Thoughts On Love From A Love Addict In Love Rehab

Love.

The four letter word that offends more people than the F word. It strikes us all whether we’d like it to or not. The pessimists experience love, the racists experience love, and even Republicans experience love outside of voting day.

It is of my opinion that love is the strongest and most original force in the world, but it’s energy attributes aside, I want to talk to you about the human pursuit of love. That is, the search for a partner, or a “happily ever after” as many like to call it.

I have been in many different types of relationships, and I have learnt a lot from all of them, but one thing that I notice as time goes on is that the relationships escalate. You go from one situation to the next thinking that you’ve got it right, just to learn that you put yourself in an even worse situation than you did before.

Love doesn’t suck, but our attachment styles do.

I have a negative attachment style. This is a consequence of having had a difficult upbringing and a negative experience with primary caregivers. I have studied attachment theory and can relay this to you: we replicate our relationships with our primary caregivers from early childhood throughout the rest of our lives.

I thought that since I’d uncovered this fact that I had fixed my issue with trust relationships, men specifically, but I was wrong. I went from one fucked up relationship, to a highly neglectful relationship, to a physically abusive relationship, back to the neglectful one, and now I am finally single.

Single to me is a state of mind, not just being out of a real relationship, but having your heart and mind be unison for yourself and not occupied by the clamor of another human being. Once you get the space back in your mind where someone else is no longer living there rent free, you open yourself up to a world of possibilities.

As someone who has been addicted to emotion before, and therefore it could be said that I have been addicted to love, I know that I need to take yet another pause from having a significant other in my life until I can be certain that I am in a good enough place to actually take on the role of being someone’s one and only and having one as well.

It’s dumbfounding, because each time we find that next person we often think to ourselves “this here is the one!” We delete old boyfriends numbers, erase cherished emails, and I am very guilty of getting rid of gifts or possessions acquired during that “lovey-dovey” time.

But let’s face it, what we really want is for that person to be erased from our memory for having played us like the very instrument he plays for others (…I’ve got a thing for musicians). What we really want, is to get back our precious time that could have been spent building our empires. And what women really want, is to not get fucked around with by yet another testosterone driven male counterpart who’s main goal is to just get in our metaphorically sacred and quite literally holy pants.

My message to men is simple: stop playing us. In the end you’re just accruing negative karma for yourself, whether you believe in it or not, it’s real and you will see. My message to women is a little more complicated.

Ladies, stop ignoring red flags. I have done it way too many times, and most recently I did it when I was in a violent domestic situation and now I am 6 weeks out of the relationship and still immobilized because of a spinal injury acquired from love turned bad.

If you’re wondering why he hit me, the answer is I have no clue. My suspicion is he was jealous of a particular friendship I began with another musician, but he didn’t give me a reason, he just hit. Regardless I haven’t sat here for a second wondering why he hit me, because that’s his problem. My question isn’t why did I stay, I was scared. My question is, how do I prevent this from happening again?

Love is a game of risk, you let someone into your universe and just pray that they are going to help you build and not tear your life apart. Love is definitely a great part of our purpose, but I would argue that self-love is the most important love that you can nurture throughout your lifetime. For better or worse we are all confined to our bodies throughout this human experience, and it is all of our personal duties to try and make that experience as filled with joy and a sense of fulfillment as we can.

If you’re in a place where you’re ready to embrace love from another human being, then I would just ask that you be cautious. Don’t be afraid to get wrapped up in the beauty that is loving another person, but just don’t forget to love yourself first. And when those red-flags pop up, please, do not dismiss them.

I am in love rehab. It’s a place that does not yet exist in physical form but one day might. I put myself there, and would encourage you if you have a negative attachment style to possibly do the same. If we do not remove ourselves from the situations that lead us from our paths, then we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past over and over again.

I am not telling women or men to stop believing in true love, it’s real. I’m not telling women or men to become cynical, for cynicism is yet another plague on the human condition. But what I am asking is that we try and stop the cycle of revisiting old relationships with new counterparts in the hopes that we can all experience love in all it’s beautiful glory.

And sometimes that means taking a step back, looking in the mirror, and sending love towards the reflection you see instead of just towards the human being sitting to your left, asking you why you’ve been looking in the mirror so long.