Ready to Heal: Breaking Free of Addictive Relationships

By Kelly McDaniel and Sarah Boggs

It's no surprise that our culture is addicted to "love". The sappy love songs, the enticing ads for romantic getaways and the desire to be cherished by a special someone will never lose their appeal. But for some women, this poses a significant problem. Because of their insatiable desire for love, they will do anything to find it and ultimately land in destructive addictive relationships over and over again causing incredible harm.

This newly revised and expanded edition of Ready to Heal provides an opportunity for women to break free from painful addictive relationships. Kelly McDaniel provides the reader with the tools they will need to move along the path to living a life where intimacy is possible. Readers have an opportunity to begin to "connect the dots" in their own relationship patterns by following the stories of four brave women. A newly added chapter on "Mother Hunger" explores the role of the mother in infancy and how she ultimately impacts a daughter's ability to have healthy intimate relationships later in life.

Break free from the chains of addictive relationships that sabotage happiness and self-respect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780985063320

Book preview

created.

INTRODUCTION

When love hurts, you may wonder about your choice of romantic partners or risky sexual behaviors. Perhaps, like many others, you’re experiencing the raw pain of an addictive relationship—the kind that’s painful to be in, yet seemingly impossible to leave. A profound sense of emptiness can result. Repeatedly, you may feel pain, anger, and confusion rather than what you truly desire: closeness, warmth, and security. You may feel broken. The more you search for the comfort of closeness and safety, the deeper you sink into the quicksand of despair.

As you read through the pages in this book, you will discover what happens when love and sex—our most primitive human needs—becomes a drug. This idea may be new to you. If you’re in the midst of recovering from other addictions, the concept may make sense but leave you asking, What? There’s more work to do?

Ready to Heal explores how addictive relationship patterns get started and how to heal from the pain of destructive relationships. The phrase love and sex addiction will be referenced throughout the book as a way to name addictive patterns. While this term may not be one you would choose, that’s okay. It’s simply a name. Naming a problem is the first step toward healing. For a woman, healing from love and sex addiction requires an understanding of the disease from (1) an early rupture in attachment with your caregivers, and (2) patriarchal norms and expectations in culture. Both will be explored here.

No woman dreams of becoming a love and sex addict. Many women are puzzled why they continually struggle with unmanageable behavior when it comes to sex and love. Shame settles in and refuses to leave. But there is hope and a way out of this shame. As you begin to understand the nature of love and sex addiction— how it forms in infancy and how culturally you’ve been set up for it— shame diminishes, and your spirit is freed up for healing. Are you ready to heal?

Part of healing an addiction involves learning why you needed it in the first place. How did your addiction start? The premise of Ready to Heal is that love and sex addiction is an attempt to re-create your mother’s love. In previous editions of this book, the term mother hunger was used to show the importance of a mother’s imprint on her daughter’s brain. Mother hunger is essentially an attachment failure. This means the original bond with your mother didn’t happen or, somehow, it broke. The concept will be explored in much more detail in this newly revised edition.

You were born with all you need—the basic hardware wired into your brain for human love and connection—but a baby can’t use it without a consistent, trustworthy guide. Your relationship with your mother was the earliest foundation for how you formulated a sense of yourself and how you understand relationships. Your mother’s love or lack of it became imprinted on your developing brain and it continues to direct your relational choices today. Your first experience with love and trust was with your mother’s touch, voice, and body. In her arms, early on you formed a belief about whether or not you were lovable. You may have learned that relationships are frightening or painful. These beliefs developed before you could speak or recall what was said or done, so they may not be concrete.

Some of you may have no early memories of your mother. Nonetheless, early experiences with her are stored in your body. In turn, they lay the groundwork for addictive relationship patterns. Unfortunately, a prevalent cultural mythology that all mothers love their children purely and sacrificially makes it difficult to take a close, honest look at the relationship with your mother. Mother-love is supposed to be unconditional, sacred, and instinctual. Our culture holds motherhood as an institution that is supremely fulfilling for women. In service to this powerful cultural ideology, the complexities of mothering are overlooked. As a result, many women come to the experience unprepared for what an enormous responsibility it is to nurture an infant. For these reasons, exploring the concept of mother hunger isn’t about blaming your mother. Most women love their children the best way they know how. Instead, examining and understanding ‘mother hunger’ is a necessary piece required to heal from addictive relationships.

In my clinical practice, I work with women facing love and sex addiction. Frequently, I’m invited to talk to groups about addictive relationships. When I discuss this painful topic, I occasionally get asked, Are only beautiful women addicted to sex? The question itself shows a grave misunderstanding of love and sex addiction. It isn’t about being beautiful. It’s not even about liking sex. Most sex and love addicts dissociate during sex. Even if they become aroused and have orgasms during sex, they do it to escape—not to feel intimate with their partner. Romance and love become a way to escape a dark emptiness in the soul. This differs greatly from enjoying a sensual, intimate sexual experience that involves trust, mutuality, and commitment.

Ready to Heal includes the stories of four women who are recovering from love and sex addiction. As you get acquainted with Maria, Heather, Tori, and Barbara, you may notice there are no descriptive physical details of them such as their beauty, hair color, skin tone, or clothing. Typically, case studies include these kinds of details. In a book about addictive love and sex, however, these details are problematic. They serve to titillate or separate. Neither fosters healing. Therefore, I’ve chosen to omit physical attributes from the stories women have shared with me. My hope is that rather than concentrating on how a woman looks, you can focus on how she feels, how she faces this disease, and how she heals. While identities have been altered for privacy purposes, the stories contain universal themes that may help you identify addictive patterns in your own life. Undoubtedly, there will be pieces of your life story not represented here. Your relational patterns are unique to you, as is the story of how you got here: to a place of questioning your romantic behaviors.

The cases and comments shared here are from heterosexual women. Although universal issues arise in addictive relationships for lesbians and heterosexual women, a separate book for lesbians is critical. The shame that lesbians encounter when exploring sexual issues can be more complicated than for heterosexual women. While both heterosexual and homosexual women face self-hatred that comes from our cultural inheritance, heterosexual women do not encounter homophobia when they address this disease. Additionally, the pain a lesbian woman faces when addressing maternal deprivation and loss of mother-love can be compounded by a mother’s homophobia.

Regardless of sexual orientation, I invite you to explore the stories in this book with a kind heart. As you read, you will discover that addictive relationships take many forms. Ready to Heal can help you if you’re struggling in a relationship with a sex addict, facing your own sex addiction, obsessing about someone who doesn’t want you, or if you’re looking for deeper understanding of your romantic patterns. If at any point, you feel overloaded or triggered by what you read, stop and take a break. This material can be difficult to absorb and digest. Exploring addiction brings darkness into the light. Facing this addiction requires compassion, awareness, and willingness to explore the unknown. The good news is that there are unexpected gifts in store for you when you face love and sex addiction. At its core, this addiction is a longing for intimacy. Since love, connection, and sexual intimacy are basic human needs, healing addictive relationships prepares you to give and receive love in healthy ways. Part of being ready to heal is having faith that although you don’t know what will happen, you are prepared to move forward on the journey. You deserve to heal.

CHAPTER ONE

A CONSTANT STATE OF DIS-EASE

Dave was catnip and kryptonite to me.

—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

Author Elizabeth Gilbert’s description of her romance with David captures the exquisite torture of an addictive relationship. Addictive relationships, while romanticized in Hollywood and mainstream media, are confusing and painful. Ready to Heal is dedicated to helping you identify painful addictive relationship patterns and heal from them. If you’re reading this book, a therapist may have suggested you do so, or perhaps you sought out the book yourself to try to understand a nagging suspicion that your romantic behavior is out of control. However you came to read this book, be assured you’re not alone. Many women find themselves in an addictive relationship at one time or another. One addictive relationship, while terribly intense and painful, may not indicate the presence of love and sex addiction. However, if your relationships regularly have draining patterns of highs and lows, intense episodes of anger and withdrawal, leave you tired and angry, and each attempt you make to find romantic connection proves more painful, you may be facing an addiction to love and sex.

The Dark Side of Intimacy

Love and sex are healthy parts of being human. In fact, intimacy makes life rich and worthwhile. However, for many, there’s a dark side to the search for intimacy. Love and sex become distorted. Relationships that could once bring joy and pleasure now bring pain and despair. You feel defective. You wonder how you got here. You may attempt to re-create a particular relationship only to find yourself miserable and lonely again.

One client described her despair this way, I just thought I was broken, that something was wrong with me. I had no idea there was a name for what I was doing romantically and that there might be a way to change. I desperately didn’t want to continue hurting myself and others, but I just thought it was my personality.

When Relationships Cause a Painful Double Bind

Research shows that women develop an identity and self-awareness in relationships, not separate from them. Women need relationships to be whole. This is not a sign of weakness. It’s healthy to desire intimacy with others. In fact, it’s hardwired into the female brain to thrive in connection to another person.

Confusion comes when a relationship, necessary for self-awareness, breeds chronic pain and isolation. You may feel lost, disoriented, and unable to identify why the relationship hurts. Maybe it becomes impossible to be in the relationship, yet impossible to leave. In other words, the very thing you need to thrive and be happy causes you shame and pain. If this happens over and over again, the thing you most need in life becomes impossible to capture. And that creates a double bind.

Love and sex addiction is a double bind. If you seek a relationship, which you’re designed to do, you’re going to experience pain. If you avoid relationships, which you may try to do, you will experience pain too. There seems to be no right way to be … no way to find comfort and happiness. The relationship (or person) you are hard-wired to need repeatedly betrays you. As a result, you may recognize the following feelings:

• I am not at ease or at peace.

• I rarely know a moment of comfort in solitude.

• I have difficulty being alone or still.

• I have disordered eating, sleeping, and/or spending patterns.

• I grow increasingly confused and tired.

• I have difficulty trusting people.

• I become more isolated while pursuing sex or romance.

• I lose interest in friends, hobbies, family, and work.

• I can’t seem to identify or live within my value system.

• I experience more and more episodes of irritability, rage, and restlessness.

Giving the Problem a Name

For some of you, it may seem that there’s no way out of destructive relationships. You feel stuck. To begin healing destructive romantic patterns, it’s helpful to name the problem. Referring to problematic sexual and romantic behavior as love and sex addiction is the first step to regaining control; however, it’s complicated. Women have been called many names for their sexual and romantic choices. If she enjoys sex, she’s promiscuous or called a whore or a slut. On the flip side, if she lacks sexual desire, she’s frigid or cold. How do women reconcile these two extremes? Is it even possible?

Dr. Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, argues that our culture asks women to apologize for being female. (1) Shame is the result of this painful message. Shame causes women to hide. Shame breeds secrecy. Secrecy breeds addiction. When relationships become addictive, love becomes a struggle for power rather than an experience of intimacy. Painful patterns of thinking dominate the romantic experience. Four examples of distorted thinking follow:

1. Secrecy is better than honesty. In many families, children grow up learning to protect family secrets. Certain painful issues are kept behind closed doors. Families adopt a don’t talk rule. As a result, a child internalizes the need for secrets. She learns that honesty is dangerous. If she speaks about certain issues or emotions, she risks anger and alienation from her family. Therefore, as an adult, she finds herself automatically telling lies, keeping secrets, and being dishonest. Telling the truth is too difficult.

2. It’s not possible to be angry and be loved. Children learn to hide anger or express it in indirect, destructive ways. When we’re adults, not being able to feel or share anger in constructive ways damages intimacy. Anger is a normal part of being alive and being in a relationship. When it’s denied, the potential for authentic intimacy dies.

3. Compromise means loss of power. In families where an authority figure dominates the household, compromise doesn’t exist. Children learn that there is only one right way. And being right is most important. They also learn to sacrifice their own needs and desires to please the authority figure. As a result, when they become adults they hunger for control and have many unmet needs. In relationships, it feels more important to be right than to find mutually agreeable solutions that may require giving up something desirable. It’s more important to win, because in the unconscious mind losing represents a total loss of self.

4. People will always leave me and can’t be trusted. Adults who find themselves repeatedly in addictive relationships have a profound fear of abandonment. This fear can masquerade two ways: extreme dependency or fear of suffocation. Dependency can appear desperate or empty. A woman feels a frightening void when she’s alone. She avoids this feeling with constant activity or romance. In the case of suffocation, a woman feels she will be used and smothered if she lets her guard down. She builds emotional walls to keep her at a safe distance from others.

Secrecy, shame, and addiction are part of a dreadful cultural inheritance for women that provides a stage for addictive relationships. Addictive relationships leave you determined to build a wall that will protect you from further hurt. Hopelessness and despair become constant companions.

Maria

Maria learned to get attention at a young age by being flirtatious and sexual. She had a series of intense relationships in adolescence and college. In her first marriage, however, she lost desire for her husband. Each attempt she made to re-create the initial intensity she felt for him failed. She grew depressed and fearful. Maria had difficulty finding help because she didn’t understand her behavior, and the professional community didn’t offer her much clarity. One therapist pushed her to be sexual with her husband, but when she tried, she felt repulsed. She internalized that the problem must be her. When Maria came to see me for therapy, she described her romantic patterns in the following way.

I was convinced that being myself would never get me love and attention, so I became desperate and did everything I could to be whatever anyone wanted me to be. I could be sexy, strong, sweet, or mean. The more attention I got from guys, the more I wanted. But when I got it, I didn’t trust it. So I craved more reassurance and grew more needy. I pushed away the very thing I needed and I didn’t know how to stop. I felt lost and hopeless. That’s when I met my husband.

How Addiction Causes Dis-ease

Maria’s words illustrate the restlessness, confusion, and cyclic nature of addictive love and sex. It became like a disease. Disease is a state of being ill at ease or a disruption in normal functioning. In this way, you can understand how sex and romance can become a dis-ease. Maria is not at ease with herself. Nothing she tries feels right, and her attempts to feel better fail repeatedly. She’s in a constant state of dis-ease. If you’ve ever disregarded your truth, obligations, or health in order to pursue a romantic situation, you know this kind of dis-ease. An intimate relationship, instead of offering you clarity, energy, and warmth, inhibits your functioning. It can take over your

Reviews for Ready to Heal

[Lilian B (Lil B) · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ground-breaking! It helped me overcome years of abusive relationships and helped me understand why my self-worth was below ground and how to build it back up. 10/10 would recommend and I do recommend it to all my friends w love addiction (which is most).