Break Free of Love Addiction

​Christian Counseling for Love Addiction & Relationship Dependency Love Addiction is a painful and confusing pattern where a person becomes emotionally dependent on romantic attachment for identity, worth, and emotional stability. What feels like love is often driven by fear of abandonment, loss of emotional connection, and unresolved childhood wounds.

This page is written by George Hartwell, M.S., a Registered Psychotherapist with the Ontario College of Registered Psychotherapists (CRPO #006700) and a Christian counselor with over 40 years of practical experience helping individuals overcome relationship addiction and build secure, healthy bonds.

​ 📞 BOOK YOUR SESSION NOW: (416) 939-0544

What Is Love Addiction?
Love addiction is not about loving too much.
It is about needing love to feel whole.
Common signs include:
  • Intense fear of being alone
  • Obsessive focus on a partner or potential partner
  • Staying in unhealthy or emotionally unavailable relationships
  • Anxiety, depression, or emptiness when not attached
  • Confusing intensity, longing, or drama with intimacy
Many people experiencing love addiction describe a loss of emotional connection with themselves, even while desperately trying to connect with another.


There can be many reasons for the love addiction pattern. A simple one is that your life from childhood has been in the People-Pleasing pattern. People pleasing in itself can be seen as a form of love addiction, in which one gives up one's right to be oneself in order to earn recognition and affirmation.

This means that Love Addiction may be almost welded into your personality pattern (persona or schema). It is not just a habit it is a part of who you are. It is not a decision so much as a behaviour rooted in your unconscious. 

Other aspects of Love addiction may include:
  1. Difficulty spending time alone,
  2. Frequently starting relationships with emotionally unavailable people,
  3. Feelings of desperation when not in a relationship,
  4. Difficulty leaving bad relationships,
  5. Returning to abusive or emotionally unavailable partners.

​What Is Love Addiction?
Love addiction is not about loving too much.
It is about needing love to feel whole.
Common signs include:
  • Intense fear of being alone
  • Obsessive focus on a partner or potential partner
  • Staying in unhealthy or emotionally unavailable relationships
  • Anxiety, depression, or emptiness when not attached
  • Confusing intensity, longing, or drama with intimacy
Many people experiencing love addiction describe a loss of emotional connection with themselves, even while desperately trying to connect with another.



Love Addiction as a Dysfunctional Personality Pattern.
In my clinical work, love addiction is best understood as a dysfunctional personality pattern—one of the internal “dragons on your path” that once served a survival function but now obstructs healthy love.
This pattern often overlaps with:
  • Codependency
  • People-pleasing
  • Emotional abandonment wounds
  • Anxious or avoidant attachment dynamics
Rather than being a character flaw, love addiction reflects early emotional learning where safety, worth, or identity became tied to attachment.

Love Addiction, Codependency, and People Pleasing.

Love addiction rarely exists in isolation.
Many clients struggling with love addiction also identify with:
  • Codependency — losing self in focus on the needs of others.
  • People-pleasing — losing self by focusing on the expectations of others.  

These patterns reinforce each other:
  • Fear of abandonment fuels people-pleasing
  • People-pleasing deepens emotional dependency
  • Dependency intensifies anxiety and relational instability
👉 (See also: Codependency and Christian Marriage Counselling)

Root Causes: Why Love Addiction Develops.

Love addiction is usually rooted in unhealed emotional experiences, such as:
  • Inconsistent or unavailable caregiving
  • Early emotional neglect or abandonment
  • Trauma around loss, rejection, or conditional love
  • Family systems where love had to be earned

These experiences from core beliefs like:
  • “I am not enough on my own”
  • “I need someone to feel safe”
  • “Love must be intense to be real”
Until these beliefs are healed, the cycle repeats—often with different partners.



Christian Counselling for Love Addiction.

Overcoming relationship addiction requires more than insight or willpower.
It requires healing the emotional brain where these beliefs were formed.

Therapeutic Approaches I Use
  • EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
    Using bilateral stimulation to heal significant memories and relational trauma
  • Listening Prayer Therapy
    A faith-based approach to inner healing, identity restoration, and freedom from emotional strongholds
  • Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
    Including Journey Work, to move from alienation to communication and secure attachment
These approaches are grounded in memory reconsolidation research, which explains why deep emotional change—not surface behavior change—creates lasting freedom.

George Hartwell is a qualified, effective and experienced individual psychotherapist who will work toward long-term change of your love-addiction and people-pleasing pattern.

This involves:
  1. Always gaining fuller awareness of one's life pattern,
  2. Using EMDR to transform the foundational issues and core beliefs,
  3. Exercises to consolidate one's identity. 

From Relationship Addiction to Secure Love.
When love addiction heals at the root, clients often experience:
  • Reduced anxiety and emotional desperation
  • A stronger, more stable sense of self
  • Healthier relationship boundaries
  • Attraction to emotionally available partners
  • A more positive self-image grounded in truth rather than attachment
Love becomes a choice, not a compulsion.

The Cost of Ignoring Love Addiction.

When left unaddressed, love addiction often leads to:
  • Repeated unhealthy relationships
  • Emotional burnout and depression
  • Increased vulnerability to manipulation or abuse
  • Spiritual confusion and shame
  • Difficulty sustaining healthy marriage or intimacy
  • Healing early saves years of pain.

About the Therapist
This work is provided by George Hartwell, M.S., a Registered Psychotherapist and Christian counselor.
  • Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology, Department of Educational Psychology, University of Calgary
  • 40+ years of clinical experience
  • Specialized expertise in personality patterns, love addiction, and relationship trauma
  • Faith-integrated therapy grounded in professional clinical standards
👉 (Learn more on the About Me page)

​Online Christian Counselling for Love Addiction. All sessions are online only, ensuring privacy and accessibility. Contact is by Zoom, phone or Facetime.
Serving:
  • Toronto
  • Mississauga
  • Oakville, Ontario
  • Across Canada and the USA



Book Your Session Now.
​If you are ready to break free from relationship addiction and build healthy love:
BOOK YOUR SESSION NOW📞 (416) 939-0544