Patterns of Interaction Between Love Addicts and Love Avoidants

From the writings of Pia Melody on Love Avoidance and Love Addiction

The Cyclic Dance Between

Love Addicted and Love Avoidant Partners

Love Addicted Greatest fear is that of abandonment with an underlying fear of intimacy.	Love Avoidant Greatest fear is that of intimacy with an underlying fear of abandonment.
	1. Enters relationship out of duty, not love
1. Is responsive to the avoidant's seductiveness and enters the relationship.
	2. Enters behind wall of seduction (which actually impedes intimacy)
2. Denies partner's walls and importance of life outside the relationship.
3. Experiences an event that shatters the denial.	3. Becomes overwhelmed by the neediness of the partner and moves from the wall of seduction
4. Emotional withdrawal from fantasy Feelings: Pain anger fear rage shame panic suicide This is a psychological emergency of worthlessness	4. Escapes the relationship: In some way, creates distance from the partner Feelings: Avoided
5. Obsesses and medicates to get out of the feelings of the withdrawal from the relationship. Feelings: Self-destructive behavior	5. Creates intensity outside of primary relationship and can use addictions or thrill-seeking. Feelings: Anger and revenge
Either the fantasy is rejected and the relationship ended OR The Love Addict Resolves the conflict and the cycle is repeated. The relationship becomes a repeating of the cycle. Returns to the relationship out of FEAR of abandonment.	Either the relationship ends OR The Love Avoidant Becomes overwhelmed with GUILT for abandoning responsibilities (because self-worth is derived from rescuing and care-taking) and returns to the relationship.

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.

Explaining Triangulation (Part III of III): Relationships and Implications

Relationship Triangulation in Botkin Syndrome

The evangelists of the Stay-At-Home-Daughter (SAHD) model of family promote enmeshment with daughters, using their children to gratify adult psychological and emotional needs, and in some cases, physical and financial needs. Daughters are taught to defer to the father primarily but also to the wishes of all men, and it extends into teachings concerning relationships with brothers. All women are restricted to roles that define them as the helpers (“ezer” in Hebrew) as well as subordinate. This teaches both young women as well as young men alike that the fairer sex has one purpose only: tools to be used to meet the needs of men. It is not only just an issue of prescribed or limited roles for women, but their very essence defines them as lesser creatures: tools and objects for the purpose of service and meeting needs.

The subtle and psychological implications of this are profound. The boundaries between sexes become virtually non-existent. This is not to say that those who intend the paternalistic protection of their daughters out of love purpose these negative outcomes at all. I believe it is an oversight wherein the followers of this teaching become blinded so that they cannot anticipate these implications. As with all idolatry, the fruit and final product produced often ironically yields the very opposite of what was originally intended. 

 Consider Romans chapter 1 wherein idolatry of man (worship of the creature over the Creator) will actually produce gender ambiguity. There is quite a bit of this notable within the movement already, while preaching gender priority actually produces men with very effeminate characteristics and behaviors. The group has become so culturally irrelevant and detatched, they do not even recognize this growing evidence of the effete. Also, there appears to be a developing trend of estrangement between grown children with their patriarchal families, characterized in some patriarchal groups by rebellion, depression, self-punishment and suicide.

The book “So Much More” focuses upon the critical nature of the father and daughter relationship, teaching both spiritual and physical salvation for daughters through service to fathers. This might not be so troubling if there was an equal attention devoted to the relationships between daughters and mothers, but mothers are rarely referenced in this capacity within the subculture. Fathers have all the priority, and mothers seem to be pushed off to the side. Victoria "Vicky" Botkin, wife to Geoff Botkin, is rarely referenced, photographed or discussed in their literature. The mother and daughter relationship is rarely discussed if at all.  The priority within patriarchy falls upon sons only, and purity becomes paramount when it comes to women.

In regard to triangulation, what we see is an unhealthy relationship triangle where father and daughter are aligned, but husband and wife as well as daughter and mother are not.




Following the example presented in the writings of Dr. David Stoop, the implications for other relationships are quite notable, primarily the adult child’s relationship with a new spouse. (I can attest to this difficulty personally, as both my spouse and I had enmeshed relationships with our mothers.) Parental enmeshment destroys intimacy and relationships between husband and wife like nothing else. Within the synoptic Gospels, Jesus tells us that not only can a house divided not stand, but it is also impossible to serve two masters. If one attempts to serve two masters, Jesus said that one will love one master and hate the other. The “multi-generational faithfulness” concept as taught by the proponents of the SAHD model may work for the initial family, but it will undermine the relationship between the new husband and wife. 



The next implication of enmeshment involves what Pia Mellody identifies as an inevitable gender-related “Love Avoidant” pattern. According to her model that expands upon the triangulation model of family therapy, enmeshment (covert incest) produces a “Love Avoidance” toward all members of the sex of the parent with whom the adult child shares enmeshment. If these fathers so control and derive non-sexual need satisfaction from their daughters, the daughters will be love avoidant with other men. They will have intimacy difficulties with their husbands, compounded by the competition that is created with the father-daughter relationship that they carried with them into the marriage. In an attempt to stress appropriate gender relations as Biblical and “kingdom architecture” (as the Botkins define it), they are actually promoting a milieu that drives women away from men.



Revised 24Feb2019

Explaining Triangulation (Part II of III): The Father/Husband Patriarch as an Idol

Patriocentricity

Some religious homeschoolers follow “Biblical patriarchy.” but it is far from Biblical and does not actually reflect traditional patriarchal systems but rather a type of male hegemony. (Power must not only be established, it must be willingly yielded by subordinates without protest or constraint. It is not enough to follow and submit to the pattern in obedience to the law, but it demands a surrender if not destruction of any opposing will. “They say it cannot be taken; it must be given,” says the Merovingian character in the third film of the “Matrix” trilogy.)


From Wise Geek’s definition of hegemony:

Hegemony dates to the Greek verb hegeisthai which translates to “to lead.” Early leaders who were able to exert a great deal of control and influence over a group of people might be referred to as hegemons. A hegemon had to have a great deal of support from at least one dominating class, in order to keep the people of the state from rebelling against the leadership.

From Wikipedia on hegemony:

The processes by which a dominant culture maintains its dominant position: for example, the use of institutions to formalize power; the employment of a bureaucracy to make power seem abstract (and, therefore, not attached to any one individual); the inculcation of the populace in the ideals of the hegomonic group through education, advertising, publication, etc.; the mobilization of a police force as well as military personnel to subdue opposition.


Within the Stay-At-Home-Daughter model associated with Christian homeschooling, all family members revolve around and serve the needs and vision of the patriarchal husband/father. The model encourages sons to “cast visions” and have callings of their own, so long as they are approved by the patriarch. Daughters may follow pursuits that are both circumscribed by the patriarchal father but also the “sphere of the home.” In other words, women must not be permitted any activity in the public square, the sole domain of men. Marriage is deemed the only “normative” role, so any premarital pursuits must be directed only towards that which will prepare the daughter for marriage and motherhood.



















Even so, these pursuits must be approved by the father and must directly and indirectly serve and benefit the overall “family vision” as declared by the father. Home based businesses are strongly promoted, though they must be deemed appropriately feminine in nature as circumscribed by the concept of the so-called “Biblical patriarchy.” Daughters are permitted, however, to serve the visions of their brothers who are encouraged to have their own, independent pursuits that are not necessarily permanently directed at the family unit. A distorted interpretation of Numbers 30 serves as the only Scriptural basis for this belief.

This is idolatry, and it is not even an optional choice of children but is a required element of “multi-generational faithfulness.” This adds to the concept that the family patriarch serves to purify and sanctify all those women assigned to him. Add to this the teachings that all daughters are to be “helpmeets” to their fathers until they are given in marriage to the spouse of their father’s choice. The ideology teaches that girls should refrain from all emotional interest and attachments to potential mates, directing those only towards family members, until their father presents a suitable mate to them. Presumably, the daughter has the option to decline a particular spouse, but based upon a concept of bounded choice, this option is only an illusion. What viable choice does the daughter have to decline? Is she not required to submit to her patriarch’s will in all matters? She cannot flee the home because she has been taught that to do so is apostasy and will render her completely deserving of God’s wrath and Satan’s pleasure. Leaving the home deems her anathema. That is not choice but is bounded choice. The idolatry of the father and then the husband after marriage is non-optional.

Explaining Triangulation (Part I of III): Objectification

Having reviewed the basics of triangulation, I would like to explain my concerns about the Botkin model for raising families. The model views deems males more powerful and capable in respect to both essence and capability, physically and spiritually. In addition, all family members, boys until they are deemed adult men and all women and girls throughout their whole lives, must serve their male “federal head.” (Many Reformed ministers I know attest that the SAHD movement's interpretation misrepresents and grossly misinterprets "federal headship".) In addition, women and girls are required to defer to males in general as well, whether they are their brothers or even their 13 year old sons. Many believe that two factors combine to create a very dysfunctional environment for women, particularly daughters, as is promoted in the teachings of the “Visionary Daughters.” Women, particularly young women and girls are used as objects to gratify needs, particularly by fathers but also by all males in general.


Objectification of children and all females

Whether they formally profess agreement with the ontological subordination of females as the “derivative” or “indirect” image of God in comparison with males (the direct image of God) matters little. Coming right out to admit this would be interpreted as a red flag to people, so they say anything but that direct statement, using unstated assumption and intentional vagueness for the purpose of denying culpability. They use these logical fallacies and propaganda techniques to convey their message subtly and deceive their intended audience. They will not come out and directly state “Woman is made in man’s image” because those specific words would be inflammatory to most Christians, though I believe that everything else that they teach is completely consistent with this premise. It is subtle and crafty.

The consequences of this assumption objectifies women, or that which treats all females as objects to be used like a tools. It is far easier to blame a lesser creature for one’s problems, just as it is quite easy to “kick the dog” after a hard day of frustration. Original sin, seeking to be like God (not woman seeking to be like man as some teach), was followed fast with blame by Adam. In Genesis 3:11-12, when God asks Adam why he disobeyed God’s command to refrain from eating of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam explains that he did so because the woman that God gave him gave him the fruit to eat, so Adam ate. Many interpret this as a very unmanly attempt to reduce his own culpability or “pass the buck” to both God first and then to Eve. The Botkin model does not follow the “flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone” concept that Adam states himself in Genesis 2:23, but more closely approximates the Genesis 3:12 concept that woman is at fault for his own shortcomings and choices.


Under such conditions, it is quite easy to “scapegoat” all women, laying blame upon her for all the ills of mankind. Many notable Bible teachers affiliated with CBMW teach that sin actually entered mankind through woman, but as a technicality, God made Adam responsible because of either or both “federal headship” and “progeniture.” I believe that this interpretation can only be “read into” the text (eisegesis) because of the presuppositions that define all females as lesser creatures. This is also a “Fallacy of the Simple Cause” or "Single Cause" that explains relationships in oversimplified terms, explaining relationships with faulty causalities. Scapegoating is then a consequence of this oversimplification: A single cause or element is identified and vilified as the source of all undesirable circumstances or outcomes. The scapegoat distracts the audience from other possible contributing factors. These teachings are well noted in “So Much More” and “Return of the Daughters” wherein women are attributed the driving desire to usurp man’s authority (and not to be like God as the Genesis account teaches). In redefining women in this way, I believe that the enmity that God placed between the serpent and the woman has been improperly reassigned between man and woman. (Wives are redefined as a husband’s adversary and not as his helpmeet.)

Roles That Enmeshed and Abandoned Children Play within Families

From the writings of Pia Mellody on Facing Love Addiction and Love Avoidance (The dynamics of non-sexual covert/emotional incest)

Note: A child can fill both positive and negative roles.

Roles Assigned to Child With Enmeshing Abuse

"Positive Roles":

• Hero or heroine (good child)
  
• Counselor
• Surrogate partners
• Surrogate parent
• Mediator
• Mascot (comedian role)
• Daddy's Little Girl (a ROLE, not a name said in passing)
• Daddy's Little Man
• Mommy's Little Girl
• Mommy's Little Man

In Enmeshment,

In a relationship, this person will be “very good at being good.” Because he/she is so adaptable as a child, when they become an adult, they will seek intensity in order to feel alive and do it in a “positive” but COVERT manner.

They derive both shame and a false sense of empowerment from these roles which imparts a sense of value. They objectify those whom they care for by devaluing their partner while also elevating self.

“Negative Roles”

• Scapegoat (problem child)
• Rebel
  

In a relationship, this person will be “very good at being bad.” This adult will seek intensity in order to feel alive in a “negative” OVERT manner.

Roles Assigned To Child With Abandoning/Neglecting Abuse

“Negative Role”

Lost Child:

In a relationship, this person will act in a dependent, needy manner and try to create intensity inside the relationship itself as he/she perceives that it is the relationship that keeps him/her alive.

Irrelevant Child:

Deeper level of the lost child.

Xenophobia for BOTH SUBTYPES:

• Fear in general.
• Fear of strangers.
• It is a biological imperative and sometimes is necessary for survival, and we then tend to be relational with what is familiar.
• For the person who has been neglected or abandoned, he/she will try to be relational with people who create distance in relationships through the use of walls. (They will naturally be attracted, ironically, to those who are emotionally unavailable to them.)
• For the person who has been enmeshed, he/she will feel compelled to be relational with people who are needy and who believe that they are worthless.
  

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.

Types of Trauma Children Suffer in Dysfunctional Families

From the teachings of Pia Mellody

Trauma Descriptions

Enmeshment Trauma

1. Physical: (Use of implement s, face slapping, hair pulling, having a child physically nurture a parent and intrusive procedures.)
   
   
2. Physical SEXUAL: (Sex acts, sexual touching, sexual kissing and hugging, voyerism, exhibitionism, verbal sexual trauma, failure to have sexual boundary in the presence of a child, and child as a witness to sexual trauma.)
   
   
3. Emotional SEXUAL: (Involving emotional enmeshment by the parent or major caregiver.)
   
   
4. Intellectual: (Attacks to the shaming of or over control of the child's expression of thought)
   
   
5. Emotional: (Shaming of a child's expression of emotion. Refusal to let child express feelings or improper expression of feelings by the parent or major caregiver.)
   
   
6. Spiritual: (Religious addiction of the parent or major caregiver, trauma at the hands of a religious caregiver, parent acting like he/she is a god or goddess of the family, indulgence or false empowerment of the child, and moral perfection and obedience demanded from the child.

Abandonment Trauma

Failure to provide adequate:

• food, clothing and/or shelter
• physical nurturing
• emotional nurturing
• sexual information
• medical/dental care
• financial support or information
• education
• spiritual nurturing
  

Introduction to Love Addiction and Love Avoidance

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From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures, and my professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

INTRODUCTION

Love Addiction and Avoidance are not about love at all. It is all about trauma reactions inside a relationship. Love starts with thought which requires an awareness of self or others that allows you to hold both in warm regard. Those who are “hard to love” require “heaving lifting” for the other party because the respect and love are not reciprocated or done so evenly. Respect is a willingness to tolerate others violations, even when you really don't have to do so. All this requires self esteem.

Note that we have three basic human needs that are God given and easily compared: love, sex and food. Just as with any need, we can manage any one of these inappropriately or to extreme. In terms of extremes, we can seek out fulfillment compulsively (like an addiction) or we can avoid and deny our needs compulsively. Both of these unbalanced extremes are self-destructive.

We all face disappointment and shame which Mellody calls “experiencing our humanity.” For the Christian, this would be experiencing our sin nature and the shame and disappointment in our failure to overcome our natural desires that have not yet been transformed to be like Christ. Until our degree and process of becoming like Jesus and our level of sanctification grows, we tend to fall into the same human trappings as everyone else. We tend to confuse love with caretaking. We tend to go about this in predictable pattern.

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Two Patterns

Pattern 1: Love Addiction

All about making up a fantasy about another person and falling in love with the fantasy

The fantasy involves

• seeing the other person as god-like
• capable of saving the love addict from his/her fear of not being able to make it on his/her own
• and loving him/her forever.
• They are someone who will “love you into loving yourself.”
• The fantasy objectifies the partner or the counter part in the unhealthy relationship (reducing them to an object of fantasy).
• This actually means that the partner is not acceptable to the love addict, therefore the love addict objectifies them by seeing them in terms of their own fantasy and not as the partner really is.
  

Pattern 2: Love Avoidance

Compulsive relational cycle that appears to be intimate but actually avoids intimacy and vulnerability

The love avoidant

• gets a sense of value from (compulsive) caretaking
• the partner confuses this with love
• They are “allergic to vulnerability”
• Their sense of value comes from caretaking and is a means of avoiding guilt.
  

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Relational Connections in Childhood

Type I: Healthy Relationship

• A relationship of Functional Bonding: Caregiver takes appropriate car of the child (affirming, nurturing, and limit setting)
• Caregiver takes care of the child and uses personal boundaries which protect the child appropriately.
• The care and responsibility for the child rests completely upon the adult caregiver.
  

Type II: Caregiver Uses the Child

• A relationship of Enmeshment: Caregiver uses the child to take care of himself/herself (affirming and nurturing must be earned by the child and must provide these to the parent as well)
• Caregiver is without personal boundaries
• The care and responsibility is partly provided by the parent, but the child is also required to reciprocate for the benefit of the parent)
• Produces a Love Avoidant type adult because the child resents the usury on some level. (Demanded sacrifice as a duty or obligation will always produce some degree of resentment.)
  

Type III: Caregiver Abandons the Child

• A relationship of Neglect/Rejection (Can be a partial neglect or inconsistent abandonment and neglect, or complete abandonment)
• Caregiver is detatched and "walled-in"
• The parent provides no care and bears no responsibility for the child and has no functional relationship with the child at all.
• Produces a Love Avoidant type adult because the child is always seeking the fantasy of love and attention.
  

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.

How Love Addiction and Love Avoidance Develops and Affects Perception of Gender

-->From the writings of Pia Mellody on Love Addiction and Love Avoidance (The dynamics of non-sexual incest)

Note: The child who experiences this abnormal parenting will associate the issues with people of the same sex as the parent. If a child experiences neglect and abandonment with a female parent, they likely will develop love addiction in their relationships with women. If the child experiences enmeshment with a female parent, they will be live avoidant with women. It is the same with a male parent (or caregiver). The association need not relate to sex but it carries with it an association with gender.

You can also have a combination of the two issues. I had a parent varied greatly based upon the level of depression they felt and the degree of threat that they felt in the relationship with me. For the most part, I was enmeshed with this parent, but when they were in an emotional fugue and withdrawn, I was neglected. So I have both issues with my parent. The enmeshment was most disturbing, but now that I am older, the abandonment implications have presented themselves (for healing).

Neglect and Abandonment

• Neglect or abandonment by a parent sets up a love addiction.
  
• The abuse is about the parent failing to provide the love and support the child needs.
• The parent is essentially "walled in" and distant.
• The parent is giving priority to other people and other issues as opposed to making the child a priority.
• The parent's behavior covertly shames the child causing the child to believe he/she is worthless and unimportant.
• In adult relationships, the person will see himself/herself as “one down” and the
  
  other person “one up.”
• Because the child's needs are neglected, the child experiences a lot of fear about being able to self-care and make it on his/her own.
  

What a child learns from neglect and abandonment:

• As a result, in adult relationships, this person will believe that he/she cannot ma
  
  ke it alone and needs someone to care for them.
• If this is triggered prior to three years of age, the child will be haunted with a sense of disaster.
• Neglect also produces an internalized sense of worthlessness, a lack of learning about relationships and and lack of learning about self care because of a “shame-existence bind.”
• Shame -existence bind: Their existence requires them to care for self but this requires the consumption of resources and they believe that they are not worthy of them and are ashamed of their God-given human need. The shame-existence bind is one of the more problematic issues to heal from after neglect and abandonment.
  
• The child will spend a lot of time daydreaming, reading and being alone.
  

Adulthood:

• As a result, in adult relationships, this person will also associate any distancing on the part of the partner (or friend, etc.) as a threat to his/her survival.
• All relationships become fear-based as well as shame-based.
  

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Enmeshment:

• Enmeshment established by the parent creates love avoidance in the child.
• Enmeshment happens when a parent is without boundaries and without boundaries in the presence of the child.
  
• The child will get “used” in some way.
• He/she will learn that value comes from taking care of needy people and if he/she does not do that, he/she will feel guilty and believe that being relational is suffocating and abusive.
• The person will base his/her sense of self-esteem on care-taking of needy people.
• This will confuse love with duty.
• This person will be “loving” to others to avoid guilt and will be allergic to being relational or being vulnerable.
  
• Resentments will likely develop from being the caretaker
• The love avoidant develops a capacity for aggression, if they served as a “scapegoat” for the parent with whom they were enmeshed.
  

What a child learns from enmeshment:

• Relationships are all about duty and deadness.
  
• Requires a shutting down of spontaneity.
  
• Identity comes from focus on the needy instead of understanding self.
• Identity and value come from focus on the needs/wants of others instead of own needs/wants.
• Life's purpose is to do what makes others happy rather than on what satisfies self or provides self with happiness.
  

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As an adult:

• This person will need to create a lot of intensity outside of the relationship.
• They do this by “risk-taking,” addictions, extreme sports, risky business style, professions involving heroic care-taking, etc.
• They create intensity to feel alive as opposed to the deadness that they feel in relationships.
• They can become antagonistic or aggressive both inside and outside of relationships, especially if they were “scapegoated.”
  

From Pia Mellody's writings and lectures,

and professional training with "The Meadows" treatment facility.

And from

“Facing Love Addiction”

by Mellody, Miller and Miller

HarperOne, 1992.