Love Addiction

By Kimber Weckel L.M.S.W.

Have you ever heard of such a thing as “Love Addiction”?  I’m sure most of us would agree that we have a strong desire to be loved – after all God created us to need love.  His greatest command is that we love Him with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our minds and that we love others.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting and needing to be loved. The problem sets in when we get our need for love met in the wrong ways.  And, over time of getting our need for love met in the wrong ways– an addiction develops.                                                   

Love Addiction – A person addicted to love is fully absorbed in the pursuit of love because love is the greatest need.  The desire to be loved can push women into perfectionism, sexual promiscuity, and unhealthy relationships.  Love is desired, demanded and pursued at all costs.  The price, many times, turns into a compromise of moral values and a devaluing of the person who pursues this addiction.  Having affairs or being in one relationship after another to fill the emptiness can become a pattern.  Fantasizing can fuel the obsession to escape from painful realities into a work where the illusion of love exists.

Love addiction temporarily removes the pain of feeling abandoned.  But it also unknowingly contributes to the ultimate down turn of just about every relationship you have.

“I have loved you with an everlasting love; and I have drawn you unto myself”            

-Jeremiah 31:3-

Take this QUIZ to see how strongly you may be affected by love addiction.