I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 175, “Is It Healthy Love or Love Addiction?”

Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast for courageous women
learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become the
boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves ever.
If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently living but
don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place. Stick around
to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks off. Is it
possible? It is, and I’m here to show you how I’m your host, Andrea Giles.
Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

(00:49):

Hi everybody. Welcome. Welcome back to another episode of Heal from
Infidelity. Today we are going to be talking about healthy love versus love
addiction. I have clients that have come to me saying that they know that
they have a problem. They know that it’s an addiction type thing rather
than a healthy thing, and I want to lay it all out for you today so that
you can ask yourself about your own situation. Is this healthy or am I
staying for reasons that are not good for me? And I hope that even though
this might be uncomfortable to look at, that it will crack something open
of truth in you so that you can see really what you are deserving of and
what you’re willing to stand up for to have the kind of love that you want.
Okay, before I jump into it, I just want to remind all of you that you can
apply for my program, get Your Life Back After Infidelity.

(01:44):

It is now an amazing hybrid coaching program where you get so much group
coaching. There’s several calls a week, so ample opportunities to get
coached even if you just make it to one call, you then get to listen to all
the replays. In addition, you get one-on-one coaching with Beth throughout
the entire year. Beth is a coach that works inside my program. She’s
wonderful and very much loved inside the program, so when you join, you
have a ton of support for an entire year. So go apply. I look over every
application. I invite you to come join us. Alright, here we go. Alright. I
want to know, have you ever felt like you can’t live without somebody even
when you know the relationship is not good for you, that you cannot
tolerate the discomfort of not having this person in your life even when
you know it’s not healthy?

(02:39):

We’re going to talk about the difference today between love addiction and
how it’s different from healthy love. Too many times people stay in an
unhealthy relationship because they’re so afraid to be alone. They’d rather
stay in a situation that they know is not good for them, just so they don’t
have to be alone or just so they don’t have to face certain things that
they don’t want to face. We’re going to be talking about what this looks
like, what to do about it, how to recognize it, and how to move forward
from it. Okay? You are going to hear definition and characteristics of love
addiction in contrast to healthy love. We’re going to talk about why love
addiction happens and its root causes, and of course I’m going to give you
some practical strategies here of what to do about it. Okay? Alright, so
love addiction is an unhealthy emotional dependence on another person where
the need for love and approval and validation becomes a compulsion.

(03:47):

We have to have it like a drug, and when we don’t have it, our body can
sometimes act like somebody who doesn’t have their drug. Very panicked,
very, very uncomfortable. A really big piece is that love addiction often
involves prioritizing the relationship over one’s own wellbeing,
self-respect or values. It’s sad. I need this more than I need to be
respectful of myself. It’s like we don’t have the tolerance for it. The
tolerance to just be with ourself, knowing that we are living according to
our values. Signs of love addiction are staying in a relationship that is
unfulfilling, where you sometimes are feeling like you give way more than
you get, or when you don’t really have much that you really mutually enjoy
or where that there’s toxic behaviors like manipulation, meanness, abuse of
different kinds, and we stick with them because we’re afraid of being
alone.

(04:56):

So it’s like the devil is better than the devil. You don’t, okay? I am not
saying I agree with that, but that’s what this looks like here. Sometimes
in this space, it’s constantly seeking romantic relationships to fill an
inner void or avoid emotional discomfort like avoiding having to look at
ourselves and seeing the things that we don’t want to see. We often over
romanticize partners. We blow right past red flags, like blow right past
them, put them on a pedestal. We feel intense anxiety or worthlessness when
we’re not in a relationship or when the relationship is on the rocks when,
for example, if you are with somebody who’s trying to decide what they want
after infidelity, whether they’re the one who betrayed or the one who
didn’t love addiction can look like intense, intense anxiety and
worthlessness as you are waiting for them to figure out what they want.

(05:56):

It can be a very miserable place to be. Okay. Now, what does healthy love
look like? Healthy love looks like mutual respect. Mutual respect. Each
person maintains their individuality. Each person is allowed to be who they
are while building a strong partnership. So there’s mutual respect and
autonomy. There’s each person maintaining their individuality while
respecting each other as they do as well. There’s the emotional security,
okay? Love is supposed to be steady that you can count on it, not a roller
coaster of highs and lows. Okay, hear me on that. Love is steady, not a
roller coaster of highs and lows. If you are listening and you have felt
like your relationship has felt chaotic, like you never quite know what
you’re going to get, please hear me on this. This is not healthy love. It
is not healthy love. Both partners in a secure relationship feel valued and
feel secure.

(07:08):

It doesn’t mean that they might not have moments where they feel shaky,
where old patterns come up, things like that. But in general, they know
that they’re valued. They know they’re deeply cared for, they feel secure.
Now, this can be a tall ask after infidelity to get back to this place, but
it is very, very possible. Often the infidelity cracks things open enough
to where both partners are able to really, really decide what they want,
what they choose, why they choose it, and then build a better relationship.
And so both partners can feel more valued and more secure than they ever
did even before the infidelity occurred. Okay? Another trait of healthy
love is boundaries and self-care. It means that each person is allowed to
take up space. Each person can have personal boundaries, they can
prioritize taking care of themselves along with shared experiences.

(08:09):

So there’s some of both. There’s crossover. Think of a Venn diagram where
there’s each person there and then there’s some crossover that’s shared,
mutually shared, meaningful in a healthy love. It is growth oriented. Both
partners support each other’s growth even when it means allowing space or
challenges in the relationship. So let’s say that somebody is doing
something that requires them to be out of the home for an extra hour in the
evening to train for something like an event, and it could present the
challenge of giving more responsibility to the one that’s home. What
happens here in a healthy relationship is coming together, collaborating to
make this happen. Hey, this really matters to me. How do you feel about
this? How can I support you? Even as I go after this thing that I want to
do and there’s some tag teaming like, alright, now let me support you.

(09:07):

How can I help you? Right? It’s not a take, take, take. I’m going to do all
of these things for my own growth and you should support me in it, right?
Not at all. It’s collaborative, both working towards each other’s good,
giving space for that, and also giving space for challenges that come up in
the relationship that’s going to happen As we grow, we’re going to bump into
new challenges. This is the way it’s going to go forever. It’s usually when
we bump up against challenges that we are able to do the work required to
get past them, especially when we’re in a space of healthy love. The
challenges are not the problem. It’s when we shut ourselves down and don’t
speak and take behavior that we know is not okay. That goes against our own
values, that we don’t feel respected or even respecting ourselves when
we’re tolerating it that it becomes a problem.

(10:03):

Alright, so what are some characteristics of love? Addiction, dependency
over autonomy, feeling like you need the other person to survive or be
whole really intense highs and lows. It feels like a roller coaster with
periods of euphoria followed by really devastating lows like where you feel
so good on top of the world, followed by crashing woes where you feel like
you want to die. It’s just so intense and they can’t live without this
person. A lack of boundaries sacrificing one’s needs, values, or
self-respect to keep the relationship intact. It’s sad, right? Yeah. Like
so much giving up, so much giving up just to keep the relationship a
relationship of any sort, even if it’s not a healthy one. Fear-based
decisions, staying the relationship out of fear of loneliness, abandonment,
rejection rather than genuine love. I’ll add to this fear-based decisions
of staying in the relationship because we don’t want other people to have
feelings.

(11:10):

We don’t want our children to have feelings. We want them to feel good, and
so we’re thinking if I just suck it up and stay and just make it work, even
though I am very unhappy here, then my kids don’t have to have the negative
feelings of having their parents split up. Now in healthy love. It is
rooted in mutual care, shared values and emotional stability. There’s not a
lot of emotional stability going on in love addiction. There’s a lot of
taking. There’s a lot of boundary over writing. I don’t care what your
boundaries are, I want this so I’m going to take it. There’s not a lot of
stability, love addiction rather than being rooted in mutual care and
values and stability is rooted in unresolved emotional wounds and fear.
Okay? I see this too many times with my clients who sometimes they’re
married to somebody who has unresolved emotional wounds and fear and they
have never really deeply looked at those things and really brought them to
the light so they can heal them.

(12:20):

Instead, they continue reacting to them and staying in this marriage even
though neither of them are very happy just because they don’t want to be
alone. This does not work. It’s a self-sabotaging and relationship
sabotaging strategy. There’s no strategy to it, right? It’s completely run
by emotions. Why does love addiction happen? Unresolved childhood wounds.
This can be experiences of neglect, abandonment, inconsistent caregiving.
It can create a craving for validation and love. Now, I’m going to share as
I do often a little bit about my own journey with some of this. I realized
probably three or four years ago that I have some abandonment wounds and I
didn’t really understand why I couldn’t go back and go. I was abandoned, so
it makes sense, and as I’ve really really looked at it and opened up and
really just looked at my life experience, my dad died when I was two days
old out the gate.

(13:28):

My dad died. I never knew him at all. I don’t even have a picture of me
with him because I was born early and was in an incubator and then my mom
got remarried and the second dad left when I was five and I’ve never seen
him since. And those are some big wounds to have at such a young age, and I
did have some inconsistent caregiving as my mom was navigating all of that.
And it definitely has reared itself in my adult life in different ways, and
the more that I see it and understand it, the more I can give myself so
much compassion and remind myself that I am safe. Another reason love
addiction happens is attachment styles. Anxious attachment leads to clinging
and fear of abandonment. Understand what your attachment style is. There’s
all kinds of information out there that you can Google to understand what
yours is.

(14:26):

Low self-worth believing you are unworthy of love and seeking constant
external validation to feel whole. This is such a sad place to be too. We
cannot love somebody. Well, when we don’t feel worthy of love, we can’t
give fully to somebody else if this is the place that we’re in. We can only
give as far as we love ourselves and the better we get at loving ourselves,
the more love we have to give. And often in this place of love addiction,
we can look really, really loving, but it really is self-motivating to get
something back. Some asurity that we’re not going to be left not coming
from this place of not trying to control or not trying to control the
outcome of as long as you never leave me, then another place love addiction
shows up, is in media and cultural narratives. When we romanticize
soulmates and this love conquers all, it can actually perpetuate really
unhealthy expectations.

(15:34):

Even the very best relationships. Sometimes you really don’t like each
other. Terry Real, who I talk about a lot, he has a term that he has coined
called normal marital hatred. This is isn’t a good relationship, okay?
Normal marital hatred. It’s normal that we have times where we really don’t
care for our spouse and then part of our growth is coming back into love,
stepping back into that. But when we have these cultural things out there
telling us what it should be like and looking at our own and going, this
looks nothing like that, we can tell ourselves a story that we have a very
dysfunctional relationship and that we should leave immediately and I expect
more. Not that expecting more is bad, but when it’s coming from this place,
it’s more of an entitled place rather than a deep desire and values space.
Okay, what is the emotional payoff between addiction type love and real deep
love?

(16:37):

Okay, with love of addiction, there is actually a chemical rush of
infatuation. It’s a rush and the fear-based drive to keep the relationship
alive at all costs. It just feels like there’s so much on the line and I
have to do whatever I can to hold onto this, and it becomes like this
chemical thing with real healthy love. It can feel amazing. It can feel very
pleasurable and amazing, but it’s actually more steady. It’s rather than
think about with food, okay, we can get a sugar rush from eating sugar and
it can feel really good. That can feel good, and then it wears off and then
we have a crash and we need more as opposed to just a steady flow of
healthy food that keeps us feeling good and sustained and whole and working
for us rather than needing more all the time. Alright, the next section is
steps to heal from Love Addiction.

(17:40):

First is awareness, of course. Awareness and going, wow, I did not realize
that that’s what this is. And acceptance of recognizing patterns of love,
addiction in your relationships. Maybe you’re with somebody who is in this
type of mindset, love addiction. This can be really hard on you if this is
the case, because what we all want to know is the person with me, with me
because they really want to be with me or because they’re afraid of being
alone. This is a good thing to know. Right? Next is developing emotional
independence. This means focusing on building your own self-esteem and
learning to validate yourself, learning to have your own back. This is
something we do a lot of work on inside my program is really growing
ourselves, growing our own backbone, growing our own ability to hold who we
are, knowing who we are, knowing what we want and holding it, cultivating a
fulfilling life outside of relationships, hobbies, friendships, et cetera.

(18:50):

Passions, cultivating a life outside of the relationship. You are more than
your relationship so much more. Getting help, getting help. This can be
through coaching, which is obviously what I do, or different modalities of
therapy like attachment focused therapy. That kind of thing can be really
helpful too. Joining other people who are dealing with the same thing can
be helped too. I didn’t know until I was researching this topic, but
apparently there is a group called Love Addicts Anonymous. I didn’t know
until I prepared this, and this is for people who are sharing the same
experiences and have accountability with each other. Okay? Learning to set
boundaries, practice saying no and identifying your needs without guilt. So
part of that self-esteem work is being able to say no and then being able
to hold that no without feeling bad for it. Recognizing when a relationship
is unhealthy and having the courage to step away.

(20:00):

I would also say with this boundary piece, sometimes it’s just recognizing
that it’s unhealthy and us cleaning up our side of things and showing up in
a different way and then seeing if this other person is willing to grow
into a more healthy relationship with us. You can shift to healthy love,
cultivate healthy relationship habits, clear communication, mutual respect,
emotional security. Okay. I want you to practice recognizing the difference
between choosing love and needing love. It’s very, very different.
Energetically, it will feel different in your body. One will feel more
fear-based and pressure based, whereas choosing will like abundance and
openness and love, right? Alright, to wrap this up, love addiction is rooted
in fear and compulsion. Healthy love is about choice, respect, and mutual
growth. Healing is possible and the first step is awareness and just
acceptance. Like, okay, this is where I’m at.

(21:09):

We’re not judging it. And just like the example I shared with you about my
own experience, there’s probably a very good reason for it for you why you
are in this space. You can have so much compassion for that. You came by
this. Honestly, nobody just decides they want to be addicted to love and
validation, right? Reflect on your own relationships, okay? I want you to
think about the relationship you’re in with the lens of what I just shared
with you and where can you tighten things up? Where can you stand more solid
within yourself? What questions can you ask your partner or spouse about why
they’re in the relationship? These are all good things to know. Okay? I want
to remind you, my dear listeners, that you deserve love. That feels steady
and secure and fulfilling. Not love. That feels like a battle for survival.
That is not love, okay? That is not love. It’s not worth your health. It is
not worth the stress, and you are deserving of secure love. Alright? That’s
what I have for you today. Thank you for being here and I will talk to you
next time.

Thank you for listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast. If you would
like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new podcast
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3 Biggest Lies About Infidelity

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I will see you next time.