Your self-doubt causes you to be jealous and possessive in an effort to maintain control. Sexually, you are more concerned with pleasing your partner than pleasing yourself. You feel as if you are unable to stop seeing a certain person even though you know that continuing the relationship is destructive to you. Memories of a relationship continue to control your thoughts for months or even years after it has ended. Addictive love is ultimately destructive to itself and to the persons involved.
Addicted lovers are increasingly unable to cope with anyone or anything else.
The relationship becomes the only point of certainty in a bewildering and lonely world. Addictive love does produce a certain excitement that is not present in healthier relationships, which is why some people stay in an unfulfilling relationship long after they've recognized the dysfunctional nature of it. By contrast, mature lovers have the desire to grow and expand themselves through the relationship. They do not use the lover to fill up the emptiness within themselves, but are self-completed. The relationship brings out the best in them.