Lesbian Love Addiction

Understanding the Urge to Merge and How to Heal When Things go Wrong

By (author) Lauren D. Costine

Publication date:

05 November 2015

Length of book:

186 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442248083

Everyone makes mistakes in relationships at one time or another. Sometimes they learn from those mistakes. Other times, they return to those behaviors and cycle through failed relationship after failed relationship. Sometimes those behaviors become an addiction to love that may leave a person feeling unhappy, unfulfilled, lonely, or worse. Lesbian Love Addiction: Understanding the Urge to Merge and How to Heal When Things go Wrong makes visible the elements of love addiction that many lesbians suffer from.

Love addiction for lesbians comes in many forms. Some struggle by sexually acting out and others are serial relationship junkies, jumping from one relationship into the next. Some are addicted to the high of falling in love and once that wears off don’t know how to handle the day-to-day realities of a committed relationship. Some are even addicted to fantasy and intrigue, while others are love avoidants and sexual anorexics. Love avoidants may be able to get into a relationship but once they are fully committed, struggle with feeling smothered. Others may avoid intimate or sexual relationships all together, becoming sexually anorexic. Some may even vacillate between all of these. The underlying component and common denominator in all of these scenarios is the “Urge to Merge.”

Lesbian Love Addiction is designed to help ameliorate at least part of this problem. Lauren D. Costine offers insight for lesbians, bisexual women in relationships with women, queer women, and more specifically, any woman who loves women, as well as their family and friends, and health care professionals, into the psychology of lesbian love addiction. It will give those who struggle with and suffer from love addiction ways to understand, cope, and heal from this debilitating addiction. It will give those who work with this population new tools to use to do this more effectively. Mostly, it will help lesbians understand their relationship failures and how to heal from problems associated with them, so they may grow and cultivate happier, more fulfilling connections in the future.
Dr. Costine created a thought-provoking platform and . . . her greatest talent is in connecting the dots. Theology, history, physiology, psychology and sociology intermingle to a specific end. She takes truths, re-examines and perhaps, repurposes those truths to create an interesting hypothesis. Lesbian Love Addiction shines a light on a particular manifestation of humanity and in better understanding that perspective; we're all positioned to better understand ourselves. Clearly, whether it's ancient Vikings, pre-Christian patriarchs, contemporary talk show hosts fretting about femi-nazis or presidential contenders wallowing in sexist slurs, the modern feminist has an ancient torch to bear. Dr. Costine is a gifted speaker, writer and philosopher and her work will continue to generate both heat and light.