MTU Library Catalogue

Syndetics cover image
Image from Syndetics

Is it love or is it addiction? / Brenda Schaeffer.

By: Schaeffer, Brenda.
Material type: materialTypeLabelBookPublisher: Center City, Minn. : Hazelden, c1997Edition: 2nd ed.Description: xvi, 195 p. ; 22 cm.ISBN: 1568381409; 9781568381404.Subject(s): Relationship addiction | Love | Psychology | Sex & sexuality: advice & issues | Family & relationships: advice & issuesDDC classification: 158.2 SCH Summary: Brenda Schaeffer believes that for many people love is a highly complex and potentially baffling thing. She reveals how intimacy with another can be achieved and differentiates between a range of emotions and ideas that clearly are not 'love'.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Status Date due Barcode
General lending MTU Kerry North Campus Library Ground Floor Main 158.2 SCH (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Checked out 13/12/2021 38888000910152
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This groundbreaking book, with more than 150,000 copies sold, is back by popular demand. Updated with new data and examples, Is It Love or Is It Addiction? helps the reader distinguish between healthy love and destructive relationships. Brenda Schaeffer provides a seven-step plan for breaking free from dysfunctional, co-dependent patterns.

Previous ed.: 1987.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-186) and index.

Brenda Schaeffer believes that for many people love is a highly complex and potentially baffling thing. She reveals how intimacy with another can be achieved and differentiates between a range of emotions and ideas that clearly are not 'love'.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Preface It has been ten years since the first publication of Is It Love or Is It Addiction?. Its phenomenal success was a gift in many ways. It provided me with the opportunity to speak to an international audience. It allowed me to hear relationship stories from many people of diverse cultural backgrounds. Mostly, it confirmed that what I had written about is a universal theme. People everywhere are struggling to have more meaningful relationships. I have met men struggling to change those cultural habits that shame them for being vulnerable, or tell them it is healthy and macho to act in sexually addictive ways. I have met women struggling to call attention to our cultural endorsement of unhealthy dependencies and romantic illusions. Everywhere, I have met women and men confused about what is healthy, mature, interdependent love and what is compulsive, dependent, addictive, immature love. I have been reminded how many people hold back their love because of being wounded by a parent, friend, partner, society, or cultural group. People both desperately want and yet fear intimate relationships. The result is loneliness, isolation, pain, violence, and more betrayal.So, is it love, or is it addiction? The answer is that it is probably a little of both. In that regard, this book is for anyone wanting to improve important love relationships, whether they are with children, parents, friends, peers, siblings, partners, or lovers. In my frame of reference, love addiction is an inclusive term in that it includes men and women, both heterosexual and homosexual, who have been referred to as "addicts" and "co-addicts," "codependents," and "love avoidant." It is for the single and the coupled. Love addiction may or may not include a romantic high or sexual addiction.Sometimes love feels good and sometimes it feels bad. Often a person does not understand why. In spite of the proliferation of self-help books on the subject, love relationships remain a profound mystery. Why do we have certain attractions? Why do we continue to want relationships even after a devastating loss? What is it about a relationship that is so powerful that we fear commitment? Am I staying in a relationship for the right or wrong reason? Why is transforming our love life so important? Am I in love or in addiction? These questions are universal and deserve answers.As a psychotherapist, I'm asked to help others ease their emotional pain. I'm reminded over and over again how basic is the need for love. In spite of the bereavement we feel when a loved one dies or a relationship ends, we seem determined to keep loving. Why? Is it because we are compelled to fill some mysterious inner need? Are we using it to avoid the bombardment of stress that contemporary life produces? Are we responding to a deeper need to connect soul-to-soul? Or is it because we believe at some level that true, deep love is the only constant we can count on in this somewhat perilous life?The problems in love re Excerpted from Is It Love or Is It Addiction? by Brenda Schaeffer All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.