Recovering love addict
Hayley Quinn talks to Dave, a recovering love addict and speaker on addiction for the Amy Winehouse Foundation about control in romantic relationships.
They discuss:
- When your interest in women is out of control
- How to break the bad cycle
- Why love is addictive...
The interview
Welcome back to another Attraction HQ podcast geezers. That's right. That's what we decided to refer to you today because we are from London. And because of that, we are speaking mainly to the men of London or the UK, or of the rest of the world who want advice on dating, sex, love and romance. There's a couple of women listening in.
As you know, my name is Hayley Quinn. I spend a lot of my life talking about the relationships we have and how to make them better. And I have an inside out perspective, which means you'll learn useful external skills and things you can do to make sure you meet more women. We're going to try and fix some stuff that's going on and get you on the right path. So if you're always running into the same stuff or the same problems, you probably need to listen.
Addicted to women
Joining me today is my good friend. An amazing positive influence on my life, Dave. Dave, apart from loads of great work in terms of doing lots in charity work and giving and his time, he's had a bit of a life story. And had done much work on his addiction to drink, drugs and that lesser-known addiction- women.
Well, you might think you're addicted to women, and he loved them. But it might not be in the way that you expect. What I want to talk about today is how that love and romantic intrigue can operate as an addiction. You might not know this, but lots of male dating advice is geared essentially, towards how to have sex with as many women as possible. And that's the highest goal of life.
I don't want you t think I want y'all to get married tomorrow or be monks. That's not true. But there's something really weird going on in our culture, where if you're not having sex with a different sexy supermodel every night of the week, something is going wrong.
Dave
I'm laughing away here, giggling because I've had two lives. A life of suffering. I spent about 20 years chasing my tail. Drink, drugs, women. And I've spent some years not doing that. Or not as much, especially not with the drink and drugs, because I'm absent from that stuff now. But I still struggle with relationships.
The number one offender, from what my own experience and from what I see with other people is we all can relate to this one. It's the number one offender relationships if you get honest with it and look at it. I believe most people don't have a drinking problem or drug problem or whatever problem you've got. It stems much deeper than that, to a core level.
I speak for myself, I have my problem, I have a relationship problem with myself. And because I have relationship problems with myself, I have a tone of dysfunctional exterior relationships with other people. And because I have an interest in the opposite sex, my interest in it's pretty evident in my life.
That is fundamentally where I've been going on for a long time. I've got a little bit of awareness around this, and I have a bit of understanding of the nature of the beast, and I've tamed that beast. I used to be quite excessive in that department.
Hayley
Give guy examples of chasing your tail for years. What kind of behaviours would be normal? Just so they've got some idea.
Dave
Look at patterns, behaviours, call it wherever you want. For me, it's not being able to be on my own. Very simply. And I recognise that in a lot of people in the world. How can we be on our own when we're not encouraged to be on our own? But, it's healthy as something I practice now is I've got a very good relationship with being able to be with myself.
Hayley
Something that I noticed people realise that's there is a need to be honest with yourself. Look around your social circle. Maybe your social relationships are not where you want them to be. Maybe you don't feel particularly loved or supported? Or do you have someone to talk to or listen to you, someone who's interested in you?
