Love addiction is very real, and we can help provide Love Addict Therapy. Mostly seen in women, the Love addict has very intense emotions including anger, fear, hate and love for the other person. At its root hides issues of childhood insecure bonding and Attachment/Rejection/loss in the relationship with a significant carer (often a mother). In all respects it is an addiction (which does require treatment in therapy).

Love addiction focuses on love as the solution to inner pain, loneliness and emptiness by creating relationships or romance that are consuming pastimes. It often is not at all about porn viewing or even “the sex”.

Love addiction can be defined as an attempt to regulate ones mood by getting and having the positive regard of someone else.

Someone has said that “The chief cause of unhappiness is trading what we want most for what we want at the moment”.

In William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night”, Duke Orsino is upset that his courtship attempts with Olivia is not going well and asks for an abundance of love so that he will lose his appetite. He says:

“If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.”

In her article, Lauren Dubinsky writes about women and porn:

“….it’s still the men’s world, but statistics show that more than one-third of pornography viewers are women. Just last week, I received an email from a girl who leads a small women’s group; they’d just discovered that every single one of them were watching porn.

…I wish someone would have told me that the kind of pornography you’re most turned on by is usually linked to a corresponding hurtful event in your life

…I wish someone would have told me pornography would normalize things I wasn’t emotionally or physically ready to handle in my relationships with men, making me feel like I had no options or control over my sex life, filling me with much regret and physical pain

…I wish someone would have told me I would begin to objectify men, build up images in my mind and think of sex day in and day out…

…I wish someone would have told me it would make me feel less valuable to men and bring up insecurities for years in the bedroom

…I wish someone would have pointed out pornography can establish your sexuality completely apart from real-life relationships, causing huge problems in your intimacy with real significant others

…I wish someone would have explained what “sexual anorexia” was and that countless young men are unable to get erectionsbecause they’ve been watching porn since they were around 14 years old.

…I wish someone would have told all the men I’ve dated that the porn they are watching is keeping them from being turned on by me, ultimately destroying our relationship

…I wish someone would have told me that the dopamine and oxytocin being released from my watching certain types of pornography would cause me to question my sexual orientation, which in turn cost me relationships with friends

…I wish someone would have told me it would subtly create a “victim” mentality in my mind, causing me to be even more sensitive than I already was to catcalls, whistles, and even sincere compliments

…I wish someone had talked about how women watch it too”