You know the course: things suck and they never seem to get better. The fights get worse, the insults get deeper and more personal, and the manipulation more obvious. You feel helpless and powerless, but you can’t leave.

Why is all this so difficult, when it seems so easy to others?

While many of these relationships are blamed on trauma bonding, or the strong emotional bond that occurs between the abused person and their abuser, the truth may be that love addiction is to blame.

But what’s the difference between the two, and how do you know which one applies to you?

Love Addiction 101

Love addiction is a complex and nebulous condition that manifests itself differently in each person. Particularly common in people with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) or victims of narcissistic abuse, love addiction usually manifests as a deep fear of being rejected by the abuser, even though the relationship is highly toxic.

From a neurological point of view, love addiction is similar to drug or alcohol addiction, where the addict feels unable to quit the habit of loving the abuser, even though this relationship has disastrous effects on your health, wealth, and happiness. It is considered a “process addiction,” which is a group of behaviors that are considered obsessive or compulsive.

Unlike other forms of addiction, love addiction is often difficult to see from the outside and may go unnoticed by the person suffering from the addiction.

How do you know if you are suffering from a love addiction

While they sound very similar, the interconnections between trauma and love addiction are two distinct things. Trauma bonding is common, but it does not require people to stay in a relationship with their abuser. In many cases, children, partners, or adults who have moved away and cut off contact with their abuser still feel trauma associated with that person, which means they may think of them fondly or find ways to make excuses for their inappropriate or callous behavior.

However, love addiction manifests itself a little differently. Here are some common signs:

1. People with love addiction do not have personal boundaries
   Have you ever found yourself sharing deeply personal information with strangers near you? You may become attached to people you have just met or endow them with virtues they have not been proven to possess. These are signs of a toxic love addiction, and they indicate a deep need for love and connection. Usually, these behaviors point to the fact that these needs are not being met by your partner.
2. You often feel like you need emotional comfort
   If you ever feel “wanted”, this is a sign of a love addiction. People immersed in toxic relationships don’t get the reassurance or stability they need from a partner, which often leads them to seek emotional comfort, especially from the person who abused them.
3. You feel hopeless about the matter
   This is one of the main differences between the association between trauma and love addiction. While people who experience trauma associated with an abuser can leave the abuser feeling fulfilled and happy outside of the relationship, people who are addicted to toxic love feel a constant sense of hopelessness. They believe that someone should come and show them their importance, that they are worthy of love, or that they are not alone.

This despair comes from a deep well of abuse and neglect.

4. You create situations to get attention
   While this is not a pretty thing to admit, people who are addicted to toxic love are often so desperate for love and attention that they create situations to get it. If you’ve ever waited outside your partner’s home, classroom, or workplace and then randomly pretended to “run into” them, pretended someone else was interested in you to make your partner jealous, or played games like “hard to get” to encourage attention, you may be suffering from an addiction. Toxic love.
5. People addicted to toxic love will tolerate anything to avoid loneliness
   While people on the outside often ask love addicts why they don’t leave an abusive relationship, a person who is addicted to toxic love will endure virtually any level of emotional, mental, verbal, physical, and sexual abuse or infidelity to stay in the partnership, believing that losing an abusive partner is the worst thing that can happen. to happen.

Here are additional examples of toxic love addiction:

An urgent need to get involved in the abusive partner’s daily life
Neglecting responsibilities in favor of a toxic relationship (patients being called into work because of a massive fight with a toxic partner the night before)
Your behavior is interfering with your relationships, such as neglecting children or changing friendships
You’ve been in trouble at work because you can’t seem to stop answering phone calls and texts from an abusive partner
You feel as though you have no control over contact with or pursuit of a toxic partner
Your life revolves around these compulsive behaviors

How to treat a toxic love addiction

Toxic love addiction often feels like a giant mountain that is too tall, jagged, and brutal to climb. This is understandable — if you suffer from a toxic love addiction, you have experienced deep abuse in your relationships. Chances are, your needs have been plucked from you over and over again. Chances are, you’ve spent years, maybe decades, doing anything in your power to be loved by a narcissist or abuser who is incapable of true love, and only knows how to manipulate, shame, and hurt you.

Fortunately, there is hope for toxic love addiction. As with most forms of addiction, the first step is recognition. Just as you cannot recover from a cocaine addiction while still using cocaine, you cannot recover from a toxic love addiction while still in a toxic relationship.

As such, it is necessary to acknowledge this fact and let go of the relationship.

From there, you can move on to the difficult, but possible, work of healing your heart and mind. Find a Codependents Anonymous group in your area or an online resource that specializes in helping support narcissistic abuse. Sessions can also start with a therapist who specializes in the complexity of narcissistic abuse.

Life after a toxic love addiction

While recognizing the difference between the bonding between trauma and a toxic love addiction is difficult, and recovering from a toxic love addiction can be even more difficult, this is hope for you if you fall into this category.