For an addiction diagnosis, a person’s behavior must meet three criteria, according to Fred Muench, a clinical psychologist specializing in addiction. The first is an inability to control one’s behavior, regardless of the consequences. As Rotem got older, she stopped having a series of relationships and began to be consumed by intense, abusive relationships from which she could not extricate herself.
“It's like you have no control over your own behavior, that is really scary,” she said.
Rotem talks about the need for help to get over the addiction.
The second criterion for addiction is salience, or needing more and more of the behavior to feel satisfied. Rotem went through many relationships to feed her craving.
“It's almost like a drug addict who you need to use different dosage levels because you kind of get bored of the same,” she said.
The third criterion for addiction is neuroadaptation or tolerance and withdrawal, which Muench describes as “the true measure of addiction.” After fully immersing herself in a 12-step program, Rotem says she went through six weeks of withdrawal. She had trouble talking to people and sleeping and would physically convulse at times.
Muench says it is not clear whether or not love addiction is truly an addiction. Studies on sexual compulsivity have found that people who scored high on romantic obsession tests also tended to score high on the obsessive compulsive disorder spectrum. While love and cocaine share a pleasure pathway in the brain, he says love is not nearly as strong and is not necessarily going to cause an addiction. He points to the possibility that love addiction is actually an anxiety disorder, like dependent personality disorder, not an addiction.
“The one thing that might be closest to a quote, unquote love addiction would be a serial monogamist in the short run,” Muench said.
Fisher believes love addiction is a human condition, a biological constant across humanity. To her, a love addict is someone who does not handle the biology of love as well as others.
Like many addicts, Rotem found help at a 12-step program three years ago.
“It's like a training,” she said. “You want to be a free human being, from the addiction, from the pattern, from the hold on your life.”
Rotem talks about her recovery program.
Today, Rotem has been in a relationship for seven months. She says she no longer displays the characteristic behaviors of a love addict. She describes her new relationship as a partnership and says she does not put herself in danger or inappropriate situations anymore. But, she still attends the program’s meetings every week.
“You find out that it's like an onion, you take off layers and you find deeper layers,” she said. “And that's why I'm committed to this process and I'm still very involved.”
While love and cocaine share a pleasure pathway in the brain, he says love is not nearly as strong and is not necessarily going to cause an addiction. He points to the possibility that love addiction is actually an anxiety disorder, like dependent personality disorder, not an addiction.
