Addiction:  a persistent, compulsive dependence on, or commitment to, a habit or practice, on a thing or substance, to the extent that its cessation causes trauma.

There are many definitions of addiction, but bottom line, it’s a dependence on something that causes one to have compulsive thoughts and behaviors, which they cannot control or stop.

Individuals can be addicted to many things such as, alcohol, nicotine, drugs, food, gambling, sex, but when we are talking about an addiction to a person, we usually use the word obsession.  When researches study addiction they often refer to certain neurotransmitters being present in the brain, or certain areas of the brain lighting up, or becoming visible on tests. At present there are no known studies to determine if the same brain patterns exist for an addiction to a person.

I was recently doing some research on addiction, for another publication, when I stumbled across something that fascinated me.

My cousin is the type of woman that always has a man, or it’s probably better to say, she’s the type of woman that always ‘needs ‘ to have a man and unfortunately for her, each man, seems to be worse, than the man before.

When we were younger, she used to ‘woohoo’ out the car window at men on the street and sometimes she would even yell out where we were going to perfect strangers. I would always duck out of sight, in sheer embarrassment, to me it reeked of desperation and crudeness, but she could pick up a guy on a dime. She was that um…. ‘talented.’ But the problem was that the guys she would hook up with were always a different brand of broken down. They would move way too fast and would even be living together before I saw her next.

Alisa Valdes was living the dream. She did her undergrad at Berkley and received her Masters of Journalism at Columbia. She landed columns writing for The Boston Globe and later The Los Angeles Times. Her first novel The Dirty Girls Social Club was a huge success and landed her on the New York Times Best Sellers List. She was voted one of the top feminist writers under 30, by Ms Magazine and was even highly touted by feminist icon, Gloria Steinem. By all accounts Valdes’s career had taken off and the future was looking pretty bright…that is of course until she met him.

In 2013 Valdes released a memoir entitled The Feminist and the Cowboy: An Unlikely Love Story.

This memoir depicts the real life romance between Valdes and a rancher named Steve Lane. In it, she discusses the joy she found submitting to this alpha-male, which caused this feminist to make statements such as:

“Never expect anything; instead win him over ‘by giving and giving and giving until it hurts.”

“If an alpha-male cheats, let him. I would share him if I had to.”

“I would hate to have friends over, especially around dinner time. Before every meal my father would preach to us. This wasn’t simply the saying of Grace. He would go on a tirade for ten minutes and this ranting would always include a request for God to show my mother the error of her ways.”- D. Muniz

This ‘religious’ theme in Narcissism comes up a lot. I am often surprised by the copious amounts of messages I receive on the subject. While they may seem like opposite ends of the spectrum,  it does seem that religion and Narcissism really are a perfect match, but why is that?

I read a quote from Anthony Robbins a couple of weeks ago and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I suppose when you hear something and it rings true for you, your entire being stops and takes notice. The quote was:

“It’s not what we do once in a while that counts, but our consistent actions. What ultimately determines who we become and where we go in life? The answer is, our decisions. It’s in these moments that our destiny is shaped. More than anything else, our decisions, not the conditions of our lives determine our destiny.”

This says basically that the quality of our lives is determined by our choices – our consistent choices – not the family we’re born into, not the body we have, or even how much money is in our bank accounts. It’s the tiny little decisions we make each and every moment, throughout our day that is responsible for the state of our lives.

“If you struggle with being present in the now, you will struggle with life.” – Eckhart Tolle

We all know one or two people that are genuinely happy and love their lives. It’s not that they have everything all figured out, but they always seem to be fully present in whatever they are doing and always thoroughly enjoying themselves.

It’s common for most of us to find ourselves out at certain events and be thinking about other things. We think about what else we should be doing, where else we should be. We think about the past. We get anxious about things that haven’t happened yet, but so often we are never where we should be, which is where we are at that moment.

Everyone’s life is a work in progress and we all struggle at different stages of our journey. Being present is one of my biggest hurdles. My mind is always in 10 different places all at once. Even when I was a little girl, my report cards would

We’ve all had break-up moments that we aren’t particularly proud of. You know, those scenes where we left the house, but forgot to take our dignity with us, those cringe-worthy moments where our behavior was, well….less than stellar.

Getting dumped hurts and if you’ve been unceremoniously tossed out on your backside, without a how do you do, and the person that ripped your heart out, trots off with someone else, it can stir up a lot of emotions.

You’re dealing with heartbreak, fear, abandonment, jealousy, betrayal, anger, outrage, indignation and all of these feelings are causing the ‘I’m not good enough monster’ to tear up your town in a Godzilla like fashion.