Most men have fantasized that a particular women could make them feel whole if only she’d go to bed with them. <\/p>\n
This desire to rescue or be rescued is a symptom of love addiction. It comes from the desire to lose oneself in a process or substance because your life doesn’t work and reality sucks.<\/p>\n
When I listen to the following song, I remember a few days spent on the couch at Pacific Union College in February of 1986 and one exciting date that week with an accomplished co-ed that every guy at Monterey Bay Academy wanted to marry, and then after my five days in paradise, I drove home to lonely Newcastle and started the Spring semester at Sierra Community College where my life descended into months of mononucleosis hell, a sneak preview of what was coming for me down the pike. <\/p>\n
Living in Seventh-Day Adventist communities growing up, I knew many good people (Seventh-Day Adventists tend to be nurturing) and when I was around them, I felt whole (as opposed to when I was alone, then I felt lousy unless I was drunk with fantasies). I wanted to be adopted into these happy healthy families. <\/p>\n
That urge to be adopted, that urge to rescue and be rescued, has never left me, but its severity waxes and wanes. The more I’m moving in the direction of a good life, the more busy I am, the less I feel this urge. The more despair I feel, the greater my need to escape.<\/p>\n
I think we all know people who make us feel whole. That yearning is so intense, we usually bollix up the very relationship we imagine can heal us. When others fail to live up to our projections, we blame them or we blame ourselves or we blame God. <\/p>\n
The opposite of addiction is connection. <\/p>\n
Eleventh Step Prayer<\/a> Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek Most men have fantasized that a particular women could make them feel whole if only she’d go to bed with them. This desire to rescue or be rescued is a symptom of love addiction. It comes from the desire to … Continue reading
\n(often attributed to St. Francis, actually from the early 1900s)<\/p>\n
\nWhere there is hatred, let me sow love;
\nWhere there is injury, pardon;
\nWhere there is doubt, faith;
\nWhere there is despair, hope;
\nWhere there is darkness, light;
\nWhere there is sadness, joy.<\/p>\n
\nTo be consoled as to console,
\nTo be understood as to understand,
\nTo be loved as to love;
\nFor it is in giving that we receive;
\nIt is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
\nIt is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"