Nearly everyone can tap into that feeling of falling or being in love: a pounding heart, sweaty palms and yes, butterflies in your stomach.

Love has a warmth and electricity that makes you feel good, safe, and harmonious.

Love should be a combination of connecting, sharing and feeling grounded with another person.

For the majority, it’s normal to think about your love interest when you’re apart, but these thoughts aren’t intrusive, nor do they affect your ability to cope with daily life.

But for others who are prone to love addiction or codependency, love can feel like a survival sport with unbearable high stakes. Instead of deep, nurturing, and mutual connections, it becomes all-consuming, leading to devastating losses.

If you’ve ever found yourself chasing unavailable partners, stuck in unhealthy cycles of giving too much, or terrified of being alone, you may be experiencing what’s known as love addiction or codependency. These patterns aren’t signs of weakness or neediness. They are often the legacy of childhood attachment trauma.

At Innisfree Therapy, we understand that behind every compulsive relational pattern is a nervous system shaped by early experiences of inconsistency, abandonment, or emotional neglect. Healing doesn’t begin with shame, it begins with understanding.

What is love addiction?

The term love addiction can be misleading. Love itself is not the problem. The issue arises when the pursuit of connection becomes compulsive and when the need for love overrides safety, self-worth, and personal boundaries.

Current studies show that love addiction affects approximately 3-26% of the worldwide population. Why such a wide range? There are various differences in how love addiction is defined and measured.

Love addiction isn’t formally classified in diagnostic manuals, but it’s a recognised relational pattern marked by:

• Obsessive love – When your everyday life, behaviours, thoughts, and feelings are all centred around your partner or romantic interest, you have developed obsessive love. 
• Intense fear of abandonment or rejection – You are in a constant state of scanning for rejection or abandonment despite no actions that support the threat. 
• Emotional dependence – You feel incomplete, worthless and empty without your love interest and start to use your love for them to deal with emotional issues or distress.
• Increased need for contact – You need to be around your romantic partner all of the time and have a complete inability to end the relationship, even if it’s harmful. 
• Avoidance – Your personal needs, work, family, friends, hobbies, and other responsibilities are all neglected and avoided in favour of your romantic relationship. 
• Withdrawal symptoms – You start to experience physical withdrawal symptoms such as irritability, nausea, anxiety, stomach cramps, and frustration when you are apart from your partner.
• Relapse – No matter how hard you try, you find it difficult—or even impossible—to decrease the time you spend with or thinking about your love interest. 
• Escape route – You may use fantasy, idealisation, or romantic pursuit to escape painful emotions.

In this sense, love addiction easily resembles substance dependence. There’s a ‘high’ from the attention and connectivity, and then a crash when that attention is withdrawn or withheld. Many people experiencing love addiction describe the same symptoms that mirror drug and alcohol withdrawal: panic, obsession, ruminating thoughts, physical distress, insomnia, and even depression. The pattern becomes a cycle of extreme highs and crushing lows, often at the expense of their physical and mental health.

Understanding codependency

Despite efforts to have codependency designated a clinical diagnosis or personality disorder, the term has never been accepted for inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

According to Psychology Today, codependency is a dysfunctional relationship dynamic where one person assumes the role of “the giver,” sacrificing their own needs and well-being for the sake of the other, “the taker.”

The term, originally used to describe the partners of people struggling with addiction, now more broadly describes excessive emotional reliance on others.

Codependency signs can be tricky, as they often overlap with love addiction.

Let’s break it down. Codependent patterns may look like:

• Putting everyone else’s needs above their own, often to the point of neglecting their own wants and needs and struggle to ask for help
• Feelings of self-criticism and perfectionism
• Gaining a sense of worth through fixing or rescuing others, as it makes them feel needed, wanted, or relied upon
• Feeling responsible for others’ emotions or choices, often making excuses for others’ behaviours and taking over their obligations
• Difficulty in setting boundaries and being assertive due to low self-esteem
• Staying in relationships out of guilt, fear, or obligation

Codependency often stems from early experiences in which children were expected to be caretakers, peacekeepers, or emotional supports within the family.

Love became something you earned by being useful, accommodating, or selfless. Over time, this role may become internalised, and adult relationships repeat the same dynamic: “I can keep them if I can just be ‘enough’ (good enough, smart enough, sexy enough, dependable enough) they’ll love me and they’ll never leave.”

The role of childhood attachment trauma

To truly understand love addiction and codependency, we have to look at attachment theory — and how our earliest relationships shape our adult ones.

From birth, we rely on our caregivers to meet our physical and emotional needs. When those needs are consistently met, we develop a secure attachment. But when love is conditional, inconsistent, or absent, we adapt.

We become anxiously attached (hypervigilant, needy, fearful of abandonment), avoidantly attached (self-reliant, uncomfortable with closeness), or disorganised (caught between wanting love and fearing it).

These patterns don’t disappear in adulthood; they simply find new forms.

For example:

• A child with inconsistent caregiving may become an adult who feels panic when a partner pulls away.
• A child who feels responsible for a parent’s emotions may become an adult who over-functions in relationships, taking on too much to feel valued.
• A child who learned to suppress their needs to maintain peace may struggle to advocate for themselves or recognise abuse.

Attachment trauma isn’t about blaming parents. It’s about understanding the nervous system adaptations we make in order to survive. These adaptations make sense. But they can also lead us into relational dynamics that feel familiar, but are ultimately unfulfilling or unsafe.

Why these patterns are so hard to break

One of the most painful aspects of love addiction and codependency is the sense of powerlessness: “Why do I keep doing this? Why can’t I stop?”

The answer lies in the body as much as the mind.

When we form an attachment to someone — even an unhealthy one — our nervous system becomes wired around them. Their presence regulates us. Their absence dysregulates us.

In the case of anxious attachment or unresolved trauma, this can feel like a literal threat to our safety. That’s why it is so difficult to leave a toxic or dangerous relationship, as the situation isn’t just about willpower; it’s about having the ability to regulate your fears and anxiety.

These patterns aren’t just about behaviour. They’re about survival strategies, shaped by formative experiences. Until we feel safe enough to not cling, not people-please, not over-function, our system will keep pulling us toward what feels familiar even when it hurts.

How Innisfree Therapy supports healing

At Innisfree Therapy, we work with clients who are ready to explore the deeper roots of their relationship patterns. Our highly skilled trauma therapists understand that love addiction and codependency are not flaws but rather deep wounds that need the right care.

We offer a blend of therapy modalities, including:

• Attachment-based therapy 
• Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) 
• Somatic trauma therapy
• Group psychotherapy

We don’t believe in pathologising behaviour. We believe in working with it through psychoeducation; gently, respectfully, and with deep compassion for the systems that helped you survive.

What healthy love looks like

As clients begin to heal, a new kind of love becomes possible. One that doesn’t feel like a lifeline. One that doesn’t leave you feeling exhausted, anxious, or unseen.

Healthy love includes:

• The ability to be close without losing yourself
• Giving and receiving equally
• Trusting that you can hold your needs and someone else’s without sacrifice
• Choosing a partner, not needing one to feel whole
• Knowing how to leave when a relationship is harmful
• Feeling safe to express vulnerability without fear of abandonment

These qualities aren’t out of reach. But they often require us to meet the wounded parts within us first, and the parts that still believe love means proving your worth, earning your place, or never being alone.

You’re not broken. You’re responding to what you’ve lived.

If you see yourself in these patterns, know this: you are not broken, desperate, or doomed to repeat the past.

Your nervous system has done its job beautifully. It learned how to protect you. It found strategies, even painful ones, to get your needs met. Now you have the opportunity to gently unlearn what no longer serves you as you learn to let go.

At Innisfree Therapy, we hold space for this kind of transformation. We believe in the power of relational healing, not just learning how to love, but how to be loved in ways that feel safe, reciprocal, and true.

You don’t have to settle for survival disguised as connection. You deserve more.

If you’re ready to start understanding your love addiction, codependency and attachment trauma, contact us today for a confidential, no-obligation conversation with one of our professionals. It’s time to reclaim your life.