Lisa Marie Bobby - Exaholics: Breaking Your Addiction to an Ex Love

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2015 by Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, LMFT, BCC

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ISBN 978-1-4549-2126-4

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I thought I was the only one who felt this way.

Jane D., Exaholic

YOU HAVE TO MOVE ON.

They werent good enough for you.

Just let it go.

Your friends say these things to you with such sincerity.

You look into their kind eyes and wish you could believe them. In fact, you would trade everything if only you could take a bottle scrubber to your brain and scour out the obsessions that are consuming you. If there was a magical sword that would slice through the attachment you have to your Ex, you would swing it with all your might, severing the connection completely and finally setting yourself free.

But you cant. You feel helplessly trapped in grief, pain, and longing. That is what they dont understand.

You try to explain. You use the most dramatic, searing words you can think of to describe the unbearable agony you cannot escape from.

Destroyed.

Ripped apart.

Shattered.

You try to tell them how the pain throbs constantlyan aching pit in your stomach that is with you throughout the whole day, from the moment you open your eyes in the morning, if you sleep at all. That your self-esteem has been ground up like raw hamburger. That you want to stop them, but you cant. That every time you think of your Ex (which is constantly), and the injustices you endured, and the ruin of your life together, it feels like being stabbed over and over again. You try to make them understand how you feel trapped in the hell of your inner experience: The worse the pain gets, the more insistent your mind is in torturing you with new obsessions. That you cant get away from the waking nightmare your life has become. That you cant make it stop.

That youre an Exaholic.

There is finally a word that describes your experience. One that captures not just the pain of a breakup, but that encapsulates the addictive nature of relationships. Its a word that conjures the emotional, psychological, and social destruction of a relationship that ends traumatically, and which finally acknowledges the support and guidance brokenhearted people need to put themselves back together again.

People struggling to heal from other problems have support. Alcoholics have recovery groups. Drug addicts have rehab. But until now, people stuck in unhealthy attachments to other people have only had invalidating platitudes: Get over it.

Whats an Exaholic?

An Exaholic is anyone who is addicted to a toxic, hurtful relationship that they cant let go of or who is struggling with intense emotional pain in the aftermath of a breakup. An Exaholic is someone tormented by thoughts of a lost lover, and may be nursing hopes of reunion. Exaholics know they should let it go, but they cant. They want to move on but dont know how. Their craving for connection and communication with their Ex makes them do things they know they shouldnt.

We all have the capacity to be Exaholics, because we are all built to fall in love and bond deeply with another person, as you will discover in later chapters. Most of us have fit this description at one point or another, because love is the human experience. Being an Exaholic means that youve stepped into the temporary identity we can all inhabit when were suffering deeply in the pain and obsession of a lost love. When you heal, you will step out again. But during the time you inhabit this terrible place, it defines you.

Are you longing to get back together with someone who has rejected you?

Are you struggling to finally let go of an unhealthy relationship?

Are you obsessed by thoughts of your Ex?

Do you feel compulsions to search for information about your Ex?

Are you afraid that you will never find another relationship that is as meaningful and special as the one you lost?

Do you feel that your self-worth has been badly damaged in the aftermath of your relationship?

Are you feeling isolated and alone, and that your friends and family dont understand what youre going through?

Is your emotional pain so great that you are having difficulty in functioning?

If the answer is yes to some or all of these questions, you are likely an Exaholic.

But being an Exaholic is not about criteria, because unlike alcoholism or substance abuse, this is not a formal mental health diagnosis. Being an Exaholic is simply a shorthand way of saying that you can currently relate to a nearly universal experience: feeling absolutely gutted in the aftermath of a lost relationship.

Im frequently asked, How is someone who is an Exaholic different from someone whos going through a regular breakup? Embedded in this question is the assumption that there is such thing as a normal breakupsome imaginary civilized parting that ends with a handshake before turning and walking in opposite directions.

There is no such thing as a Normal Breakup.

All breakups are unique, and exist on a spectrum between mutual agreement and the frantic, enraged clinging of one person to another. There is a range of pain and madness in our breakups because there is a continuum of love and attachment in our relationships.

The degree to which we are traumatized in the aftermath of a split is directly in proportion to the degree to which we were in love with, and emotionally connected to, our lover at the time of the breakup. Love and pain create a balanced equation in the emotional algebra of the human experience.

There are, in fact, relationships that can end without intense pain.

As is so often the situation, our fond feelings can fade, eroded by the pecks of small disappointments. Over time, you stop believing that the other person can be who you want or need. Finally, the spell is broken and it feels like the house lights coming up at the end of the show. There is nothing left to see. Its just time to find your keys and go home.

Then there are relationships that can last a long time and end for ages too, like soft taffy pulling apart until the gossamer thread breaks. It feels over for a long time before the fact is formalized. Someone eventually says the obvious truth out loud, and then it is so.

Its also possible to like someone very much, and have sincere feelings of care and love for them that never catch fire and roar into the passion of romantic love. In those cases, ending a relationship is a process akin to relocating for a new job after discovering the old one just wasnt a good fit. You pack boxes, you forward your mail, you say goodbye to the neighbors, and drive off feeling a little sad, a little guilty, but hopeful about your new future. Its bittersweet, but necessary.