Many people associate substance use disorder (SUD) with the abuse of alcohol and drugs like opioids. Yet, this association can cause process addictions to often get overlooked as a source of harm to well-being. Process or behavioral addictions are often overlooked because people are unaware of them or do not recognize that they are a form of addiction. Some examples of process addictions include gambling, overeating, internet addiction, and sex and love addiction. Meanwhile, what is the difference between a substance addiction and a behavioral addiction?
According to the International Journal of Preventive Medicine, while complex, addiction does not only encompass dependence on drugs and chemical substances. Rather, addiction can come from any source that stimulates you to engage in excessive behaviors despite potential consequences. More specifically, a substance addiction stems from the excessive use of drugs and or alcohol, whereas a behavioral addiction stems from the excessive behavior or feeling brought on by a set of actions. Therefore, process addictions are similar to substance addictions, but behavioral addictions can be passive or active.
For example, compulsive television watching is passive, while excessively playing video games is active. The presence of passive and active addiction can make it more difficult to recognize addictive behavior like love addiction. As a result, the following criteria can help to identify process addictions:
- Contains inducing and reinforcing features that lead to addictive tendencies
- Unable to resist the impulse to engage in particular behaviors
- Frequent preoccupation with the behavior or related activity
- The activity is perceived as the most important activity in your life and dominates your thinking and behavior
- Causes functional impairments
- Daily tasks
- Interpersonal relationships
- Social situations
Thus, at The Guest House, we recognize love and sex addiction as process addictions. Through our holistic and trauma-specific approach to treatment, we understand the roots of behavioral challenges. Much like SUD, process addictions like love addiction are rooted in trauma. When you are overwhelmed by trauma and other negative emotions, process addictions can develop as you rely on maladaptive behaviors to replicate positive feelings like happiness. Yet, you may question how you know if you have a love addiction and or sex addiction.
What Is Love Addiction?
Love and sex addiction are often confused with each other, but they are two different types of process addictions. Much of the confusion happens because love addiction and sex addiction are discussed together. Both in the general public and medical settings, love and sex are viewed as interconnected. Yet, in reality, while love addiction and sex addiction are related, love and sex are not the same thing. For example, many people confuse physical intimacy with sex or perceive them to be the same.
In reality, sex is a physical act that can be connected to intimacy, while physical intimacy does not require sex. Sex in the context of sexual activity is a broad range of physical and psychological actions that involve sexual arousal, desire, and satisfaction. Further, through sex, you experience and express your sexuality. As noted by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), sexuality is the way you experience and express yourself sexually. Moreover, your sexuality is built on feelings, desires, actions, identity, and different types of physical touch or stimulation.
On the other hand, intimacy, like emotional and physical intimacy, is about closeness. As the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships states, intimacy is the experience of strong feelings of closeness, connectedness, and bonding. Intimacy is an important part of healthy attachment relationships. Some of the ways intimacy supports healthy attachment relationships include enhanced quality and daily stress buffering to support satisfying romantic relationships. However, when attachment is disrupted by trauma and maladaptive coping, challenges with love addiction and or sex addiction can develop. Thus, awareness of the difference between love addiction and sex addiction is important for understanding the impact of trauma on relationships and well-being.
Much like intimacy and sex, romantic love and substance addiction are often compared to each other. Many describe love as a drug, so some similarities can exist in the intensity of love and substance use. Romantic love is an intense longing for and infatuation with another person. Similarly, drug addiction shares a similar euphoria and craving for the object of obsession. However, love and drug addiction deviate sharply from each other when comparing healthy romantic love to substance use.
In the second phase of healthy romantic love, the relationship develops into a more stable love. Stable love is characterized by a sense of calm, safety, and balance in your relationship. The second phase of drug addiction, however, is compulsive, and the addictive characteristics are magnified by repeated use. Therefore, love addiction is a reflection of unhealthy romantic love, which is comparable to the harmful qualities of drug addiction. As noted in “The Love Addiction Inventory: Preliminary Findings of the Development Process and Psychometric Characteristics” by Sebastiano Costa et al., love addiction is a compulsive need for relationships even when there are adverse consequences.
When you are addicted to love you lose interest in activities and relationships outside of the relationship. You may ignore your friendships, hobbies, school, and work in favor of your romantic partner. Disconnecting from the rest of your life to focus on your romantic relationship can be detrimental. The obsessive and compulsive nature of love addiction can make it difficult to function. It becomes impossible to make plans and maintain other relationships. Moreover, with love addiction, you experience negative emotions when you are not with your partner. Therefore, your romantic partner becomes your whole world as you look to them to cope with emotional distress.
Sex addiction, on the other hand, is a repetitive and intense obsession with sexual fantasies, urges, and behaviors that are distressing and or impede your functioning. The characteristics of sex addiction are more often stigmatized compared to love addiction. Further, the stigma of sex addiction can be related to the perceived taboo nature of sex within society. People often perceive sex addiction as synonymous with individuals, typically men who are out of control, players, untrustworthy, and even dangerous. Additionally, stigma can be seen in the categorization of sex addiction as paraphilic and non-paraphilic:
- Paraphilic sex addiction:
- Sexual behaviors
- Deemed socially unacceptable
- Causes suffering to yourself or your partner
- Sexual acts that involve children and or non-consenting partners
Meanwhile, nonparaphilic sex addiction features more commonly accepted sexual desires, but the sexual acts are typically compulsive.
- Non-paraphilic sex addiction:
- Compulsive sexual behaviors
- Sex acts with multiple partners
- Masturbation
- The use of pornography
- Sex and sexual acts in a consensual relationship
- A fixation with a seemingly unattainable partner
The inclusion of criminalization of sex addiction in the paraphilic category can complicate seeking and receiving treatment for nonparaphilic sex addiction. Thus, as with many stigmatized addictions and mental health disorders, sex addiction is misunderstood. Sex addiction is a real condition that causes a great deal of distress and can further complicate challenges with trauma. Similarly, love addiction is a real condition that also harms well-being and relationships when left unaddressed.
Understanding the Impact of Trauma
Trauma, attachment, and love addiction share an interconnected relationship. It is well known that family is often the primary source of attachment, nurturing, and socialization in your formative years. The attachment styles you form in your family can shape your physiological stress responses as they impact your ability to regulate emotional distress. Thus, the attachments you form early in life can impact how you function today. Yet, what is attachment or an attachment style?
Attachment is a reciprocal process in which an emotional connection is formed between the infant and their caregiver. As a process, attachment can have a significant impact on multiple areas of development. In particular, attachment can influence a young child’s physical, neurological, cognitive, and psychological development. As a result, attachment influences how you learn, process stress, relate to others, and engage in the world. Furthermore, an understanding of attachment in early childhood and adulthood is found in Mary Ainsworth’s experiment, titled “Strange Situation.”
In the “Strange Situation,” Ainsworth observed young children’s actions and behaviors to uncover three attachment styles. The three attachment styles uncovered are secure attachment, ambivalent or anxious-ambivalent attachment, and avoidant attachment. Then, later on, a fourth category for attachment style was uncovered, now known as disorganized attachment.
First, secure attachment is a reflection of a healthy level of comfortability with yourself and others. You can regulate your emotions and adapt to negative experiences in healthy ways. The development of secure attachment can be seen in the behavioral reactions of toddlers during the “Strange Situation” experiment:
- When the caregiver leaves
- The child notices the absence and shows discomfort
- Behavior around a stranger
- The child is comfortable when their primary caregiver is also present
- When the caregiver returns
- The child displays happiness and a positive mood
- How the caregiver responds to the child
- Responsive to the child
- Expresses happiness to see the child
Secure attachment showcases your ability to find comfort and value in relationships while maintaining independence. Insecure attachments, however, reflect difficulty in emotional regulation and relationships. Listed below are the insecure attachment behavioral reactions of toddlers in the “Strange Situation” experiment:
Anxious-Ambivalent Attachment
- When their caregiver leaves
- The child expresses severe discomfort when they realize their caregiver is gone
- Behavior around a stranger
- The child displays high levels of discomfort
- Once their caregiver returns
- They are not soothed
- Rejects the caregiver
- How the caregiver responds to the child
- Response to the child’s needs is inconsistent
- May or may not comfort the child
- They amplify the child’s distress
- Are overwhelmed
- Response to the child’s needs is inconsistent
As the Paediatrics and Child Health Journal notes, anxious-ambivalent attachment is based on hope responses. The child tries to deal with their distress by displaying extreme negative emotions. Extreme negative emotions are expressed in the hopes that the inconsistent caregiver will notice their distress and become responsive to their needs.
Avoidant Attachment
- When the caregiver leaves
- The child displays discomfort over the absence of their caregiver
- Behavior around a stranger
- The child appears to be comfortable
- Once the caregiver returns
- The child makes no effort to engage with their caregiver
- How the caregiver responds to the child
- They ignore or reject the child
Since the caregiver consistently rejects the child, the child knows to avoid the caregiver in times of need.
Disorganized Attachment
- When the caregiver leaves
- The child’s behavior is inconsistent
- They can become angry or act withdrawn
- The child’s behavior is inconsistent
- Behavior around a stranger
- The child’s reaction is inconsistent
- Once the caregiver returns
- The child expresses worry
- How the caregiver responds to the child
- Their response is inconsistent or frightening
By understanding attachment styles, you can explore their impact on long-term well-being. Moreover, the attachment style you form and often carry into adulthood is a reflection of the dynamic and function of those close relationships in early childhood. In other words, attachment trauma stems from unhealthy and dysfunctional attachment relationships in those early interpersonal relationships.
Addressing Attachment Issues in Love Addiction
Many forms of addiction, whether it is a substance or process addiction can find their roots in trauma. Therefore, your attachment style in adulthood is a reflection of the attachment trauma you experience in the interpersonal relationships you formed in early childhood. For instance, being verbally abused by your primary caregiver(s) in childhood increases your normalization of that behavior. You are more likely to perceive verbal abuse as a normal part of relationships. The normalization of unhealthy attachments then manifests as self-defeating behaviors like addiction.
Each insecure attachment style can contribute to challenges with love and interpersonal relationships in adulthood. However, preoccupied or ambivalent attachment in particular is associated with love addiction. According to the Journal of Personalized Medicine, preoccupied attachment is characterized by fear and anxiety, such as:
- Fearing that others will be unavailable in times of need
- Anxiously seeking out love, support, dependence, and commitment
- Experiencing a deep distrust in others’ intentions
- Engaging in compulsive self-reliance
Your fearful attachment is a reflection of your early experiences in trying to adapt to a caregiver who was inconsistent or constantly unavailable. Thus, taking a trauma-specific approach is vital to addressing and healing love addiction.
Taking a Trauma-Specific Approach to Love Addiction
A trauma-specific approach to care allows you to work with your clinician to address and dismantle the harm of trauma in multiple domains of your life. Moreover, trauma-specific approaches, support the reality that trauma does not have to define who you are. By providing access to unique holistic modalities like attachment work, hypnotherapy, and psychodrama, we can support your long-term healing.
Attachment work focuses on building positive connections with others. You will work with a clinician to uncover and reflect on your early experiences with your primary caregiver(s) for greater self-understanding. Through attachment therapy, you will learn how to find safety and comfort in your relationships rather than fear and anxiety. Further, hypnotherapy can be another effective tool for love addiction because it can be difficult to recognize the impact of attachments formed in early childhood. Through hypnotherapy, you are placed in a hypnotic state with waking awareness to uncover your inner experiences.
With greater awareness and understanding of your inner experiences, you can dismantle insecure attachment behaviors and build adaptive coping skills. Additionally, expressive therapies like psychodrama also can support healing love addiction through storytelling tools like role-playing. By acting out your experiences, you can gain greater insight into your life and experiences. With more self-awareness and self-understanding, you can heal the whole of your parts to decrease conflict and anxiety, while improving your self-perception and interpersonal relationships.
Healing Attachment at The Guest House
At The Guest House, we believe holistic healing can help address your needs for healing as a whole person. Distress and self-defeating behaviors are often rooted in the traumas of your childhood. Thus, when deep-seated traumas are left unaddressed, love can morph into unhealthy thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
By addressing your traumatic experiences you can start building tools to support healthier emotional, romantic, and or sexual connections. Through a wide variety of conventional and alternative modalities, we work collaboratively with you to build a treatment plan that makes sense for you and your specific needs. With support, functioning in your daily life and forming meaningful long-lasting supportive relationships is not just an idea but a real path to build a fulfilling life.
Process addictions like love addiction reflect issues with forming healthy attachments with romantic partners. Further, love and sex addictions are often rooted in attachment trauma. Attachment trauma highlights the impact early childhood experiences can have on long-term well-being. Thus, increasing your awareness of the connection between your relationship with caregivers and your romantic relationships today can support self-understanding and healing. When you understand how early attachments impact your thinking and behavior patterns, you can start dismantling those unhealthy behaviors to support whole-person healing. At The Guest House, we are committed to providing a safe, nonjudgmental space where you can truly start to heal the whole of your parts. Call us at (855) 483-7800 today to learn more about love addiction.