I read Love Addict with interest, with identification, with admiration and respect for Vare's writing, research, recovery.
My own take on "love addiction" is that it is at bottom an existential, metaphysical, theological, and in the end religious subject (religion meaning "to bind back together"). I've had to learn that just as the guy can't heal, fix, make me whole, I CAN'T DO THAT FOR HIM EITHER--and the ramifications of that go far, far beyond "recovery." They go to my whole place in the universe, the meaning of suffering, where I am to put my erotic/procreative urge, the capacity of my heart for love. Only through letting my desire go "to the stars" (i.e. not around, but through and beyond the guy) do we both take on our true significance in the scheme of things. I'm able to let go not because I love him less but because I love a little more authentically...
At the same time, TO BE SURE, you have to quit writing 8-page single-spaced letters, defriend the guy on FB, and realize that your "love" is impacting his wife, kids, and career. This is where Vare's book comes in right handy. Her goal is to define love addiction, let you decide if you're hooked, introduce you to some fellow travelers, provide tools, and make you laugh, all of which she does in spades--though in several places my impulse was not so much to laugh as to hide my face in my hands and shudder, or cry.
Here's a sampling of her pithy, common-sense reflections/advice:
"Just because your addiction isn't your fault doesn't mean it's not your responsibility." "Substance abuse isn't about the substance; it's about the abuser."
"Love addicts have a pathological relationship to their own body chemistry. We are obeying physical signals we neither recognize nor understand."
"Mind you, simple is not the same as easy. I never said it would be easy. For starters, odds are that you don't want to recover. What you want is to be cured."
"Ask yourself `What would a normal person do under these circumstances?' Then, do that."
But to me, the most valuable chapter was the last--"Higher Love." She quotes Dr. Richard Lorenz: "People spend their lives searching for the One, never realizing that One they are searching for is their Self." She quotes Richard Firestone: "Emotional hunger is not love. It is a primitive condition of pain and longing which people act out in a desperate and vain attempt to fill a void or emptiness." She consults the scientists and finds that giving to others ACTIVATES THE SAME PART OF OUR BRAINS AS MAKING LOVE AND ROMANTIC LONGING. What else do we need to know? Thanks to Ethlie Ann Vare for giving us this book.