Love addiction, part 2

Last, I wrote that love addicts and avoidants develop unhealthy patterns of dependency, distance, chaos, and often abuse.  In this article, I will describe the types of love addiction.

The types of love addiction are:
* Obsessed love addiction: This type of addiction comes with the inability to live independently from another person, or a feeling of possession.  The person may continue the obsession years after the relationship has ended.
* Codependency addiction: This type spins around the desired person.  The partner’s life is the focus, not the love addict.
* Relationship addiction: This often manifests as an addiction to the idea of having a relationship, instead of the development of an authentic relationship. There are two types: those who are constantly in and out of relationships and those who will not let go of a bad relationship for the sake of having a healthy relationship.
* Narcissistic love addiction: This type is all about the love addict, not about the person of affection.
* Ambivalent love addiction:  Having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about someone is what this love addict encounters.
* Romance addiction: This can represent itself as an obsession over romance itself, including, but not limited to adventure and passion. People suffering with this type of love addiction worry about romantic rituals such as dates, dinner, sex, and everything else that has to do with a passing romance. This can often be a living out of the person's individual fantasies. A typical example is the legendary Don Juan. The love addict will seek seduction and conquest, but quickly tire of it.

By Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT

Renee has offices in Westminster and Fort Collins, Colorado.  Her work number is 303-257-7623 and 970-324-6928

Love addiction

Love addicts and avoidants form relationships that inevitably lead to unhealthy patterns of dependency, distance, chaos, and often abuse. Familiarity is the central engine of the love addiction. Each is attracted to the other specifically because of the familiar traits that the other exhibits.  These are patterns learned in childhood and continue into adulthood despite the pain that is caused. When the two addictive lovers come together --- a common and predictable relational process is ignited. Reference http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_addiction

This cycle of love addiction encompasses a push-pull dance full of emotional highs and lows where the one is on the chase (love addiction) while the avoidant is on the run. They both engage in "counterfeit emotional involvement” which consists of melodrama and negative intensity.  This dance creates the illusion of true love, intimacy, and connection.

The negative consequences of love addiction can vary. Depending on the severity of ones love addiction, negative consequences can range from violence (to others or self) to increased feelings of shame, depression, impaired emotional growth, chronic emptiness, loneliness, and loss of intimacy and enjoyment in life. In its extreme form, love addiction causes more murders and suicides than any other addiction.

The consequences of love addiction are most-clearly revealed when the love addict experiences withdrawal, which occurs when a relationship has ended or is perceived as falling apart. When a break-up occurs, the love addict longs for the attachment and apparent loving feelings of the lost relationship, as much as a heroin user craves the drug that is no longer available. This longing is a form of emotional withdrawal that leads to debilitating pain, obsession, and destructive behaviors atypical of that person’s usual behavior patterns.

By Renee Madison, MA, LPC
Renee has offices in Westminster and Ft. Collins. Her work number is (303) 257-7623 (970) 324-6928

Unconditional love vs. validation

"Unconditional love means loving your child no matter what.  Although unconditional love is critically important in parenting, it is a different concept from validation.  Unintended hurt an happen even when unconditional love is present.  You can have unconditional love and still invalidate your child's feelings, just as you can have unconditional love and validate your child's feelings.  When you give unconditional love while invalidating your child's thoughts and feelings, you run the risk of fostering the child's unhealthy dependency on you or others.  Unconditional love creates a safe environment, but invalidation teaches the child that he can't make his own decisions and can't keep himself safe, but needs you or someone else to do that.  'I love you no matter who else hates you' does not validate the child's loss of a friend.  'We've always got each other' does not help the child deal with his emotions about not making the team or about his father's move out of the house.  It is actually more confusing to him than simply validating him." - Karyn D. Hall, PhD and Melissa H. Cook, LPC in The Power of Validation

Validation is important to your child's emotional health as is unconditional love.  Since we love so deeply, we want to validate.  Being intentional is the validating is important as we can easily invalidate in that love.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928

Constructed to love

"God has not constructed us to be fueled by accomplishments, possessions or trophies. He has constructed us to be fueled by love. And love only comes from being deeply connected to others." Henry Cloud in Law of Happiness

It is important to remember that we don't get our fulfillment, true fulfillment with stuff. Experiencing and owning things can add to life and accomplishments to the enjoyment but not add love.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928

The Impossible

A beautiful movie of love, tragedy and survival.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928


[youtube=http://youtu.be/Bgw394ZKsis]

The life of a giver

"First, give out of faith....
"Second, give out of empathy....
"Third, give out of your whole life, not just your material resources....
"Fourth, give in a structured way....
"Fifth, make sure that you are giving 'freely'....
"Sixth, give past your comfort level at times....
"Seventh, make it relational...
"And last, give to those who don't deserve it.  Jesus told us to give to our enemies and to those who won't return the favor.  'Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.  Then your reward will be great, and you will be the sons of the Most High, because  he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.'" - Henry Cloud in The Law of Happiness

Giving too much of your emotional reserves can lead to unhappiness.  We need to be in other people's lives, forcing ourselves to give to not be selfish and to be loving.  It is not easy but it is a rewarding life.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928

A loving couple bubble

“As experts on one another, they can detect when the other has an itch, and they know exactly how to scratch it to provide relief.  Often it takes just a smile or a look or a grasp of the hand to calm each other’s primitives and communicate the support that is needed.  They get their needs met in ways that would not be possible if each were alone; they do this for each other because they can and because it makes them more attractive–and even indispensible–to one another.  Nor does anyone outside their bubble do what they do for one another, and as such, their world is a safer, more protective world than the one that exists outside their bubble.” -Stan Tatkin, Psy.D. in Wired for Love

A loving couple bubble is work but it is worth the work.  Like a child who is has parents who know what we need, so can an adult couple-ship can meet each other’s attachment needs with contentment and belonging to each other.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928

Love things or people

“Kilbourne demonstrates how ads encourage us to objectify each other and to believe that our most significant relationships are with products.  As she says, ‘Ads turn lovers into things and things into lovers.’

“Jean Kilbourne shows that the main message is that happiness comes from products.  Advertisers exploit our very real human desires for connection, calmness, respect, and excitement.  Every emotion is used to sell something.  The cumulative effect of all these ads is to leave us romantic about objects and deeply cynical about humans, who are after all much more complicated than products.  (‘Who says guys are afraid of commitment?  He’s had the same backpack for years.’)  Over and over, ads’ messages are that human relationships are fragile, difficult, and disappointing but products won’t let us down.  (‘The ski instructor faded away three years ago, but the sweater didn’t.’)  But, Kilbourne points out, ‘Products are the only things, and no matter how much we love them, they won’t love us back.

“Kilbourne writes that our being buried alive in what David Denby calls ‘an avalanche of junk.’  Twenty years ago, kids drank twice as much milk as soda.  Thanks to ads, today the reverse is true.” – Mary Pipher in Can’t by My Love

We can’t exchange things for people to have a full life.  Yes, relationships can interfere our perfect lives as we plan them, however life is meant for more than things.


Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928

Be Your Partner's Regulator

"How many people actually know how to spontaneously make their partner feel happy and loved?  I'm talking here about a phrase, a deed or an expression aimed at one's partner meant specifically to uplift him or her.  I have seen partners married for thirty years who appear dumbfounded when challenged to brighten, move charm, or otherwise enamor one another. Yet this ability to spontaneously and predictably shift or elevate your partner's mood or emotional state is a crucial aspect of being an expert on your partner.

"In my work with couples, I have found most people don't want their partner to change, not really.  They fundamentally appreciate their partners as they are.  But what people do want is to know how to influence, motivate, and otherwise have a positive effect on their partner.  They want to avoid pushing the other's buttons.  But that is not enough.  They also want to know the antidotes to apply when things go awry.  They want to be privy to when and where their partner has an itch, so they can scratch it for him or her.

"In this way, couples seek to become competent managers of each other.  In fact, their competence as partners is not unlike the competence of parents, who want to soothe their child's painful feelings and cultivate positive ones.  It also can be compared to the role of a regulator.  Partners who are competent managers are able to help regulate each other's moods and energy levels. As regulators, each continually monitors the other and know when to jump in and throw a switch to help restore balance in the direction of those things that make the partner feel good." - Stan Tatkin, Psy.D. in Wired for Love

This idea of regulator of partners mood may sound unhealthy.  This, however, is not losing yourself in the relationship.  I like the similarity to parents soothing their child when having painful feelings.


Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928

Relationship Vow

"When I see partners in a successfully maintained couple bubble, one standout feature is their ability to care for, influence, and manage one another, much the way expert parents do with their children.  Both partners seem to have read and carefully studied the owner's manual for the relationship and for each other.  Each is familiar with operational details that no one outside of the bubble is likely to know.
"For instance, these partners know what has the most power to push the other's buttons.  When the other is feeling bad, they immediately sense why.  Not only that, they know how to remedy the situation.  They know the right words to say, or deeds to perform, that have the power to elevate, relieve, excite, soothe, or heal each other.  From a neuroscience perspective, these partners possess strong orbitofrontal cortices; well-balanced left and right brains; well-developed smart vagal systems; well-regulated breath and vocal control; and honed communication skills that keep love close and war at a far distance.
"How did they get to be so adept?  Are such people perhaps in possession of a perfect partner chromosome?  Trust me, no.  Do they have some kind of secret superpower that allows them to manage their partner emotionally?  Well maybe.  ...some of us got a better start in life than did others, with a lots of positive interactions with safe adults who were interested in and curious about us.  We all come to the table with primitives that don't want us to be harmed, and ambassadors that at times can be annoying.  Truth is, we can be, all of us, pains in the rear.  When we recite our relationship vows, perhaps we should say, "I take you as my pain in the rear, with all your history and baggage, and I take responsibility for all prior injustices you endured at the hands of those I never knew, because you now are in my care."  - Stan Tatkin, Psy.D. in Wired for Love

Would you be willing to take that vow?  That is commitment.  As parents we are to take that vow.  Can we do it for our main relationship?  Secure partners do this for one another.  It is not easy when our partner has a lot of baggage.  And what I see in my counseling office is that when one partner has a lot of baggage then the other one does too.  This is a difficult situation that needs a third party sometimes to help.

Renee Madison, MA, LPC, CSAT is a counselor in Colorado.  She can be reached for appointments at 303-257-7623 or 970-324-6928