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Post by LovelyJune on Feb 18, 2008 14:18:07 GMT -8
Hello All, I went to therapy today (first time in a long while) and thank God I felt comfortable with this woman. She made lots of sense. I told her my history and that I am working the steps in LAA. I specifically told her about my ex, G, whom I loved the most and dated the longest out of everyone. I also added that he had intimacy issues & that we hardly EVER had sex. Her reply stunned me. I thought I'd share: "I think in your case, based on your relationship with your father and your fear of abandonment, you loved G so much BECAUSE you never had sex. That you, in fact, are the one that fears intimacy and romance and love." I said, "how is that possible?  If I am "addicted to love" doesn't that mean I love LOVE." "Absolutely not," she said. "Being a love addict has little or nothing to do with actual love. It stems from a need to not be abandoned." I was quite shocked. Here I am all this time, trying to coax G into a physical relationship and pressuring him to change his ways and yet, I am the one who fears intimacy! It makes sense, really. Because I tend to run real fast away from relationships that are overly sexual. So...obviously i have a LONG way to go. Thought? Opinions? Do you agree? T |
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Post by Susan Peabody on Feb 18, 2008 15:21:31 GMT -8
Telmita, I agree with your therapist. Whenever I love an unavailable man it is all about my father. My father and I were very close, what we call emotional incest. He "almost" molested me at night when he put me to bed. When I fell in love with my therapist and he asked me why I wanted to have sex with him, I blurted out, "I want you to pick up where my father left off." Love addiction is different when you consummate the relationship. But even then your partner is often a stand in for someone important from you past. Most people would run from the pain of unrequited love, but we hang on to AVOID experiencing abandonment again (abandonment from childhood and abandonment that came later in our life from other partners). Unavailable men are a perfect stand-ins for our fathers because like our dads they are unavailable. When a father becomes too available (incest) this makes things worse. Most people do not want to hear that they wanted to have sex with a parent. It is called the oedipus dilemma. But we must remember that this is natural and we are too young to know any better. One of our parents was our first love and we wanted to consummate our love even at a tender age. I recommend that everyone talk to their therapist about this. Finally, it is because of all this that love addicts have an unconscious, or underlying fear, of love. The website has a link about this called the Ambivalent Love Addict. See link below. Sometimes this fear manifests itself as a fear of emotional intimacy, sometimes a fear of sexual intimacy. The fear goes away when the person is unavailable and returns when he (or she) is available, healthy, or able to return our love. This is the dilemma of the love addict. We fear what we crave.loveaddicts.org/ambivalent.html |
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Post by Rainbows Always on Feb 19, 2008 5:55:43 GMT -8
Telmita, Im with you on this one. Im glad you bought it up. Im completely confused too. Im a love addict/codependent of the obsessive kind, last few men have been avoidants , does this mean I am afraid of intimacy too/ ? I can see it in others, but i just CANT SEE IT IN myself ( ??denial). I seem to have insight regarding a lot of other stuff, but Id eat my hat if I were told I was afraid of intimacy!! I HAVE never ran away from love or intimacy or a partner EVER. I have had very intimate r'ships before with my last ex. Ive tried to address this before but ive read the info here and I just cant relate at all. i dont really understand it to tell you the truth. Perhaps there is a huge block for me. I loved my dad, he wasnt that emotionally available for me. But he wasnt a bad dad. But I knew he loved me. I only have one bad memory with him when he hit me when I was 15 other than that there was NO abuse whatsoever of any kind. He was a straight laced normal Dad. It was my mother who I never felt loved by. Your thoughts Butterfly girl, or anyone else on this?? thankyou rainbows |
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Post by LovelyJune on Feb 20, 2008 11:29:38 GMT -8
Sadly, I can't answer those questions Rainbow. I thought I was a very intimate person too. ALWAYS seeking intimacy. I thought my only problem was that I didn't believe in myself enough to date men that were more on my level and that's why I kept leaving them. It does, however, make enormous sense to me that I would run from intimacy. Those that wanted me to be completely intimate I could not cope and left. Those that were avoidant always felt safer to me. My favorite men of all were the avoidants. I've never dated a SW with the exception of G. He is my first. But then again, he is the ONLY man I chose to stay with for longer than 6 months (about how much intimacy I can handle!)
That being said, it is obvious to me that i am the one who fears intimacy. I seek it out, and i love it at first, but then it becomes extremely entrapping.
I also heard this morning on NPR: You cannot have a real relationship with someone you put on a pedestal. And that is what G did to me and one of his excuses for not having sex.
One step closer today!
T
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Post by Susan Peabody on Feb 20, 2008 20:22:34 GMT -8
If you have both an incest wound and an abandonment wound then you both crave love and are afraid of it. The incest wound could be emotional not sexual. The abandonment wound could be subtle. You do not have to remember your childhood in order to have been wounded by it. If the symptoms are there then you have been wounded. In my opinion, all love addicts at one time or another are Ambivalent Love Addicts (ALAs). |
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Post by jonny on Mar 3, 2008 10:03:50 GMT -8
one small point i disagree with is the fact i am a love addict and get infatuated and then absessed into being a love addict with women.......But i have no fear of sex whats so ever only when i had sex with my S/W partner she appeared willing but very scared as she was a 35yr old virgin with lots of fear issues such as commitment and sexual and immotional intimacy.....
Although she did say on our first time she did not believe how comfortable she felt but she was drunk ??
she made me feel quite inadiquate when talking about it afterwards and questioned why it was not all as she expected and said it was because she did not love me that she could not produce lust...bearing in mind she was ill with ME and openly admitted to always having a very low or no sex drive....but i took the brunt of her complaints and took it personell like a fool ??
just more pain from a S/W !!!!! to take being a foolish love addict
the biggest pain for me was the rejection !!!
Her final parting words to hurt me was to tell me after all the fun and pleasure she enjoyed with me that she had tried but did not fancy me and regreted what she had done after 2 yrs this was a massive rejection when i had given her all i could to make her happy.....
jonny xxx
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If I am "addicted to love" doesn't that mean I love LOVE."
