When I was in my mid-twenties, I sat myself in the consulting room of a steely therapist, who told me that I was doing everything wrong when it came to love. For me, she said, love was all about the intoxicating highs and the soul-destroying lows; a dysfunctional cycle of attraction and distancing.
I was left ashen-faced. Since when had my love life descended into a kind of school lesson, complete with a whiteboard and diagrams? But this wasn’t a conversation about giggly kinds of romantic infatuation. Rather, I was being told about my love addiction. I apparently couldn’t control it – romance controlled me. I didn’t know what to think. Me? A love addict? It sounded more like a fragrance. But could it have been true? Was love addiction the reason I felt perpetually trapped in my own Sex and the City storyline?
