Love addiction

Tell the person I'm dating that I recently discovered I'm a love addict while I'm doing the work on myself?

I mean, not the first week, but yes, I think it's important to tell the person that you're dating some of your patterns and what a great way to use this dating experience as an exercise to see how much you've grown in your love addiction as an exercise to put some reps in, right? So I think the importance of telling this person that you're dating is that you guys are both on the same page and this person can support you with your love addiction.

And it's also telling to see if this person bounces and if this person bounces, then not for you.

I love this idea of using dating as an exercise and also like a temperature check to see where you're at when it comes to things like love addiction, old patterns.

You're not using the person, you're using the experience, right? Getting on the same page with the person is going to also provide connection, a bridge, relationship glue.

So I would do it that way.

I found her on my Spotify search page when I wanted to know more about this tricky and you'll find pretty pervasive issue in our culture.

You may have heard about it through Liz Gilbert's book that brought awareness to sex and love addiction on a whole bigger scale.

It was very tricky and upsetting for a lot of people.

That was interesting.

I know you had a whole podcast episode on that and I listened to it and I see you nodding with such intensity because my goodness, but we're here to center on this really misunderstood, but also pretty widespread concept of love addiction.

So thanks

for being

So yeah.

But yeah, to your point, absolutely.

Like, I think I definitely, I don't even, I'm not going to diagnose myself with love addiction.

You can.

We can.

So I'm just now going to be single until God tells me that it's okay and he puts someone literally in front of me and it's like, this is the person

I want for you.

I just want a, like, perspective for people who don't understand what love addiction is.

Now, this is going to sound dramatic, but...

And then we'll open it up and complicate things a little bit more because the full answer, I think, is more interesting than just two boxes that you can sort yourself into.

Love addiction at its core is about a state, the state of being in love with being in love.

What the love addict is loyal to isn't any particular person.

It's the feeling of falling, the rush, the fantasy of love, the drama and intrigue of not quite knowing where things are going yet, the electricity that we all recognize at the beginning of love.

Or they have no choice but to transition into feeling bored, fearing real, actual intimacy, or experiencing various types of relationship anxieties and insecurities.

Whereas moving on to a new person, making a brand-new beginning, it gives someone who's a love addict a hit of the same drug they're after.

If you've watched someone leave relationship after relationship the moment it settles into something calm and stable, someone who seems addicted to the start and allergic to anything beyond that first opening act, that's something that is closer to love addiction.

The people keep changing, but the feeling they're chasing never changes.