Books on love addiction

Confusing Love with Obsession: When You Can't Stop Controlling Your Partner and the Relationship

by John D. Moore

People who confuse love with obsession:

• Instantly attach themselves to another person, regardless of compatibility.
• Cannot function unless they are in a relationship.
• Attempt to "fix" an abusive partner's behavior by walking on eggshells.
• Abandon their friends and family because they are obsessed with their relationship.
• Try to control their partners through emotions, money, sex and even food.
• Stalk, harass and abuse their partners in an effort to exert control.
• Through a series of riveting personal discussions and case presentations, John Moore sheds light on a problem that is widely unknown and often misunderstood. Men and women who confuse love with obsession can discover healthy, loving relationships with others but only when they learn to have a relationship with themselves.

Facing Love Addiction: Giving Yourself the Power to Change the Way You Love

by Pia Mellody, Andrea Wells Miller, J. Keith Miller

Recovery from codependence comes from clearing up the toxic feelings left over from childhood and learning to reparent oneself by intervening on the adult symptoms of codependence. Central to Mellody's concept is the idea of the "precious child" that needs healing within each adult. She creates a framework for identifying codependent behavior and describes an effective approach to recovery that includes both therapy and self-help processes. Designed to be used with her new workbook for codependents, Breaking Free, this is a powerful tool for understanding the nature of codependence.

Is It Love or Is It Addiction

by Schaeffer

Women Who Love Too Much: When You Keep Wishing and Hoping He'll Change

by Robin Norwood

Obsessive Love: When It Hurts Too Much to Let Go

by Susan Forward, Craig Buck

• Do you yearn for someone who is not physically or emotionally available to you?
• Do you believe that if you love him enough he will have to love you?
• When you feel insecure, does it drive you only to want her more?
• Do you find yourself phoning repeatedly or waiting long hours for the phone to ring?

Do you wish someone would let go of you?

• Does an ex-lover or ex-spouse refuse to believe that it’s over?
• Do you receive unwanted phone calls, letters, presents, or visits?
• Is this pursuit of you creating so much anxiety that it affects your physical or emotional well-being?

In this invaluable self-help guide, Dr. Susan Forward presents vivid case histories as well as the real-life voices of men and women caught in the grip of obsessive passion.

Whether you’re an obsessive lover or the target of such an obsession, here is a proven, step-by-step program that shows you how to recognize the “connection compulsion,” what causes it, and how to break its hold on your life so that you can go on to build healthy, lasting, and pain-free relationships.

Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay: A Step-By-Step Guide to Helping You Decide Whether to Stay in or Get Out of Your Relationship

by Mira Kirshenbaum

Trying to make the agonizing decision whether to get out of a troubled, potentially life-wrecking relationship is the specific ambivalence this book addresses. The reader is offered a focused way to deal with one critical issue at a time rather than sort endlessly through the whole messy bundle of emotional pros and cons. Kirshenbaum's expertise allows her to pinpoint the pertinent questions. The Boston psychotherapist, who does relationship counseling, offers a series of them, amplified with guidelines: "Power people poison passion"; "If your partner can't even see what it is about him that makes you want to get out, it's time to get out"; "If it never was very good, it'll never be very good." And threaded through the book, which is written in a sympathetic, chatty, accessible style, are validating anecdotes that dramatize how other people have experienced and responded to the same problems the reader is going through.

For those struggling to decide if a relationship is worth trying to save, Kirshenbaum (clinical director, Chestnut Hill Inst.) knows the issues and explains them clearly, presenting 36 well-phrased and well-ordered diagnostic questions, giving examples, and then succinctly offering guidelines to follow. Those who give certain answers to the diagnostic questions will be faced not only with a realization of how deep the problems may be but also with Kirshenbaum's repeated admonitions that "most people who answered the question the way you did were happy they left and unhappy they stayed." Her emphatic prescriptions for such nuanced problems, as well as her promise that "new hope is now entirely realistic for you" and assurance that "there are definite answers for you here," should make most readers wary. But Kirshenbaum does caution that "nothing in the book overrules what a good therapist...might tell you," and she will help readers sort out ambivalent feelings about relationships.