Love's Many Faces - Exploring Love Addiction (Part II)

What if your idea of love is actually an addiction? Dr. Shemena helps us understand how individuals with deep-seated insecurities and fears of intimacy can fall into a pattern of seeking perfection and adulation in their partners, becoming addicted to the euphoria of love rather than experiencing its genuine depth.  This episode is for anyone seeking to transform their relationship dynamics and gain deeper insight into their own behavior. Tune in!

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Transcript

Dr. Shemena 0:05

This is the Dark Matters podcast with Dr . Shemena . I'm Dr . Shemena , a licensed therapist that underwent my own transformation , and I'm here to share my insights and revelations . This is a podcast that goes well beyond the surface of everyday psychology to help you become conscious and aware . It's about understanding and it's about empowerment so that you can take control of your life in this challenging world . So what do you say ? Let's dive in . Hi everyone , this is Dr . Shemena , and today I'm going to be following up on one of my prior podcasts in which I discuss what's in the word love and some of the many faces of love .

Dr. Shemena 0:52

In this episode , I'm going to take the opportunity to follow up and discuss some other ways that I believe that romantic love can function as an intoxicant which can be similar to an addiction . So healthy romantic love has its roots in not needing an individual to be perfect for you , but to be able to love someone warts and all just for who they are . You know , and it's a process that happens in moments over time , but when you have deficits in your psychology , like these deep-seated insecurities and fears of intimacy , your emotions can move you to a place where you require , and almost at sometimes demand , that someone be perfect for you , mirror you , make you feel good about yourself . Like , please tell me I'm the greatest , please tell me that I'm lovable , please tell me that I'm good . And , in a lot of ways , the need , the desire , the demand to hear that , like , you become addicted to it . You become addicted to the sense of adulation as a way to prove to yourself that you are loved , you are likable or you're attractive . It's a way to cover up for the deeper insecurities . Now I have to say that some of you might be thinking that this is something that you might just see in men , but it's really not . It happens with women too . This dynamic is a common experience for individuals who have really never really learned the simple rules of how to discover another person's personality and also learning to question and think whether if this person on the other side of you is compatible with you or not , like , for example . I'll give you an example Like , a lot of times , individuals will initiate sex and like , have sex with someone without really knowing who they are as a person .

Dr. Shemena 3:24

Now , I'm a therapist and I'm a therapist of this world and I'm also a human being , and if you want to have a one-off sexual encounter with someone or as many lovers as you want . That is fine . That is not what I am saying and putting forward today . But thinking about when you're initiating sex with someone . Do you understand yourself , your motivations and why you're doing what you're doing and when you're doing it ? That's a key question . A lot of times we will initiate sex because I just want to have sex , but then 24 to 48 hours later I'm thinking we're in a relationship or you might be thinking this person , why don't you have feelings for me ? And it's all misguided and it's all misplaced . It really starts with really questioning your own self and why you're doing what you're doing when you're doing it , being conscious of that part of you that just wants to feel good .

Dr. Shemena 4:38

Now I described one version where loving a person comes from the way he or she makes you feel and involves little concern for the other , because what the lover really wants is this kind of heady feeling of intoxication , that blissful state where you feel as if life has become a sort of heaven on earth and all your troubles have disappeared for the moment . It's like a flight from reality , like falling in love and being with this person and then , raptured in this erotic sense gets conflated with excitement and eroticism and it's not based on any kind of real intimacy . The problem is that it's impossible to stay high forever and as you come down from this high , you start to realize that the person you're looking at on the other side of you , that you love , maybe isn't so perfect after all . But even worse , you find that your reality is still the same and maybe it feels unfulfilling . Now you might get frustrated that nothing has changed and you might think on some level , maybe I made a mistake and maybe this person is not my person . And then you move on and it becomes a cycle of wash , rinse and repeat . It's like writing a story where there's always a beginning , there's a middle and then there's an end . And , trust me , there's always an end because it's this repetitive cycle that lies within your unconscious , and Freud discussed this at length .

Dr. Shemena 6:28

With the repetition compulsion . We have this tendency unconsciously to repeat the same scenarios over and , over and over again until you learn a lesson . You're trying to cure a core wound , albeit this is all unconscious . It's like the psyche is trying to make sense of a particular pain point and find a different way to answer some questions . And , as I said , this kind of love which is where you just are looking for a high . It doesn't have a lot of lasting power or concern for the other person .

Dr. Shemena 7:13

What lies at the heart of this type of dynamic or this type of love is often to avoid real love and intimacy , which means being in touch with your needs and becoming ultimately dependent on someone else , which is really about vulnerability . Now some people wake up from the delusion of this romantic love to find that the person they've chosen might not be perfect , but maybe it's still pretty good at their core . Then authentic love may begin to develop because you're more in contact with a sense of reality . And then there's also some other people who can't bear reality and they move on to the next person . For them , as I mentioned before , love is this drug that brings the greatest high we humans have ever known . But when it wears off it's not uncommon it's like I just need another fix . Now , changing these habits and interrupting this repetition . It's about being able to zoom out a little away from these intense core emotions and see the reality of the situation , that this is unhealthy patterning . You know the real .

Dr. Shemena 8:43

The issue of vulnerability and avoiding real intimacy lies behind a number of addictions , because one of the primary functions of addiction is to produce this heady feeling state that helps the addict escape the truth in the reality . And in many instances , the reality which the addict wants to escape is deep feelings of shame , maybe real need for someone , maybe feelings of inadequacy . There's no secret that many addicts often have stronger relationships with their drugs than what they do with their significant others . So if that's a clue for you , there's something to think about . So now I'm going to turn the lens on you for you to ask some questions of yourself and really ponder some of these questions . Like are you addicted to love ? Maybe , if you've had a series of short , failed relationships , this may be the reason .

Dr. Shemena 9:50

I'm not saying it's the only , but think about it . Maybe you find the reality of love , with being connected to someone , difficult to tolerate . Or maybe you just like the idea of love but don't really have a sense of reality of what love really means . Are there other addictions and I don't mean in the casual way , like I'm addicted or I just love ice cream . I mean real addiction interferes with your life . While it brings immediate pleasure , it usually leads to long-term suffering .

Dr. Shemena 10:28

Think about it like what about work , sex , alcohol , surfing on the Internet , pornography , exercise , spending money , compulsive shopping these can all be looked at as a kind of addiction . Are you using this metaphorical drug of choice to avoid people , to escape feeling the desire for somebody else ? Maybe you might find it too frightening to make yourself that vulnerable and you might feel safer in the arms of your drug of choice . You know , I've always believed that while addictions have a physiological component and involve other psychological issues , wanting to avoid the reality of love , need, and desire for a separate person often really lies at the heart of them . So that's all I got for today . Take care , be well . I hope you enjoyed this episode of Dark Matters with Dr . Shemena . Thank you for listening in . You can find me at shemenajohnson . com . All the links of where you can find me are in the show summary . Come back often and make sure you subscribe , rate, and review , because I'd love to hear your comments and remember . Either you deal with your feelings or they deal with you . See you guys soon .