LL, I know what you're saying. We do have to be really careful that we are not so "intoxicated" by the initial overwhelming feelings that we mistake romantic intensity for sustaining, deep love. I think that with many addicts, we unconsciously realize so much is at stake, so much is intense, because the addict himself--or herself--is living at the edge of life and death. I think we can pick up that feeling of "now or never" when we are with them, and everything intensifies, the way it does when women and men are living in times of war. The bonding is much more dramatic.
For myself, the passion I felt was not about sexuality but about the feeling that for THIS man, I would walk through fire. Swim the seven seas. I would fight for him, and for us, because I felt so BLESSED to know him. Anne Bancroft once said of her husband Mel Brooks that even after years and years of marriage, when she heard his key in the door, her heart leaped with happiness. And I knew I had found the man I would feel that for.
Sadly, fighting for love will not help an addict who is drowning in his own addiction. We have to let go. To enable his addiction by continuing to live with it--no consequences--is not love. It is an acquiescence to the demon that is destroying him.
Good thread here. Thank you.