Hi Nurse Michele,

I am not a sex addict, but I do identify as a love addict and belong to another board for love addiction. Sometimes folks who show up there end up better identifying as sex addicts and so we redirect them to the following website. I hope that your friend will find it helpful:

Sex Addicts Anonymous

Your friend is fortunate to have you in his corner. I wish you both the best!

SG

What is love addiction?

Hi Amazon,

I'll give you the basic information first, then give you some background as to why I identify as a love addict. My understanding at this point is that "love addiction" is a manifestation, or a symptom, of attachment disorder. One way to heal is to work through old childhood issues, or "inner child" work.

Susan Peabody wrote a book called "Addicted to Love" in which she describes the various "types" of love addicts. You can find the definitions on this website:

Love Addicts Anonymous

She also is the administrator of the message board I belong to. There is tons of information on that site too. Here is the link (I'm strummergirl there too, but haven't posted nearly as much as I have on this site):

LAA Recovery (message board)

Susan Peabody's approach is the same 12-step approach used in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Since I had been in AA for years, this appealed to me immediately.

She also states several times that love addiction traits are symptoms of attachment disorder, and that in order to heal, we also need to do "inner child" work to heal old childhood wounds.

When I first went through the steps as a recovering alcoholic, I just "turned over" and "forgave" what happened to me as a kid. But I never really worked through it. A couple of years ago, I ran into my first boyfriend, whom I had never really gotten over. I had managed not to think about him much since getting sober in 1991, but after running into him again in October of 2007, I began to long after and pine over him again as if we had broken up yesterday. It really shook me up and I didn't understand what was happening. It felt like grieving. So began my therapy quest.

The first two T's didn't really know how to help me. They both said "just work on your marriage and you will stop thinking about the old BF", but like I kept telling them, I couldn't even focus on my marriage while longing for and grieving over the old BF. But I decided to try taking their advice anyway and began couples counseling with my former T in December 2008. After a few sessions I admitted that I still could not focus on my marriage while pining after the old BF. That's when I went to individual sessions with my former T.

My former T recommended Susan Peabody's book to me at the end of our first individual session. Ironically, he had never read the book, and I don't think he ever really understood how I identified with it. The definitions are quite broad and I don't identify with everything. I identified mainly with the "torchbearer" and "avoidant" definitions, since after my first BF, I only could "worship from afar".

Susan Peabody also recommends on the message board that all "love addicts" in therapy read "In Session" by Deborah Lott, because love addicts tend to be more prone than most to transference. I read the book and did some more research on transference, which is how I found this message board.

I am so grateful to be a part of this board. Especially the personal accounts of working through childhood trauma because I really had no idea how to do that. I always felt like what happened with the old BF was traumatic to me, and needed to be treated as such, but it's been so hard to get people to understand or believe that. Because of the circumstances leading up to and at the time of the breakup, I did not have the resources to cope. Since then I've done the best I could, and AA helped tremendously. But now it is time to "dig deeper", peel another "layer" off of the onion, so to speak.

SG

Thanks SG for very detailed information. I know where are you coming from now. I could recognize some of the traits in myself and my inner child was neglected for a long time too, however that's going to change now.
I hope you will do so with your new T's help too and things will get better.
Anyway just to finish, my sister and I are Adult Children of Alcoholic. I hope my T will get me straight.

Hi Amazon,

Thanks for the well wishes. I'm the child of an alcoholic, too. I tried ACOA for a while but by that time AA fit me better. I hope you find the recovery you need. How does your sister cope? Is she in therapy, too?

SG

I really admire the fact that you went through the steps of recovering alcoholic. I wish my father could do that, but alcohol is too important for him. He probably will never give it up. His father was also alcoholic, somebody before him probably as well.
My sister is not in therapy but she would like to do something about her low self-esteem and lack of confidence. These would be her main issues.