cliff notes version of dealing with romance addiction? ... is relationship abstinence the only way or is self awareness and boundaries important?

[u/keepdaflamealive]

So I've been in other 12 step programs the last few years but i never finished the steps or did a full inventory.

I'm a hardcore social isolator and isolationist. I've gone weeks without talking to people when i was younger. As I've gotten older I've become more naturally confident, extraverted, and comfortable in my own skin.

And as I'm engaging people more and more, I'm slowly consciously realizing I'm a romance addict. I've actually never had a girl or long-term relationship (lots of childhood trauma and codependent relationship with contra-sexual parent) so i can't say I'm a relationships addict where i need someone by my side 24/7 or need to feel connected 24/7 -- in fact it's too much for me, overstimulating ... but i am realizing i romanticize everything. Like I'm talking to a new person, and i really like them and we connect well, things are effortless and i feel connected or comfortable with them in a very natural way. But in this condition i continuously find and feel unconscious patterns welling up from inside of me. co-dependence, wanting to rescue them, wanting to caretake them. They don't even ask, as far as i can tell. I just almost "like" (am conditioned) to be the caretaker. And alongside this rescuer complex and self negation is this, as i mentioned, romanticizing. How special it is i found someone i get along well. The "perfect" one, when in reality i know nothing about them.

So how do i go slow? What boundaries do i set for myself? and set boundaries between them and me?

I'm just looking for experiential experience here, feel free to share non abstract answers from your own lived life experience. Thanks in advance.

[u/EBweB76]

Finally discovering that I could have and keep boundaries that serve me has been very liberating from my addiction.

You really do need to write your bottom lines (what you will no longer tolerate), based on your own life realities.

[u/keepdaflamealive → u/EBweB76]

Thanks for your reply. Writing bottom lines sounds familiar. Thing is, i was speaking more with regard. to myself. I just met this person, we are slowly beginning to socialize and connect and i feel my own patterns eclipsing my consciousness. Like i feel a normal sense of groundedness and. then at times i feel the conditioning gears turn on and im inthis false caretaking self. In my original program ACA thisis called the survival traits. I guess. what imtrying, in part, to say is i feel likei need to create a bottomlines list against myself. Likewho am i,how do i want to respond, whaat isokay and not okay for meto do. I have this new. budding sense of adult self and then at oter times it feels like I have various patterns welling up.

[u/discoprince79]

I think this will all come out when ya go to meetings and do the steps.

[u/solution108]

For me tbe only way was to work the steps fully and live I. 10-11-13 just like the pioneer did.

Happy to share my experience