Love & Relationships

A Journey Within and Beyond Love and Relationships

For many women with addiction, matters of the heart are the heart of the matter. The basic answer to “what’s the matter?”, it turns out, is a wounded heart. If we look at the outer effects of addiction, we see disorder and dysregulation of the magnitude that has the power to disrupt organic, natural ways of relating to others. In other words, addiction impairs the heart’s ability to connect with others.

For as long as the false addicted self is blocking our real self, we cannot be truly loving and unable to receive true love. We have covered over our true self with a fake personality, which, until dismantled, will always interfere with our ability to make genuine contact. Underneath that pattern, however, we have the pre-existing condition that the addiction exists to manage. What is the matter, deep down, underneath it all?

The inability to feel connected, which is to say, the inability to feel love. Almost every one grows up with heart wounds. We are damaged in our natural right to know ourselves as “lovable just because.” In other words, we grow up in conditions that tell us we are “lovable if” and “lovable when.” Our lovability will happen at a certain future point, or if achieved, then is experienced only for a precarious moment.

Love is meant to flow in and out of us as easily as air. If anyone underestimates how fundamental love is, consider that babies in orphanages who are not held and loved are more likely to die than children. Love is not just a feeling; it is a requirement of survival. The incredibly widespread problems with lack of or low self-esteem and self-compassion among women are an essential impairment in the ability to love the self.

In the absence of genuine love, I mean total acceptance and enjoyment of who we are, patience and space, kindness and closeness, affection, respect, and of our individual self, we will settle for the next best thing. An imitation of love will do. Addiction’s effects on the body and brain mimic the effects of love. Many of us became hooked on our drug of choice because of the oceanic feelings that seemed to blur our isolation, separation, and pain.

It seemed to turn us into more lovable people or maybe made others seem more loving. It was an illusion, however, because at the same time that the addiction gave us a short-term experience of bliss by hijacking our own store of pleasure neurotransmitters and spending them all at once on us, it was actually depleting us and creating dependency.

It was like a boyfriend that seemed to be spending a bunch of money on us but was getting that money out of our own account. Once we enter recovery and halt the pattern of addiction, issues relating to love and relationships come rising to the surface almost immediately. Our problematic ways of relating instantly appear, perhaps even getting worse before they begin getting better.

Several love themes stand like sentinels on our journey – gatekeepers that we may need to terms with. Codependency, love addiction, attachment styles, needs, communication skills, and differentiation are just a few. As we recover, we understand more and more about what can go wrong when matters of the heart are the matter at hand.