The Yoga of Relationships. Yogi Amrit Desai

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      Chapter 3

      Love as an Addiction

      Addictions are not only related to drugs or alcohol. We can become just as addicted to relationships that give pleasure and relieve us temporarily from pain or fear. We manipulate people and external conditions to provide and assure perpetual pleasure, success and happiness.

      When a loving relationship becomes an addiction, the lover becomes an object of dependency, the same way a drug takes hold of one’s life. Dependency comes from low self-esteem. Inability to deal with life situations also results in dependency. Relationships can become a relief from stress, an easily attained gratification that is socially acceptable—and nobody will call it an addiction.

      All addictions end up as dullness, unconsciousness and self-doubt. Beware: Anyone who deprives an addict of the sole source of their comfort becomes a victim of anger, jealousy or violence. The root of addictive behaviors is a lack of awareness of the all the Yamas, Ahimsa, Satya, Astyeya, Brahmacharya, and Aparigraha. In the darkness of ego-driven desires, we make up stories of deficiency about ourselves, which leads to desiring what we think others have and developing voracious appetites for sensual fulfillment.

      Love is the complete opposite of addiction. Addiction demands that which love offers willingly, expecting nothing in return. Self-sacrificing love is the polar opposite of addictive love. Dependency makes both partners defensive and demanding toward each other. Apparent inconsistencies and dishonesty are often unintentional. All the attention and sacrifice offered to the beloved is only bait to catch the fish. Once the victim goes for the bait, the fish is hooked. The victims fail to see the hook inside the bait. The more tempting the bait of promises, the more hypnotic it becomes and the less obvious the hook.

      When we are demanding instead of giving from the heart, offering only as an exchange, we have entered the marketplace of love. Seeing only our own needs and ignoring the other’s, we become insecure. Seeing the other’s needs, we become caring and compassionate. Born of fear, insecurity demands a great deal from the other. There is no way such demands can be fulfilled. Insecurity, like greed, never knows how much is enough or when to stop asking for more.

      Dependency is like a vine that strangles the tree, sapping it of its life energy. Demanding chokes each other’s growth, draining the relationship’s vital force, leaving it lifeless. Craving more security, we find our own inner source running dry, and end up looking for a relationship as a resource to fill the needs. A relationship based on self-centered desire is bound to fail. The same relationship, when conceived as a commitment to mutual growth and fulfillment, is bound to succeed. A mature relationship is born out of the strength of self-sufficiency rather than from self-seeking demands. Love is the overflow of the self-fulfilled being.

      Let go of what is holding you back.

      Create space for what is coming.

      The memory of the attachment formed during the illusory period of love is so overwhelmingly powerful that both struggle hard to return to the love they felt from each other. In the early stage of the relationship, when each one was focused on giving to the other, the conflict was planted as a seed of illusion—the illusion that what each one was getting from the other was love (rather than an evenly worked out exchange of expectations.)