By Upendra Mishra
BOSTON—I used to call myself an eternal romantic. But things change as we age. And so does the definition of love and romance.
Some of us are addicted to love, some to alcohol, some to drugs, some to gossip, some to smearing others, some to jealousy, and some to putting everyone down all the time—no matter what.
For a long time, I believed that addiction to love was the best addiction of all. Later, I adjusted that belief: love may be better than the other addictions, but it is still an addiction. Today, I think any addiction is bad—even an addiction to love.
Why?
Because any addiction creates dependency. Without your “dose,” you feel inadequate, incomplete, low, and miserable. Addiction wants you to live in a constant high—24/7 if possible. And the same pattern applies to love.
Just as someone using drugs slowly increases the dosage to feel the same effect, a love addict increases emotional dependency to get the same emotional high. As with any addiction, no high is ever high enough. Eventually, even the highest peak is not enough, and you crash. Yes—people can crash from love.
So how do you know if you’re addicted to love?
To answer that, it helps to look at what researchers and clinicians say. According to Krystina Murray, writing for the Addiction Center and reviewed by David Hampton, “love addiction creates fixations and compulsions in love interests and can play itself out in unhealthy behaviors.” These behaviors can lead to clinginess, enmeshment, poor job performance, conflict, anxiety, and even depression.
Murray notes that love addiction has the same lack of control seen in substance addictions. The emotional highs—intense passion—and lows—heartbreak, disappointment—can eventually strain even healthy relationships.
Here are some common symptoms of love addiction, drawn from both research and my own reflections:
- Needing to be in love all the time: Without a love interest, you feel empty or lost.
- Putting your partner on a pedestal: A little admiration is normal. But Addiction Center warns that love addicts may “obsessively put their partner on a pedestal to their detriment,” even when the partner is distant or abusive.
- Obsessive thinking: You replay conversations, check your phone constantly, and schedule your day around the person.
- Cravings, withdrawals, and emotional dependency: Yes—love can produce withdrawal symptoms similar to chemical dependency. Dopamine and oxytocin are powerful chemicals.
- An inability to be alone: Silence and solitude feel unbearable.
- Seeking love to fill a void: Low self-esteem, childhood trauma, or loneliness often sit beneath the surface. As Addiction Center explains, people may “develop love addiction as a way to fill a void left over from childhood trauma, low self-worth, or a lack of self-love.”
- Staying in toxic relationships: People stay not because it’s healthy, but because the withdrawal from leaving feels worse.
I came to this realization and decided to raise this topic after I watched a few Pakistani dramas such as Main Manto Nahi Hoon, Pamaal and Humsafar. If you observe them simply as a viewer, you begin to notice how many shades of love are being portrayed — not only romance or passion, but also dependency, control, obsession, sacrifice, and self-destruction. These dramas illustrate that in the name of love, people often justify anything: from truly caring to full control, and from idealization to full manipulation.
In Humsafar, for example, love and sacrifice are constantly intertwined with jealousy, insecurity, and societal pressure. The show’s narrative highlights how love can be laced with distrust and betrayal — and how characters cling desperately to relationships even when those bonds cause more pain than solace. According to critics and fans alike, what started as a story of deep affection gradually reveals the fragility of trust, the toxic power dynamics, and the emotional cost of clinging to idealized love.
Such stories echo what experts describe when they discuss love addiction. The romantic highs, the constant emotional investment, and the refusal to let go — even under distress — all mirror the patterns of dependency, withdrawal, and obsession found in substance or behavioral addictions. When lovers equate their self-worth with a relationship’s stability, they set themselves up for a cycle of emotional highs and devastating lows.
Just as Humsafar reveals how love can twist itself into insecurity and possessiveness, Main Manto Nahi Hoon goes even deeper into the anatomy of love’s illusions and wounds. What struck me in this serial was how each character personified a different shade of love — Maria’s unconditional affection, Hasrat’s silent sacrifice, Mehmal’s awakening self-respect, Manto’s tortured sincerity, and Farhad’s dangerous obsession masquerading as devotion. Watching Farhad, in particular, is like watching the clinical definition of love addiction play out on screen: the idolization, the dependency, the inability to let go, the possessiveness disguised as passion. As I wrote in my review, “I have met every one of these characters in real life.” And that, perhaps, is why this serial lingers — because its emotional truths are uncomfortably familiar.
What these dramas quietly reveal — if you watch them as an observer rather than a fan — is how elastic and alarming the word love can become. In the name of love, characters justify control (Pamaal), surrender their identity (Humsafar), or confuse obsession with care (Main Manto Nahi Hoon). This mirrors exactly what experts like Murray of Addiction Center describe: that love addiction is not about love at all, but about compulsion, dependency, and the desperate attempt to fill inner voids with another person. Murray notes that love addiction often includes “idolizing partners, obsessiveness, withdrawal, and emotional highs and lows,” and these patterns are everywhere in these storylines. They show how easily love slips into something that feels urgent but is ultimately unhealthy — something that feels sacred, even as it quietly erodes self-worth.
Why This Happens
Love addiction can stem from upbringing, trauma, abandonment fears, or genetics. Lust and sexual bonding can intensify attachment; Addiction Center points out that oxytocin released during intimacy can create intense emotional glue for people with low self-esteem.
Four Types of Love Addicts
Author Susan Peabody identifies four types of love addicts—obsessive, codependent, narcissistic, and ambivalent/avoidant. These are different ways the same dependency shows up, but the common thread is the inability to regulate emotional needs without leaning heavily on another person.
In short: love addiction is not about love at all. It is about using another person as a drug.
Love Addiction and Mental Health
Love addiction can coexist with anxiety, depression, or substance abuse. When the emotional high wears off or attention fades, love addicts may feel abandoned or betrayed. According to Addiction Center, this can push people into “uncomfortable feelings that they may use chemicals to solve.”
It becomes a cycle: chasing love to regulate emotions, then feeling worse when the illusion breaks.
Can Something Be Done?
Fortunately, yes. Treatments exist, and all paths begin with awareness.
- Addiction Center recommends cognitive behavioral therapy to identify distorted thinking patterns.
- Meditation can help slow anxiety and rebuild self-worth.
- Trauma therapy can address deeper wounds from childhood or past relationships.
In their words, there is often an “underlying shame and void that needs healing and awareness.”
And healing is possible.
Love is beautiful when it is free—not when it is demanded, chased, or clung to. Healthy love grows. Addictive love consumes.
If you or someone you know suspects love addiction, resources—including those listed by Addiction Center—can help. As they emphasize, no one has to manage this alone. Love should lift you. If it drains you, suffocates you, or becomes your only source of meaning, then it is not love anymore. It is dependency—and like any addiction, it invites you to break free.
(Upendra Mishra is the author of After the Fall: How Owen Lost Everything and Found What Really Matters and Precise Marketing: The Proven System for Growing Revenue in a Noisy World. He is the Managing Partner of The Mishra Group. Learn more at www.UpendraMishra.com )
