Recently, an Instagram post made me pause to consider a surprising question: Could I be addicted to love? It presented five “self-reflection questions,” such as: Have I ever used the internet to seek relationships? Am I terrified of confrontation? Do I constantly fear the end of a relationship when I’m in one? Answering yes to these, according to an app called Sobbefy, might mean I’m a “love addict.”
Over the past few months, I’ve noticed this term, “love addict,” appearing with increasing frequency. It’s popped up in podcasts, headlines, social media feeds, and even casual conversations. People now readily use it to describe others’ relationship struggles: “Oh, he’s a love addict, that’s his problem.” “She’s obviously a love addict.” And sometimes, the question turns inward: “Am I a love addict?”
To truly grasp this phenomenon, I spoke with Marisa, a 44-year-old woman whose experiences vividly illustrate the profound challenges that can fall under the umbrella of love addiction. Romantically, she always sensed something was amiss but didn’t know how to address it. She was a perpetual serial dater, driven by a persistent need to fixate her affections on someone. She frequently became deeply entangled with unavailable or married men, sometimes even financially supporting them. Her own marriage crumbled. Once, a voicemail from a boyfriend left her so distraught she got into a car accident. For years, she was intermittently involved with an abusive drug addict, feeling trapped and unable to leave despite facing danger. Her subsequent boyfriend had severe anger issues, and again, she found herself unable to break away.
Her journey took a turn when she started watching psychology videos on YouTube, initially to understand her boyfriend’s possible borderline personality disorder. Then, she stumbled upon a video discussing the idea of love addiction – likening it to drug addiction. For Marisa, everything clicked. She recognized herself: a love addict. Now, she’s an active participant in Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (S.L.A.A.), a 12-step program that has brought her a profound sense of peace she had never known before. Her story resonates with many others I interviewed – individuals whose romantic lives were chaotic, even perilous, until they embraced the identity of being a love addict.
The core concept is that many individuals harbor an unhealthy, compulsive relationship with romance, leading to unstable partnerships and constant emotional distress. Recently, this notion of love addiction has garnered significant attention. It’s featured in personal essays and podcasts like “Journals of a Love Addict” and the “Modern Love” episode “How Orville Peck Got Addicted to Love and Came out the Other Side.” Bestselling memoirs, such as Elizabeth Gilbert’s “All the Way to the River,” contribute to the discussion. Online forums are buzzing with people wondering if they, too, are obsessively focused on love — feeling as though romance has taken control of their lives and distorted their decisions, much like alcohol or gambling might.
This idea of love addiction has also permeated how everyday people discuss relationships, often used casually to explain various dramatic situations. For instance, after Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez announced their divorce, a host on “The View” openly wondered if Lopez suffered from love addiction (a sentiment echoed by a TMZ “investigation”). Meanwhile, a source reportedly close to the couple suggested to InTouch Weekly that many believed Affleck had “switched vices and become a love addict.”
This diagnostic trend sometimes veers into surprising territory. On Reddit’s r/loveaddiction forum, someone pondered, “Has anyone read ‘Love in the Time of Cholera?’ Have you read any other books, fiction or nonfiction, that address love addiction?” Users recommended works ranging from “Wuthering Heights,” Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, “A Lover’s Discourse” by Roland Barthes, and “The Pisces” by Melissa Broder. Another forum asked about movies depicting love addiction, with suggestions including “Blue Valentine” and “(500) Days of Summer.” While these cultural pieces all touch on romantic love, their portrayals are strikingly diverse. “(500) Days of Summer” is a lighthearted rom-com affirming love’s value, whereas “Blue Valentine” is a bleak picture of a toxic, abusive marriage. “Love in the Time of Cholera” explores yearning, infidelity, and love’s evolution over time. Applying the “love addiction” framework to such varied narratives can be puzzling.
As another commenter on a separate thread put it, “Do you guys see love addiction and codependency everywhere as you read books or watch movies?” The answer was a resounding yes: “I can’t stop now lol. I was reading ‘David Copperfield’ and now that I learned about Love Addiction it reads completely different to me.” Even the animated comedy “Rick and Morty” was no longer viewed the same way.
One particular forum post resonated with me long after I read it: A man described himself as “badly addicted, and codependent upon,” his wife of 25 years. They were trying a month of “no contact,” and he wondered if he should extend it to 90 days, a standard duration for substance addiction treatment. He asked, “Once over, is it possible to have a healthy relationship with my former addiction object?”
The term “love addiction” is neither a new concept nor a widely recognized clinical diagnosis. It’s notably absent from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5, which sets the standard for psychological diagnoses (only gambling, among behavioral addictions, is included). While many people now identify as love addicts, this isn’t a formal clinical development. Instead, it strikes me as a symptom of a much deeper cultural shift: a fundamental change in how we perceive romantic love.
From a young age, we are immersed in narratives — through love songs, movies, poetry, and parental guidance — about love’s immense power. It’s depicted as irrational, all-consuming, sometimes painful, yet ultimately beautiful. Love is supposed to transform us, breaking us down only to remake us anew. If it disrupts our ability to eat or sleep, so be it. We’re taught to need someone, to feel incomplete without them. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116 eloquently states: “Love is not love/Which alters when it alteration finds,/Or bends with the remover to remove./O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark/That looks on tempests and is never shaken.” Love, he declares, “bears it out even to the edge of doom.”
Yet, the more I delved into discussions and conversations about love, the more I sensed a widespread shift in perspective. Many are arriving at a new conclusion: What if, in reality, love shouldn’t be like that? What if the grand, transcendent portrayals of love we’ve internalized are, at best, misguided, or at worst, deeply unhealthy? People are not just using the concept of love addiction to describe destructive, obsessive romantic patterns. They are employing it to fuel a fascinating rebellion against the idea that love is the ultimate human experience. And, I realized, some are replacing this with a new narrative entirely – one that raises concerns about the future of love itself.
Illustration by Giacomo Gambineri
The first hurdle in understanding “love addiction” is the lack of a clear, shared definition for either “love” or “addiction.”
This ambiguity often becomes apparent when young people ask older, supposedly wiser individuals how to recognize true love. The common, yet unhelpful, response is usually: “You just know.” This simple answer bypasses millennia of efforts by poets, philosophers, and neuroscientists to truly define love. There’s a general consensus that love possesses a dual nature: a chemical and biological component (the brain and body reactions) alongside a social and cultural one (what we learn to feel from our environment and cultural narratives like Shakespeare’s). However, romantics still believe love transcends these elements, approaching something sacred – eternal, mysterious, unbreakable, and unknowable, its very ineffability contributing to its profound value.
As for addiction, definitions vary widely. Some define it as a brain disease, others as a behavioral disorder, some as an identity, or a combination of all three. While some addictions, like alcohol-use disorder, have somewhat consistent medical definitions rooted in quantitative metrics (e.g., drinks per day), even these standards are not entirely rigid. A common online query highlights this: “My husband drinks four to six beers every day. Is he an alcoholic?” Medically, he might meet the criteria for an alcohol-use disorder, but his spouse is often seeking a more definitive answer about when he officially becomes an addict. This difficulty with strict binaries is why clinicians are increasingly moving away from the singular term “addiction” and towards describing a spectrum of disordered usage.
When “love” and “addiction” are combined, definitions become even more elusive. It’s challenging to pinpoint precisely what “love addiction” refers to. It’s distinct from sex addiction, another debated term; many self-identified love addicts struggle with fantasy, obsession, and attachment rather than sex itself. It could describe someone who frequently cheats, jumps between relationships, and constantly seeks new romantic thrills, or conversely, someone who clings obsessively to one person, desperate to keep a relationship alive.
Theories on love addiction often highlight both love’s chemical properties and our attachment patterns. Some researchers, such as biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, author of a 2016 paper, note that the initial intense stages of romantic love mirror many common addiction symptoms: craving, tolerance, withdrawal, and relapse. The following year, ethicists including Brian Earp published a paper arguing that, much like drugs or gambling, “love’s pull is so strong that we might follow it even to the point of hardship or personal ruin” — or, in extreme cases, violence. Another influential perspective comes from Pia Mellody’s 1992 book “Facing Love Addiction,” a foundational text for many who identify with the concept. Mellody describes the addict as typically a woman who, in response to a formative wound, disastrously latches onto people incapable of reciprocating her love – a narrative deeply embedded in culturally ubiquitous notions of childhood trauma since its publication.
These interpretations of love addiction are highly contentious. In fact, one expert, clinical psychologist and sex therapist David Ley, dismisses them as “total nonsense.” His advice: “If anyone ever tells you that you are a love addict, run, run, run.” He critiques the neurotransmitter comparison, stating that the idea of love being “like cocaine” is “Valley Girl science,” a superficial analogy to reward circuits in the brain. “Our brains react when we see a puppy in the same way,” he argues. “Does that mean puppies are like crack cocaine?” Ley finds the entire concept of love addiction too vague and amorphous to be genuinely useful, suggesting it “could apply to almost anybody.”
Indeed, the term did seem to be applied broadly. While speaking with self-identified love addicts, I often recognized the painful patterns they were trying to break; for people like Marisa, S.L.A.A. had genuinely been a liberating and life-saving experience. However, I also encountered individuals who I worried were over-pathologizing normal human emotions. A 19-year-old, for instance, cited her obsessive feelings when a crush didn’t text back all day as a symptom of her addiction. It was hard not to wonder: Doesn’t almost everyone feel that way sometimes? Isn’t that normal? Months after our initial conversation, she no longer identified as a love addict.
One research paper from UTHealth Houston psychiatrists acknowledged the “conceptually unclear” boundary between love addiction and typical romance. It estimated love addiction’s prevalence in the U.S. population at around 3 percent but also referenced an older study of small college student populations where a staggering quarter identified as love addicts. Was this an undiagnosed epidemic among undergraduates, or simply the usual passionate and dramatic experiences of youth?
I kept returning to the story of the man who felt addicted to his wife. What would it genuinely mean not to feel dependent on your wife of 25 years, or to not struggle with the thought of life without her? While I could envision the most negative scenarios – perhaps he was so codependent he’d lost his sense of self, or so obsessive that she felt suffocated or abused – even his chosen language was striking. He didn’t speak of a marital separation, but a period of “no contact.” He viewed his wife as “a former addiction object,” questioning whether a healthy relationship could ever resume.
The Love Addicts Anonymous website (distinct from S.L.A.A.) offers “40 Statements” for self-identification. These include prompts like: “You fall in love very easily and too quickly.” “More than once, you have gotten involved with someone who is unable to commit — hoping he or she will change.” “You are terrified of never finding someone to love.” I suspect a large, non-pathological portion of the population would answer yes to many of these.
Then there’s Statement No. 37: “Love is the most important thing in the world to you.” This strikes me as a question of fundamental values. If I declare that love holds paramount importance in my life – that I cherish it above all else – does that automatically push me further down an addiction spectrum? Or am I simply affirming a value that countless poets and prophets throughout history have hailed as the most noble human experience?
Illustration by Giacomo Gambineri
Love addiction is largely self-diagnosed, a common starting point for many psychiatric diagnoses where individuals first acknowledge their own distress. However, self-diagnosis carries risks, particularly with a concept like love, which isn’t inherently harmful and cannot be quantified like alcohol consumption. There’s a “contagion” effect: people encounter online discussions, recognize aspects of themselves, and feel they’ve pinpointed their problem. This fuels Ley’s critique, as he believes the label can divert attention from underlying issues (like mood disorders) that have established treatments (like medication). He offers an analogy: “If I come into my doctor’s office sneezing, he doesn’t tell me I have a sneezing disorder. He tries to figure out if I have a cold, a virus, a bacterial infection. And then, if appropriate, he gives me antibiotics.”
Furthermore, individuals aren’t just introspectively examining their own romantic histories; they’re also applying this new framework outwardly. They’re identifying symptoms of love addiction in friends, family, dates, and colleagues—even in celebrities like Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, or fictional characters in films and novels. “Love addiction” has become a convenient explanation for others’ behaviors: why an ex couldn’t be faithful, why a friend repeatedly dates problematic men, or why a parent makes reckless decisions.
Often, these observed patterns and experiences appear to be the typical complexities of romance: the pain, yearning, and confusion that have historically been viewed as integral to love’s power. Yet, through the lens of addiction, these emotions are pathologized, treated as symptoms of a disorder. In doing so, we fundamentally redefine love itself. It’s no longer something meant to transform us or endure “even to the edge of doom”; such intensity is now deemed unhealthy. This perspective suggests that many of our deeply ingrained expectations of love are, in fact, toxic or illusory.
Some of these expectations are deeply rooted in the stories we absorb from childhood. Marisa, for example, highlighted how popular culture distorted her understanding of love; the telenovelas and Disney movies she watched, she felt, offered “a misunderstanding of what a normal and healthy relationship should be.” While many women have already rejected the “Disney princess” narrative, critiquing it through the framework of love addiction felt fresh, mirroring the experience of those who suddenly saw “David Copperfield” in a new light. These centuries-old cultural narratives are now seen as remnants of a profound societal ill, having normalized obsession, oppression, emotional abuse, and unrealistic “happily-ever-after” expectations, all under the guise of all-consuming, uncontrollable love.
But if we discard these traditional notions of romantic love, what will fill the void? This is, in essence, the question the forum user asked about his wife: If his marriage was toxic, what could possibly come next? The answer, it seems, is a form of love that neither saves nor shatters us. This emerging vision champions a cleaner, healthier approach. We should choose partners who logically enhance our lives. Relationships should prioritize compatibility and stability, and above all, guarantee emotional safety. This is a tamer, more controlled love, devoid of ardent self-sacrifice or world-altering passions. It’s the kind of love where you and your partner might proudly report to a therapist about “meeting each other’s needs.”
This therapeutic lexicon has increasingly permeated all aspects of interpersonal relationships – from intimate partnerships to family dynamics and professional interactions. The casual diagnosis of psychiatric disorders is now widespread; terms like “narcissism” or “O.C.D.” from the DSM are frequently tossed around to describe personalities. There’s a heightened awareness of “trauma,” “trauma responses,” and even “generational” trauma. We constantly discuss “boundaries,” “wounds,” and “attachment styles,” while both employees and employers champion “self-care.” Psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams has eloquently detailed the repercussions of this trend, noting that where a client once described herself as “painfully shy” seeking help for social situations, today she might declare she “has” social phobia – as if an external affliction has invaded an otherwise unblemished inner life. People refer to themselves using acronyms, “my O.C.D.,” “my eating disorder,” “my bipolar,” seemingly detached from their lived experience. McWilliams describes this as an “odd estrangement from one’s sense of an agentic self.”
Within romantic love, this estrangement from the self can also lead to an estrangement from others. “Sobriety” from love addiction is a complex concept; unlike alcohol, few aspire to permanent romantic abstinence. However, it often involves periods of celibacy and solitude, focusing on “working on yourself” before re-entering the dating world. This idea has also diffused into mainstream culture beyond 12-step programs. We see it in online trends like #boysober, a “Dry January” for women tired of dating, or the male-coded “monk mode,” where romantic distractions are shelved in favor of self-perfection at the gym and career advancement. This pervasive emphasis on healing and self-optimization tends to view romance as, if not an outright adversary, at least not a beneficial ally.
Considering the widely acknowledged issue of loneliness in America, I can’t help but view any narrative that prioritizes relentless self-improvement over romantic connection as a tragic, even lonelier, trajectory – a self-imposed “straitjacket of the self.”
I recently recalled writer Shirley Hazzard’s reflection in a 2005 interview with The Paris Review about her 2003 novel, “The Great Fire.” She said:
I wanted to write, perhaps, a story of falling in love. I wanted to be as true as possible to a phenomenon now passing away from our society: the accidental meeting of man and woman and a sense of destined engagement that would possibly last out their lives. This, to serve as counterweight to the huge disillusion of a ravaged world. I will let myself in for derision, whatever I say on this theme, I suppose. Yet I think that such a story is not necessarily idealized, and that the dream, at least, of such love still supplies the poetry of all manner of unpoetic lives.
A “destined engagement that would possibly last out their lives!” Indeed, this concept appears to be increasingly out of vogue.
Hazzard’s “The Great Fire” chronicles, among other narratives, a World War II veteran falling in love with an Australian teenager. Drawing from Hazzard’s own teenage experiences, such a novel could, through the lens of love addiction or age-gap discussions, be interpreted as a cautionary tale. However, it also offers other readings. Hazzard’s fundamental belief — that love can genuinely infuse “poetry” into otherwise ordinary lives, without succumbing to delusion or idealization — strikes me as one of the most vital values we should uphold.
The pervasive cultural focus on love addiction, the impulse to “tame” romantic love, and the desire to strip it of risk, confusion, and disruption are trends that are continually deepening and spreading across our social landscape. My hope is that we won’t entirely abandon our profound notions of romantic love and its potential to transform us, even when accompanied by pain. Instead, I hope we can forge a new vision of love – and its associated emotional challenges – that is neither oppressive nor overly idealized. After all, what else possesses the unique power to infuse poetry into unpoetic lives?
Sophie Haigney is currently working on a book about our obsession with collecting objects, from priceless fossils to plastic Power Rangers. Her last essay for the magazine was about the remarkable power of group chats.