Love Addict Recovery: Detachment, Self-Care, Boundaries
By Jim Hall, MS, Relationship Recovery Expert
Love addiction recovery is about reclaiming our own lives. One part of our path to recovery is learning and owning our right to focus on and take care of ourselves, build on our strengths, and ask for and accept help with our limitations.
Many of us find it difficult even to begin this self-focused process because we've carried impaired boundaries in all our relationships, which have too often been blurred (or invisible), and have lost track of the separation between ourselves and others- especially a relationship partner.
Having placated, giving more and more and much too much of ourselves, and abandoning our own needs and wants in relationships, we too often have taken upon others' responsibilities that don't rightfully belong to us.
The result is that we lose the sense of who we are, and we feel like crumbling.
We have become so enmeshed and smothered with a relationship partner's life and problems that we have lost the knowledge (and right) that we are separate and valuable individuals.
When asked about ourselves, we often respond by talking about our partner or our relationship as a whole. We perceive ourselves to be extremely connected and if something happens to a partner we are in a relationship with, it seems only natural for us to respond.
Love - Care - Boundaries
A core issue I discuss in my book, The LOVE ADDICT in Love Addiction, is that we confuse this absence of personal boundaries with love and caring.
There is no healthy middle ground. For example, from the moment a partner walks out the door, we sit, immobilized, unable to do anything but think obsessively about him or her. We lose the ability to distinguish between the partner and ourselves until the partner's past, current, and potential actions become our sole focus.
This is not love; it's an obsession and very destructive to you and your relationship. When we cease to live our own lives because we are so preoccupied with another person's life, our behavior is motivated by fear, largely the fear of abandonment. Genuine, healthy love is not a preoccupation or obsession.
It isn't self-destructive or other destructive. It does not diminish us or strip us of our identities, nor does it in any way diminish those we love. Love is nourishing, safe, and has balance as it allows each of us to be more fully ourselves. The enmeshment that characterizes an addictive relationship does just the opposite.
Detachment Boundary
Detachment is one of the most valuable we can do as love addicts in recovery to reclaim ourselves. Detachment means to separate ourselves emotionally when engaging emotionally is not in our best interest for our well-being. Detachment is a mechanism of a healthy boundary.
Detachment is a key to recovery from love addiction. It strengthens our healthy relationships - the ones that we want to grow and flourish. It benefits our difficult relationships - the ones that are teaching us to cope. It helps us!
If someone we love became resentful and angry with us because of something they expected us to do (like plan a dinner date); and they did not communicate this expectation to us- by not specifically asking us if we wanted to plan a dinner date together at a specific time instead of expecting we would read their minds and do it.
We wouldn't take it personally, feel guilt or shame, or feel responsible that somehow we should have read their minds, and it was our fault for their lack of communication. This is an example of detachment.
In other words, by detaching (a healthy boundary), we, in our minds, would separate the person's lack or unwillingness to communicate to us what they wanted.
We would separate emotionally their resentment and anger is not from something we did- we would understand their feelings are coming from their mistake that they did not communicate to us and expected us to read their mind (an unrealistic expectation). This is detachment.
By seeing a person's behaviors, choices, feelings, or emotions as separate from ourselves- by detaching, we can stop being hurt and self-victimized by feeling as if we have ownership or responsibility for their behaviors, choices, feelings, or emotions.
If we can learn to step back from another person's unacceptable short-comings (certain behaviors, choices, feelings, or emotions) and effects for which we are not responsible, just as we would from someone with a cold sneezing near us, we will no longer have to take another person's short-comings and effects to heart.
Detachment is not about being cold, unloving, or uncaring. It is about self-care. When we engage in self-care, we engage in self-love - a very important characteristic of healthy relationships.
Detachment is not something we do once. It's a daily behavior in recovery.
We learn it when we're beginning our recovery from love addiction and adult children issues. And we continue to practice it along the way as we grow and change and as our relationships grow and change.
Author: Jim Hall MS is a love addiction specialist and online recovery expert who helps those struggling with love addiction discover a healthy path to overcome obsessive dependency patterns, develop the skills, self-love, and self-assurance to have healthy, happy relationships.
You can learn much more about Love Addiction (love addict and love avoidant) in my book, The LOVE ADDICT in Love Addiction (downloadable to any device).
