Addicted To Love

Addicted to love: when falling in love leads to madness

Up to five percent of the population knows the sickest face of love. Some live in a perpetual state of falling in love with several people at the same time and others are "hooked" to a similar one. He or she is your *drug*

A human being in love experiences a pleasant sensation comparable to few things in this world. Problems disappear, life is faced with optimism, there is no pain, there are no defects in the beloved and an overflowing happiness even makes us vulnerable and, in a way, lose our way. But that does not matter when you are immersed in a "drunkenness" of feelings towards another person, especially if we are reciprocated. Over time these sensations evaporate, but few would not give anything to re-experience them, even if only for a moment.

However, love also has its pathological and harmful version for physical and mental health. The pleasure of being in love leads many people to want to live in a perpetual and impossible state of falling in love. Others are "hooked" to a man or a woman and their absence or rejection is what heroin is for a drug addict. Then, love leads to suffering, not happiness; both in the first group, the so-called addicts to love; as in those who suffer an emotional dependence towards another person.

According to an epidemiological study on a base of 800 people conducted by the Spiral Institute Foundation of Oviedo, "up to eight percent of the population suffers some kind of sentimental dependence, five percent clearly linked to a couple," explains its director, Carlos Sirvent.

Stagnant

While the emotional dependent focuses his obsession on a single person, in the addict of love the "drug" is not a similar one, but the longing to love and be loved, to live always installed in the first phase of any couple relationship where passion and feelings lead through an emotional slide, romantic and idealized love.

«Addicts to love cannot bear to leave this state. When the romance begins to break because the relationship calms down, they no longer feel that peak of stimulation. Then they look for conflicting relationships that guarantee that there will always be vertigo, fights and reconciliations, "explains psychologist Patricia Faur, professor of Psychoneuropharmacology at the Favaloro University in Argentina.

Most people do not stagnate at that point, they just turn the page and "the relationship is over after that initial passion stage, when you see the other person really as it is, you accept that the other is not what it was expected and there is a withdrawal, of course, with sadness and pain. There is a realistic look that allows us to realize that if they continue together they will hurt themselves, "says Maria del Carmen Méndez, a clinical psychologist specializing in addiction to people at the BJM Center in Santiago de Chile.

"They can love several people at the same time to satisfy that internal need for new love experiences. I tried a case of a man who had relations throughout Europe, all very intense, he sent poems, he was full to have that recognition on the part of all those women, "says Sirvent.

The appearance on the internet and especially social networks have aggravated this problem. "Networks like Facebook make it possible to meet old loves of adolescence and that has stimulated in this time the illusion of recovering something that has been lost," explains Faur.

A question of chemistry

The pleasure that is experienced in the phase of falling in love has a clear physiological explanation. In some studies, it has been observed by magnetic resonance that in the brain of people in love the regions that are most active -the ventral tegmental area and the caudate nucleus- are the same ones that react to different addictions to substances.

The balance of neurotransmitters, neuronal messengers, largely justifies many behaviors associated with love and its circumstances. "The increase in dopamine that also intervenes in the reward circuit increases attention and the tendency to consider the loved one as unique. It causes euphoria, loss of appetite, tremors, palpitations, increased respiratory rate, anxiety, panic, fear, sudden changes in mood, despair if the relationship breaks. All of these behaviors are characteristic of dependence on drugs such as cocaine and amphetamines. On the other hand, the increase of noradrenaline allows the fixation of the positive qualities and dismisses the negatives of the beloved person, while the decrease of the serotonin levels generates obsessive thoughts towards the beloved one »,

However, although the life of the addict of love is complex and runs along tortuous paths -with economic problems derived from parallel relationships-, perhaps in the emotional dependent the degree of suffering is much greater. Send hundreds of mobile messages in a day, uncontrolled jealousy and giving up friends and family for the beloved are common currency among these patients. They are so blind with love that they even allow themselves to be humiliated or allow physical aggression on the part of their partner.

 "They tolerate that because they are willing to pay any price in order to keep that person by their side," says Cruz Vivas, an expert psychologist in relationships. «The fear of being left alone paralyzes them. They lose their individuality, they live through their partner, they abandon their life, their friends, their family, their activities to be with the other person, they become obsessed with it and they need to control everything: where it is, what it eats, what it buys ... Always she lives in distrust, imagining things and fearing that they will abandon her, "says Méndez. "But then they suffer a lot seeing themselves in that role of stalker or stalker. They only want to love that person, but obsession dominates everything, "adds Vivas.

The origin

For Stanton Peele, the first specialist to define as such the addiction to love, in 1975, in that state "these people lack self-esteem and doubt their place in this world, they do not have family or friendly relations nor an objective that motivates them in life. In their childhood they have suffered some kind of effective deficit in terms of trust on the part of the parents, on the opportunity to engage with another person and ability to make friends, "Peele told this weekly.

According to specialists, the addiction to love itself could be a more common pattern in men, while women often get into sick and dependent relationships. Nor is the degree of suffering the same, since the addicted to love can find consolation in successive people who fall in love, but in the case of the dependent if you can not be with the desired partner, access your particular "drug", do not There is another option to have a bad time until suffering from more or less severe psychiatric symptoms.

It is getting bigger and harder to reach. The greater the number of encounters, the greater the increase in the interior vacuum. This personage reached shine in the patriarchal society and supported by the women that still left felt the privilege of having been chosen. At present all these roles sustained for years are being denounced and brought to light, "say the founders of the Association People addicted to people (APAP) of Argentina, the psychologist Mónica Pucheu and the psychoanalyst Inés Olivero.

The detection of the problem is not a simple task. "Normally women are more likely to ask for help, but not because they are involved in a problematic relationship, but because of some of the disorders associated with this dependence, such as anxiety or depression. Then you "dig" a little in the query and see what the underlying disorder is, "says Sirvent.

Dysfunctions

In general, there are many degrees of problems for the couple. "Every aspect of the relationship that blocks, destroys or hinders its essential reason for being is a dysfunction; if it is committed voluntarily, an abuse; if it also includes coercion so that the other person collaborates or participates in the dysfunction and/or to hold it against their will, it is already abuse. In practice, the greatest sources of abuse, abuse and harassment have to do, in reality, with the inhibition of personal empowerment, that is, with the requirement that one has to sacrifice one's person for the maintenance of the union. When this happens, the need for a separation must be considered, or at least, reconsidering the terms and priorities of the couple, "says Luis de Rivera, professor of Psychiatry and director of the Institute of Psychotherapy in Madrid,

A disorder with multiple faces and a common point: love. But, as Méndez summarizes: "Addiction to love does not mean loving too many men or women or falling in love too often, nor feeling a deep love for that other person, it really means obsessing over another and calling that love obsession".