This is part three in our series on love addiction so in this video we're
going to talk about what does it look like when you are addicted to a person
that you're actually currently in a relationship with because being
in an addicted state is very different than being in love with a person and if
you're not sure what those differences are then you definitely need to watch part one
now being addicted to a person that you're in a relationship with happens under a few
different kinds of circumstances let's explore some of them one way that you
can become addicted to a person that you're already in a relationship with
is if that person has an addiction if they have a personality disorder if they're narcissistic
if they're antisocial or any of those kind of things is because what happens
is there's a real inconsistency with the way that person relates to you and
sometimes it's really and sometimes it's really bad that is what makes it addictive
addiction is always an illusion addiction means chasing something you can't have
and so when you're in a relationship with someone who has an addiction or you're in a relationship
with someone who's narcissistic or any of those other things we named it's like sometimes they're
really great and they relate to you and they connect you and you get that serotonin and
dopamine and oxytocin and all those good brain chemicals and you feel wonderful about that person
but then they don't and sometimes even worse they do something very negative and
they make you feel terrible and awful and desperate that inconsistent cycle
is what can lead to addiction now another scenario that can result in being addicted
to being like love addicted to a person is when you have an anxious attachment
now if you don't know what the attachment styles are I do have a separate video on
that which I will link up here at the end but when you have an anxious attachment you have
this fear of losing a person this fear of losing a person that's so big that it can
cause you to do desperate things and that fear can actually block and interfere with your ability to
actually have a real loving relationship because it puts you in a desperate state
and when you're in a desperate state you can't really ever be present in a relationship or
consistent in a relationship because it makes you desperate you're coming from a
place of fear now another scenario where you can be in like an addicted state to a person
in the beginning of a romantic relationship you go through this phase it's called infatuation
most people call that oh I'm in love with the person but it's really different it's
infatuation and sometimes it's even limerence but during these initial
state you're full of dopamine and great chemicals and all you can think about
is the other person you're just obsessed with them and you just want to be near them
you just want to smell their shirt you just want to look at their pictures all those
things there's just an obsessiveness about that person because it feels really good when you're
in that state but in real life that state always wears off usually when you're in a
relationship with that person somewhere between eight and 12 months or so and that's normal
but what can happen is this most of the time when you have two people in a relationship
they go through that infatuation stage and it's fine in the beginning because
you both feel that way about each other and it's all working fine but
one of you is probably going to leave that infatuation state before the other one does
because when you leave that infatuation state you start like coming back down to reality the
high starts to wear off it's not that you don't like that person anymore or you don't want to
be around that person anymore but you start to think about your regular hobbies interest
activities your work your career your school goals being around your friends all the regular stuff
and so some of your attention starts to drift back to that because that's what happens when
you're not in an addicted state you're more balanced you think about more things you want to
do more things you enjoy more things when you're in an addicted state you only enjoy one thing so
when someone starts moving out of that state it's natural that they want to pursue some other things
they still want to be around you they still love you and care about
you and that can trigger like a desperate response out of the other when you get
in that desperate state you feel like you're losing that person then you start coming from
this place of fear and desperation which leads to making bad choices
so let's talk about what those bad choices look like these are the choices that can happen in any
one of those different scenarios that I talked about but I'm going to add to it because there's
some different kinds of stalking behaviors that will go on when you're actually in the
relationship with that person because for the most part When you have the stalking behaviors
and you're not in a relationship with a person most of that stalking stuff is behind the scenes
but when you are in a relationship with that person the stalking will become controlling
which can become abusive so you've got to be really careful here so when you're in that
state you could do things like threaten if you don't quit your job where Susie is and I know
you like Susie that I'm going to break up with you you start to demand that person be around you
more do certain things because you want that infatuated feeling back and you start trying
to force that other person to do things that you think are going to give you that feeling
another way that desperation could come out is you could start fawning over someone
and what fawning means is like laying it on really thick like being really overly
nice overly complimentary it's extra and when you do any of these behaviors that
I'm talking about these addictive behaviors any of them are going to
push the person away from you which is going to make you even more desperate
so it's like a negative feedback loop that just continues to cycle itself
another thing that you might do when you're in this state is you might try to make that
other person jealous because in your mind it's oh if I can remind them of what they
have they're going to come running back to me and that's going to solve the problem
can you see how all these things are controlling it's like I'm trying to bring this feeling that
I get from this person it's like I'm desperately trying to get it back when
you find yourself getting to the point that you're threatening you're demanding you're
giving a lot of ultimatums you're putting a lot of rules and demands on the other person
you're trying to make them jealous you're threatening to break up with them all the
time you are breaking up with them every other day you're chasing you're spying you're doing
all that stuff you have now reached a level of desperation that is moving into the abusive
category and I promise you these behaviors will never make someone want to be closer to you
but it can be very hard to control because it's an addiction and any
addiction is really hard to control the best thing you can do if you're in that state is
to go all the way back in the chain reaction process to the obsessive part because that's
where the heart of the addiction lies and you've got to stop that obsessive peace
which means stop doing all the things that trigger that desperation in you
stop looking at their social media stop doing the spying stop driving by their work stop allowing
yourself to go in your head into this crazy what if land because when you do that you are fueling
your addiction I have seen some people do some really crazy things when they're in this state
and most of the time when they're doing these things they just don't
realize how abusive and out of bounds they're really being
throwing crazy jealous fits telling someone they can't go or be can't
go certain places or do certain things like unreasonably calling other people
and connect to that person like calling someone's boss or coworker or schoolmate
or something like that and telling them to stay away from your loved one
all of those are the kinds of things that happen when you're in this state it's not your best self
people it's your desperate self and that's not good now just like with any addiction
you have got to be careful because you will lie to yourself about what is happening you
will justify you will rationalize you'll make excuses for you will blame the other person
you will blame the other people you will blame the other environment and you will justify these
behaviors and you'll say it's okay to continue to do these things when it's really not okay and let
me just go ahead and tell you one more really important thing here just because you have your
feelings hurt does not give you the right to turn into a crazy psycho abusive person
It doesn't I know it feels that way sometimes but it just doesn't addiction
is obsession it comes from a fearful place when you're addicted to something it is an
illusion it never feels satisfied it's an itch that will never feel satisfied
and the chasing of whatever that thing is will lead you down a very dark path
so join me in the next part in this series we're going to talk about what
happens when you're addicted to a person after the break up