Addicting Relationships

Bibliotherapy is one way of encouraging the development of self-help skills in coping with various emotional difficulties.

A number of people are facing the trauma associated with the break-up of their relationship – be that marriage or a strong emotional commitment to another person. For years I have been recommending a book called “How to Break Your Addiction to a Person” to aid in their healing process. I shall give a brief review of this book for the present paper.

Howard Halpern, Ph.D., is the author of “How to Break Your Addiction to a Person”. He has also written another good book, “Cutting Loose: An Adult Guide to Coming to Terms with Your Parents”.

The first question, which must be answered by anyone involved in an unhappy but intimate relationship is whether the relationship is, overall, a healthy one.

As I’ve stated in previous columns, maintaining any close relationship requires a great deal of work and commitment by both parties. As Halpern points out, every relationship has “difficult periods of discord and disenchantment that are an inescapable part of the process of two separate and changing people struggling to maintain a loving partnership.” Just because one is unhappy sometimes does not mean that the relationship is unhealthy and should be terminated.

But what Dr. Halpern and I are concerned about are unhealthy relationships. In an unhealthy relationship, there is a very strong emotional attachment to another person who is “painfully unattainable (perhaps because they are committed to someone else, or don’t want a committed relationship, or are incapable of one).”

The book also gives criteria to help people with mixed feelings who are thinking about ending a relationship (which means everyone who is thinking about ending a relationship). When deciding if a relationship is unhealthy, one might want to make up a tally sheet of positives and negatives. If there are more negatives involved then positives, or if the negatives involve important basic issues, such as consistent lack of trust, of sharing, or of emotional support, then, painful as the prospect may be, the relationship is probably unhealthy and should be ending.

Halpern describes the initial attraction, which brings many people together, as limerence. Limerence is “the blissful state of walking on air, of obsessive and intrusive thoughts about the loved one, of an acute longing for reciprocation, of an aching in the chest when there is uncertainty, and of seeing the loved one as utterly wonderful. Most addictive relationships start with limerence.”

I have also read, I think in a book entitled “Chemistry of Love”, that certain chemicals are believed to be produced between people who experience an overwhelming physical and emotional attraction to each other. However, this chemical congruence only tends to last for six months to a year, and then subsides. If the relationship is a healthy one, then by that time other factors are more important. Such factors include respect, supportiveness, and mutual enjoyment of each other.

Halpern speaks of what is called “attachment hunger” which causes one person to become addicted or overly emotionally dependent upon another person. He feels the attachment hunger is the result of unresolved issues stemming back to infancy, to the time when we were “needy, vulnerable beings with limited perspective, undeveloped judgment, little capacity for rational thought and no willpower.”

One of the more important results of the attachment hunger is time distortion. When things are going well in the love relationship, time seems endless and filled with bliss. When problems develop, time seems to stretch out to unbearable lengths. One of Halpern’s many adages, which he suggest individuals going through withdrawal from a relationship should repeat is “The pain of ending it won’t last forever. In fact, it won’t last nearly as long as the pain of not ending it.” I will often tell patients to post a sticky note on their telephone reading “For a miserable time, call ---”, the number of the partner with whom they are breaking up.

Halpern’s book describes the attributes of the addicting partner. He feels that there are certain physical attributes, personality characteristics, and behaviors in this partner, which are reminiscent of early childhood experiences in the addicted person. Thus, the attraction is due to what therapists call “unfinished business” from childhood.

Those who decide to end the relationship are given concrete suggestions in the book to aid them while undergoing the pain of emotional withdrawal. Such pain feels like a near death experience, I think especially in younger people who have fewer life experience and coping skills. These suggestions include various forms of writing, being good to oneself in special ways, talking with supportive friends and/or a therapist, and using thought-stopping and distraction to diminish the time spent in obsessing about the other person.

I want to emphasize one point which Dr. Halpern makes. Although it is important to break the attachment and go on with your life, “if you stop yourself from thinking about the other person and the meaning of your getting into an addicted relationship with him before you have a chance to understand it, you will learn nothing from the experience, making it highly likely that you will enter into another such relationship.” It is important to understand what the attraction was, and if it has unhealthy, infantile roots, to work on developing more emotionally mature desires for future relationships.

To repeat, I feel “How to Break Your Addiction to a Person” is a good self-help book and highly recommended for people experiencing painful withdrawal from intense romantic relationships.