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Exploring the issue of Love and Relationship Addiction For most women with unhealthy love and relationship addiction, we are dealing with depression, isolation, and a lack of trust. Unhealthy use of love and relationships is used as a means of achieving worth. Characteristics of someone struggling with Love and Relationship Addiction may include, but are not limited to: • Lack of nurturing and attention when young • Feeling isolated, detached from parents and family • Mistake intensity for intimacy • Hidden pain • Seek to avoid rejection and abandonment at all cost • Afraid to trust anyone in a relationship • Inner rage over lack of nurturing, early abandonment • Depressed • Manipulative and controlling of others • Perceive attraction, attachment, and sex as basic human needs, as with food and water • Sense of worthlessness • Escalating tolerance for high-risk behavior • Presence of other addictive or compulsive problems • Using others to alter mood or relieve pain • Existence of secret “double life” • Defining “wants” as “needs” • Use fantasy or unhealthy relationships to escape painful feelings or reality • Unrealistic or unhealthy expectations with our spouse LOVE & RELATIONSHIP ADDICTION
How We Find Recovery Through a relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Higher Power, and by working through the 8 principles and the Christ-centered 12 steps, we can find freedom from our hurts, hang ups and habits. Characteristics of someone in recovery with Love & Relationship Addiction may include, but are not limited to: • Accept Jesus Christ as Higher Power • Working the 12-step recovery process diligently and consistently. • Shifting our worship from our sexuality to God. • Finding healthy coping mechanisms for negative feelings, emotions, and circumstances. • Developing a healthy identity and positive self-worth that comes from God, not our bodies or others. • Learning to love ourselves as God loves us, so knowing we are worth the work it takes for Him to heal us. • Emotionally connecting with God, self, and others, and developing safe relationships. • Identify difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships with others. • Not engaging in sex with self, phone sex, cyber-sex, pornography, fantasy, or a sexual relationship outside of marriage. • Seeking a biblical definition of healthy sexuality. • Become willing to experience grief, forgiveness, and acceptance. • Discerning the difference between physical “need” and “want” • Avoid cross over addictions, i.e. food/alcohol/drugs • Identify triggers • Avoid people, places, and things that tempt us to act out. • In our recovery, we become willing to be used by God to bring hope to others with similar struggles. LOVE & RELATIONSHIP ADDICTION, cont.