their feelings.
When a love addict and a love avoidant come together, they form a toxic cycle of addictive attachment, where the love addict pursues and the love avoidant resists. This cycle can be described as follows[^3^]:
Attraction: The love addict and the love avoidant feel a strong chemistry and attraction, and rush into a relationship. The love avoidant seduces and charms the love addict, who feels special and validated by the attention. The love addict idealizes and fantasizes about the love avoidant, who seems perfect and strong.
Progression: The relationship progresses, but the intensity decreases for the love avoidant, who starts to feel discomfort and trapped by the love addict's attempts to create more connection and closeness. The love avoidant begins to pull away with subtle distancing tactics, such as being less attentive, less affectionate, less available, less communicative, or more critical. The love addict feels anxious and insecure, and tries harder to please and appease the love avoidant, who feels more suffocated and resentful.
Crisis: The relationship reaches a crisis point, where the love avoidant either breaks up with the love addict, or engages in a major distancing behavior, such as having an affair, becoming abusive, or disappearing. The love addict feels devastated and abandoned, and experiences withdrawal symptoms, such as depression, anxiety, insomnia, or physical pain. The love addict may beg, plead, or manipulate the love avoidant to come back, or try to find a replacement partner quickly.
Reconciliation: The love avoidant may return to the relationship after some time, either out of guilt, pity, boredom, loneliness, or fear of being alone. The love avoidant may also miss the admiration and validation from the love addict. The love addict feels relieved and hopeful that things will change this time. The cycle repeats itself.
This cycle is driven by the underlying fears of both partners: the fear of abandonment for the love addict, and the fear of intimacy for the love avoidant[^2^]. These fears often stem from childhood trauma or attachment wounds that have not been healed.
The good news is that this cycle can be broken with awareness, therapy, support groups, self-care, and healthy boundaries. Love addicts can learn to value themselves, express their feelings and needs, set limits on unacceptable behavior, detach from toxic partners, and seek healthy relationships that are based on mutual respect and trust. Love avoidants can learn to face their feelings, communicate honestly, overcome their defenses, commit to their partners, and embrace intimacy as a source of joy and growth.
Relationship cycles for love addicts can be painful and exhausting, but they can also be opportunities for healing and transformation. By breaking free from the pattern of unhealthy attachment, both partners can discover their true selves and find authentic love. ec8f644aee