5 Tips for Overcoming Love Addiction

Posted by fxckfeelings on November 12, 2015

Breaking the cycle of addiction may be a boon to reality television producers, fancy rehab centers, and the makers of terrible coffee in church basements, but for the addicts themselves, the rewards are a lot more hard won. Whether you’re hooked on a drug or, in the case of our reader earlier this week, a bad relationship, getting clean is always a difficult process. While 12 Step programs have a lot to offer anyone trying to get clean, we humbly offer these five steps specifically for those trying to move on from a bad relationship.

Five tips for overcoming love addiction:

Step 1: Step Back For Perspective

Without allowing yourself to mention your current partner, describe the qualities a prospective partner must have before a relationship has any chance, not of starting, feeling good, or being exciting, but of lasting and bringing more to your life than it takes away. If your list is more about how a guy smells or what a girl’s legs should look like than whether s/he can pay bills on time or be trusted with a car, then you’re doing it wrong.

Step 2: Stick To Your Guidelines

In the presence of a trusted friend or therapist, honestly and carefully assess your current partner’s ability to meet the requirements listed above. Give yourself credit for every time you can admit they don’t have what it takes, but take away that credit (and then some) for each time you attempt to re-open the discussion by imagining something you could do to change them. This isn’t about changing them, but changing your priorities and ability to tolerate too much BS.

Step 3: Find Support

Since the worst partners are often the hardest to leave, strengthen your partnerships with friends and family, because their support is invaluable. Talk to them about your helplessness with your addiction, which is, of course, the first of the actual 12 steps. Give them permission to stop you by any means necessary if you want to change the subject from what you should do next to what you could say or do to get him to see that he’s done wrong.

Step 4: Stick to the Script

Once you’ve become certain that you need to move on, and you’ve lined up allies to help you, you might still need a little reinforcement when it comes to delivering the news to your ex-to-be. Write a paragraph that describes your requirements in a partner and states, with regret but without anger, the requirements you believe he’s unable to meet. If you sound like you’re trying to persuade him to meet your requirements, or that you’re open to argument about whether he is or isn’t eligible, then enlist one of your friends to edit that garbage right out.

Step 5: Step Away

If at all possible, go on vacation with friends, because the best way to put distance between yourself and a bad relationship, at least at first, is to literally go far away. While you block him from your phone and drop him from social media, give yourself a chance to go through withdrawal in pleasant, nurturing circumstances. It’s a quick trip to relationship rehab with lots of distraction and a built in support group who will help you come up with a strategy if you’re ever tempted to slip. Getting over someone is hard, but if you can get your priorities together, get reinforcements, and then get away, you can get on with your life.