Other Kinds of Love in AA: How to Recognize and Appreciate the Different Forms of Love You Receive a

Love addiction creates fixations and compulsions in love interests and can play itself out in unhealthy behaviors toward loved ones. Love addicts can people please, putting the needs of others before their own. It can also result in divorce, affairs, poor job performance, relationship conflict, poor concentration of everyday tasks, enmeshment, clinginess, and emotional distress including anxiety and depression. Emotional highs such as intense passion, and emotional lows, like intense disappointment or heartbreak can eventually strain the relationship, resulting in resentment. Consequently, love addiction may have intense elements of a lack of control present in other addictions, such as sex addiction or a chemical addiction.

Love addiction is a controversial and highly debated condition. Some may argue we are all at risk of having some level of love addiction potential. Despite the many opinions on the matter, love addiction can cause emotional problems and even contribute to the breakdown of a relationship. Furthermore, it is a condition that creates much emotional distress, compulsive behaviors and even obsessions where love, romance and sex are concerned. As a result, people battling love addiction can find themselves in unstable relationships, such as toxic or abusive relationships, which can be abusive both mentally and physically. Unfortunately, many may not be able to identify the dangers that come along with such unions.

Other Kinds of Love in AA

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People who struggle with love addiction may idolize their love interest and pursue relationships for the sake of the honeymoon phase or become very clingy and overly dependent on their partner. Love addiction can take on the following symptoms, but these signs are not limited to this list:

It is normal to idolize romantic partners by putting them on a pedestal. In the case of love addiction, however, the love addict may obsessively put their partner on a pedestal to their detriment. The partner may not even be emotionally responsive, affectionate, or may be abusive.

Much research is being done to provide information on how love addiction truly works. Genetics, trauma, and upbringing can play a factor in love addition and addiction in general. Love addiction stems from several places like low self-esteem, or other underlying problems. For example, a partner lacking self-esteem may lean on their partner to give them that. Additionally, people may develop love addiction as a way to fill a void left over from childhood trauma, low self-worth, or a lack of self-love. Like other types of addictions, it can stem from abandonment fears. Furthermore, lust for a partner can create obsessiveness as chemicals are released through sexual activity. Sex releases chemicals like oxytocin, and can create an intense attachment for someone who already has low self-esteem or codependency.

An additional reason can include using relationships to fill emotional voids. People may feel love would bring life, excitement, and value. In this case, someone can put too much pressure on their partner to be their everything, have poor emotional boundaries, and develop codependent unions. Feeling like someone has all the traits you lack can cause you to see your partner in an idealized light, or constantly seek approval from their partner. Finally, childhood trauma can be a factor. Circumstances like child abuse, rejection, and emotional neglect can contribute to love addiction.

Lastly, the ambivalent (or avoidant) love addict avoids true intimacy. They can function as the one who holds on to past loves, engages in one-sided relationships (unrequited love), and can sabotage their relationships. Furthermore, they are addicted to the illusion of relationships but may run away or be inconsistent about getting close in relationships. Any of these models of love addicts can use sex to maintain unhealthy attachments, lie, manipulate, play out past relationship dynamics, or even threaten themselves or their partner if they decide to leave.

Love addiction can exist with other types of mental or emotional challenges. In the case of trauma, people can seek love in unhealthy places to gain what they perceive as love. Equally, people who seek the highs of love (the dopamine) or people with addictive personalities can find this as a motivating factor in constantly needing relationships and love.

Moreover, if the obsessive love addict cannot maintain the attention or affection of their loved one, he or she can experience feelings of anxiety or even get depressed as their relationships begin to fall apart. The stress love addicts can put on themselves to obtain love, or the compulsive need to maintain or form relationships can become a distracting factor in poor job function or wellbeing. As a result, they can begin to neglect their self-care, further neglecting their needs as they become consumed by emotional highs and lows. They may not be able to function within healthy patterns without someone there to love or be loved by, seeing it as an act of betrayal. These feelings of frustration, rejection, and betrayal can create uncomfortable feelings that people can use chemicals to solve.

Often times, there is an underlying shame and void that needs healing and awareness. Additionally, obsessiveness and anxiety can occur that love addicts cannot fix alone. Therapies such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help bring awareness to the love addict as they become mindful of their thoughts. Online therapy can also be an effective option for those with a love addiction and who may wish to opt for at-home treatment. Meditation can slow the feeling of anxiety and bring compassion to the individual suffering.

In cases where anxiety exists, meditation and cultivating self-love can work wonders to bring the focus back to the individual suffering, while allowing them to build self-worth and fill the void. For trauma, therapists in inpatient rehab facilities can both help provide helpful insight, while recognizing unhealthy patterns from childhood or adulthood that can impact diagnosing unhealthy patterns or behavior. Lastly, useful medications for depression or anxiety can benefit the individual.

Love encompasses a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most sublime virtue or good habit, the deepest interpersonal affection, to the simplest pleasure.[1][2] An example of this range of meanings is that the love of a mother differs from the love of a spouse, which differs from the love for food. Most commonly, love refers to a feeling of a strong attraction and emotional attachment.[3][4][5]

Love is considered to be both positive and negative, with its virtue representing human kindness, compassion, and affection, as "the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another" and its vice representing human moral flaw, akin to vanity, selfishness, amour-propre, and egotism, as potentially leading people into a type of mania, obsessiveness or codependency.[6][7] It may also describe compassionate and affectionate actions towards other humans, one's self, or animals.[8] In its various forms, love acts as a major facilitator of interpersonal relationships and, owing to its central psychological importance, is one of the most common themes in the creative arts.[9] Love has been postulated to be a function that keeps human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species.[10]

Ancient Greek philosophers identified six forms of love: essentially, familial love (in Greek, Storge), friendly love or platonic love (Philia), romantic love (Eros), self-love (Philautia), guest love (Xenia), and divine or unconditional love (Agape). Modern authors have distinguished further varieties of love: unrequited love, empty love, companionate love, consummate love, infatuated love, self-love, and courtly love. Numerous cultures have also distinguished Ren, Yuanfen, Mamihlapinatapai, Cafuné, Kama, Bhakti, Mettā, Ishq, Chesed, Amore, Charity, Saudade (and other variants or symbioses of these states), as culturally unique words, definitions, or expressions of love in regards to a specified "moments" currently lacking in the English language.[11][12][13]

Scientific research on emotion has increased significantly over the past two decades. The color wheel theory of love defines three primary, three secondary and nine tertiary love styles, describing them in terms of the traditional color wheel. The triangular theory of love suggests "intimacy, passion and commitment" are core components of love. Love has additional religious or spiritual meaning. This diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.

The word "love" can have a variety of related but distinct meanings in different contexts. Many other languages use multiple words to express some of the different concepts that in English are denoted as "love"; one example is the plurality of Greek concepts for "love" (agape, eros, philia, storge) .[14] Cultural differences in conceptualizing love thus doubly impede the establishment of a universal definition.[15]

Although the nature or essence of love is a subject of frequent debate, different aspects of the word can be clarified by determining what isn't love (antonyms of "love"). Love as a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like) is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy). As a less-sexual and more-emotionally intimate form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust. As an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is sometimes contrasted with friendship, although the word love is often applied to close friendships or platonic love. (Further possible ambiguities come with usages "girlfriend", "boyfriend", "just good friends"). 2ff7e9595c