I am doing a little housecleaning and have determined that a re-branding of my website is in order! The Lovely Addict will be the same great content on love, dating, relationships,  love addiction and self-avoidance. I will still continue to publish The Break-Up Journal, which, by the way, is almost at its bitter end. And, you will still be able to find me at thelovelyaddict.com. Only now, my page and persona will be Girl Rebuilt. 

This re-branding has to do with three main factors. The biggest one is the negative connotation of addict. Whether we are love addicts or not, who cares. The term addict has only one purpose as I see it. To drive you in the right direction and figure out how to solve a pattern you keep repeating. Once you find that, I’d like to think that the term addict is no longer useful. What really matters is that we are working every day as brave and courageous women to rebuild ourselves from seemingly the ground up. So, I wanted a name that defined our hard work and accomplishments more so than our dis-ease and our struggles.

The second thing I realized that needed to change, was that I am technically no longer an “addict” in the love addict sense. I have always been a huge proponent of believing that love addiction can be cured. And I feel as though I am living proof of that. And since I couldn’t come up with a short, catchy name that better described my situation (The Lovely No-Longer-Love-Addict), I thought I’d change it completely.

Lastly, through the eight years of writing this blog, I have uncovered a big truth to love addiction. It’s not really the problem! The problem is…We are not love addicts as much as we are avoiders of ourselves. This is why we chase after unavailable men. This is why we hang on desperately to toxic relationship and slip into fantasy when we don’t have a relationship to obsess over. Because that’s somehow safer and less complicated (if you can believe it) and less scary than dealing with ourselves. Our true, deep, scary selves. Our biggest hopes and fears. And, if that’s the case, if we are no really “addicts” but rather “avoiders,” then, we have a lot of work to do. Not on that which we are chasing after, but rather, that which we are running away from.

We have a lot of rebuilding to do.

I hope this helps to underscore this pretty big change, and I hope you keep reading and participating in the community.