Narcissistic Relationship Stories Offer Hope

Narcissistic relationship stories with positive outcomes can provide hope for those struggling with the pain of emotional abuse. If you have identified this complex, dysfunctional relationship dynamic in your life, please know that you’re not alone. Many before you have walked the same path. Even if you aren’t entirely sure what the problem is, if any of the details in this post resonate with you, it’s time for change.

At PIVOT, we have helped thousands of people extricate themselves from painful, complicated relationships. Our process – proven time and again – empowers each person to show up with their unique story and shape a trajectory toward healthier, happier relationships. 

Just like the heroes in our narcissistic relationship stories below, you can successfully rewrite the ending of your story. With PIVOT, you can be confident that you’re on the right path to healing.  

Surviving a Narcissistic Relationship

Kris’s Story

I met Marc at a company-wide workshop. At the end of the day, he sat at the bar’s piano and intrigued me with his singing.  Afterward, he caught my eye and walked over to ask if he could buy me a drink; I was hooked.

After a whirlwind year of weekend trips and expensive gifts, we got engaged. Marc was a few years older than me, and often made suggestions about my clothes and hairstyle. I was flattered that he cared so much and concluded that he had my best interests at heart. Whenever we disagreed, I usually acquiesced to his way of thinking. Though previously divorced, he told me I was nothing like his ex-wife. He made me feel valued and loved.

Our wedding and honeymoon were extravagant, romantic affairs. Soon after, however, things began to change. We started arguing more frequently, and I often felt I was to blame. During disagreements, Marc would lecture me in a condescending tone until I was convinced that I‘d been wrong all along. With each emotional outburst, I wondered what I’d done to provoke him and then vowed to try harder.

By our first anniversary, I was a shell of my former self. I’d stopped hanging out with friends because I didn’t want to set him off. I even avoided seeing my family to prevent the inevitable blow-up.  Marc’s friends and family seemed to hold me at arm’s length – I wondered what he had told them about me. I felt totally dependent on him, and the future seemed limited. What had become of my life?

Feeling a need to escape, I left while Marc was at work and took refuge with my parents. I took a few days to reset and reflect, then turned to the internet to search for help. That’s where I found PIVOT

When I shared my story with Kayla, she didn’t flinch. In fact, she seemed to understand exactly what I was going through. She suggested that I attend a narcissistic abuse retreat, which turned out to be a real turning point in my recovery. 

At the retreat, I found a supportive community and a PIVOT coach who showed me how to recognize the manipulative tactics Marc had used with me. As I healed, I also learned to communicate my needs more effectively. Soon, I felt like my old self again. 

Now, I’m fortified with the appropriate tools to better navigate my future relationships. PIVOT helped me rediscover my true self, so that I can look forward to healthier, more resilient personal connections.

Milo’s Story

I dated Kendall for two years before we tied the knot. I didn’t take any of the early warning signs seriously – I was too enamored. Sure, she liked to have things her way. Her older brothers hinted that as the only girl and youngest child, her family had always indulged her because she was “special.”

For someone who’d received so much love and attention as a child, she wasn’t very big on empathy. Her apologies usually sounded like, “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way!” Still, we were mostly happy as long as things were going well. 

It was during times of stress that Kendall became hard to live with. She demanded constant attention and became extremely controlling. When we argued, she twisted my words around and projected her behaviors onto me. The result was pretty destabilizing. I almost started believing that I was the one being unreasonable.

A friend at work told me about his great success with the PIVOT Process. I investigated online and learned about their couples’ intensive that could help me and Kendall make some critical changes in our relationship. I approached her at the right time, and she agreed to go.

As we worked through the process with our individual coaches, we learned a lot about ourselves and how our childhood relationships influenced our marriage. After Kendall and I finally came together with our advocates, our conversations were incredibly productive.

We learned to recognize how we were triggering negative emotions in each other and how to establish healthy boundaries. PIVOT gave us the tools to replace old, dysfunctional communication methods that paralyzed us in cycles of conflict. Now when we disagree, we use effective new strategies to diffuse the conflict peacefully. We’ve learned to align our thoughts and emotions with our actions, and our relationship is now on solid ground.

Read More PIVOT Success Stories

What You Can Learn from Narcissistic Relationship Stories

If you believe you’re in a narcissistic relationship or you see yourself in these stories, here’s an important takeaway: healing is not only possible, it’s within reach. Although it’s hard to effect lasting behavioral change by yourself, PIVOT is here to help.

PIVOT relationship coaches specialize in recognizing challenging interpersonal dynamics and helping people achieve relational freedom. We support you in the following skills:

  • Learning to recognize manipulation techniques
  • Changing repetitive behavioral patterns
  • Setting and maintaining healthy boundaries
  • Using the actionable tools from the PIVOT Process in your relationships

Like the survivors in these stories, you can reclaim a stronger, healthier, and more resilient you.

narcissistic relationship stories bring hope to a young man on a park bench

Do You Ever Fully Recover from Narcissistic Abuse?

Living with a narcissistic partner can strip away your self-confidence and damage your self-esteem. After being conditioned to doubt themselves in favor of their partner’s needs and demands, one of the most significant difficulties survivors of narcissistic abuse face is having healthy relationships in the future.  For this reason – and to ensure that you aren’t destined to repeat this excruciating experience – it’s essential to analyze how you fell into this trap.

A PIVOT relationship coach is your best resource for achieving this insight. We’ll help you examine your own developmental psychology and identify your attachment styles.  In addition, we’ll help you reconnect with your goals and provide the tools to help you reach them. Seeking help is your first step on the path to rewriting the ending of your narcissistic relationship story.

Transform Your Relationships With PIVOT  

If you hear echoes of your own experience in these narcissistic relationship stories, PIVOT can help. We offer expert relationship coaching for individuals, couples, and families who struggle with this challenging relationship dynamic. If you are anxious to see rapid behavioral change, intensives and retreats provide immersive, quick-start experiences. Reach out today to begin your journey to a healthier, happier life. Call us at 1-855-452-0707.

When Love Addiction and Narcissism Meet

When love addiction and narcissism intersect, it’s likely that a dysfunctional and imbalanced relationship will occur.  Like a dramatic, passionate dance, this pairing is ruled by widely fluctuating emotional undercurrents that destabilize the relationship.

While a narcissistic partner pushes their needs to a fault, their love-addicted counterpart often sets their own needs aside to please their partner and preserve the relationship. Despite this, the narcissistic partner remains angry and unhappy. They gain the upper hand, and a power differential is established. Without targeted intervention, this struggle may continue indefinitely.

If this sounds like you, there is hope. We’ve put together a hub of resources for you as a place to start. And if you are ready to start working on your relationship in a deeper way,  PIVOT offers relationship coaching to help you both communicate more clearly, unpack past traumas and unhealthy coping mechanisms, and break the toxic cycles in your relationship.

Love Addiction and Narcissism Resources

Anxious Avoidant Relationships: The Co-Addictive TangoCodependency & Narcissism Relationships
Narcissistic Relationship StoriesNarcissistic Love Bombing Cycle
Codependents & Their Struggle for Power & ControlHow to Deal with Disorganized Attachment in a Partner

Recovery From Love Addiction Is Within Reach

love addiction)

Despite the romanticized label, love addiction is a painful behavior pattern that traps sufferers in a cycle of instability.  Rather than forming secure and steady attachments in relationships, a love-addicted partner attaches insecurely due to unresolved emotional wounds and childhood traumas. Though looking for real love, they often choose inappropriate or unavailable partners, thereby perpetuating the cycle and their own emotional misery.

If you see these patterns in your own life and relationships, there is reason for optimism. With the proper support, you can improve your relationship dynamics and find a pathway to secure and stable attachments.

Resources on Recovery From Love Addiction

Love Addiction: Navigating Through HeartbreakLove Addiction Recovery Stories
Love Addiction vs. Real Love: How to Tell the DifferenceNavigating the Love Addiction Recovery Steps
What to Know About Love Addiction TreatmentBreaking the Love Addiction Cycle

Breaking Free From Narcissistic Abuse

man free from narcissistic abuse

It is unquestionably difficult to have a healthy relationship with a narcissistic partner. Though their actions may be abusive, it is necessary to keep in mind that these come from a place of significant pain—their arrogance and superiority camouflage deep-seated insecurity and low self-esteem. The development of narcissistic characteristics often involves aspects of both nature and nurture.

If you are in a relationship with a narcissistic partner or you see characteristics of narcissism in your behavior, healing is possible. Both partners can benefit from relationship coaching that addresses the origins of this behavior pattern and provides proactive strategies to replace harmful choices with healthier ones.

Resources for Breaking Free From Narcissistic Abuse

Recognizing the Signs of a Narcissistic PartnerNarcissistic Love Bombing: All You Need to Know
Love Bombing ExplainedHow to Break the Cycle of Narcissistic Abuse
The Effects of Narcissistic Abuse: How to Heal & Find HappinessNarcissistic Retreat

End Toxic Patterns With Relationship Coaching

Does the clash between love addiction and narcissism resonate with your experience? Do you see yourself and your partner in these roles? We know how devastating and exhausting it can be to deal with these challenges. If you feel drained and hopeless, know that healing is possible and you aren’t alone. 

The PIVOT process was designed specifically for healing this type of dysfunctional relationship. It meets each partner where they are and holds up a mirror. Only by looking back at the influences and relationships that have shaped you can you begin to find a way forward. 

The PIVOT difference involves pairing each partner with their own coach to help you come to terms with your past and understand how it impacts your present and potentially limits your future happiness. This provides twice the expertise and personal coaching power of the average relationship coaching process. We have helped many couples overcome even the toughest of obstacles and build bridges to happy, healthy relationships.

Transform Your Relationships With PIVOT

PIVOT offers relationship coaching for those struggling with love addiction and narcissism. Our expertise in sorting the complexities of these challenges is unparalleled in our industry. Reach out to begin your journey to a healthier, happier life. You can reach us at 1-855-452-0707.

Love Addiction vs. Real Love: How to Tell the Difference

We all crave love — it’s one of the most human emotions. But, for some, the need for love morphs into an all-consuming addiction. Love addiction, otherwise known as attachment dysregulation,  can feel intense, sweeping you into passion-filled highs only to drag you into devastating lows when that love is threatened. So, how do you know if what you’re feeling is true love or something more harmful?

In the realm of love, the lines between healthy attachment and attachment dysregulation can get blurry. If you’re constantly questioning the stability of your relationship, it’s important to explore the differences between love addiction vs. real love. PIVOT coaches offer individual and couples relationship coaching as well as private retreats to help you sort through your feelings and break free from the emotional turmoil that attachment dysregulation often brings.

Love Addiction vs. Real Love

Both love addiction and real love come with similar feelings of intense connection and all-consuming focus. But they differ in many key ways. Love addiction is fueled by insecurity and obsession, whereas real love is grounded in mutual respect and emotional security. The diagram below shows you how the two overlap and how you can start to tell the two experiences apart.

love addiction vs real love venn diagram pivot

The Four Types of Love Addiction

Attachment dysregulation can manifest in many ways, but here are four common types of love addiction. 

  1. Obsessive: You may obsess over your partner, often confusing intensity with intimacy. Boundaries are blurred, and your life revolves around your partner’s approval and presence.
  2. Romantic: You may be addicted to the thrill of romance. Once the initial high of the honeymoon phase fades, you may seek out a new relationship to feel that rush again.
  3. Codependent: You focus on caring for your partner to an unhealthy degree, believing you need to sacrifice your own well-being to maintain the relationship.
  4. Narcissistic: You may crave admiration and attention and use your partner to feel validated.

Differentiating Love Addiction

There are a lot of things that can feel like love addiction, but they are different. PIVOT coaches can help you sort through love addiction and other feelings to get to the root cause of your troubles.

Love Addiction vs. Love Avoidance

Love addiction and love avoidance are two sides of the same coin. If you have a love addiction, you most likely chase closeness and fear abandonment, while people who are love-avoidant fear intimacy and feel suffocated by closeness. A toxic cycle forms where you are constantly pursuing connection, and your partner responds by retreating, creating a push-pull dynamic that leaves both of you unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

Love Addiction vs. Codependency

Love addiction and codependency share many similarities: they both involve unhealthy attachment and reliance on a partner to feel whole or secure. However, in codependency, the focus is on caretaking and control, where you may derive your sense of self-worth from “fixing” or helping your partner. In love addiction, your focus is more on receiving love and validation to fill a personal void rather than on taking care of the other person.

Love Addiction vs. Anxious Attachment

Anxious attachment stems from insecurity and fear of abandonment, much like love addiction. Both anxious individuals and those with love addiction tend to cling to their partners, overanalyze small interactions, and worry excessively about rejection. The difference is that love addiction is a broader pattern, encompassing the need for romantic intensity and a constant emotional high, whereas anxious attachment is more about seeking consistent reassurance and stability in relationships.

love addiction vs. real love

The Root Causes of Love Addiction

At the heart of attachment dysregulation, or love addiction, is often a deep-seated fear of abandonment rooted in early childhood experiences. Whether it’s due to inconsistent caregiving, trauma, or attachment wounds, you may subconsciously believe that love is conditional and must be constantly earned. As a result, you become desperate to secure your partner’s affection, fearing rejection or abandonment at every turn. 

Healing from love addiction starts with examining the root causes of your attachment patterns. Working with your PIVOT coach is essential to unpacking your thought processes and behaviors, childhood experiences, and communication preferences to build toward a healthier attachment style.

Can Love Addicts Have Healthy Relationships?

Yes, but it’s complicated. A person struggling with love addiction can still experience moments of connection and genuine care, but these relationships often come with instability, dependency, and fear of abandonment. The truth is, to have a truly healthy relationship, you need to heal your underlying issues and develop healthier patterns of emotional attachment. Real love grows from a place of self-respect, trust, and mutual care, whereas love addiction thrives on anxiety, insecurity, and the need for constant reassurance.

Breaking the Cycle of Love Addiction With PIVOT

Recognizing the difference between love addiction vs. real love is the first step to healing. Real love grows from mutual respect, care, and trust. It feels secure, even when things aren’t perfect. Love addiction, on the other hand, keeps you trapped in a cycle of emotional dependency and fear. Breaking free from love addiction requires introspection, support, and a commitment to self-healing. 

PIVOT can help you end this cycle through a transformative approach and proven tools like relationship coaching and individualized retreats. You can learn to identify your attachment style, break toxic patterns, and cultivate healthier, more fulfilling relationships.

If you’re struggling to differentiate between real love and love addiction, you’re not alone. The good news? With the right guidance and support, you can learn to let go of addictive love, build emotional resilience,  and step into a life where you experience true connection — without fear, obsession, and anxiety.By working with PIVOT, individuals can break free from the cycle of love addiction, rediscover their own sense of self-worth, and create healthier relationships. If you need help differentiating between love addiction vs. real love, reach out online or at 1-855-452-0707.

Love Addiction: Navigating Through Heartbreak

Love addiction, a term which we call attachment dysregulation, can cause apprehension and insecurity in romantic relationships. Love addiction can be heartbreaking, dysregulating, and just plain exhausting, both for the person struggling with love addiction and for their loved ones. Fortunately, with targeted intervention from an experienced relationship coach, love addiction can be overcome. 

Here is our guide to navigating the rocky waters of love addiction. With the right support, healing and healthy relationships are always possible.

Table of Contents

What Is Love Addiction, Really?

What Causes Love Addiction?

Understanding the Love Addiction Cycle

Love Addiction Symptoms

Facing Love Addiction Head-On 

 Love addiction couple

What Is Love Addiction, Really?

Destabilizing patterns of behavior
A preoccupation with romantic partners
An inability to be single

Love addiction, also referred to as pathological love, is a behavioral pattern characterized by an overwhelming and unhealthy preoccupation with romantic partners. This excessive interest often leads to a lack of control, obsessive thoughts and behaviors, and a driving need to have attention, validation, and reassurance from another person. 

Love addiction is about a deep, unmet longing that drives people to desire a relationship to make the pain go away. In this respect, love addiction is similar to other addictions since it involves obsession, cravings, and withdrawal.

Also, like drug addiction, people struggling with love addiction often struggle to achieve satisfaction. There is never enough. And, like drug addiction, many people who are told they have a love addiction KNOW they want things to be different but feel unable to stop the behavioral cycles they find themselves in. People who are stuck in these patterns often need a relationship coach to help them break the cycle.

Woman with love addiction

What Causes Love Addiction?

Insecure attachments
Withdrawal from love
Core wounds

Early childhood relationships are the first place to look to understand how love addiction forms. Love addiction is a response to relational damage caused by early unmet needs. 

As adults work through the causes of their love addiction, they often realize that issues in their relationships relate back to their childhood experiences. They’re drawn to what’s familiar, regardless of merit. This means they can be drawn to people who cause them pain repeatedly, even if they don’t mean to be. 

People often find themselves inexplicably recreating the painful experiences they endured when they were young. This normally happens unconsciously and unhealthy patterns may be passed downfrom one family generation to the next. It takes careful, intentional work to change these patterns.

Love addiction can be a way of coping with emotional distress, pain, or fear and can provide a temporary sense of fulfillment or pleasure. The relief experienced often feels like well-being, but it usually doesn’t last. Dysfunctional attempts to heal inner pain from an outside source often perpetuate cycles of pathological love.

An Insecure Attachment

Love addiction and attachment disorders can develop when individuals try to fill the void left by a significant emotional or psychological childhood wound. When children do not receive the emotional nurturing and healthy attachment they need from caregivers during their formative years, they may develop an insecure attachment style that makes them more prone to the problematic feelings and behaviors of love addiction. This frequently looks like anxious attachment in adulthood.

The origins of anxious attachment could be from a parent who was frequently gone, who couldn’t stay connected, or who had their own wound and couldn’t nurture their child. Losing a parent at a young age, divorced parents, or having a parent who wasn’t a stable presence are often triggers for love addiction later in life. Any shift in caregiving that feels unsafe or confusing, such as foster care or changing homes among relatives, can cause people to feel insecure in their attachments. 

Circumstances like these, and others, can lead to an adult life spent craving attention and reassurance. There is a longing for connection and security, but when it happens, it’s coated in fear and worry – what if it goes away? What if I’m not enough? What if I do something wrong? How can I be sure they won’t leave? 

People with love addiction tend to resonate with the term “attachment disorder” upon looking at the emotional challenges of neglect and abandonment they experienced in their childhood. Because their deep unmet longing is hard to tolerate, the individual is often left feeling lifeless and empty. They spend years, sometimes a lifetime, trying to repair childhood longing through their partners. Attempt after attempt leaves the sufferer baffled, as romantic partners and romantic love fail to quench their cravings and meet their expectations.

Sometimes other diagnoses may have been given by a licensed therapist or other mental health professional. For example, substance addictions, depression, anxiety, personality disorders, or trauma diagnoses can be co-occurring. These additional diagnoses can be underlying or the unintended result of the dysfunctional attempts to soothe the pain of living with the original emotional wound: the attachment injury.

Withdrawal

Most love addicts who are unable to end a relationship will try to “fix” it and prove to themselves that they are “worth the love they are fighting for.” For them, “winning” often means their romantic partner stays with them and that the intimate relationship continues, regardless of the quality. They do not have a solid sense of self-worth outside of a relationship, so they may protect it to the point of their own self-detriment.

They are found in a highly destabilized position when abandoned, often unable to function at work or in social circumstances because of a withdrawal from love. The pain of real or perceived rejection and abandonment feels intolerable. And once the addictive rush of the honeymoon phase is over, perceived rejection and abandonment are visible everywhere. 

It’s very hard in attachment withdrawal to see that there are healthier ways to engage in relationships. At this point, a person may likely feel desperate and unworthy. Their self-esteem is plunging, and often, the belief is that only the attention of a romantic partner can help. This is true withdrawal.

Love Addict Core Wounds

If someone has experienced any of the following and has not taken the time to heal their wounds, they are likely to be susceptible to what some call “love addiction”:

  • Parents got divorced when they were young
  • One or both parents had untreated mental illness
  • They were adopted
  • They lost a sibling or parent at a young age
  • They were abused
  • Their parents were emotionally unavailable
  • They were neglected
  • They were abandoned
  • They didn’t get validation from their parents

These experiences drive the need to want either overly dramatic and intense emotions in relationships or detach completely for fear of neglect and abandonment. Both compromise the ability to have healthy, secure attachments.

In either case, the result is a disconnected and unhealthy relationship.It’s important to note that love addiction can have multiple causes, and each person’s experience is unique. Understanding the underlying causes of love addiction is an important step toward recovery and developing healthy coping mechanisms.

Understanding the Love Addiction Cycle

Unfortunately, “love addicts” usually pick a love-avoidant person to partner with, which triggers an unhealthy cycle, because the love-avoidant person is terrified to have anyone get too close, so they push their partner away. People with love addictions are not satisfied by love-avoidant types, but they are normally drawn to them because the dynamic 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 peace of healthy relationships. Once a relationship has grown comfortable, they can mistake stability for boredom – OR they can become terrified that their partner has become bored or disinterested. Once the intensity of falling in love has simmered down, worry often follows because relational normalcy feels unfamiliar. They have a very hard time learning to experience feelings like contentment and relational safety.

Their life choices become focused on the search for this perfect relationship. This search for immature love leaves a person in constant consideration of what their partner wants. They live in the hope of finding the one person who will fill their inner void, and their expectations in relationships are often unrealistic.Furthermore, people with love addiction struggle with setting boundaries and communicating their needs in a relationship. They may prioritize their partner’s needs and wants over their own, which can lead to feelings of resentment in the relationship. Relationship coaching can help break this toxic cycle.

Struggling with love addiction

Love Addiction Symptoms

Fears of abandonment
Cravings for attention and romantic validation
Chaotic, unstable relationships

What Does Love Addiction Look Like?
Feeling Behaviors
Anxiety
  • Avoiding abandonment and rejection at any cost
  • Trust issues – difficulty trusting and/or difficulty being trustworthy
  • Ongoing perceptions of abandonment or rejection
  • Inability to leave unhealthy relationships for fear of being alone
  • An anxious reluctance to identify and express wants and needs
Sadness
  • Attempting to numb out loneliness or rejection with other behavioral addictions
  • Feelings of shame and guilt
  • Using relationships and sex to improve mood and relieve pain
Instability
  • Difficulty maintaining friendships
  • Financial problems
  • Jumping from relationship to relationship and a fear of loneliness
  • Drawn to emotionally unavailable people
  • Maintaining a secret “double life”
  • Hungering for the experience of falling in love, but lacking success in maintaining healthy relationships
  • A tendency to mistake intensity for intimacy
  • A tendency to mistake chaos for excitement
  • A tendency to tolerate high-risk behaviors
Neediness
  • Needing regular confirmation of commitment and loyalty
  • Feeling lost without a love object to pour their attention into
  • Unrealistic expectations of relationships
  • Cravings for positive regard
  • A continuous need for reassurance and validation in a relationship
Obsessiveness
  • Obsessive thoughts and/or daydreams about partners
  • Investigative behaviors in a relationship
  • Romanticizing the notion of addictive love
  • Abandoning other interests during a romantic relationship
  • Experiencing other compulsions and addictive behaviors to cope with feelings
  • Confusing love and sexual attraction
  • Fantasizing about a romantic relationship when given attention
Anger
  • Diagnosing or labeling romantic partners when their needs aren’t met
  • Intense sense of rejection when others set boundaries
  • Inner rage caused by early abandonment and lack of nurturing

It’s important to note that each person’s experience with love addiction may be different, and not all individuals will exhibit all of these signs and symptoms.

Man waiting for text

Facing Love Addiction Head-On

You aren’t stuck.
You aren’t alone.
Healing is possible.

Love addiction is not a fixed way of being. It’s the result of heart pain and brain processes that can be healed with loving care and skilled attention. 

Since these behavioral patterns often begin with unmet needs in childhood, the resulting wounds and attachment injuries follow into adult relationships. For many people, it’s a do-over-and-over-and-over because the reward system of the romantic relationships created are never able to provide the deep healing needed to soothe those early wounds and painful messages. 

Just because someone comes from a dysfunctional family doesn’t mean they can’t create secure attachments and have healthy relationships. Even if they’ve had a traumatic childhood or experienced a devastating or unhealthy relationship, they can still heal. Believe it or not, everybody is capable of that… and, importantly, everybody is worthy of that.

Healing from love addiction

Break the Pattern of Love Addiction With a PIVOT Workshop

If you are struggling with love addiction, you aren’t alone. And you are already taking steps towards healing by reading this and researching love addiction. It isn’t easy to face pain and take an honest look at yourself, but remember, you are capable of happiness, love, and a healthy relationship. 

If you are looking to overcome love addiction, then contact PIVOT. Our team provides evidence-based methods to support your journey toward healing. At PIVOT, we are committed to the sincere belief that ANYBODY can experience the relational satisfaction, inner peace, and profound freedom that comes with healing those early attachment injuries and disconnecting from the survival patterns of love addiction. We’ve seen success again and again.

Our specialized relationship coaching and love addiction retreat gives you sequenced action steps for behavioral change. We can help you get on the right track toward a healthy and happy relationship. Call us today at 1-855-452-0707 to begin the journey.

Love Addiction Recovery Stories

love addiction recovery stories hold promise for you

Many people are confused by the label of love addiction.  Love addiction describes a deep, unmet longing that drives people to desire a relationship to make the pain go away. In this respect, love addiction is similar to other addictions since it involves obsession, cravings, and withdrawal.

Despite its recognition in popular and some academic circles, love addiction is not formally recognized as a clinical diagnosis in major diagnostic manuals like the DSM-5. Some experts argue that the term “addiction” may be problematic due to its association with substance use disorders and the potential for stigmatization. Instead, terms like emotional reliance or affective dependence are sometimes preferred to describe the obsessive and compulsive behaviors associated with love addiction.
If you are feeling shame or uncertainty because you fear this label increasingly describes you, you aren’t alone, and you aren’t stuck. With the right support, it is absolutely possible to heal and create healthier connections. We hope these successful love addiction recovery stories will inspire you to take the first step toward happier relationships.

Why Am I Like This? The Love Addiction Recovery Story of PIVOT’s Founder Lori Jean Glass

I was thirty-seven years old and in a therapist’s office, brokenhearted over another romantic relationship that had fallen apart.

I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to go on.

I was labeled a love addict and told that I was incapable of giving or receiving love. My behavior towards love interests was controlling, and my expectations were unrealistic. I had to accept that love addiction was the thing that had derailed me.

That diagnosis didn’t make sense to me, however. My relationships didn’t feel loving; what I felt was a constant and intense longing to be loved. How could I be addicted to something I was so unfamiliar with?

In fact, I was starving for romantic love… hoping it would finally give me that sense of self-worth and belonging that my heart was hurting for. It had been a longing for…. as long as I could remember. As an adult, I thought that a romantic partner or a love interest might heal the breach in my low self-esteem, although it never quite worked out. But I kept trying.. and trying… and trying. This translated to me becoming a “stage five cling-on.” I couldn’t be alone and always had to be in a relationship.

So, when I was told I had love addiction, 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 relationship addiction.

This prescription seemed totally counterintuitive and left me feeling even more abandoned and alone. What I always wanted was to love and to be loved, and now I couldn’t ever have that… because I was addicted to love. Would I have to stay away from love like any other addict would from any other addictive substances? The idea of addiction to love made me feel like I didn’t deserve to be loved. I couldn’t be trusted with love. Love wasn’t safe for me.

As a behavioral and mental health professional, I set out to find answers that made sense. I focused the energy of my early career on the meaning and treatment of love addiction… I worked hard to understand it. After extensive research on the topic, taking a deeper look at the effects of unhealthy attachment, and working alongside my gifted staff of therapists and healers at PIVOT, I came to understand an important reality. Love itself is not addictive. This truth changed everything.

Through sustained and concentrated effort, I learned how to be responsible for my emotions and stand in relational alignment. I created this term to describe a state where your mind thinks in alignment with how your heart feels, and you have the courage to take healthy action with your feet. It allows you to achieve a verticality that is honest, ethical, and authentic to who you are.

Once I found the inner strength to turn my life around, I developed and extensively tested the PIVOT Process, an evidence-based approach to achieving relational freedom. In the years since then, I have helped many, many people write their own love addiction recovery stories. It’s a journey that requires courage, determination, and a belief in your own worth.

Learning to Love Myself: Larissa’s Love Addiction Recovery Story

I truly thought that one person was going to change the way I felt about myself and my life. 

In an interview with my wedding videographer, I openly stated that my husband was “my adonis” and “my knight in shining armor.” Yes, it is on record. I truly believed that he would be the one person who could save me. Poor guy. He never stood a chance at fulfilling my fantasy. 

Sadly, he wasn’t the first to experience this intense passion. I would consistently and anxiously seek emotional validation from every guy who came into my life. I was overly dependent on them and felt like I needed to be with them all the time. I needed them more than I needed myself. My world got very small, and their approval of me equaled my self-worth. That’s a tough way to live, especially because in most of my relationships before I got married, I experienced some form of emotional, mental, or physical abuse. 

Why did I have to lose myself to gain a false sense of self-worth? Why did I have to compromise my mental and physical well-being to get an ounce of their attention? Why was I waiting for their phone calls or making late-night drives by their house to spy on them? Who goes to someone’s house at two in the morning to enter a dark bedroom just to see if that person is asleep in their bed and not with someone else? 

Even when they told me they loved me, it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. I was never enough. That feeling stayed with me into my marriage and family life and created a lot of conflict, drama, and trauma. My marriage was filled with more demands on my partner and less love and connection. I was even addicted to the need to be loved by my children. I was laced with depression, anxiety, and, at times, suicidal ideation. 

It was the suicidal ideation that brought me to my knees and forced me to get help. In the depths of my despair, I realized that I didn’t know what true love really was. How can the pursuit of love be so damaging? Why did love hurt so much? I was in so much pain, and I knew that I needed help. I needed to understand this obsession with the idea of love and why I couldn’t ever really feel it.

I found a wonderful therapist who gave me so much strength and hope, but that feeling of “not being loved” never went away.  It took another 10 years before I was introduced to the work of PIVOT. 

 When I found PIVOT, I found the answer. I had been seeking a fantasy of love. Coming from a childhood of confusion, attachment issues, emotional neglect, and having had several sexual abuse experiences, I developed a hard-core belief system about love. Someone who loves you will take away the pain. Love will take away the pain of feeling like something is wrong with me, that I don’t matter, that I am not enough and that I am very much alone. 

The euphoria of meeting someone new and believing in the fantasy of marriage did that. It took away the pain momentarily. It’s much easier to focus on someone else than it is to focus on oneself. That stops working. Trust me. I was conditioned to believe that someone else’s love was ALL I ever needed. Their love wasn’t enough! His love wasn’t enough! Gaining an understanding of the impact of those messages on me, of being less than, not mattering, not being good enough, feeling alone, and how love is supposed to fix you, was the beginning of my journey. 

Having the ability to repair those thoughts and emotions allowed me more space to heal. Healing is allowing me to learn more about my beautifully unique self. This internal shift I learned from PIVOT is teaching me what love really is. 

Love is more than just a feeling. It’s the action of trust, compassion, and positive regard. The reason why I didn’t feel loved was because I wasn’t being loving to myself. I had so many expectations of myself and so much self-disregard, I actually put more distance between myself and others. 

I’m now working on more appreciation, gratitude, and acceptance. I’m not going to lie and say I love all of me. Hell no! I’m working on that. I’m a work in progress. I won’t say it’s easy or it’s been overnight. I will say that I am my own “knight in shining armor” these days, thanks to PIVOT.

More Love Addiction Recovery Stories

What Can You Learn From Love Addiction Recovery Stories?

As you read these stories of love addiction recovery, you may see parallels with your own life. What do you have in common? What about these stories resonates with you?

Though love addiction is a descriptive phrase, a more accurate term is attachment dysregulation. This is because the conditions that cause this pattern of behavior often originate in childhood with your earliest attachments. Abuse, neglect, and unmet needs may cause deep attachment wounds—the survival patterns adopted in response lead to the cycle known as love addiction.

For healing to occur, early attachment wounds must be identified, and you must learn healthier ways to cope. While each person’s healing journey to healthy relationships will be different, several things must happen along the way.

Love Addiction Recovery Steps

Steps to Recovery

Essential Actions

Recognition

Before you can begin the journey to love addiction recovery, you must acknowledge that there is a problem. Recognizing the signs and symptoms in your life should be a red flag and an indication that it’s time to seek help. This awareness is the first step towards healing.

Deep Self-Reflection

The crucial next step to true healing involves a thorough self-examination. Through this process, you will learn about yourself and your attachment styles. You will begin to understand where your relational trauma began. The painful wounds underlying love addiction often have their origin early in life, however. Identifying them will require a deep dive with a skilled facilitator. This self-reflection is a key part of the healing journey.

Healing Relational Trauma

To break the cycle of love addiction and begin the recovery process, you must address and understand your early attachment wounds. Increasing self-awareness and boosting confidence will set you up to achieve healthier relationships in the future.

Action Steps Forward

The final step in the healing journey involves taking supported steps forward. An action plan for future relationships mapped out by experts in the field is absolutely essential. Having an accessible toolbox with ready-to-use tools will help you to deal with and rebound from life’s uncertainties as you seek love again.

Undertaking the love addiction recovery journey with help from a seasoned expert provides the support you need to heal past traumas and attachment wounds and move toward healthy love in the future. A relationship coach will help you identify your survival patterns and replace them with healthy, sustainable actions. You will learn to set reasonable boundaries and hone your communication skills through the process. But most importantly, you will realize that you are worthy and capable of finding secure, fulfilling romantic love.

Begin Your Healing Journey With PIVOT

If you are ready to confront survival patterns that have you trapped in the cycle of love addiction, PIVOT has answers. With high-impact options that include relationship coaching for individuals and couples and love addiction retreats at the Glass House in northern California, we have a solution for you. Our personalized and highly customizable process can meet you where you are and help you find a path forward. Reach out today at 1-855-452-0707 to begin writing your love addiction recovery story.

Separation Anxiety in Relationships: Signs, Causes & Coping Tips

Even if a picture of a crying child as parents leave for work is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the words separation anxiety, the feeling behind it might not seem so distant or childish to many people. People suffering from adult separation anxiety in relationships usually feel a strong and irrational fear they might lose a loved one, most frequently a romantic partner, in various ways. Those can include injury, accidents, illness, and death, or they may fear being broken up with or abandoned by the person they love.

The overwhelming fear of being away from people you love, particularly your partner, can be quite familiar to many adults in their closest relationships; most of us can think of at least a few examples of having felt this way. While it’s perfectly normal to occasionally feel lonely when you’re away from your partner, in some cases, these feelings get out of control and can cause severe distress and pain. This is a clear sign you may be suffering from separation anxiety in relationships.

How Do I Know If I Have Separation Anxiety in Relationships?

physical signs and symptoms of separation anxiety in relationships infographic

While nobody likes to be away from the people they love, there are cases when people feel irrational fear, panic, anxiety, and overall distress at the very thought of not being around their loved ones. Adults who suffer from separation anxiety disorder experience both emotional and physical symptoms that include negative thoughts and obsessive worrying.

Separation anxiety is not equally serious in all cases. It can be mild for some, while others may experience overwhelming levels of stress and anxiety, preventing them from the most basic functioning in their everyday lives. If you’ve been living with these feelings, you might not even realize something is wrong.

You may be suffering from separation anxiety in relationships if:

  • You feel unfounded and excessive worry and fear that people you love might disappear from your life, leave you, or pass away.
  • You refuse to be away from your loved ones and experience severe distress if you do.
  • You have difficulty sleeping when you’re away from your partner and feel extreme fear that something bad might happen to them.
  • You experience frequent depression or anxiety episodes or have panic attacks if separated from your loved one for a period of time. Just thinking about being away from them can trigger strong negative emotions.
  • Your daily commitments, work, parenting, self-care, etc., are compromised due to your fear of being away from loved ones, crippling your productivity and decision-making skills.

If this sounds like you, you aren’t alone, and you aren’t stuck. The first step in healing separation anxiety in relationships is understanding where it comes from. Relationship coaching can help you explore how your past relationships and environment made you feel unstable and fearful in your connections. This soul-searching work must be done in order to build healthier coping skills and heal your relationships.

What Can Cause Separation Anxiety in Relationships?

The causes of separation anxiety can be divided into several categories. Children of parents suffering from anxiety are more likely to experience it both as children and as grownups. Adults who are already diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder can often experience separation anxiety as one of the many manifestations of this type of disorder. Environmental factors and various stressors experienced later in life can also play a role in developing separation anxiety.

Common Causes of Separation Anxiety in Adults
CodependencyCodependency in a romantic relationship and putting your partner’s needs above your own can create anxiety for both you and your partner.
History of rejectionA history of rejection or abandonment in previous relationships can cause you to constantly worry it will happen again.
Childhood attachment issuesChildhood neglect, abandonment, or other attachment issues can create deep-seated anxieties later in life.
Stressful environmentsAdverse environmental conditions or stressful changes are destabilizing and can create an atmosphere for anxiety to grow.
woman with separation anxiety in relationship, sitting down, pausing and breathing

What Are the Negative Effects of Separation Anxiety on Your Relationship?

Separation anxiety is most obvious in romantic relationships, which inherently makes people feel vulnerable and exposed. An anxious attachment style, which can develop during early childhood, can also amplify feelings of separation anxiety in romantic relationships. Being intimate with someone and opening up to them may also mean revisiting a lot of suppressed emotions, including those from early childhood. When people are unaware of the underlying causes of their separation anxiety issues, it can cause a wide range of problems in romantic relationships.

manifestation of separation anxiety in relationships infographic

There are, of course, cases when separation anxiety isn’t completely unfounded. People who enter romantic relationships with partners with avoidant attachment styles may be particularly susceptible to these issues.

Behaviors by love-avoidant people can make the situation worse, as those individuals crave independence and self-reliance. Love-avoidant individuals don’t feel comfortable relying on others or having others depend on them, so they tend to push their romantic partners away, easily triggering separation anxiety in the other partner.

Learn Coping Strategies for Relationship Separation Anxiety

If you recognize some of the behaviors and feelings in yourself or a partner, you might benefit from learning coping strategies to manage separation anxiety in relationships. While learning how to deal with such feelings requires some effort, professional guidance is available to help you make healthy attachments.

Managing separation anxiety involves developing healthy habits and activities that can alleviate feelings of anxiety when apart from your partner.

You can make the first step through PIVOT coaching sessions or retreats at the Glass House. Our experienced and caring relationship coaches can help you recognize and change unhealthy thoughts and behavior patterns, which can, in turn, make you better equipped to deal with your romantic relationship issues.

When you work with us, we can help you explore your and your partner’s attachment styles, communication patterns, and past traumas that are influencing your current relationship. We work with individuals and couples, both separately and together, to heal their connections and move forward in a healthier way.

Transform Your Relationships With PIVOT

PIVOT offers relationship coaching for individuals, duos, couples, and families, as well as business coaching and retreats. Reach out online or call us to begin the journey to a healthier, happier life where you no longer have separation anxiety in relationships.

pivot relationships company logo with tagline

Emotional Detachment In Marriage: What Causes It & How To Overcome It

Most people who’ve been in a long-term, committed relationship can recall times when it felt like you were spending all of your time together. You will also likely remember that there were times when you started feeling more distant or drifted away from your partner. This can be a sign that you’re starting to grow apart. However, it’s not necessarily a bad sign. It might be a result of changes in your career, complications with family and/or friends, a consequence of boredom with everyday routines etc. 

Many people struggle with understanding what to do with this felt sense of boredom. Rather than blaming yourself or each other, you may try to understand the nature of your unexpected emotional disconnection. Rather than let it turn into emotional neglect that can lead to challenges, you can seek professional help and learn how to improve intimacy in your relationship.

What Does It Mean To Be Emotionally Detached?

If you feel emotionally detached, it means that you feel disengaged or disconnected from the feelings of people around you. 

It might manifest itself as the absence of motivation to be involved in the emotional lives of other people, or a lack of capacity for it. It can be a reaction to a stressful period, which is often temporary, or it can be a trait of your attachment style, especially if it was developed as a way to cope with traumatic events in life

How Do You Get Emotional Detachment?

If you had traumatic experiences as a child, detaching from the feelings of others can be a means to survive and keep negative emotions at bay. There are other scenarios that can lead to emotional detachment as well:

  • Experiences of significant loss, such as a separation from a primary caregiver, parental divorce, or death of a parent or sibling.
  • Having traumatic experiences growing up, including natural disasters, immigration to a different country, and going through life-threatening situations.
  • Spending childhood in foster care or challenged adoption home.
  • Experiences of emotional and/or physical abuse.
  • Experiences of physical and/or emotional neglect.

Remember, not all people who have survived emotional trauma in childhood or adolescence develop emotional detachment or other avoidant behavior. Some people will try to trauma bond with their romantic partners, idealizing them or reliving their trauma, and many will be able to recover and start healthy relationships. 

What Does It Mean To Be Emotionally Detached

How Do You Know If You Are Emotionally Detached In Your Marriage? 

Here are some of the possible signs of emotional detachment in a relationship:

  • You take each other for granted.
  • You have stopped listening closely and started shifting focus from your relationship to other interests when the focus needs to be on your relationship.
  • You no longer respect your mutual rituals, i.e. you don’t have breakfast, dinner, or go to bed at the same time.
  • When on a business trip or away, you only communicate routinely and don’t really want to call each other to check in.
  • You have a fear of engulfment i.e. loss of boundaries with your spouse, which wasn’t the case in the past.
  • Getting lost in your job and career role, using your work responsibilities as an excuse not to spend time with your significant other.
  • You have trouble finding ways to balance your personal space and intimacy.
  • You seek reassurance and resources for your emotional needs from other people. This doesn’t have to take the form of adultery or flirtation. However, it can take the form of emotional infidelity.

What Do You Do When You Feel Disconnected From Your Partner?

If you want your relationship to be healthy, you will want to resolve it. You can start by looking at events that jeopardized your connection. You can also look up similarities with your past relationships, and see whether you’ve ever withdrawn the way you do right now. And, if you have no history of being emotionally detached, you might just need some personal space and your detachment is just temporary. 

It’s possible to reconnect by working on your relationship together. You may join a relationship workshop to help you pinpoint the causes of your emotional distance and work on bonding with each other again.

How Do I Emotionally Reconnect With My Spouse?

First, you may check whether the nature of your disconnection or detachment is traumatic or situational. Track down the source by taking your time and reflecting on the causes. 

  1. Get To Know Yourself Better

Try to learn more about your needs and past experiences that you might’ve hidden deep. A relationship coach may help you discover your common relational patterns and attachment style.  Then you can work through the wounds that keep you from having a successful relationship.

  1. Give Yourself Time

Be patient and gentle with yourself, so that you can be fair and caring for your spouse and your relationship. Sometimes, it will take you more than a short period of time to gain understanding and find a way to not avoid emotional intimacy.  

  1. Recall Important Milestones Of Your Relationship

Reflect on the good times and the bad times. It may put your whole relationship into perspective and give you valuable insights.

  1. Try To Get Into Their Shoes 

Try to see your relationship from your partner’s perspective. Talk to them to understand their position better and understand their wants and needs.  Then share yours and find common ground to rebuild your relationship.

  1. Make Efforts To Rekindle Your Connection

You could do this with small gestures or by introducing the spirit of excitement and surprise. It’s a good idea to be creative and show that you care. Rebuilding your relationship on honesty, trust, and self-awareness is more likely to be successful, and a little effort often goes a long way.

How Do You Get Emotional Detachment

How Can My Relationship Benefit From Experience-Based Intimacy Coaching? 

Whether you’re looking for a way to restore the warmth and passion in your long-term relationship or to work on your own patterns of attachment, you can count on our relationship advocates to PIVOT from your old ways and learn something new. 

We offer couple-based workshops that can help you improve your intimacy and mutual understanding, as well as private coaching sessions for individuals

You can pick the type of coaching you feel most comfortable with, and steadily. Give us a call today and embark on a journey toward a healthy emotional life.