In both my personal work and my work with others, I have discovered something really interesting about why people who are codependent or coming out of relationships with narcissists tend to be obsessive or hyper-focused on the person they are attempting to break away from.

Although obsessive thinking can be a symptom of both codependency and PTSD, there is more going on beneath the surface.

When we are babies or young children, we need the love, attention and adoration of our parents; especially the Mother. If that Mother is unavailable for any reason, and can’t provide the necessary attention, we find ourselves longing for that attention. We may cry, wanting to be picked up, or feel a sense of devastation when we are not getting our needs met.

Remember babies cannot survive if they do not get their basic needs met from another person. They are fully dependent and so it is a built-in mechanism that they cry or wail to get the attention of someone.

If a parent doesn’t respond to us right away, we may go into fear and longing. We long for the attentions of that parent and when we finally get that parents attention there is a sense of relief. But there is also anxiety that comes from not knowing that our needs are going to be met. We develop an anxious attachment to that parent.

That anxious attachment goes with us into our adulthood and our adult relationships. We may feel uneasy, anxious or uncomfortable if we don’t feel our significant other is available to us in the way we need them to be. When that person is consistently unavailable either emotionally or physically we may find ourselves longing for them, in the same way we longed for the unavailable parent when we were young.

That feeling of longing has us craving for that love, that attention, that need to be filled. And when we are longing for “the other” our attention and focus is on “the other.” We are looking to them to meet our needs; especially for love.

This feeling of “longing” is often interpreted as love.

We often look at love as a feeling; especially the feeling of being “in love.” When we look at love as a feeling rather than an action, we can miss a lot. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard horror stories of how a person was treated by their significant other and they follow up that story with “but I really love him,” or her. We can develop a really complex relationship with love itself, not fully understanding what love is.

Even when it comes to self-love, I encourage people to look at self-love as a series of actions rather than as a feeling. We may not have a warm, fuzzy feeling about ourselves, but we could take positive action in our own behalf. We could be loving towards ourselves.

Sure we do feel love in our heart and the love that we feel can be extended to anyone, including our abusers, but if we are unwilling to let go of our abusers because of some false idea of love, we are sorely lacking in self-love. In a sense we are saying that the one who is abusing me is more worthy and deserving of my love than I am. We are also saying, on some level, that we are simply unworthy of the love and respect of our partner. How can this be true?

The feelings we have that are pulling us back into relationship with someone who clearly is not showing us love, kindness, respect or empathy, is not likely love. It is more likely our craving to be loved and cared for by someone who simply is not capable. We are longing for “the good stuff” from someone who can only ever keep us in a state of longing.

There is a stage in most relationships with narcissists that we call love bombing. This is the beginning stages of a relationship where one is showered with attention, affection, admiration, gifts, and often royal treatment. For someone who is at a love deficit, love bombing can feel really amazing. It is a huge hook!

When we are hungry for positive attention; when we are lonely; when our self esteem is low and our ability to truly love ourselves is lacking, we can easily fall prey to love bombing from someone who gives all their attention up front in a relationship and then withdraws it once you are hooked.

We use the word “hooked,” when someone is addicted to a drug. It is like this! We become addicted to the goods that we received in the early stages of the relationship and can spend the rest of our relationship pining away for the attention, affection, adoration and positive regard.

If that relationship begins to go bad, after the love bombing stage, we may go into denial, refusing to accept that the person we have fallen in love with isn’t who we believed him or her to be. It is almost as if we were given this really beautiful gift that is packaged in a very attractive box. We are so excited to be presented with this beautiful package and we slowly begin to unravel the ribbons and the bows, barely able to contain our excitement. When we finally get the wrapping paper off the box and open the box, there is within the box an ordinary rock. We feel that plummeting inside as if the wind has been taken out of our sails. The contents of the package were nothing compared to the initial presentation and the expectation we had that there was going to be something really wonderful inside.

Instead of seeing the rock for what it is; just a plain, ordinary stone, we focus more on the thoughtfulness and care that went into the packaging and overlook the contents. This is the beginning of our denial. The expectation that you were going to finally get all the love you have been dreaming of was so high, that when you begin to get glimpses into the true content of that relationship, you simply refused to accept it. You begin longing for the inside to match the outside. You wait for the rock to become the amazing gift you believed you were going to receive. But it always remains, just a rock.
In relationships where our need for love and positive attention are not met, instead of walking away and finding someone who is capable of meeting those basic needs, we stay attached, usually in an anxious way, to the one who is not emotionally available for a relationship.

Let’s say you do meet someone who is available emotionally and physically for a relationship and has the same desire you do, for a healthy, happy relationship. You may find that you are not attracted to that person, or that you can’t sustain the attraction. You may quickly put that person into the “friend zone.” He is she may be a really kind, loving, generous and caring person, but you just aren’t feeling it.

What is really missing? You may say there is simply no chemistry. You may feel smothered. You may feel that person is pursuing you but you aren’t very responsive yourself. In fact, you may even recognize that now you are the one who is emotionally unavailable for the relationship. You may find yourself distancing and only half heartedly participating in the relationship, until you either break up with that person or that person ends it.

You may find yourself saying “I wish I could find someone who had the kindness and emotional availability of this person, but the intense chemistry you had with that other person, who was not very kind, caring or loving. What is wrong with this picture?

Well what is wrong with this picture is that when you have what you say you want, you don’t want it. And when you don’t have what you want, you long for it or try to change that person to be what you want.

So, lets talk about that intense chemistry. This is a really important piece. Most of us love that chemistry. We want it! We crave it! Without this kind of chemistry the relationship connection may feel boring. It may lack the passion and intensity that causes you to feel attracted to that person. If that chemistry isn’t there, or doesn’t develop quickly enough, you may discard that relationship prospect in favor of one who you feel much more chemistry with.

The problem is, that the chemistry we are talking about here, is most often created from a meeting of the internal, invisible core wounds. We unconsciously recognize that person, we have intense chemistry with, as having the same or similar core wounding. We don’t recognize this externally. We might just see that beautiful package. But the more we unwrap the package, the more the wounds begin to reveal themselves. His wounds trigger her wounds and pretty soon you find yourself in a dance of wounded souls.

I’ve talked before how when we come from dysfunctional families where there is neglect, abuse, alcoholism, narcissism or anything less than loving and nurturing, we tend to polarize towards disorders of narcissism or codependency. And then we are attracted to the polar opposite. Both ends of the spectrum are wounded and didn’t get their needs met on a consistent basis, if at all.

The chemistry we seek often comes from the promise we may have that our needs for love will finally be met. Yet we are drawn to romantic partners who also come from a love deficit, usually on the polar opposite side of the spectrum. So the narcissist might be attracted to the codependent, and the codependent attracted to the narcissist. The codependent will end up trying to get the narcissist to be more loving, and the narcissist will either display as needy and dependent or avoidant, extracting narcissistic supplies from the codependent in the form of caretaking, or attempting to extract the attention, intimacy and love she needs.

This dynamic has the potential to sustain itself for a time, as long as the Codependent stays in a state of longing and denies her own needs and the narcissist continues to get his narcissistic supply from the codependent. But if the Codependent begins to heal and focus more on herself and her own needs, the relationship will likely be thrown into chaos. The relationship can only work when the Codependent, in her true nature, focuses her attention on the narcissist, and the narcissist, in his true nature, feeds off that attention, and getting his needs met, but doesn’t give anything back.

There is a myth that the healthier the relationship the longer it can last. This is simply not true. A very unhealthy, toxic relationship can last a lifetime, because both parties remain in a toxic dance. Neither partner will be truly happy or satisfied in that relationship but they will still stay in it.

Some people will remain in a toxic relationship dance for forty years and still be waiting for the other to change or try to recapture the first six months of a relationship. This is truly sad, because the partner who is waiting will never get what he or she wants in that relationship, and yet they can never give up on that relationship.

This sense of longing remains as the relationship partner continues to pine away for her unmet needs to be met in that relationship. She may say that she loves that partner, but still she remains very unhappy in her relationship because that partner never changes into someone who can meet her needs for love, attention, affection, financial stability or whatever she is waiting for.

If a partner within an unhealthy relationship decides to leave, it can feel unbearable.  This is because the toxic dynamic filled an empty space and may have distracted that person from feelings of emptiness, loneliness and emotional pain that may begin to rise up once the distraction of that relationship is gone.

We can remain comfortably “numb” in a relationship for a long time. We may tell ourselves it is better to be in this relationship, than no relationship at all. We may fear the loneliness that is likely to rise up once we leave. We may fear what other people might think of us if our relationship fails. We may even feel we are somehow betraying our vows to each other or to God.

There are many reasons we stay in toxic relationship dynamics. If you have young children, you might sacrifice your own needs for the needs of the children, adding ten, fifteen or more years to a relationship that has already failed to be loving or nurturing.

Relationship partners will often insist that the other partner get therapy, or that they both go into couple’s therapy, in order to try and right the wrongs of the relationship. If a partner is high on the narcissism spectrum or is an addict of some sort, they will be very resistant to therapy. They may either refuse to go to therapy or their resistance to change will cause them to be unresponsive to therapy.

Therapy really only works for people who have a strong inner desire to change their own patterns so that they will have a more effective relationship with themselves and others. People who are drug into therapy will usually be resistant to it.

When two people genuinely love each other and genuinely want to work out the issues that are keeping them from having a deeply loving, nurturing relationship, and both are willing to accept responsibility for their part in the problem, therapy can be effective. But we don’t often see this in truly toxic relationship dynamics.

Some people coming out of a relationship with a narcissist will seek therapy to heal, but focus entirely on the narcissist. This will typically be a codependent personality. In order for that codependent personality to heal, he or she must be willing to see her part in the toxic relationship dynamic. It might be her own confusion about what love is. It might be her own tendency to sacrifice her needs to focus on the needs of the other. It might be her tendency to people please or be a doormat. It might be her inability to draw boundaries in her relationship. Until she can take responsibility for her own issues in the relationship, she won’t find much healing.

The codependent may come into therapy focused on how the narcissist was cruel and abusive to her and didn’t really love her at all. She may focus on how much she loves him and wants him to see the error of his ways, make the necessary changes and come back to her transformed and ready to be the loving partner she always wished he could be. She may not want to really look at her own low self- worth that unconsciously leaves her feeling she doesn’t deserve love. She doesn’t deserve to be treated kindly or lovingly. It may be difficult to look at the reality that she attracted into her life exactly what she believed she deserved.

Now this doesn’t mean that when she heals and raises her level of self-love and self-worth up, that the narcissist in her life will magically start treating her better. Because the narcissist has his own issues that causes him to show up the way he does. But as the Codependent increases her levels of self-love, she won’t allow others to treat her unlovingly as she did when her levels of self-love were very low.

This is why I always say that self-love is the true key to healing from narcissistic abuse and narcissistic relationship patterns. We need to raise our level of self-worth up to a point where being treated poorly is no longer acceptable.

We usually don’t find ourselves longing for someone who hasn’t given us some positive attention over the course of the relationship. Narcissists, for example, may have a perfectly lovely side to them where they are capable of intermittent kindness and loving behavior. If this is the case, then you may get your needs for love and positive attention met some of the time, but not consistently.

This is the most challenging dynamic because most of the people I have worked with would never have stayed in a relationship where they never got any of the good stuff. They may have received crumbs of positive attention and that kept them believing there were more crumbs to come. And maybe soon they will get the whole cookie and not just the crumbs.

Intermittent reinforcement is something that causes our addictive behavior toward another person. When we get what we want some of the time but not consistently, it keeps us trying to get what we want or need from a well that only produces water once in a while.

Someone who is thirsty and doesn’t feel there is any other water source may continue to go to the same dry well over and over again, just in case it decides to produce water. When it does have water in it one day, the thirsty person drinks it in to contentment or until the water is gone and repeats the same behavior, although barely surviving due to lack of consistent water flow. In a case like this the thirsty person becomes addicted to checking the well for water, even when most of the time there is no water. There is an excitement and a high when the well does produce water and for that short moment in time, the thirsty individual gets his needs met and is re-hydrated. The feeling of satisfaction he has after the hydration keeps him believing in that well to sustain him, even though he may one day die of thirst before he sees another drop of water.

The intermittent reinforcement we receive in some of our unhealthy relationships, keeps us holding on to the possibility that we will get what we need in that relationship. This keeps us in a state of continual longing with only short periods of fulfillment.

When the relationship ends, we may become addicted to the very infrequent text messages or emails in the same way we were addicted to the rare periods of kindness. If we are attention starved and addicted to the attention of the abandoning relationship partner, even a brief text message can feed a need and keep us addicted. It might feel that some connection is better than no connection.

The term Love Addiction is often used to describe someone who becomes addicted to the attention of another person. It also describes the dynamic where one is constantly seeking a relationship in order to meet his or her needs for attention, affection and love, even if that relationship can’t provide these goods.

But love addiction can also be the longing we have for the love that is rarely available to us. So, we aren’t really addicted to love. We are addicted to trying to extract love from a place where there isn’t any. At least in any kind of consistent basis. It isn’t really love, it is longing!

When we finally find ourselves in a relationship where we consistently are getting our needs met for love, kindness, positive attention and affection, we won’t be hungry or thirsty anymore for these goods. If we have done our work and have developed enough self-love, we will be able to consistently offer love back to our partner and enjoy the mutually fulfilling relationship. However if we are addicted to the longing for love, we will likely sabotage a perfectly good, nurturing relationship in favor of someone who comes on fast and strong, sweeps us off our feet and then dumps us on our head.

I’ve worked with many different women who have left good, nurturing marriages in favor of a narcissistic man who offered the intensity, chemistry and excitement she wasn’t getting in her marriage. Although it was intense and sexually exciting in the beginning, it ended badly, leaving her feeling horrible about herself. She destroyed a good marriage and a stable family life for an addictive, destructive, unstable and fleeting relationship. In a case like this the woman often blamed her “boring” husband for the lack of excitement in her life instead of going deeper into her own self-understanding to see how she might spice up her own life.

She didn’t feel the longing in her marriage because her needs were being met. But when she felt the addictive, crazy, intense dynamic of that narcissistic relationship, she came to believe she was in love with that person. Not because he treated her with love, kindness and respect, but because he triggered her feelings of unworthiness to such a degree that she pined away for him, longing for him to make her feel worthy and loved. This comes from unhealed core wounds.

As you move forward on your own healing journey remember that it isn’t love, but the lack of love that makes us feel unworthy and creates that state of longing. The deeper you go into self-love and increase those feelings of self-worth, you change the dynamic in yourself which attracts unloving partners. As a result you become a match for someone who has the emotional capacity to truly offer you love and kindness on a consistent basis.