Is It Love? Or Addiction?

“It’s better to be healthy alone, than sick with someone else” — Phil McGraw

You never really think it’s going to happen to you. You hear stories about people who have given everything to a partner, who ignored all the red flags and loved through pain only to get washed up on the other side broken. You think that with all that you’ve been through and learnt about yourself that you can’t be fooled again. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Here is my personal experience.

I met Tim online. His status was ‘separated’.

Of course, looking back it seems utterly preposterous to imagine that I didn’t know what I was wading into. However, with the benefit of hindsight I realise now that I was not at all healed from my divorce, despite my marriage having ended two years prior. I was looking for validation and confirmation that I wasn’t a bad person for leaving my marriage. I was a perfect target with my negative self talk and strong belief that I wasn’t good enough to be loved again.

Red flag number one, he told me he had three children, but after a few weeks of seeing each other he confessed that he had an elder child that he had raised as his own. He said he never told me this as he didn’t want to scare me off that he had four kids. I justified it in my head, he just didn’t want to seem as though he came with a lot of baggage. I could understand that.

Red flag number two, he drove his car while inebriated one night and crashed into a parked vehicle. When he called me the next day to tell me, I was sympathetic; we all make mistakes. I had gone through a phase of drinking too much when I separated from my husband, nobody is perfect. Again, I justified it to myself.

Red flag number three, he told me he was living on his own, but I eventually discovered that he was still essentially living in the same house as his wife, only staying at his other place some of the time. His reasoning? So the kids don’t know what’s happening between us.

Red flag number four, while on holiday together I was using Spotify on his phone. Something inside (my intuition) had always wondered if he was being faithful to me and I couldn’t help but glance at his messages. I found photos of a younger woman that he had been chatting to, along with some naked photos that she had sent him. When I confronted him he admitted that he’d known her before we met and he had had phone sex with her in the past few months. He said it was a ‘fantasy’ and that he didn’t know why he did it. Of course he was extremely remorseful and didn’t want to lose me. I accepted this bullshit. Why? Because it was less painful than admitting I was being used and having to face rejection when I was in the full throes of a love addiction.

I did end the relationship six weeks after discovering those messages. Four months later he contacted me, giving hints that he wanted to try again. I proceeded to rush straight back in and do all the heavy lifting, trying to make it work. With a man who had lied and cheated. What did this say about me and what I believed I deserved?

Of course, sex between us was amazing and passionate. Sex always is when there is high drama and the toxic cycle of love bombing, devaluing, discarding and hoovering. I was completely unaware of this abusive cycle at this point of my life. When I look back at myself I have a vision of a junkie, completely dependent on the next high and totally sick with addiction.

This time around the behaviour was worse. It was almost as though he upped the ante to see what I would accept. On one particular occasion he went to his eldest child’s 21st birthday party, which I of course could not attend due to the fact that I was basically his ‘affair’. He switched his phone off for 24 hours and didn’t respond to my messages until late the next night. When I questioned him about why he was uncontactable for so long he cut me off and wouldn’t speak to me for two more days. The message was clear; Don’t question my actions or you will be punished. I duly behaved.

I’m sad to say that this woefully inept way of relating went on for another two years until I finally realised that it was never going to get any better, in fact, it was only going to get worse. I read a book called “Women Who Love Too Much” by Robin Norwood and it ripped the blinders from my eyes. I was finally able to see that I didn’t love this man. What I “loved” was the crippling anxiety that he induced in me. My childhood had been full of neglect and watching my mother use drugs and alcohol. I inherently believed that I was not good enough to love, or good enough for someone to stop feeding their addiction in order to care for me and show me love. Therefore, as an adult, these types of feelings felt normal, comforting and right. In reality, they should have felt wrong and repelled me.

I finally ended the relationship for the third and last time after three and half years together in total. He tried relentlessly to convince me not to, but somewhere deep down I found the strength to tell him firmly and clearly that it was over. I ended up going no contact and blocking him on every possible avenue. He still managed to find a way to “accidentally” bump into me on several occasions, and email me from a new email address, but eventually he stopped trying to engage. Now it’s just the odd sighting from afar if he drives past me on a walk or a drive. It still triggers feelings of sadness but there is no desire to return to the madness of the relationship anymore.

I am sharing my story as a way of trying to heal and perhaps help anyone else who is going through or has been through this. My friends and family think of me as a strong, intelligent and caring person. Toxic abuse can happen to anyone, because it is triggering a subconscious impulse. You are running on auto-pilot, the map is a blueprint that was created when you were too young to even remember. Until you understand what is driving you, it is extremely difficult to recognise what is happening. Once you do understand this, it’s vital to find information that can help you to undo the programming and change the beliefs that you have about yourself. If you don’t do this, the chances are very high that you will repeat the pattern with a new partner.

I have been single now for a year and a half. I am still recovering spiritually but I know that I’m getting there. I hope that one day I can have a healthy, loving partnership. I wish the same for anyone else who has ‘loved too much’.

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Previously Published on medium

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