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When you have effectively accomplished this detachment, the intensity subsides and the environment may get extremely quiet, especially in comparison to the way it was. When the intensity is gone, it may seem as if you have nothing left in the relationship, because intensity was practically all you had in the first place.

Oh!

In situations in which you have been engaged in your addictive process, you need to stop and be willing to go into withdrawal and stay there without returning to the addictive experience, until the withdrawal has passed. For example, you need to stop chasing somebody who doesn't want to be with you; stop having sex with inappropriate people; stop drinking; stop overeating; stop overworking.

If you are in denial that you are an addict, there is virtually nothing anybody can do to help you until you move into reality—the reality that you are an addict. This almost always means waiting until the pain is so severe that it cracks the shell of the denial.

Many of us think that the right partner will complete a missing part of ourselves, finally making us feel whole. We also believe that this ideal lover will reveal the meaning of life to us. But each one of us has the potential to feel whole and fulfilled from within ourselves to the extent that we can develop our competence in self-love, self-protection, self awareness, self-care, and self-containment.

I'll never forget that day I broke through the denial and delusion about my immaturity and began to see the reality of the person with whom my partner was living—me.

This has some kick

The Love Avoidant, when being pursued, feels positive intensicy from being in control and in power—as long as the Love Addict doesn't get too close with his or her neediness.

The Love Avoidant usually becomes seductive as a way of reconnecting, and starts doing all the things that the partner always wanted him or her to do. The Love Addict says, "Oh, wow," turns around to face the partner, exclaiming in joy, "Oh, you love me," and goes toward the Love Avoidant. When the Love Avoidant sees the Love Addict coming, […] he or she pulls away and runs, reversing the direction of the dance

One is running and the other one is chasing almost all the time. When the one who is chasing finally gets close to the one running away, they both erupt into intensity, either a brief romantic interlude or a terrific fight.

People who think for themselves, say directly what they mean, solve their own problems, dont get caught up in intense fighting, and take care of themselves reasonably well are not interesting to Love Avoidants.

LAUGHED OUT LOUD WOWWWW FUCK

A part of self-esteem was wounded in Love Addicts' childhoods, since abandonment sent the message that they were not worth being with.

Love Addicts are familiar with people who are involved in many activities and don't have time to give them much attention.

How can I even be funny when they wrote me into this book

Just changing partners to a healthier person without doing the work of recovery will not solve the problem.

I- 😀

[…] it may seem strange that these people could ever have been attracted to each other. But it is important to note that each person is first attracted to the other specifically because of the "familiar" traits that the other exhibits. These traits, although painful, are familiar from childhood abuse experiences. Neither a Love Addict nor a Love Avoidant is usually attracted to a non-addicted person.

My jaw…

The Love Avoidant avoids intimacy and is hypersensitive to any sense of being controlled. The Love Addict seeks enmeshment and is hypersensitive to any sense of being left.

I basically highlighted this whole page I’m so sick of

Love Addicts think that Love Avoidants are the problem because they won't change. But when the Love Avoidant contemplates a change requested by the Love Addict, the Love Avoidant thinks that to change is to capitulate to or be controlled by somebody else.
Stalemate.

(2/2)

CHILL STOPPPPPPP

Love Addicts are constantly seeking change to improve things in the relationship and to get what they want-more contact, more care. On the other hand, Love Avoidants want acceptance of the status quo, and so they work to keep the relationship stable, predictable, and unemotional; Love Avoidants don't see change as an advantage.

(1/2)

Codependents lack healthy boundaries […]. Without adequate internal boundaries, […] neither can experience this exchange without either trying to fix or change the other partner, or defensively justitying themselves and arguing about the other person's reality, or abusing the partner with so-called "honesty," or with sarcasm, exaggeration, ridicule, name-calling, or other violations of internal boundaries.

Without good boundaries there is much to fear about being intimate.

Basically the whole book right there

Love Addicts are obsessed with the partner and seek to create intensity inside the relationshipactually to relate too closely to the point of enmeshment rather than establishing healthy intimacy.

A Love Addict and a Love Avoidant form a relationship marked by cycles of positive and negative intensity (which they call love, passion, or romance), until they can't stand it with that partner-and then they leave that person and repeat the cycles with somebody else.

SILENCE FROM YOU 🤺🤺🤺🤺

Caretaking has value to Love Avoidants, so out of guilt they often go back to the Love Addict, who is trying to carry out a plan to get the Love Avoidant back.

SHUSHHHHH

The seduction causes the Love Addict partner to feel loved or special, usually to overlook the fact that the Avoidant is actually walled in. Using a wall instead of a boundary, the Avoidant does not tell the partner what is really important to him or her and does not listen to what is important to the partner. So the relationship has the appearance of intimacy without being intimate

They enter relationships more to caretake than to be relational and use walls of seduction to keep from feeling suffocated as they caretake. This caretaking from behind walls breeds resentment in the Love Avoidant because it is draining. The resentment enables them to distance from the relationship where they create intensity which feels good.

The nervous laughter this book brings out in me

Such people usually alternate between being a Love Addict and a Love Avoidant. A Love Addict might be abandoned by a Love Avoidant, then say, “[…]I'm never going to get that hooked on anybody again." So this person meets a very needy person and becomes the Love Avoidant in control. Then the person tries to relate that way and finds out that it doesn't work either, and switches once again to the Love Addict role.

Love Avoidants usually believe they are better than others, but sometimes swing down to a deep sense of worthlessness.

There is a proper close parent-child relationship called bonding, a functional activity on the part of parent to the child. This emotional connection is like an emotional umbilical cord that goes from the parent to the child so that the parent, rooted in a mature, stable place, nurtures and supports the child.

The way I’m reading this in a book to learn about it instead of experiencing it is wild