Love Addiction: Craving Infatuation, Limerence

Introduction and Speaker Background

• The speaker, Savagnin, a professor of psychology and author, introduces himself and explains his medical education background hidden until now. Emphasizes removing toxic subscribers from his channel to maintain intellectual integrity. [00:00]

Definition and Nature of Love Addiction

• Love addiction is defined as a maladaptive, pervasive interest in romantic partners often involving fantasy rather than real attachment. It manifests in hyper-promiscuity, extreme and reckless behaviors, and emotional dysregulation. Most love addicts are women. [02:00]
• Love addicts fall in love with real people, strangers, or fictional characters, showing the delusional and fantasy-driven nature of this addiction. The addiction centers around the rush of infatuation and limerence, rather than genuine love. [05:00]

Psychological and Behavioral Characteristics

• Love addiction is characterized by impulsivity, emotional dysregulation, compulsions, and obsessive thoughts about love objects. It is distinct from psychotic disorders and from sex addiction or erotomania. [15:30]
• Love addicts are often emotionally reactive, unable to exit infatuation stages, suffering from mood disorders, and frequently overlap with personality disorders such as narcissistic, borderline, and psychopathic traits. [18:00]

The Role of Fantasy and Misperception of Love

• The love addict’s concept of love is often confused with sexual attraction, infatuation, or initial romantic excitement and is disconnected from authentic intimacy or mature love. They often idealize partners and repeatedly seek the honeymoon phase. [20:00]
• Love addicts sacrifice personal values and boundaries to sustain these dysfunctional relationships and fantasies. [23:00]

Impact on Life and Relationships

• Love addiction causes destructive behaviors: extreme people-pleasing, reckless sexual behaviors, inability to maintain relationships, emotional dependency, and repeated personal and social dysfunction. [25:00]
• Love addicts often experience emotional despair, fear of rejection and abandonment, and shift quickly from one relationship or fascination to another, including imaginary and online partners. [27:30]

Signs and Symptoms of Love Addiction

• Notable signs include confusing sexual excitement with love, compulsive relationship seeking, inability to be alone, engaging in extreme sexual activities to please partners, using sex or romantic intensity to cope with emotions, and betraying personal values to maintain relationships. [30:00]
• Love addicts may engage in parallel or unhealthy relationships, sabotage intimacy, and use manipulation or emotional blackmail. [33:00]

Psychological Underpinnings and Contributing Factors

• Possible causes include childhood trauma, low self-esteem, anxiety disorders, mood disorders, rejection, and abandonment fears. There’s uncertainty whether these conditions cause love addiction or develop from it. [37:00]
• Love addiction shares characteristics with attachment disorders and codependency but is distinct. There is also evidence linking love addiction to behavioral addiction mechanisms similar to substance addiction. [39:30]

Types of Love Addicts (Based on Peabody’s Classification)

• Obsessive love addicts: unable to detach from unhealthy partners.
• Codependent love addicts: seek self-esteem through partner approval, engage in people-pleasing.
• Narcissistic love addicts: use partners for ego boosting or supply, may mistreat partners.
• Ambivalent/avoidant love addicts: avoid true intimacy, maintain parallel relationships, sabotage intimacy. [42:00]

Challenges and Treatment Approaches

• Treatment is difficult; limited success with cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation. Building self-worth and filling internal voids are critical for recovery. [47:00]
• Support groups like Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous exist but with limited effectiveness. [48:30]

Conclusion

• Love addiction is a serious behavioral addiction marked by compulsive pursuit of infatuation, emotional instability, and destructive life patterns. The addiction satisfies emptiness but ultimately perpetuates suffering, shame, and dysfunctional behaviors requiring complex intervention. [49:30]