ADDICTED  TO  LOVE

"Might as well face it, you're addicted to love..."  - Robert Palmer

            As people drawn to the helping professions, we need constantly to assess our surrounding relationships. Paradoxically, if our natural inclination to help others becomes bloated, we harm instead of heal. Sadly, someone recently lamented to me that people in the psychological community seemed less mentally healthy than the general population.  Even the honorable desire to help can slip into addiction, no less destructive than gambling, workaholism or compulsive overeating. The short quiz below illustrates many of the signs and symptoms.

If seven or more of the following describe you, the danger of love addiction is very real.

You:

• come from a family in which emotional needs were not met;

• assumed a caretaker/pleaser role to gain approval;

• are attracted to people who don't treat you well;

• find loving, kind, stable people boring;

• put forth over 50% of the effort, or take over 50% of the responsibility;

• are very tolerant of others and spend a long time hoping for something different;

• make excuses for his/her behavior, holding out for the way it used to be, or could be;

• have a low self-image: you believe you have to earn happiness;

• are terrified of abandonment and being alone;

• control or manage your partner's life in an effort to help him/her;

• focus on others, thereby avoiding personal responsibility;

• have other addictive tendencies: overeating, too much TV, working too much, etc.;

• fear disapproval so much you rarely say 'no', or express your true opinion for fear of displeasing or losing your partner.

            Sternberg (1988) identified ten indicators of healthy love.  As you read over the following list, keep your marriage and other personal relationships in mind, but also asses your professional liaisons as well.

Successful partners:

• do not take their relationship for granted;

• make their relationship an important priority;

• actively seek to meet each other's needs;

• know when and when not to change in response to the other;

• value themselves;

• love each other, not their idealization of each other;

• tolerate what they cannot change;

• are open with each other;

• make good times together and grow through the bad ones;

• do unto each other as they would have the other do unto them.

            As you have been reading this column, rivers and streams are slowly eroding mountains of solid rock. But you would have great difficulty detecting the process because of its gradual, quiet destruction. Similarly, relationship addiction slowly erodes intimacy by imposing unhealthy demands, crossing various boundaries, and ignoring vital information.  

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