Love Addiction

     Looking back over my blogging life, it occurs to me that I tend to write more when I'm in a low place in my life.  It seems that when I'm happy, I just don't have the stimulus to write anymore.  I hate that, because once upon a time, I wrote when I was crazy happy.  Poetry, short stories, blogging.  I used writing to talk to myself, and I miss it.  I miss talking to me.  You see, it never really mattered to me if someone else even read it.  Sure, it was great to get a comment on a blog post or poem.  I appreciate every one of them and always responded.  But for me, it was self expression and it didn't require comment to be meaningful to me.  (Unless it was an article written for another site of course.)

 

Then I noticed that I apparently equated being happy, to being in a relationship.  Writing during a break up or when I was alone and then dropping it all when I was happily paired up, for a time.  The pairing never lasted.  Yep, there's a pattern here. 

 

During a recent very difficult time in my current relationship, I remembered something I had read while researching an article on lesbian bed death.  I have to confess that when I was reading the information, I was basically skimming through it.  I was looking for specific information as it related to decreased sexual intimacy between lesbian couples over time.  I wasn't reading it well enough to realize how it applied to my own life.  Probably because of denial.  I mean, who really wants to admit that they have a problem with relationships and an addiction all at the same time.  One that you've gone your entire life without even recognizing.

 

So on this one very difficult day, when I was facing the end of my marriage of only a little over a year, I remembered something I had read.  I might never have gone back looking for the information, except for one thing.  This time, I felt different about the relationship ending.  I didn't want to run away to reduce the anxiety I was feeling.  I wanted to figure out why two people who loved each other, could not find a way to communicate what we were feeling and get through the problem we were having.  So the hunt was on. 

 

It wasn't easy to find the subject again.  I couldn't remember exactly what it was called, except that it was about addiction and love.  Google that and you get a lot of returns on drug and alcohol addiction recover and tough love.  Not was I was looking for.  Then I put love addiction in the search box, and bingo.  There it was.  I even narrowed it down and put "lesbian love addiction" in the search box and much to my surprise, there was a specific book advertised on the subject.  I waited a couple of days before I actually went back and purchased one of the books.  I had a feeling, deep in my gut, that I was going to have to face some demons if I read it.  I was right. 

 

It really is a shattering experience to open the pages of a book, and read about yourself.  To see yourself so clearly laid out on the pages  that there is no denying it.  That was the experience I had on that day.  I felt exposed, and for the first time in my life I understood why I could never stay attached and engaged to another person.  Why I always found some way to push them away by pulling back so much that their leaving was less anxiety producing than their presence.  How can you be addicted to love?  But you can, and I am.  Apparently, I always have been. 

 

So here's to those people in my past who I hurt through no fault of their own.  I am so sorry.  I will say this though, for the most part, I have chosen other people with the same addiction.  We hurt each other, and I am sorry for those people too.  I hope you find the help you need to heal, as I am trying to do. 

 

So, I'm reading, a lot.  Everything I can get my hands on.   Facing the fact that I do not have, nor do I want to have, control over other people and their actions or decisions.  Facing the fact that I am vulnerable, but so is everyone else who lets love in.  Accepting the reality that this is going to be work, but in the end I'm looking forward to meeting the person that is inside me when she learns how to attach and love in a healthy way that allows love to be a long slow burn and not a fire that keeps getting gas thrown on it, then burns out again and again.