Are you in love �?or addicted? How to know when to call it quits...and how to find the courage to call it quits.

Are you unable to leave a love relationship even though it gives you more pain than joy? Your judgment and self-respect tell you to end it, but still, to your dismay, you hang on. You are addicted �?to a person. Now there is an insightful, step-by-step guide to breaking that addiction �?and surviving the split. Drawing on dozens of provocative case histories, psychotherapist Howard Helpern explains to you:

• Why you can get addicted to a person.

• Why and how you may try to deceive yourself. ("He really loves me, he just doesn't know how to show it.")

• How you can recognize the symptoms of a bad relationship.

• How to deal with the power moves and guilt trips your partner uses to hold you.

• Why strong feelings of jealousy do not mean you are "in love."

• How to get through the agonizing breakup period �?without going back.

• How not to get caught in such a painful relationship again.

Excerpt

Chapter 1

Maybe the Surgeon General hasn't determined it yet, but staying in a bad relationship may be dangerous to your health. It can shake your self-esteem and destroy your self-confidence as surely as smoking can damage your lungs. When people say that their relationship with their partner �?a lover or spouse �?is killing them, it may be true. The tensions and chemical changes caused by stress can throw any of your organ systems out of kilter, can drain your energy, and lower your resistance to all manner of unfriendly bugs. And often it can drive one to the overuse of unhealthy escapes, such as alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates, narcotics, tranquilizers, reckless pursuits, and even overt suicidal acts.

But even if there were no threat to your health, staying too long in a relationship that is deadening, or deadly, can cloud your life with frustration, anger, emptiness, and despair. You may have tried to improve it, to breathe life back into it, but you have found that your efforts have been futile �?and demoralizing. You are certainly not alone. Many basically rational and practical people find that they are unable to leave a relationship even though they can see that it is bad for them. Their best judgment and their self-respect tell them to end it, but often, to their dismay, they hang on. They speak and act as if something were holding them back, as if their relationship was a prison and they were locked in. Friends and psychotherapists may have pointed out to them that in reality their "prison door" is wide open and that all they need do is step outside. And yet as desperately unhappy as they are, they hold back. Some of them approach the threshold, then hesitate. Some may make brief sallies outside, but quickly retreat to the safety of prison in relief and despair. Something in them wants out. Something in them knows that they were not meant to live this way. Yet people, in droves, choose to remain in their prisons, making no effort to change them �?except, perhaps, to hang pretty curtains over the bars and paint the walls in decorator colors. They may end up dying in a corner of their cell without having really been alive for years.

Every day I listen to the struggles of men and women who feel imprisoned in unsatisfying relationships.

Alice: I'm slowly growing crazy with Burt. He's so cut off from his feelings and so unresponsive to me that I feel I'm with a robot. In the beginning he was kind of romantic, but now there's nothing coming from him but silence and disinterest. When I complain he says that's the way he is. Even though I'm so frustrated and miserable, I can't get myself to leave him. In fact, I get very frightened when I think about it seriously. . . .

Jason: Dee is irresponsible and selfish much of the time. She'll put me down before other people and sometimes flirt with other men right in front of me. If I get annoyed, she accuses me of trying to suffocate her, but I've checked it out with my friends and they say that she really does give me a hard time �?so much so that they sometimes wince for me. At this point, I can't see anything she gives me, yet whatever is binding me to her seems stronger than I am.

Maureen: I know Brad will never leave his wife. I see that I'm destroying myself and wasting years of my life by staying involved with him, but each time I've tried to end it, the hell I went through was unbearable and back I would go. . . . I feel he owns me.

Mitchell: I don't know how it happens, but everything is a battle, an awful gut-twisting fight. We get into power struggles over every little thing, from what movie to see to how much the window should be opened. I think the only thing Lara and I agree on is that we'd be better off without each other, but we can't let go.

Jo Anne: I stopped loving Dennis years ago. Most nights, I dread his coming home. But we have so much together �?the house, the kids, memories, and maybe just plain habit �?so that as much as I want out, the thought of his no longer being in my life and of all I'd have to go through to end it makes me hang in there for another year, and then another year, and another. I'm becoming resigned that this is all there is for me, but I feel dead. . . .

Arthur: The truth is, I don't love Betsy, at least not enough to marry her, but I can't break it off. . . . I avoid meeting new women because I expect them to reject me, and that possibility terrifies me. So I guess I hold on to Betsy because she's there. I like knowing that at least there is someone who really cares about whether I get hit by a truck and who I can share all those little things that happen during the day, like just missing my bus or getting a new shirt �?things that nobody else would give a damn about.

Eileen: Why do I keep seeing Peter when he treats me so badly? He's really cruel to me, and totally self-centered. I practice telling him it's over in a hundred ways. "I love you, but the relationship is not good for me." "This isn't working." "I don't want to see you anymore." "I've outgrown my need for you." "Get lost, you selfish SOB." "Drop dead." And sometimes I do say these things and I do end it �?for a week!

The Power of Self-Deception

All of these people really believe it would be better for them to leave the relationship, but when it comes to doing so they are paralyzed. In order to remain in the relationship, knowing it is against their own best interests, they frequently try to trick themselves by distorting the situation. They rationalize, using "good" reasons to conceal other possibly unconscious reasons.

Alice (who is "slowly going crazy" with Burt's distance and disinterest): I know he really loves me beneath his coldness. He just has difficulty showing it. Why else would he not want to break up?

Jason (who finds Dee selfish and hurtful): I know she often seems cruel and insensitive, but maybe it's just that I'm being too sensitive and expecting too much.

Maureen (who knows Brad will never leave his wife): Sometimes it feels so good between us, and he seems so loving that I can't believe he'd be stupid enough to stay with her.

Mitchell (who fights with Lara about every little thing): Maybe the fact that we fight so much shows how much we love each other.

Jo Anne (who stopped loving Dennis long ago): Maybe love isn't very important. Maybe this is all there really is for anyone.

Arthur (who doesn't love Betsy enough to marry her): There aren't many women out there whom I would be attracted to and who would be attracted to me.

Eileen (who finds Peter treats her cruelly): It's not that he doesn't love me. He's just afraid of commitment.

Rationalization is not the only self-deceptive technique. People sometimes hold deeply entrenched feelings and beliefs that defy logic and, worse, can blur judgment as to what is in one's own healthy self-interest.

Alice: If I leave Burt, I know I'll be alone forever, and that's the most frightening thing I can imagine.

Jason: Dee often treats me like dirt. Every word is a complaint, a criticism, or a command. But I love her. I feel I couldn't live without her.

Maureen: Sometimes I have this fantasy that I'll marry someone else, and Brad will stay with his wife but that we will remain lovers forever. It's in our stars.

Mitchell: I know that we can't talk for two minutes without fighting, but when you feel the way I do about Lara, you can always work it out.

Jo Anne: Every time I think of leaving I feel overcome by guilt.

Arthur: Who else would want me?

Eileen: Peter says he doesn't love me anymore, but it just can't be. He loved me once, and it just doesn't disappear. He has to love me.