Category: Addictive Relationships

Do you feel like you must prove you are good enough to be loved by your partner? Or maybe you do everything for your partner, but you get little in return?
Or are you always busy and over-committing yourself? Maybe you always say yes to your partner.
If this one-sided pattern reflects your relationship, then you may be in a codependent relationship. Luckily, codependency recovery is perfectly possible, as there are numerous intensive codependency workshops that may give you the tools and resources you need to overcome your struggles and start building healthier relationships.

What Is Codependency?

It’s where you become excessively reliant on others for approval, identity, and feelings of self-worth.
Being codependent often stems from our childhood and the way we were raised. Consider if any of this relates to you:

• Did you have your basic needs met?
• Were there financial issues in the family?
• Were you neglected?
• Were your parents workaholics? Were you neglected or abandoned?
• Did they get a divorce? And if so, how did that impact you?
• Did you feel safe as a child? Or were you abused?

What Is The Root Cause Of Codependency?

Codependent traits are typically rooted in our childhood experiences and traumas. Children who experience emotional neglect or abandonment by their parents or caregivers early on in life tend to develop insecure attachments that carry on in their adulthood.

Codependency And Childhood Trauma

As children, we are vulnerable and completely dependent on our parents and caregivers for food, safety, and boundaries. However, if you’ve suffered feelings of abandonment, then you can easily take on the role of caretaker.
In other words, you’ve put your parent’s needs first, above your own.
What’s more, childhood trauma can create your belief systems, mindsets, and limiting beliefs; which can lead to repeating the same behavior in adult relationships. It can create who you are relationally as adults and determine how you feel about yourself.
If you didn’t get your needs met in childhood, then you may find you put others’ needs before your own, give of yourself to others and compromise your ability to care for yourself.
Unfortunately, dysfunctional families don’t acknowledge that a problem exists, which means the family members repress emotions and disregard their own needs.
And so, this becomes a pattern of survival. And often, family legacy.
If this is you, then you may also experience emotions of anger, guilt, grief, fear, and shame, due to feeling powerless to change or help another person.
If you suspect that you may be a codependent partner, consider attending a codependency intensive retreat as it may help you understand your own survival patterns and motivate you to work on creating healthier attachments.

What Are The Signs Of A Codependent Person?

If you’re wondering if you or a loved one has codependency issues, here are the most common signs to look for:
Most Common Signs Of Codependency:

• Feel most comfortable when they are giving
• Try to please others instead of themselves
• Have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility
• Feel anxiety, pity, and guilt when other people have a problem
• Try to be all things to all people all the time
• Unable to say “no”
• Seek out chaos and then complain about it
• Get angry when somebody refuses their help
• A tendency to have self-esteem connected to “doing”
• Try to prove they are good enough to be loved
• Try to be perfect, and expect others to be perfect
• Have self-blame and put themselves down
• Feel victimized by the “selfishness” of others

Impact Of A Codependent Relationship

Giving up your needs and identity to meet the needs of a partner has unhealthy short-term and long-term consequences.
You can become anxious, exhausted, and begin to neglect other important relationships. What’s more, you may feel victimized by the “selfishness” of others.
Being in a codependent relationship can stop you from healing your past wounds.

How Do You Deal With A Codependent Relationship?

If you believe that you may be codependent, the best way to facilitate change is to take responsibility for that part of yourself that is no longer needed to provide survival. This means, releasing the survival pattern from childhood by exploring childhood issues.
If you can’t get to the root of the issue on your own, then a carefully designed codependent relationship retreat may be the best solution. A trained professional would discuss your childhood wounds with you and help you find balance in your relationships by teaching you effective overcoming codependency exercises.

How To Overcome Codependency

Sometimes it’s easier to want to change and take responsibility once you link your behavior to your childhood. I witnessed this when I worked with a woman who was in a relationship with a much older man. It started when they had an affair, and she left her husband for him.
In the beginning, he was strong, intelligent and very kind to her. It felt like the relationship she had always craved, even as a child, especially as she had experienced abandonment by her father during her childhood years.
However, after a year together, she began to feel completely lost as he became more controlling. She panicked and felt she couldn’t leave the relationship, as this started to activate her feelings of childhood abandonment.
What’s more, she carried a tremendous amount of guilt because she left her husband to be with this man. She felt she had to make this relationship work.
While working with her, it became clear that the connection she had with this man was related to sex. She was trading sex for feeling loved.
One day, she decided to leave him. As she told him, he said they should still have sex, even if they were not in a relationship. She told herself, “sure, I can just have sex with him. It’s not love. Just sex.”
The truth was that sex with this man was an unhealthy pattern connected to an untreated attachment wound from her childhood. Once she understood this, then she saw herself standing over her child self, the same little girl who had experienced the devastation of her father’s abandonment.
When she imagined sending that little girl into the room to have sex with the man, guess what happened? She never had sex with him again.
She realized she was only with him because she longed for a false connection through sex, which was hurting her because she hadn’t healed her deep-rooted feelings of hurt, loss, and anger from past wounds.

The Next Steps: Codependent Relationship Retreat

We recommend that you seek support from individual relationship coaching professionals and talk about the pain that’s inside of you. Remember, you are worthy of happiness and love and a healthy relationship. You can have relational freedom.
We provide support and healing for these individuals at the codependent relationship intensive workshops we offer at The Glass House. Our Repair & Restore Retreat will help you begin a new chapter of your life where you will learn to no longer suffer from unhealthy relationships. We help codependents by focusing on creating healthy boundaries, building self-esteem, learning how to say “no” without guilt, cultivating deep self-care, and you will learn to define and understand your attachment style.
Our clients include family members, spouses, and individuals who struggle in the workplace or in the home with codependency. In addition, we offer intensive programs designed to repair and restore relational challenges. Learn more about our Programs. We’re here to help.

I used to be labeled a “love addict.” That’s why I focused my early behavioral health career on love addiction… to deeply understand it.
However, after working alongside my gifted staff of therapists and healers at Five Sisters Ranch, I learned the truth. Love itself is not addictive.
In fact, naming a condition “love addiction” is counterintuitive and shameful.
If you’re told you’re a love addict, and you’ve experienced abandonment wounds from your childhood, then you may be craving love. And that unmet longing is driving every single relationship.
However, with this label, you don’t feel like you can show up healthy in any relationship because you go into every relationship wounded.
Why? Because, if you love too much, you feel like “there’s the example of my love addiction.”
I remember when I was thirty-nine, I was in a therapist’s office, broken-hearted over another relationship that had fallen apart.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to go on.
That was when I was labeled as a love addict. Someone not capable of giving or receiving love.
However, that definition didn’t make sense to me. Although my relationship didn’t feel loving, what I felt was a constant and intense longing to be loved.
In fact, I was chasing relationships with the hopes of finally experiencing a sense of belonging. This translated to me being a “stage five cling-on.” I couldn’t be alone. I always had to be in a relationship.
So, when I was told I was a love addict, it confused me because the “cure” I was given was to not draw attention to myself, stay out of relationships for one year and attend a “love addicts” group to listen to others share their stories of abuse.
The “prescription” seemed totally counterintuitive as I felt more abandoned, and alone. What I always wanted was to love and be loved, and now I couldn’t because I was addicted to love. I had to stay away from love, which made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be loved.
It made no sense.
After all, how could I be addicted to something that I had never experienced? What I was addicted to was chasing unavailable people.

What Is Love Addiction Really?

“Love addiction” is painful, because at the core – it is filling a void caused by a lack of nurturing and attention at a young age.
It’s an unhealthy attachment to people, romance or sex to heal past trauma, get unmet needs fulfilled, avoid fear or emotional pain, fill our loneliness and maintain balance.

Addiction To Affection

Love addiction develops from experiencing an avoidant bond in childhood. This could be from a parent who was gone all the time, or couldn’t connect with you, or had their own wound and couldn’t nurture you.
This then leads to craving love.

Understanding Relationship Addiction

Unfortunately, “love addicts” usually pick a love avoider to partner with, which triggers the unhealthy cycle for the love addict, because the love avoider is terrified of anyone get too close, so they push you away. – And, that type of person is familiar.
“Love addicts” live in a chaotic world. They are fearful of being alone or rejected, so they endlessly search for that special someone to make them feel whole.
They become attracted to the intense experience of “falling in love” instead of wanting the peaceful intimacy of healthy relationships.
This leads them to spending their time hunting for “the one.” Their life choices become focused on the search for this perfect relationship – from wardrobe choices to hours at the gym, to doing hobbies that may not interest them.
They live for the hope of finding the one person who will fill their void.

How Does Love Addiction Start?

Early childhood relationship patterns are the first place to look when working to break the bonds of love addiction.
Working with clients, I see that issues in adult relationships relate to childhood experiences. You’re drawn to what’s familiar, regardless of how good it is for you. It is what you know.
Addiction or attachment disorder becomes a survival pattern. They happen because you are trying to fill the hole of an abandonment wound from childhood.
If you’ve experienced any of the following and have not taken the time to heal your wounds, then you are likely to be susceptible to “love addiction”:

• Your parents got divorced
• One or both of your parents were alcoholic
• You were adopted
• You lost a sibling or parent at a young age
• You were abused
• Your parents were emotionally unavailable
• You were neglected
• You were afraid of being abandoned
• You didn’t get validation from your parents

When a child grows up and watches their parents go through a bad divorce, their experience complicates their view of attachment in relationships, creating an attachment disorder.
This drives us to either want overly dramatic and intense emotions in relationships (“love addiction”) or to detach completely for fear of neglect and abandonment (“love avoidance”).
In either case, the result is a disconnected and unhealthy relationship.

Facing Love Addiction

If you have an attachment disorder or you are a “love addict,” it doesn’t mean you are stuck with this forever.
When I was told I had a love addiction, I dug deeper. I wanted to find out where the pain was coming from. What I discovered was that I felt abandoned and I didn’t know how to be alone.
I realized that my love addiction was based on getting validation that I’m lovable and a worthy human, which was denied in childhood. Unfortunately, the pattern is to choose the same kind of person as the parent who was unable to give the genuine love, caring and emotional support.
This leads to a cycle, or addiction.
However, just because you come from a dysfunctional family doesn’t mean you can’t create secure attachments and healthy relationships.

Love Addiction Intensive Workshop: Break The Pattern Of Love Addiction

If you are committed to change, then you’re not stuck with this forever. Instead, be open to change and find a therapist to talk about the relationship and the pain that’s inside of you.
Remember you are worthy of happiness and love, and a healthy relationship. You can have relational freedom.
If you are ready to create meaningful connections and overcome addictive relationships, then contact PIVOT. Apart from individual and personalized coaching, we also provide 5 day relationship workshops at our love addiction retreat, The Glass House. We’re here to help.

The words “I’m addicted to you” are a warning sign that there is something dark in your relationship. Although this may sound romantic, it might be an indication that you are in an addictive relationship.
If you grew up in a dysfunctional family, then you may not recognize what a healthy relationship should look like and feel like. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t find happiness in your relationships. By attending a love addiction intensive retreat and learning more about your childhood wounds, you can transform your relationships and create healthy and meaningful bonds in your life.

Why Do People Choose Toxic Relationships?

Very often, issues in your adult relationships relate to your childhood because you’re drawn to what’s familiar, not what is good for you.
If you haven’t taken time to heal your childhood wounds, then you are likely to be susceptible to addictive relationships. Especially, if you have experienced any of the following:

• Alcoholic parent(s)
• Losing a sibling or parent at a young age
• Finding out that you are adopted
• Some kind of abuse
• Emotionally unavailable parent(s)
• Some sort of neglect
• Fear of being abandoned
• Not receiving validation from your parent(s)

Unhealthy childhood relationship patterns that are unresolved often lead to unbalanced, unfulfilled and addictive relationships. And addictive relationships become a survival pattern. They happen because you are trying to heal the childhood abandonment wound.

Is Love Addiction A Real Thing?

Love addiction, otherwise known as pathological love, is very real and affects a great number of individuals worldwide. It involves a pervasive and obsessive interest in one or several romantic partners.
Love addicts renounce control as well as other behaviors and interests to be with their chosen partner at all costs. They are prone to novelty seeking and impulsivity which tend to stem from childhood attachment wounds.
At PIVOT, we call love addiction attachment dysregulation because many find this term shaming.  Love itself isn’t addictive however many individuals who grew up craving love, are addicted to the craving of something they have not experiences.  Therefore when they feel a honeymoon connection with someone, they mistake it for love and become hooked and crave more and more.

Can You Be Addicted to Someone You Love?

Some individuals have a tendency to become addicted to “love”. But what does this actually mean? Where do you draw the line between what people call love addiction and simply being in love with another person?
Well, for most attachment challenged individuals, their relationship becomes the center of their universe, taking over their entire being. And when an anxious person who is called a love addict ends up with an avoidant or ambivalent partner, these behaviors can become even more pervasive, drawing the love addict into a toxic, vicious relational circle.

What Is An Addictive Relationship?

Just like an addiction to alcohol, drugs or other substances, being in an addictive relationship is unhealthy, toxic and powerful. And it brings you pain usually with a love/hate dynamic.
Addictive relationships are colored with conflicts, emotional abuse, and even physical violence.
Although you may be aware of how dysfunctional the relationship is, you stay in it. This is the definition of an addictive relationship. Now if you’ve dated one horrible person, this doesn’t mean you’re addicted to bad relationships. However, if you’re noticing a pattern, then there may be a problem.

Why Is A Toxic Relationship Addictive?

Unfortunately, many love addicts are attracted to emotionally unavailable partners. This tends to happen because the love addict’s parents or caregivers were unavailable or abusive.
Simply put, the love addict is subconsciously attracted to what is familiar to them, recreating the toxic cycle they experienced in their childhood. They are used to being abandoned and they end up begging for affection and love. Therefore they seek to find the same dynamic in their adult relationships.

Can An Addictive Relationship Become Healthy?

An addictive relationship can’t be saved unless you recognize and heal your relational wounds. If you are in an unhealthy relationship, you will first need to identify your own feelings and be honest with yourself and your partner about both the negative and positive aspects of the relationship.
In many cases, leaving the addictive relationship is the best course of action. If you feel isolated and lonely, know that you’re not alone. Unhealthy relationship patterns are more common than you may think and relationship addiction recovery is entirely possible.
The good news is that you don’t have to be in an addictive relationship for life. You are not “broken.” Just because you come from a dysfunctional family doesn’t mean you can’t create secure attachments and healthy relationships.
It is time to shift. If you are committed to change, then you’re not stuck with this forever. You can have relational freedom.

How Do I Get Out Of An Addictive Relationship?

The only way to get out of an addictive relationship is to change what you are willing to put up with and to make lasting changes. Here’s what you should do:

Step 1

Start by recognizing the addiction. Be present and accept what you are feeling, thinking and what you want.
This is the hardest step for most people. It is especially difficult to be present when your present moment is hostile, hurtful, scary and invalidating. Many people stay locked in an addictive relationship by pretending that this present negative moment isn’t happening.
If you’ve ever said to yourself:

• “Oh, he/she didn’t mean it”,
• “He’s/She’s not always so mean”,
• “He/She can’t help it”,
• “If I just do this, then he’ll/she’ll be nice again.”

Then you are pretending and you are not in the present moment.

Step 2

Stop judging your feelings, thoughts, and wants. Be aware of them and accept them. Once you accept your feelings, thoughts, and desires, then you can decide what to do about them.

Step 3

Remember you are worthy of love. And the most powerful love comes from within you. Don’t depend on your partner for love. Instead, increase your love for yourself. Love your uniqueness, your views, your personality, and your gifts.

Step 4

Identify ways you would like to express the best in yourself and take actions that reflect your best self. You deserve to be treated with respect. Don’t allow yourself to be treated any less than your best self deserves.

Step 5

Be willing to change. Real change starts with healing and repairing yourself. This step includes dealing with feelings, grieving and healing from past wounds. Healing allows you to reconnect to yourself with self-compassion and self-love. This is best done with the help of a professional who specializes in addictive relationships.

Step 6

Make these changes, work on self-love and healing yourself without trying to change or judge anyone else. This process is about your recovery. You can’t change anyone else except yourself.

Step 7

Once you have started to heal yourself, then you can make choices. You can choose to give up the unhealthy relationship. You can decide that being whole, unique and your true self is worth it. You can determine whether your relationship is working well or if you are just addicted. You have choices.

Find Freedom At Our Love Addiction Intensive Workshop

The best way to achieve relational freedom is to seek assistance from experienced professionals and talk about the relationship and the pain that’s inside of you. Attending a love addiction retreat will help you to better understand yourself and learn to nurture relationships based on emotional support and mutual respect.

Remember you are worthy of happiness and love, and a healthy relationship. You can have relational freedom. If you wish to learn how to create meaningful connections and overcome addictive relationships, then contact PIVOT.
We’re here to help you by providing insightful individual relationship coaching as well as in-depth intensive workshops for overcoming relationship challenges. Contact us today and start your journey towards relational freedom!

Have you ever felt like you’re in a never-ending cycle for your partner’s love and affection? Like you need them in your life otherwise you wouldn’t survive.
This may be a sign you’re in an addictive relationship. But the truth is… you may not even be aware it is an addictive relationship.
While all romantic relationships may exhibit occasional signs of addiction, the difference with an addictive relationship is a constant pattern of one or more of the signs, leading to increased negative consequences.
If you’re wondering if you or a loved one is in an addictive relationship, here are the five major signs to look for:

1 – Manipulation and Control

An addictive relationship is based on manipulation and trying to control the other person.
You may not always see the sign, but you may feel stifled and uncomfortably restricted.
You may feel like you aren’t independent within your relationship, even though you are independent in other areas of your life. For example, you:

• Feel like you need to participate in activities that don’t interest you or go against your personal values to please your partner
• Give up important interests, beliefs, or friendships to maximize time in the relationship or to please your partner
• Miss out on important family, career, or social experiences to spend more time with your partner

2 – Mistaking Intensity for Intimacy

Addictive relationships happen fast and hard because they are typically based on instant sexual attraction. This leads to mistaking new romantic excitement and intense sexual experiences for real love.
You want to be close to others… emotionally and physically, but the intensity in an addictive relationship is often confused for real intimacy. This occurs if you:

• Find it difficult to maintain an intimate relationship after the excitement has worn off
• Choose partners who are emotionally unavailable and/or verbally or physically abusive
• Use seduction, and manipulation to hold on to a partner
• Use sex to cope with difficult experiences within the relationship

3 – Feeling a Sense of Worthlessness without a Relationship

If you feel alone and empty without a relationship, then you feel the need to jump into relationships too fast and hard.
Being in an addictive relationship occurs when you need to heal a hurt from childhood and /or adolescence. If you didn’t feel loved, secure or worthy as a child, then one way to try to fix this as an adult is to constantly seek relationships.
The problem is the fix doesn’t last. It can’t.
Here are the signs that you seek relationships to fix childhood hurts:

• Constantly crave and search for a romantic relationship
• When you’re in a relationship, you are desperate to please and fearful of the other abandoning you
• When you’re not in a relationship, you feel alone and may use sex and fantasy to fill the loneliness

4 – Co-Dependency

Addictive relationships are like any other addiction. As tolerance increases, more is needed to feel the same “fix.”
This leads to an increased fear of losing the relationship and translates into a dependency on the other person as the “fix.”
Co-dependency may be reflected by:

• Preoccupation and obsession in keeping the relationship
• Constantly seeking approval
• Fantasized attachment to each other
• Being needy, worshipping and striving to please

5 – Denial and Avoidance

A sign that you’re in an addictive relationship is how your partner reacts to a confrontation about their behavior. Typically, they may seem remorseful at first, but they never change.
When it feels like a chore each time you bring up issues that need a robust discussion, then this is a warning signal.
Instead of learning and growing from discussions and feedback, your partner prefers that you deal with the results of their addictive behavior.
Most addictive partners deny or downplay their behavior instead of admitting where they went wrong and trying to change. Worse still, they may turn it on you.

What to do if you’re in an addictive relationship?

The reason you’re in an addictive relationship may be because you have attachment disorder as a result of issues from your past.
The good news is you’re not stuck with this forever. Just because you’re in an addictive relationship now doesn’t mean you can’t heal and create a secure attachment. Recovery starts with being aware and recognizing the addiction. It is about healing yourself and being committed to healing.
The process includes dealing with feelings, grieving and healing from past wounds. Healing allows you to reconnect to yourself with self-compassion and self-love.
We recommend that you seek support from professionals and talk about the relationship and the pain that’s inside of you. Remember you are worthy of happiness and love, and a healthy relationship. You can have relational freedom.
If you are ready to create meaningful connections and overcome addictive relationships, then contact PIVOT. We’re here to help.