Love addiction is a human behavior in which people become addicted to the feeling of being in love. Love addicts can take on many different behaviors. Love addiction is common; however, most love addicts do not realize they are addicted to love. Love addiction can be treated with various recovery techniques, most of which are similar to recovery from other addictions such as sex addiction and alcoholism, through group meetings and support groups. Addictive love is an inclusive term in that it includes "addicts" and "co-addicts", "co-dependents", "emotional anorectics", and "love avoidants".
Healthcare professionals have not reached any consensus regarding whether love addiction exists or, if it does, how to describe or diagnose the phenomenon. There has never been a reference to love addiction in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a widely recognized compendium of acknowledged mental disorders and their diagnostic criteria published by the American Psychiatric Association.
Read more about Love Addiction: History, Process, The Addictive Love Relationship, Delimiting Love and Sex Addictions, Love Withdrawal, Cultural Examples, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words love and/or addiction:
“There are some women ... in whom conscience is so strongly developed that it leaves little room for anything else. Love is scarcely felt before duty rushes to encase it, anger impossible because one must always be calm and see both sides, pity evaporates in expedients, even grief is felt as a sort of bruised sense of injury, a resentment that one should have grief forced upon one when one has always acted for the best.”
—Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893–1978)
“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)