The Dithering of a District Diva

“Addicted to love, like the drug, drug of a fiend.”–Lauryn Hill

Love Addiction.

I didn’t realize there was such a thing until I saw it on Oprah yesterday. (Lord knows all the things I’ll miss out on when she retires in 2011!) There I was, comfortably watching her show on sex addiction, listening to the addicts and thinking man, those poor, poor people. And then I noticed that the beautiful woman on the stage to the left hadn’t uttered a word. Was she a counselor? There for moral support? What was her deal? Then Oprah decided to move on to the next topic, love addiction, and the cameras panned to the lovely woman. “Yes, Oprah, I’m a recovering love addict.” Whaaa?

She was 38 years-old and had never been in a relationship because she spent 12 years 12 YEARS obsessing over her first love. You can do that? Like, legally???

Even if it didn’t directly apply to me, I still felt the same chill up my spine as when I watched Girl, Interrupted and discovered Borderline Personality Disorder…omg, is that…me?

I had scoured Wikipedia–God bless Al Gore for inventing the internet–searching for any resemblance of myself in Borderline Personality Disorder. Yes, I had changed my career goals 4 times, but geez, I’m in my 20s. And who doesn’t spend compulsively? We’re in a capitalistic society! Wasn’t that normal?? After discovering that promiscuity and acute low self-esteem were huge parts of the disorder I could finally breathe a sigh of relief. Are you done now?

But yesterday, I just wasn’t quite ready to explore the symptoms of love addiction. So, I put it aside and kept reading my book, Eat Pray Love. Now there’s a chick with a love addiction, I thought, from the safe haven behind the pages.

I barely had an adolescence before I had my first boyfriend, and I have consistently had a boy or a man (or sometimes both) in my life ever since I was fifteen years old. That was–oh let’s see–about ninteen years ago, now. That’s almost two solid decades I have been entwined in some kind of drama with some kind of guy. Each overlapping the next, with never so much as a week’s breather in between. And I can’t help but think that’s been something of a liability on my path to maturity. [pg. 65]

I shut the book immediately, as if to say: You shut your mouth, Liz Gilbert!

Fine, I had had my first boyfriend at 15 and a steady stream until age 23. So? In all but one, I was in control. They conformed to me, not the other way around. Didn’t that make them the love addicts and not me? After all, its not like I needed to be in a relationship or even went looking for one. And even when I was in one, I had always taken myself out on dates to the movies and sat in restaurants alone enjoying my own company with no book. That’s huge! So under the guise of this safety net, I decided a little wiki-search/self-non-diagnosis couldn’t hurt.

I discovered that a Love Addict:

• Is unable to trust in relationships

• nope, I trust too freely (which disorder is that?)

Has an inner rage over lack of nurturing in childhood

• I don’t think so…(?)

Battles with depression

• define “battles”

Tolerates high-risk behavior

• not normally…
  

Has other addictive or compulsive behaviors

• I broke my spending habit. 5 months clean.

Questions values and life all the time

• Oh, now that’s just not fair.
  

Has a frantic personality

• No…

Denies problems

• SAVED!!

Clearly, I couldn’t be a love addict! I would make a career out of acknowledging my problems, if I could (and I just might). And while there is no need to delve back into my previous unrealistic expectations of love, in complete honesty, I do believe there are various stages of love addiction, some clinical, and some not. And irrespective of whether it was clinical, it was certainly unhealthy to hinge myself to a man immediately after ending a relationship with another, time and time and time again. And worse, to continue to use those relationships as a stand-in, a distraction for the real underlying issue, like some sort of poisonous Ferris wheel.

But this is not to say that I did not feel real love for at least a few of them. There were many things about a few of them I did love very much. I have–no doubt–been in love. What was unhealthy was the pattern of not analyzing myself and the relationship after it ended, giving myself time to deal with it so as not to repeat the mistakes, and to change what needed to be changed in myself. But It’s a pattern I am determined to break.

In the book, Gilbert took a vow of celibacy for a year. I will take a more difficult route for me–no dating. Granted, it has been over a year since my last relationship–if that even counted as a relationship–but I cheated myself by going on several dates throughout this past year and not just being. While it has been the longest I’ve gone without being in a relationship, I just don’t feel like its been long enough, or that I’ve achieved enough as an individual to be in a healthy space with which to date, without losing my focus. So here it is: I WILL NOT DATE UNTIL I HAVE PASSED THE BAR. There. I said it. Hold me to it.

And with friends like these: “if you still feel like this in 7 yrs, i will bring you to the shrink myself!” I think I just might make it.

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