5 Signs You’re Addicted to Love
Love addiction comes from the chemicals that are released in our brains when we find ourselves falling in love with someone. Being around a romantic partner releases extreme levels of dopamine, while oxytocin literally rewires the brain to make you feel those deep, rewarding feelings of love toward your partner. This means that everyone is chemically addicted to love in some sense, but here are a few signs you might be in over your head.
Obsessing Over Your Partner
It’s normal to think about your partner often, especially in the early stages of the relationship – when you first start dating, you might notice that they’re practically on your mind 24/7. But if you find yourself obsessing over them excessively, it could be your first sign that you’re addicted to your partner.
These obsessions can manifest negatively or positively. You might find yourself constantly worrying over the worst outcomes of your relationship – checking their text messages, stalking their socials, and obsessing over what they might be doing when they’re away from you. This kind of obsession can create a vicious cycle that demonstrates your desperation in love; you can’t shake your new worst fear that they might leave you.
Positive obsessions can be harder to spot because they’re often written off as being cute behaviors. But if you find yourself constantly daydreaming about you and your partner, relying on them as your only form of social support, and slowly moving your life to revolve around them, you’re definitely in the danger zone for love addiction. You’re basically crafting a world for yourself where everything balances on the shoulders of your partner; if they were to leave, you’d spiral.
Feeling Anxious When Your Partner is Away
Experiencing heightened anxiety or distress when your partner is not around is another indicator of love addiction. If the absence of your partner makes you feel incomplete, anxious, or significantly upset, it could point to an unhealthy dependency on your relationship for emotional fulfillment. It’s normal to miss your partner – and if they’re gone for extended periods of time, feelings of anxiety aren’t anything to worry about, either – but it’s not normal for your entire world to be turned upside down every time you can’t see them for a little while.
Maintaining independence is important both for a strong relationship and for avoiding the throes of love addiction. If you find yourself attaching yourself too heavily to your partner, recognize when (and why) this might happen and encourage yourself to take a step back. A healthy relationship should include complete comfort with both togetherness and individual space. That doesn’t mean you should be happier without them than you are with them – it just means that you can enjoy life on your own, too.
Jumping Quickly Into New Relationships
If you find yourself rapidly moving from one relationship to another with little time in between, this is one of the biggest signs of love addiction. It also makes it easier for you to accidentally fall into unhealthy relationships. The reason? You’re seeking relationships out of the fear of being alone, not the genuine partnership with another person.
If you rely on your romantic relationships to validate you and make you feel fulfilled, you’re limiting the success you’ll be able to have outside of a relationship. When you struggle to exist outside of a romantic relationship – no matter who the partner may be – you’re suffering from love addiction. This is one of the clearest indicators that you’re not just dedicated to one particular partner, but rather feel the need to be in a relationship at all times; if you’re not in one, you’re not happy. It’s important for you to understand that self-worth and contentment should ideally come from within, rather than solely from romantic connections.
Dropping Everything To Focus On Dating
Another red flag is when all other aspects of your life – such as friendships, hobbies, career goals – start to lose importance, and the sole focus becomes your romantic relationships. You might find yourself pushing back work deadlines to see your partner or texting them while on the job. Maybe you stop going out with friends entirely so that you can devote every second of your spare time to your partner. You might cancel plans last-minute if your partner suddenly becomes available to see you. You’re basically self-sabotaging your own life (and non-romantic relationships) for the sake of a romantic relationship.
Balancing your dating life and your independent life is important. When you lose the things that fulfill you outside of a relationship, you’ll quickly become love-addicted; nothing in your life can compare to the high of being in love. Once a relationship stagnates or ends, however, you’ll likely fall into an extended period of listlessness – when your regular life doesn’t compare to the same joy you feel in a relationship, you might feel the urge to continue the cycle of dropping everything else you’ve got going on to pursue someone new. If dating or the pursuit of romantic attachments is consuming your time and energy disproportionately, it may be time to reassess your priorities.
Wearing Blinders 24/7
Have you ever woken up one day and realized that a lot of your past relationships didn’t really match your values in life, but you just ignored that while you were with them? Are you the kind of person to wear rose-tinted glasses around your partner and miss all the red flags they’re presenting? Do you see the potential in your partner instead of the reality? If you get broken up with, do you fantasize about what could have been?
This is a sign that you might have been love-addicted in your past relationships. Many people wonder why partners choose to stay together when they’re clearly wrong for one another. If you’ve ignored red flags from your partner or stuck by their side even when you were seeing signs you wouldn’t work out long-term, it could be because you were addicted to that relationship. It’s actually relatively normal to miss red flags in someone you’re interested in, because you want things to work out – you might also just be weighing the pros and cons of a partner and decide they’re still worth it. But when you look past everything you need in a relationship and try to mold yourself to be with a partner, you might be experiencing love addiction – not real romance. If you can’t let go of them even when you no longer are right for each other, you’re probably love-addicted.
I think I’m love-addicted. What should I do?
If you notice yourself going through intense periods of sadness, insecurity, numbness, anger, and grief after breaking up with a romantic partner, you’re experiencing dopamine and oxytocin withdrawal. This is normal, and it happens to pretty much everyone after ending a relationship – you got used to the intense chemicals that are released in our brains once we’re in love, and now that your brain isn’t producing them anymore, you have to readjust to not having these feelings easily produced all the time. You might notice that this happens especially when a relationship ends during the ‘honeymoon period’ (about 1-6 months in) or when you lose a long-term partner to whom your brain is very adjusted. So, in a sense, everyone is addicted to love – at least a little bit.
To combat this, you just need to be alone for a while. If you’re addicted to love, the best thing to do is to remove romantic relationships from your life for a while and focus on finding yourself outside of a relationship. Focus on understanding what fulfills you and why you might not feel happy without a partner. Learn what might be causing you to unhealthily attach yourself to your partners or how to find validation outside of romance. If you’ve recently been broken up with, just leave yourself to process your feelings for a few months before starting a new relationship.
If you think your reliance on romantic relationships is becoming a bigger issue, you might benefit from receiving outside perspectives. Talking to friends, family members, or a professional about what you’re experiencing could help you determine more about your behavior in romantic relationships. Love addiction doesn’t always stem from romantic desires – it can also come from an issue you’re not addressing in your daily life.