Are you addicted to your relationship?\u00a0 Do you spend an inordinate amount of time . . .<\/p>\n
If you were honest with yourself when you answered these questions, and you answered yes to several of them, then you might be addicted to your relationship!<\/p>\n
A relationship addiction puts all of our focus, in some cases our very existence, on our love object.\u00a0 While we may not recognize it as an addiction, it subtly consumes our thoughts, feelings, and actions all day long. Trust me, if you are addicted and you don\u2019t know it, you will find yourself doing just about anything to keep the relationship going even when it is painfully clear that it is not good for you.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Relationship addiction is harder to spot than the more obvious alcohol or drug addictions.\u00a0 Our world values an enmeshed relationship where \u2018two shall become one\u2019 and couples \u2018live happily ever after\u2019.\u00a0 This culture has been planting seeds our whole lives that a love \u00a0relationship will complete us, that we will not be whole until we are in a starry-eyed, romantic and committed, love relationship.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying we shouldn\u2019t be in a good relationship. We were made to be relational.\u00a0 We are drawn to find the person to whom we \u201cbelong” in this world.\u00a0 \u00a0What I am saying, however, is that we put too much emphasis on the outcome of the relationship and too little focus on learning and growing ourselves.<\/p>\n When the outcome of the relationship is paramount, we can\u2019t hear that we might be doing something unhealthy that could hurt ourselves or others.\u00a0<\/strong> <\/em>We can\u2019t allow our partner some distance so that they can figure some things out for themselves.\u00a0 We can\u2019t sit in the messiness and learn what we are supposed to be learning because too much is at stake!<\/p>\n I really encourage you to examine this aspect of your life.\u00a0 Look back at the questions I posed and watch for this in yourself.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t stand alone, then you will be desperate and addicted to your relationship, causing damage to it, your partner, and yourself!<\/p>\n The good news is that you don\u2019t have to divorce or break up with your love object to fix this, but you do have to stop being addictive.\u00a0 The bad news is that it will cause some changes in your relationship that will be uncomfortable for both you and your partner.\u00a0 (Most likely they are addicted to you, too.)\u00a0 Once you stop behaving in addictive ways, your partner will be forced to make some changes as well.\u00a0 It is that growth in both of you that allows for a mature, healthy relationship to develop!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Are you addicted to your relationship?\u00a0 Do you spend an inordinate amount of time . . . Thinking about your partner? Talking about them? Trying to please them? Being angry at them? Having mock arguments with them while you are alone? Focusing on how to fix the relationship? Wondering what they are doing? Looking at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[888,728,889,447,890,891,892,893],"class_list":["post-3632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marriage","tag-how-to-have-a-happy-marriage","tag-how-to-stop-fighting","tag-indianapolis","tag-marriage-counseling","tag-nothing-is-working","tag-relationship-addiction","tag-trapped-in-relationship","tag-why-cant-we-just-be-happy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4259,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3632\/revisions\/4259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healingheartsofindy.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}