When love turns into obsession: emotional dependency

By Cristiano Antonino On May 29, 2023

When love turns into an obsession that dominates the mind and causes suffering, we no longer speak of love but of emotional dependency

A problem related to emotions, thoughts and behaviour in love relationships, which is increasingly widespread in the contemporary world.

Addiction in a relationship in itself is not pathological

It is absolutely normal, particularly during the falling in love phase, for there to be a certain degree of emotional dependency and fusion with the partner.

The desire for dependency should diminish as the relationship stabilises, leaving the couple with a pleasant perception of autonomy.

Dysfunctional affective dependency can be defined as a pathological state in which the relationship is experienced as a unique, indispensable and necessary condition for one’s existence.

Such importance is attributed to the other that one cancels oneself out and does not listen to one’s own needs.

This mechanism is perpetuated to avoid facing the greatest fear: the break-up of the relationship.

It is a negative relational condition, characterised by a chronic absence of reciprocity in affective life, which tends to create psychological and/or physical malaise.

Symptoms of emotional dependency

Those who manifest the symptoms of affective dependency, on the other hand, have a desire for fusion that remains unchanged over time.

Although it is not considered in the diagnostic manuals as a true pathological dependency, it can reach such an extreme form that it presents characteristics similar to substance use addiction.

Those suffering from the symptoms of emotional dependency have a strong need for connection to a person on whom they are totally dependent and on whom they invest all their energy.

He/she constantly lives in anxiety that he/she may lose her/him and needs constant reassurance.

She usually has difficulty consciously identifying her needs and goals unless a support figure or context is present to perform this function.

In a couple, he tends to make exaggerated and incongruent emotional demands on his partner and not feel sufficiently and adequately loved.

Sometimes he increases these demands to the point of a definitive break-up of the relationship.

Symptoms of affective dependency do not necessarily manifest themselves within a couple’s relationship, but can also manifest themselves towards a parent, another family member, a friend figure or a person of authority.

Co-dependency

A particular form of emotional dependency is co-dependency.

It is a multidimensional condition that encompasses various forms of suffering or self-nullification associated with focusing one’s attention on the needs of a substance- or activity-dependent partner.

In 1986, Cermak identified four distinctive traits to identify the co-dependent:

the tendency to continuously invest one’s self-worth in controlling oneself and others;
the tendency to take responsibility for others or for situations that are out of one’s control in order to satisfy one’s partner’s needs;
the presence of states of anxiety and lack of perception of boundaries between self and other;
habitual involvement in relationships with people with personality disorders, addictions, impulse control disorders or co-dependencies.

Affective dependency and personality structure

The need for protection and low self-esteem constitute the underlying theme of those suffering from love addiction, fuelled by beliefs that one’s happiness depends entirely on the closeness of a supportive person.

The characteristics of the person with affective dependency correspond in part to those of those suffering from Dependent Personality Disorder.

For these people, the state of personal efficacy is in fact typically linked to the presence of a strong and stable significant relationship.

However, we can also find it in borderline personality disorder, when the fear of abandonment leads the person to do everything to maintain the relationship with the other.

Or in narcissistic personality disorder, when maintaining a positive self-image depends on the admiration of the other, who must therefore be available and close whenever there is a need to restore one’s self-esteem.

Thus, emotional dependency behaviour does not necessarily indicate a totally dependent personality.

It is necessary to understand the underlying reasons for the dependency and to frame them within a specific personality profile.

Sometimes even anxiety disorders (such as agoraphobia, panic disorder or specific phobias) are characterised by the need to maintain the relationship with the other through the symptom.

Causes of emotional dependency

Dependency has its roots in childhood, in the relationship with caregivers.

Those who become affectively dependent probably received the message as children that they were not worthy of love or that their needs were not important.

The person would have failed during childhood to develop an adequate psychic structure due to negative affective experiences with caregivers.

In this sense they would tend to unrealistically overestimate the other, losing contact with reality.

Usually the parents of these dependent adults were overprotective and limiting.

They frustrated the need for play and spontaneity, substituting themselves for their children in choices.

Or, conversely, they may have been lax, limitless, such that the child had to construct his or her own rigid rules at odds with the rest of the world.

There is a close connection between attachment type and personality.

Those who suffer from distress related to the sphere of emotional dependency generally present an insecure attachment style, very often of the dependent, avoidant or disorganised type.

What happens in the couple dynamic

The dependent person’s choice of a partner with certain characteristics is not random.

The dependent person often has a perception of him/herself as someone who is not worthy of love.

Consequently, he or she will tend to unconsciously choose problematic, avoidant, anaffective partners who will confirm the addict’s negative self-image.

Affective dependency is therefore not a phenomenon that affects only one person, but is a two-person dynamic.

Sometimes the partner of the ‘affective addict’ is a problematic and/or narcissistic person.

Other times the loved one is rejecting, elusive or unattainable.

The dependent devotes his or her whole self to the other knowing how to make him or her happy and satisfying his or her needs, until he or she feels an overload or coercion that may lead to rebellion.

In this case he will either feel a great sense of guilt and try to recover the relationship right away or if the other person drives him away, he will look for a new relationship so as not to feel completely empty and non-existent.

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Another typical relational mode is often at the root of crime events.

It concerns the dominance-power relationship.

Faced with the employee’s moment of rebellion, the other may react with intense abusive reactions.

The dependent person feels exclusively responsible and the cause of their partner’s behaviour, giving them even more power and idealising them.

Treatment of emotional dependency

A course of psychotherapy can help the person overcome the distress associated with this state, in which the couple is experienced as indispensable and necessary for their existence.

The treatment of emotional dependency aims to:

Understanding one’s own functioning, in order to understand what the underlying motivation for the addiction is.
Modify insecure attachment bonds and reprocess negative experiences to allow the establishment of meaningful and satisfying bonds.
Developing assertiveness so that the affective dependent can think and express their needs without fear.
Improve self-esteem and self-confidence by working on one’s patterns.

To get out of emotional dependency, the first step is awareness of one’s own functioning and schemas.

Only then is it possible to intervene in the relationship with the other person.

Psychotherapy can help the affective dependency patient recognise the complex cognitive and emotional traps that lead to suffering and unhappiness.