One - The Problem Healthy romantic love is a unique experience which can encourage bonding, intimacy and the opportunity to play and explore with that special new person. Romance, with or without sex, encourages personal growth as each new relationship forces new insights and self knowledge. The beginning stages of a potential love relationship can be intense and exciting. Healthy intimacy, however, is characterized by more than romance, intensity and sex.
Intimacy evolves over time.
Loving relationships develop partially through utilizing those first exhilarating times to begin to build a bridge toward deeper, longer term closeness. It can be difficult for anyone who is not a love or sex addict to understand how love or sexuality can be exploited or evolve into destructive patterns of addiction and compulsion. Yet for the Love and Sex Addict, romantic love, sexuality and the closeness they offer, are experiences most often filled with pitfalls, anxiety and pain. Caught up in the constant search for a partner, the addict's endless intrigue, flirtations, sexual liaisons and affairs, leave a path of destruction and negative consequences in their wake of his or her behavior. Ironically, the Love or Relationship usually has few options to resolve these painful circumstances except by engaging in even more searching, creating an escalating cycle of desperation and loss.