by Susan Peabody

Created on: January 26, 2009

CHRISTIAN IDEALS AND LOVE ADDICTION

Recovering love addicts who believe strongly in Christian ideals are often confused. They want to know if recovery means disowning such Christian concepts as sacrifice, unselfishness, dying to self, loving thy neighbor, putting yourself last, laying down your life, and staying married "as long as you both shall live." They also find that some Christian ideals are hard to understand. At first glance, they seem contradictory, confusing, or inconsistent with the concepts of recovery from addiction to love. Because of this, some recovering love addicts are tempted to abandon Christianity altogether. However, it doesn't have to be this way. Christian love addicts just need to be willing to sort the wheat from the chaff to look more deeply into the meaning of Christian ideals and to make personal decisions about how to integrate them into their intimate relationships.

One of the most common mistakes love addicts make is to confuse Christian love with romantic love. Christian love, what Kierkegaard calls "eternal" love, is the love of God, ourselves, and our neighbor. This love operates under its own principles or laws. It is of God. It is unconditional. It is forever. It causes no pain, but can only fulfill us. When given away it comes back to us, somewhere along the way. Romantic love operates from a different set of laws or principles. It is object-oriented or based on "passionate preference" (attraction). It promises "forever" but rarely delivers. It can be euphoric, but it can also turn to hate; and for all the pleasure it brings, it also fosters suspicion, jealousy, despair and anxiety.

When love addicts do not understand the difference between these two forms of love, they often try to use spiritual love to promote romantic love. For instance, St. Francis of Assisi said that "it is in giving that we receive." This implies that if we give love we will receive love in return. This is true. The Christian love we give away does come back to us, not necessarily from the people we give it to or at the exact time we want it to be returned, but eventually it does come back to us through other people we meet along the path of life and from God. However, this spiritual principle of giving love to receive love does not work with romantic love. When love addicts don't understand this, they fall in love with someone who does not return their affection and suffer for a long period of time hoping that the spiritual principle of giving love

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