In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert, a successful magazine writer and author of short stories who would go on to even greater acclaim with the publication of “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia” six years later, went to get her hair cut by Rayya Elias and ended up meeting her best friend. The two spent years as close friends — through Gilbert’s two marriages to men, adaptation of her memoir into a movie starring Julia Roberts and subsequent books — before Elias’ 2016 terminal pancreatic and liver cancer diagnosis made Gilbert realize she was in love with her. They had a short but tumultuous relationship, battling each other over substance abuse issues as Elias’ cancer progressed. When Elias died, Gilbert realized she was suffering from an addiction too: one to sex and love.
Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life.
After that death, Gilbert set off on a journey of recovery that included a romance with Simon MacArthur, a longtime friend of Elias. Gilbert’s latest memoir, “All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation,” is her account of how devastating heartbreak helped her come to terms with her addiction and set her on a path toward healing.
The Times spoke with Gilbert about how to recognize signs of sex and love addiction in ourselves and how to learn to be OK on our own. Now cleared for romance, the author has a sober dating plan intended to create boundaries and avoid jumping into another relationship too quickly. “The better care I take of myself, the less stressful the world feels,” Gilbert says, “and whatever energy is left over, I pour into my work, my friends and my community.”
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
What were some warning signs for you that you had a problem with sex and love?
Intimate relationships have been a cause of pain and struggle for me from my early teens until I finally found the help I needed at age 50. For 35 years, I used my romantic and sexual partners the way other folks use drugs. I was constantly looking outside myself for both stimulation and sedation. I found partners I could get high on, and other partners who would calm me down. I was constantly overlapping relationships, always either running away from someone or toward someone else. I was never able to settle my nervous system, find contentment with anyone or take care of my interior life. Though I knew my behaviors were harmful to myself and others, I could not stop compulsively repeating the same patterns. It was exhausting, shame-inducing and, as I’ve heard sex and love addiction described, about as satisfying as hijacking a revolving door.
How did the discovery that you were a sex and love addict change your worldview?
There was relief in finally being able to name the thing: “Ah! So that’s what’s wrong with me!” It was soothing to sit in a room with other people who behaved in many of the same ways I did. People told the truth about behaviors I’d always tried to hide, and being able to talk about these behaviors released so much of my shame and gave me a safe community in which to heal.
“For 35 years, I used my romantic and sexual partners the way other folks use drugs,” Elizabeth Gilbert says.
(Deborah Lopez)
Through recovery, what have you learned about how to build healthier relationships?
The goal of my recovery is to end up in a healthy and sustainable relationship with myself. I’d always looked outside myself for a partner who could rescue me. Over the last six years of recovery, I’ve learned how to take full accountability for my own life, how to self-soothe, and how to become securely attached to myself. I now trust that there is a sober, sane, emotionally stable, well-resourced and compassionate adult woman at the wheel of my life. It is now inconsequential to me whether I ever end up in a romantic relationship again; I have a reliable life partner, and it’s myself.
You write about being “lost in the endless search for connection.” Does this search feel over to you, and what do you do with the extra energy and love you have to give?
It takes an immense amount of love and energy to keep one human being (myself) thriving. For years, my codependency and enmeshment kept me focused on making sure all my partner’s needs were met, so that, ideally, they might take care of me. It’s inefficient and exhausting to pour all your love and resources into one person, with the hopes they might someday give you some of it back. Now, I’m learning how to pour that love, energy, and care directly into myself, which is so much more gratifying. My creativity is thriving, my friendships are richer than ever, I’ve been traveling more, and showing up in the world as a whole and contented person. The better care I take of myself, the less stressful the world feels, and whatever energy is left over, I pour into my work, my friends and my community.
How is sex and love addiction similar to and different from other types of addiction?
A good description for addiction is “false worship” — making something or somebody into your God and sacrificing everything to it. Our culture teaches us that disappearing into another person’s heart is what “love” means, and women, especially, are taught not only to seek this kind of extreme attachment, but that they are worthless without it. At the beginning of my recovery, I was asked, “What is this behavior costing you? Why don’t you believe that you can take care of yourself? And why don’t you believe that they can take care of themselves?” Those questions helped me see the level of my addiction. Historically, I have always needed to be with somebody whom I believed I could not live without, or somebody whom I believed could not live without me. I’d throw away any sense of balance, reason and integrity, all so I could give my all to somebody. As with all types of addictions, I was trying to escape the pain of my reality. The high always works till it doesn’t — then comes the suffering. This kind of mad attraction, attention and abandon comes to a screeching halt when one of the parties changes their mind and starts to pull away. Then comes the withdrawal process, which feels like death. That’s not an exaggeration: the closest I have ever come to both suicide and murder was because of my addiction to another person. I wish I could say this extreme level of disorder and violence is uncommon, but people kill themselves and each other every day because of relationship fixation and obsession. People routinely lose everything (their health, serenity, jobs, money, and families) because of romantic devastation and dysfunction — and still, they have trouble walking away.
(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)
You have now been cleared by your sponsor as “ready to date.” What will that process look like for you?
As part of my recovery, I have a “sober dating plan” intended to create boundaries and brakes around getting to know someone. The plan includes such items as “no weeklong first dates.” Knowing how capable I am of throwing myself into another human being, I’m not in a hurry to go out there and discover if I can survive another relationship. Having had 35 years of relationship drama, it’s been beautiful for me to learn how to find serenity in solitude, and I don’t want to risk throwing away all the gains I’ve made. But should I ever want a partnership, there is a plan in place to keep me as sane and sober as possible through that union.
How do we know when we are depending on someone else too much, and how can we become more emotionally dependent on ourselves?
The first step of all 12-step programs reads, “We came to believe we were powerless over (fill-in-the-blank person, substance or behavior) and that our lives had become unmanageable.” Ask yourself: Has your life become unmanageable? If the answer is yes, you might be in some sort of addiction/dependency crisis. If you come from a background that was dysfunctional, neglectful or abusive, “unmanageable” might just feel like home to you, and it may be difficult to imagine that there could be a simpler, happier way to live. I have learned it’s not necessary to live a life of nonstop unmanageability. No matter how chaotic my history, I can learn how to safeguard my serenity so I don’t have to drag people into my drama anymore or leap headlong into theirs. Moving forward, my emotional labor is to make sure that I remain full — full of creativity, joy, faith, emotional health, esteem, curiosity, rest, courage and the vibrancy of life itself. It’s also my job to hold the belief that others can resource this same inherent fullness within themselves, without requiring me to empty my life into theirs, as proof of love. My ultimate purpose is to be of loving service to the world, and I cannot be that if I have emptied my life into someone else’s.
TAKEAWAYS
From “All the Way to the River”
What do you say to people who believe they’ll never be happy if they don’t find someone with whom to share their life?
I would say the same thing my own higher power said to me in a meditation once: “Honey, why would we have designed the system in such a way as to guarantee your endless misery? Can’t you see that we designed you in such a way that everything you are searching for outside of you exists within you? Call off the search, sweetheart. You contain everything you need.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
