Yet who can say what is necessary and what is superfluous in the gyration of emotions that, magnified in the present, become submicroscopic when passed? That which costs such agitation in the chemistry of the brain, the transitory and subsequently infinitesimal impasse, who can tell how much of it may contribute to the substance, development, and ultimate shape of events?
- Hurry Sundown, Vol II
Sex / Love / Relationship Addiction

This is part of a letter written by a recovering addict. Personal references have been deleted. Many thanks to the writer for sharing this with us.

Dear husband,

Since we have not been talking much this week, I thought I’d write you a note so that you may know what’s going on with me. I’ve been reading a lot and journaling, as you know. I’ve also had talks with my mom and dad. This is all really important in my recovery process. When I read The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, I found the chapter on marriage profound and precisely how I feel a partnership should be. I will quote it here:

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

This is the kind of relationship that I want. I think that we are so conditioned through our past behaviors that we have difficulty achieving this. This is why I asked for a separation…so that I could become a whole person again and not be lost in what I thought everyone else expected me to be. I think that only when two people are complete on their own, can they come together in a healthy and loving relationship. As long as we are looking outside ourselves to fill the void, we will never be truly happy. This is where spirituality comes in. I have been on a spiritual journey for some time now, and I pray regularly for guidance, peace and love. I also pray for the strength to give up my illusions and open myself up to the love that surrounds me. Part of this requires me to let go of the past and relinquish my resentment. Resentment has been so toxic in our relationship, and I have held onto it with righteous indignation. This is not the person I want to be. Letting go is hard for me, and I recognize my fear of being vulnerable and exposed. This fear has surrounded my relationship with my father, and that is something that I’m working on.

With regard to my love addiction work, I have prepared a contract for myself to follow so as not to fall into the trap of escape fantasy. Some of the components are activities that I need to abstain from, just as the alcoholic abstains from drinking. It also requires that I protect myself with healthy boundaries, not walls of fear and bitterness. Pia Mellody in her book, Facing Love Addiction, says that, “the function of an addiction is to remove intolerable reality.” This, too, is why I need the separation, of sorts. I have to determine what parts of my reality are so intolerable that I feel the need to self-medicate with obsessive fantasy. According to this book, there are two types of addicts, the love addict and the love avoidant. I recognize that in my relationships with others, I am the love addict and, in my relationship with you, I am the love avoidant and you are the love addict. It is possible for two love addicts to be in a relationship together, but eventually the stronger addictive personality wins out and the other person generally becomes the avoidant. This is my perception of us.

Characteristics of the Love Addict are:
1. Love Addicts assign a disproportionate amount of time, attention, and “value above themselves” to the person to whom they are addicted, and this focus often has an obsessive quality about it.
2. Love Addicts have unrealistic expectations for unconditional positive regard from the other person in the relationship.
3. Love Addicts neglect to care for or value themselves while they’re in the relationship.

Characteristics of the Love Avoidant are:
1. Love Avoidants evade intensity within the relationship by creating intensity in activities (usually addictions) outside the relationship.
2. Love Avoidants avoid being known in the relationship in order to protect themselves from engulfment and control by the other person.
3. Love Avoidants avoid intimate contact with their partners, using a variety of processes I call “distancing techniques.”

Love Avoidants consciously (and greatly) fear intimacy because they believe that they will be drained, engulfed, and controlled by it. As we shall see, in childhood Love Avoidants were drained, engulfed, and controlled by somebody else’s neediness, somebody else’s reality, somebody else’s existence, and they don’t want to go through that experience again. This experience of childhood enmeshment created a deeply ingrained conviction that more intimacy will bring more misery, based on experience both with the original caregivers and with other Love Addict partners.

A Love Addict’s demand to be loved in spite of the impact of immature, irrational, offensive behavior toward the Love Avoidant is one way the Love Addict abuses the Love Avoidant. It’s unreasonable to expect to be loved unconditionally, especially when one is acting inappropriately toward the other person.

Love Addicts also have trouble seeing how difficult they are to live with because they are focused on how difficult the partner is making their life. They don’t see themselves as the addict. They abuse their partners by demanding to enmesh with them and be taken care of, yet they think these are reasonable requests – that in fact it is evidence of love and trust. Love Addicts think that the Love Avoidant’s need to get away from them is abnormal, when actually what they are asking for is threatening and more than anyone can give.

There is also an interesting section on enmeshment in relationships between parents and children...

There is a proper close parent-child relationship called bonding, a functional activity on the part of the parent to the child. This emotional connection is like an emotional umbilical cord that goes from the parent to the child so that the parent, rooted in a mature, stable place, nurtures and supports the child.

Enmeshment is the opposite. The emotional connection between parent and child is also like an umbilical cord, except the energy flow is being extracted from the child to nourish the parent. These enmeshed children get drained dry and used by Mom’s or Dad’s need for companionship, attention and love.

As you might discern, this is precisely what happened to me in my childhood and now I am suffering the consequences.

<passage deleted>

I know that you are processing a lot of hurt and anger, and I pray for your peace and happiness.

I hope that this information has been helpful and enlightening. I trust that you will take from it what you need and leave the rest.

Love,
your wife