The Marriage Junkie

After Rihanna and Alanis Morissette and Amber Smith and Rachel Uchitel, we've all heard about love addiction—people who feel they can only be happy when they are deep in an all-consuming love. There are a handful of books about it (including Facing Love Addiction by Pia Melody, Women Who Love too Much by Robin Norwood, Love Addict by Ethlie Ann Vare, and others), and many rehab and recovery centers are now advertising that they help clients with love addictions. But no one has approached the subject of its equally damaging cousin—marriage and relationship addiction. Marriage addicts are so in love with love that they continually move from one relationship to another, always on the rebound, never giving themselves time to heal and learn how to be independent. They marry again and again, just to avoid feeling lonely—or worse, to avoid feeling "abnormal." The Marriage Junkie will address all of these issues, looking at early childhood trauma and how that affects our subsequent choices in partners, and how we approach love and marriage. It will discuss the lessons we learn from our upbringing and social and cultural background—lessons that sometimes teach us what healthy relationships look like, but sometimes teach us something else: that we don't deserve any better; that a typical relationship looks turbulent and difficult; that if we ask for better for ourselves, people won't like us or want to be with us.

"This is an important book. Sherry Gaba clearly identifies a common pattern in relationships and shows the negative results on relationships of self-abandonment.

Margaret Paul, PhD

Co-Creator of Inner Bonding"