If you have a loved one who has an addiction, you might have realized a long time ago that you feel disconnected from that person. You might seek their attention and protest the distance. However, they resist your plea for connection, and they make their addiction their priority. This causes you to feel secondary, unimportant, and abandoned. You noticed that your loved one prefers the addiction to you.

Addiction is where people go when they feel disconnected. The pain of being disconnected from a loved one is too big for someone to face. To cope with the loneliness caused by the disconnection, people seek an alternative that ends up becoming an addiction. After a while, the person gets attached to the addiction and no longer connects to a human being.

In this episode of Thriving Your Love, we try to help you see that you can find the way back to human connection. Even though you might be afraid of being let down or hurt, nothing will give your life more meaning and purpose than connecting with your loved one. If you look around, you'll notice someone is asking for your attention and feeling deprived of you. They fight for your emotional presence because they love you and they think you're worthy of fighting for.

In our latest podcast, Addiction: The Remedy for Loneliness, we explore the growing epidemic of loneliness and how people often turn to addictions as substitutes for genuine human connection. This pattern often begins in childhood, when children are unable to form secure bonds with their caregivers for various reasons. The pain of loneliness can feel so unbearable that they seek ways to numb it, turning to substances or behaviors that provide temporary relief and serve as replacements for attachment figures. Over time, these substitutes become the primary source of comfort, making it increasingly difficult to build or sustain real emotional connections.

In the latest episode of Thriving Your Love, Trisha and Claudio revisited a powerful question: What is the true cost of being right? Beneath our arguments, our yelling, and our frustration often lies something much more vulnerable—a desire to feel loved, valued, and safe.