Is love addiction real – and what does it look like?

Originally published in The Guardian

Elizabeth Gilbert was using people like drugs: a point she emphasizes throughout her memoir All the Way to the River, released in September.

In the book, Gilbert describes falling in love with her friend Rayya Elias. Elias’s terminal cancer diagnosis compelled Gilbert to reveal her feelings, despite being married at the time. She admits to enabling Elias, a self-described “ex-junkie”, to access hard drugs and alcohol during her final months as a warped act of care.

“I needed Rayya at a level that was far beyond healthy,” Gilbert writes of wanting to demonstrate her commitment with extreme acts.

Confronted by her compulsion to seek meaning through the highs of romantic intensity, Gilbert eventually diagnoses herself as a “sex and love addict”, exploring the label via self-reflection and 12-step recovery communities such as Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA).

Love and sex addiction can overlap and are often discussed together, but Gilbert focuses less on her sex life than on the extreme ways she pursues love, acceptance, validation and approval, abbreviated in recovery communities as “Lava.” Some of these recovery communities, such as Love Addicts Anonymous (LAA), engage primarily with love addiction as its own unique form of unhealthy obsession.

Love, intimacy and acceptance are universal needs, and western society venerates romance, lionizing extreme behaviors in its pursuit. So one may wonder: at what point does love become dysfunctional?

What does love addiction look like, and what can be done about it?

This story originally appeared in The Guardian, December 2025. To read the full story, click here.