Beware Of Love Addiction That Can Be A Serious Condition With Harmful Emotional And Physical Effects
While there are many misconceptions surrounding love addiction, it can be a serious condition with harmful emotional and physical effects. Here, 28-year-old Hannah*, an account manager and aspiring TV presenter from Sunderland, tells Cosmopolitan UK how her addiction to love left her having anxiety attacks and needing psychotherapy.
“My friends would describe me as the most independent person in the world. I’ve moved away from home, got a really good job and I take care of my appearance. I’m always outgoing and never shy in social and professional situations. Basically, I’m the complete opposite of what love addiction does to a person.
When I’m single, my life’s in check. I date guys and everything’s great. Even if someone I’m dating’s really good looking, I always start off disinterested. The guy then falls for that girl, the cool, together, outgoing one. But the minute I start to fall for them — which usually happens around the two or three month mark — I literally just lose it.
Something takes over me and I completely lose sight of myself. I won’t care about going out with my friends. It’ll all be about spending time with my boyfriend. It used to embarrass me to admit this, but I’m basically a bunny boiler girlfriend… to the point where I almost suffocate the poor guy.
I’m basically a bunny boiler girlfriend.
Why do I get like this, when my life is usually so together and sorted? It’s because I get so physically addicted to the feeling I have when I’m with them, that nothing else compares. That feeling, the love, is similar to when you do a line of cocaine and it releases endorphins. It’s not the actual person I get addicted to, it’s the feeling I have when I’m with them.
The cycle
Pretty much every long-term relationship I’ve been in has gone like this. I was with my first boyfriend for three years, from when I was 15. It was quite a young relationship so I don’t remember it ever being that intense with him. The first time my love addiction really hit full swing was when I met my second boyfriend aged 19. Since then, it’s just been the same pattern over and over again.
But it wasn’t until I met Matt* on Match.com in 2014 that my addiction reached a whole new level. I was 25 and Matt had just come out of a serious relationship. He’d been engaged to her and they’d lived together for five years before she left him alone in their big, beautiful house.
At first things were great, but about three months in, it all started again. I’d obviously been to his place where they used to live together, but suddenly even the simplest thing could set me off, like finding one of her highlighter kits in a drawer. It would trigger this rage inside of me. ‘Why haven’t you got rid of this yet?’ I’d scream at him. ‘We’re together now.’ It felt like I was living in her shadow. At the forefront of my mind, I worried he was going to abandon me. ‘He wants to be with her. He’s only not with her because she ended it. I’m a rebound,’ I told myself.
Of course he’d say that he was over her and he loved me. He may as well have been talking to a brick wall. Everyone around me thought I was mad and told me Matt had upgraded. All I could see was that he was going to leave me, that I wouldn’t get that hit of love anymore.
