Sophie Haigney at the New York Times:
I spoke with several people like Marisa — people whose love lives were disordered, even dangerous, until they began identifying as love addicts.
The idea is that many people have an unhealthy, compulsive relationship with romance that makes stable relationships difficult and causes constant distress. Lately a burgeoning pocket of attention has focused on love addiction. There are first-person 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.” There are much-discussed memoirs like Elizabeth Gilbert’s “All the Way to the River.” Online forums boom with discussion, with people suspecting that they, too, are problematically obsessive about love — that in a manner similar to alcohol or gambling, romance has come to control their lives and warp their choices.
Love addiction has also spread into the ways ordinary people think and talk about relationships, used casually to diagnose all sorts of drama.
More here.
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