A Diagram/Adaptation of Pia Mellody's Love Addiction/Love Avoidant Cycle

(Click to enlarge diagram)
Think of each block like a cog on a wheel.
Both wheels turn because they are propelled by the next cog in the partner's wheel, driving one another.

This is not my work but an adaptation of Pia Mellody's conception of how the Love Addicted (fantasy oriented, needy people that love you into loving yourself) and Love Avoidants (rescuers, care-takers, risk-takers) interract with one another.

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Total Wholeness: Adams on Covert Incest

From pages 99 – 105:

The primary task for covert incest survivors is to separate from the opposite-sex parent. [Blog host note: It has been my task to separate from the same-sex parent, and the sexualized energy was actually limited punishment for being womanly.] 

The fact that so many covert incest survivors remain inappropriately bonded well into their adulthood suggests a tremendous struggle to let go. The separation will not be given. Real emancipation cannot be given. It must be taken. Emotional maturity cannot be realized until emancipation occurs. You cannot be an adult man or woman and hold onto Mommy or Daddy. For a marriage and a relationship to work, full access to your emotional and sexual energy is necessary. Even then, it's tough...[A] relationship cannot be fully functional when leftover sexual energy is tied to the opposite-sex parent...

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Integration of Intellect and Emotion: Adams on Covert Incest

From pages 105 – 107:

Watch your seductive behavior. Keep your seduction in check. You don't do yourself or anyone else any favors by engaging in behavior which results in hurt, confusion and emptiness. Remember, your pattern of seduction and abandonment is a way to experience feelings of power and control intended to help you overcome the sense of victimization as a child. But it doesn't work. If your seduction is part of a pattern of sexual addiction, get some help.

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Abuse Role Assignment Within Family: Thoughts on Love Avoidance And Love Addiction

Part IV: From the writings of Pia Mellody on Love Avoidance and Love Addiction (The dynamics of non-sexual incest)

Roles Assigned to Child With Enmeshing Abuse

Note: A child can fill both positive and negative roles.

“Positive Roles”

• Hero or heroine
• Counselor
• Surrogate parners
• Surrogate parent
• Mediator
• Mascot
• Daddy's Little Girl (a ROLE, not a name said in passing)
• Daddy's Little Man
• Mommy's Little Girl
• Mommy's Little Man

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Types of Trauma: Thoughts on Love Addiction and Love Avoidance

Part III:
From the writings of Pia Mellody on Love Addiction and Love Avoidance (the dynamics of non-sexual incest)

Trauma Descriptions

Enmeshment Trauma

1. Physical: (Use of implement s, face slapping, hair pulling, having a child physically nurture a parent and intrusive procedures.)
2. Physical SEXUAL: (Sex acts, sexual touching, sexual kissing and hugging, voyerism, exhibitionism, verbal sexual trauma, failure to have sexual boundary in the presence of a child, and child as a witness to sexual trauma.)
3. Emotional SEXUAL: (Involving emotional enmeshment by the parent or major caregiver.)
4. Intellectual: (Attacks to the shaming of or over control of the child's expression of thought)
5. Emotional: (Shaming of a child's expression of emotion. Refusal to let child express feelings or improper expression of feelings by the parent or major caregiver.)
6. Spiritual: (Religious addiction of the parent or major caregiver, trauma at the hands of a religious caregiver, parent acting like he/she is a god or goddess of the family, indulgence or false empowerment of the child, and moral perfection and obedience demanded from the child.)

Abandonment Trauma

Failure to provide adequate:

• food, clothing and/or shelter
• physical nurturing
• emotional nurturing
• sexual information
• medical/dental care
• financial support or information
• education
• spiritual nurturing

I have taken all of this material and that which I will present from Pia Mellody's writings and lectures, and my professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility. This is all her her copyrighted work that I am citing here for educational purposes only!!!

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Development: Thoughts on Love Addiction and Love Avoidance

Part II: From the writings of Pia Mellody on Love Addiction and Love Avoidance (The dynamics of non-sexual incest)

Note: The child who experiences this abnormal parenting will associate the issues with people of the same sex as the parent. If a child experiences neglect and abandonment with a female parent, they likely will develop love addiction in their relationships with women. If the child experiences enmeshment with a female parent, they will be live avoidant with women. It is the same with a male parent (or caregiver). The association need not relate to sex but it carries with it an association with gender.

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The Dance: Thoughts on Love Addiction and Love Avoidance

Part V: From the writings of Pia Melody on Love Avoidance and Love Addiction (The Dynamics of emotional, non-sexual incest)

The Cyclic Dance Between

Love Addicted and Love Avoidant Partners

Love Addicted Greatest fear is that of abandonment with an underlying fear of intimacy.	Love Avoidant Greatest fear is that of intimacy with an underlying fear of abandonment.
	1. Enters relationship out of duty, not love
1. Is responsive to the avoidant's seductiveness and enters the relationship.
	2. Enters behind wall of seduction (which actually impedes intimacy)
2. Denies partner's walls and importance of life outside the relationship.
3. Experiences an event that shatters the denial.	3. Becomes overwhelmed by the neediness of the partner and moves from the wall of seduction
4. Emotional withdrawal from fantasy Feelings: Pain anger fear rage shame panic suicide This is a psychological emergency of worthlessness	4. Escapes the relationship: In some way, creates distance from the partner Feelings: Avoided
5. Obsesses and medicates to get out of the feelings of the withdrawal from the relationship. Feelings: Self-destructive behavior	5. Creates intensity outside of primary relationship and can use addictions or thrill-seeking. Feelings: Anger and revenge
Either the fantasy is rejected and the relationship ended OR The Love Addict Resolves the conflict and the cycle is repeated. The relationship becomes a repeating of the cycle. Returns to the relationship out of FEAR of abandonment.	Either the relationship ends OR The Love Avoidant Becomes overwhelmed with GUILT for abandoning responsibilities (because self-worth is derived from rescuing and care-taking) and returns to the relationship.

I have taken all of this material and that which I will present from Pia Mellody's writings and lectures, and my professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility. This is all her her copyrighted work that I am citing here for educational purposes only!!!

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Thoughts on Love Addiction And Love Avoidance: An Introduction

I have received several emails about this issue, so I have decided to post a series on the basics of "Love Addiction and Love Avoidance."

I have taken all of this material and that which I will present from Pia Mellody's writings and lectures, and my professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility. This is all her her copyrighted work that I am citing here for educational purposes only!!!


Pia Mellody, Senior Clinical Advisor for The Meadows and Clinical Consultant for Mellody House and Dakota, is known and respected as a preeminent authority, lecturer and educator in the fields of addictions and relationships. Her work in codependence, boundaries, and the effects of childhood trauma on emotional development has profoundly influenced the treatment of addictions and issues around forming and maintaining relationships. She is the author of several extraordinary books, including Facing Codependence, Facing Love Addiction and her latest book, The Intimacy Factor. As one of the pioneers in the field of recovery, she developed theories on the effects of childhood trauma that became the foundation for The Meadows� programs and are, in large measure, the reason for its success. Much of her work at The Meadows includes counseling with staff and individual patients. A highly acclaimed lecturer, she maintains a schedule of speaking engagements and training workshops throughout the world.

INTRODUCTION

Love Addiction and Avoidance are not about love at all. It is all about trauma reactions inside a relationship. Love starts with thought which requires an awareness of self or others that allows you to hold both in warm regard. Those who are “hard to love” require “heaving lifting” for the other party because the respect and love are not reciprocated or done so evenly. Respect is a willingness to tolerate others violations, even when you really don't have to do so. All this requires self esteem.

Note that we have three basic human needs that are God given and easily compared: love, sex and food. Just as with any need, we can manage any one of these inappropriately or to extreme. In terms of extremes, we can seek out fulfillment compulsively (like an addiction) or we can avoid and deny our needs compulsively. Both of these unbalanced extremes are self-destructive.

We all face disappointment and shame which Mellody calls “experiencing our humanity.” For the Christian, this would be experiencing our sin nature and the shame and disappointment in our failure to overcome our natural desires that have not yet been transformed to be like Christ. Until our degree and process of becoming like Jesus and our level of sanctification grows, we tend to fall into the same human trappings as everyone else. We tend to confuse love with caretaking. We tend to go about this in predictable pattern.

Two Patterns

Pattern 1: Love Addiction

All about making up a fantasy about another person and falling in love with the fantasy

The fantasy involves

• seeing the other person as god-like
• capable of saving the love addict from his/her fear of not being able to make it on his/her own
• and loving him/her forever.
• They are someone who will “love you into loving yourself.”
• The fantasy objectifies the partner or the counter part in the unhealthy relationship (reducing them to an object of fantasy).
• This actually means that the partner is not acceptable to the love addict, therefore the love addict objectifies them by seeing them in terms of their own fantasy and not as the partner really is.

Pattern 2: Love Avoidance

Compulsive relational cycle that appears to be intimate but actually avoids intimacy and vulnerability

The love avoidant

• gets a sense of value from (compulsive) caretaking
• the partner confuses this with love
• They are “allergic to vulnerability”
• Their sense of value comes from caretaking and is a means of avoiding guilt.

Relational Connections in Childhood

Type I: Healthy Relationship

• A relationship of Functional Bonding: Caregiver takes appropriate car of the child (affirming, nurturing, and limit setting)
• Caregiver takes care of the child and uses personal boundaries which protect the child appropriately.
• The care and responsibility for the child rests completely upon the adult caregiver.

Type II: Caregiver Uses the Child

• A relationship of Enmeshment: Caregiver uses the child to take care of himself/herself (affirming and nurturing must be earned by the child and must provide these to the parent as well)
• Caregiver is without personal boundaries
• The care and responsibility is partly provided by the parent, but the child is also required to reciprocate for the benefit of the parent)
• Produces a Love Avoidant type adult because the child resents the usury on some level. (Demanded sacrifice as a duty or obligation will always produce some degree of resentment.)

Type III: Caregiver Abandons the Child

• A relationship of Neglect/Rejection (Can be a partial neglect or inconsistent abandonment and neglect, or complete abandonment)
• Caregiver is detatched and "walled-in"
• The parent provides no care and bears no responsibility for the child and has no functional relationship with the child at all.
• Produces a Love Avoidant type adult because the child is always seeking the fantasy of love and attention.

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