Embark on a raw and revealing journey into the complex landscape of love addiction as we sit down with Raul Gasteazoro, filmmaker and storyteller. In this deeply personal conversation, Raul bravely shares his experiences navigating the highs and lows of compulsive romantic pursuits, unpacking the emotional wounds and cyclical behaviors that defined a significant chapter of his life. We dive headfirst into the often-misunderstood world of love addiction, exploring its intersections with codependency, abandonment issues, and the desperate search for validation. Raul candidly reflects on the challenges, the hard-learned lessons, and the transformative journey towards self-awareness and healthier relationships. If you’ve ever felt lost in the maze of love or struggled with relationship patterns that feel out of your control, Raul’s story offers powerful insights, relatable truths, and a beacon of hope for finding genuine connection.
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When Love Becomes An Addiction With Raul Gasteazoro
On this episode, we have a very close friend of mine, Raul, where we go through the journey of a love addict. We have liftoff. Raul, welcome to the show.
Thank you, my friend. Happy to be here.
It’s so good to have you. We are going to talk about a real fascinating subject, which I haven’t really ever come across until our relationship and friendship became a lot deeper over the years. Before we get into it, let’s talk about where you right now. California?
Yes. In Hollywood, in Laurel Canyon, California.
Where did you grow up in?
I grew up between Minnesota and Panama. My father was in Panama, my mom was in Minnesota.
Decoding Love Addiction & Childhood’s Psychological Footprint
You were a globe-trotter very early on. We are going to talk about the subject of love addiction. Love addiction, according to the authorities, and I’ll read here, it says, “The diagnostic manual of mental health disorders doesn’t recognize it as an actual mental health disorder. However, many experts feel there’s enough evidence to consider it as an independent mental disorder, which makes identifying the condition tricky.” Let’s start off with your childhood. You grew up between Panama and Minnesota. When do you recall your first love interest? Where did it all get started?
I want to note that it makes sense why love addiction wouldn’t be qualified as a particular psychological disorder. I will say that having gone to both therapists and Sex and Love Anonymous and CoDA, which is Co-Dependents Anonymous, you do see a lot of overlap and Venn diagramming of those larger, I don’t want to call them issues, but psychological propensities. I find that interesting that there is often like an overlap.
When you say overlap, do you mean that the steps in your head or the same elements of addiction flow through in in all these categories? They all have very similar characteristics.
I think some similar characteristics and/or similar causality. I’m not a psychologist, but I would say that it seems to me that following that thread, there’s a similar issue or initial wound, let’s say. There’s different ways that people scab over it. Maybe it’s filled with a sex addiction, maybe it’s filled with a codependency, maybe it’s filled with a love addiction.
Are you saying the trauma that caused it is very common?
It seems to have a quality that is shared by several of those different disorders if or whatever we want to call them. For me, I think the abandonment one was the big one. My dad wasn’t really present in my childhood. I think he was doing his best with having three kids and not knowing how to do that. He did a much better job than his father, his grandfather at raising us but was very absent. He literally spent my entire childhood in the basement writing a dictionary, Spanish to English Spanish law dictionary and working as a lawyer and was not present. My parents got divorced and he left the country.
At what age did your parents get divorced?
When I was eleven.
When you were eleven, you don’t recall him even being around even when he was at home?
I have random, sporadic, relatively traumatic maybe not great memories. Yes, either violence or intense anger or intense, just not being present. Mixed in with some really beautiful times of going canoeing together in the boundary waters. I remember making shotgun shells together for hunting and some random nice moments with the family of course as anyone does. I don’t actually have a lot of data from before that eleven-year-old fissure of him leaving. I think that event was for me like a big abandonment distrust. I’m not lovable. I need to step into being the man of the family.
How were you out of the three siblings?
I was in the middle and my younger sister, I ended up really did have to come into taking care of her in some capacity. My older sister left for college right after my parents got divorced. I changed schools and hit puberty and all these big difficult things occurred. My parents took every effort to support me in that. I don’t think I probably healed or grieved those wounds as well as I should have. I think that would be my wound or scar amidst all the rest. I think for me that was a feeling of, one, being abandoned, two, not being worthy of love and three, really not being welcome. I think that was a big one for me, this underlying sense of I am not worthy or welcome.
When he moved to Panama, did you used to go visit him when you were in high school?
Yeah, I would go and visit him for basically six weeks of every year.
How was it when you visited him?
I love my family in Panama. They’re wonderful and a very tight supportive unit. My time with my dad was really hard until I was probably, I think I was 21 and we got into a big row. I was playing rugby and had been fighting a lot for fun. I started a fight club in college and I stood up to him and I was like, “Let’s go. You’re bigger than me. You used to beat the shit out of me. I’m going to fuck you up right now.” Through tears and through anger but I was like, “Let’s actually just do this so we establish who the fucking alpha monkey is.”
From that point on, in a weird way there was like a mutual respect and understanding as to our roles in relation to each other. I think that was a really healing moment for us. We were able to start to find a middle ground of compassion. My relationship with my dad has actually gotten to a really good place through a lot of hardship and also just becoming a man and a father and understanding how hard it is to be a dad and to sacrifice so much of your freedom and your own personal desires.
When the quality of that love becomes less pronounced or potent, you need more sources. Share on XDid he go on go on to have another family, more kids etc.?
No. He married his high school sweetheart who he was best friends with since he was fourteen years old and that was the catalyst that actually broke up my parents’ relationship. They are happy and a healthy relationship, which is great and I’m happy to see that. I think in the process of 30 years now of understanding, I get why parents get divorced. I understand both the ramifications on the children of a family that struggles through divorce but also the benefits to it as well.
I bring that up because I think the formative wound with my father, part of what enabled me to get through this love addiction milieu of the madness that comes from it was accepting, understanding, forgiving him and that wound. I don’t think it would’ve been possible otherwise, to be honest. I think that that core scar, without the healing, you just keep trying to salve it.
To answer your question, because I know that was a long-winded review, the first time I remember feeling amorous and love was probably my first serious girlfriend. I changed to this new school. I was like the cool new kid in class who was from a public school and I was going to a private school because I was a troublemaker and had some learning disabilities and needed some help. I was getting a lot of attention. This one woman named Erin who I was very fond of, we ended up dating and falling in love as twelve-year-olds. I think we kissed or something. When we were seniors, we ended up getting back together.
In sixth grade, we dated and then senior year, we ended up losing our virginities for each other, all those things. During that high school time, while I was grappling with all those big changes in my life, there were a lot of feelings of love and connection. I think the difference in what struck you in us initially discussing this on many of our adventures was this idea of it not being about the sex but it being about this cultivating this deep feeling and connection of love, which is such like a fruitful and vibrant and intoxicating thing.
It made me feel welcome. It made me feel validated. It made me feel not the opposite of abandoned, which I guess would just be like seen and loved or worthy. I definitely got addicted to that as the thing to make me okay, to make whatever shortcomings I felt I had resolved for the moment, but you have to keep feeding it. There’s this quote of feed the good wolf because we have two different wolves in us or like chasing the dragon people talk about with their addictions. I think there was definitively that bad wolf or dragon quality to it where it’s insatiable. You can’t fill it. You can only feed it. It’s like a sacrifice to it.
The Heart’s First Shatter & The Relationship Cycle’s Onset
With that first serious love, which was senior year, on reflection, was it just a normal healthy high school relationship? If you think about the way you were in the relationship, did you become obsessive or was that just a normal, healthy loving exploration of relationships?
It’s so funny because as you’re saying that, it’s like that relationship with Erin was actually very healthy, was actually very stable up until the point where senior week, I blew it up in a very hero way. What’s interesting is like you asked what the first love was and she was in sixth grade. I totally fell in love with this woman named Christie before high school. I was super obsessed and jealous and she’d went off and dated a senior as I was a freshman. He and I got in this gigantic series of literal fist fights and drama.
The one day my dad ever picked me up from high school, actually, the only time I remember him picking up from school was the day that I’d gotten into a proper fucking public fist fight with this senior and was bleeding everywhere and all beat up. I’m a pacifist despite my enjoying fighting or wrestling. The intention is not to hurt. It’s really just to test. This guy, I let him just beat the shit out of me while telling him how I’m sorry his dad used to beat him up, which I knew because he was dating Christie.
Point being there was all these crazy interwoven relationships that I had gotten myself into before I got back together with Erin, the original love. I really got into a lot of drama even before I got back together with Erin. I think that us being able to come back together and we’re still very good friends was like in her seeing me and accepting me and loving me for who I am at my core, which I think is a really good loving person, which she understood because we had been friends. I’d say that’s a commonality with the people that I’ve been able to retain really healthy relationships with after. The reason my relationship ended with Erin is that Christie, the drama relationship. As I’m leaving for college, she came back into my life in the drug-fueled senior party.
We ended up hooking up and then of course, it got back to Erin and then of course, it was this huge, explosive disaster. There were always magical things bringing me back to the people that were healthy in my life. I remember Erin and I didn’t speak our entire first year of college and then came back to Minnesota and we’re like, “Let’s take a walk.” We went on a walk to a place that we used to just hike. This dude emerged out of the woods and he was like, “You guys stay right there. I have something that I found that’s for you.”
Some random leprechaun came out of the woods. We’re like, “Okay, cool.” He goes into the woods and comes out with a four-leaf clover and he’s like, “I saw this and it is for you.” He gave it to us. She still has that in a locket. We’ve been best friends ever since. We did get back together and then realized it wasn’t a thing. There were always these weird signs from the universe is to the keep around and the other people who were toxic, which I will say there’s a lot of toxicity around this love addiction behavior. Things get really fucking messy and destructive.
There’s some of the other stuff I read about which was what they say here is the behaviors of people who are feeling lost or uprooted without a partner, feeling overdependent on the partner. Prioritizing the relationship with a partner over family and friends, becoming depressed and obsessed with a love interest when romantic advances aren’t reciprocated. Constantly seeking romantic relationships regardless of quality. Feeling despondent without a romantic partner or relationship. Having difficulty leaving unhealthy or toxic relationships.
Definitely, I could check all these.
Making poor decisions based on emotions felt towards a partner or love interest. Example, quitting a job or cutting ties with family. Obsessively thinking of the other person to the point of disruption. When I say all those things to you, they all resonate.
I would check all those boxes because it’s you’re addicted. There’s an actual drug. I can’t remember what it is as far as what’s happening in your brain or the chemicals being released. Oxytocin or whatnot. It’s like you are getting hit and you need that hit because that wound, otherwise, is this gaping chasm that is seemingly insurmountable. I would agree with all of those things. I’ve done all of those things to the point where I’m destroying my relationships.
I’ve shared this with you, and it’s why I’m not afraid of having my name here, is that I really have done some things that I regret and I’ve hurt some people that really deserved nothing but unconditional love. What’s interesting is that so much of the time it was coming from a deep place of love. There was no maliciousness or ill intent and yet my behaviors in no way reflected that. My behaviors were of a crazy person acting completely out of integrity in a very callous and sometimes cruel way. Some of the stuff I would do, I’d be like, “What the fuck? I have such a problem.”
Are you aware of the problem?
If you're addicted, it doesn't matter if it's bad, if it makes you feel better, if it fills that void. The most toxic part is realizing you're hurting people and definitively hurting yourself; your work and relationships are suffering. Share on XInitially, I don’t.
First Heartbreak & The Cycle Begins
Let’s take a step back because I want to go on the chronology. I want to just let the audience know as well the Raul of today.
Full circle.
Full circle is in a very healthy mono, committed family. You have a family and you are just very stable, consistent, whether say you’ve really, you’ve gone through a very big journey here and obviously have come through, which is amazing. I want to take the audience on the journey. When’s the first time you had your heart broken? Do you recall who broke your heart the first time?
Yeah, it was actually that girl Christie. The Erin and Christie show was a whole thing. I was very much infatuated with Christie and had been for years. I went to Oxford to study film and we were trying to do long distance and there was this amazing, beautiful woman. I was playing Romeo, she was playing Juliet. That played itself out. I realized literally in the film, we were making an eight millimeter and I was like, “this woman is brilliant, beautiful, wealthy, radical and cool and got caught up in that.
I remember kissing her and then being like, “What am I doing? I have a girlfriend that I’m in love with.” I went home and felt horrible about it and then told Christie immediately. I was like, “I’m so sorry. I accidentally kissed this girl but I’m in love with you and I won’t pursue that. There’s a lot of beautiful people here, but I’m with you.”
She made me feel absolutely the most horrible human on the face of the planet. I found out after I got back after a month. This sent me into a deep depression. Literally, this catalyst was like, I am not kidding you. I think I lost twenty pounds I couldn’t eat for weeks. I became very emaciated. I should show you a photo. I actually got really love sick, but I used to struggle with depression when I was in high school pretty intensely. I was on lots of different meds and some of them would make me really fat, some of them would make me really sleepy, some of them would make me really erratic and crazy and I lost a lot of weight, got really sick, couldn’t eat, was super depressed.
I would cry half the day. I was a disaster actually. Making this Romeo and Juliet and, and all this stuff. I hated the woman who had became Juliet because she had caused me to destroy this relationship. I find out after I get back from this trip that the whole time, Christie had been fucking a friend of mine and just had failed to mention that. When I had told her the truth, she was omitting her truth, which was ironic, considering the journey I’d been down, but also I think it taught me a lot about how much is at stake and how real those feelings are and how obsessive and overpowering they can become.
Let’s go back to the actual when your heart’s broken for the first time.
I had broken it. I had broken my own heart. I had made the behavior. It wasn’t her fault that I had kissed somebody else. I had done it. I think that was a theme a lot of times in the heartbreak that I experienced where something I had either done or allowed to happen was the reason for my sadness. I think that’s interesting in and of itself. It’s like a self-inflicted wound. Part of it what you get addicted to with a love addiction is the drama. I think it’s important to mention that the drama, somebody pulling away and then having to get them back, this push and pull is an important and particularly toxic and destructive aspect of it.
Multiple Relationships & The Logistics of Love
I was talking about before when feeling you are lacking is when you’re getting a bit more crazy, a bit more obsessive about it, about filling that hole.
It’s filling that void.
It’s like you have a big void that you think you need to fill with someone who you are able to give love to with reciprocity with, “I will give you love but you need to give it back to me.”
I would say where it gets really crazy is when the quality of that love becomes less pronounced or pungent, potent. When it becomes less potent, you need more sources.
Constantly seeking romantic relationships regardless of quality, that’s what it says here. What you are saying here is when the quality dropped of that love, that’s when you when you morphed into, “I think I can manage more than one of these at the same time.” If I think about I’m 50 years old and I think about how many, let’s call it love interest not physical, with without love relationships, my intuition tells me that most people experience somewhere between low to high single digits of in their whole life.
Maybe 3 to 5 people that can say, “I was really in love with that person,” or, “I had a very serious relationship in high school.” It’s maybe five or something. You found yourself in situations where you were running five romantic loving relationships. You are running a serious with five at the same time across states.
They were living in different states and they had no idea about each other. Yet you were having these very deep, meaningful, loving, deeply connected relationships. I want you to walk the audience through how are you managing your life and how you are giving yourself to each of these individuals over long periods of time with geographical distance.
I think most people find being in one relationship is a very heavy load in itself in the communication in actually interacting, whether you’re talking on the phone with technology or whether you’re actually physically hanging out with each other. You are needing to do this with multiple women and them not being aware and you’re also running your life. You are going to gym. You’ve got a job and you’ve got friends and family. Talk us through it. How are you doing that?
I'm not alone in this. This is something that people are struggling with. Share on XI think it’s important to note that for me, it wasn’t a sex addiction. I actually had to think that I was in love with the person to fill the wound. The sex wasn’t the thing. I remember in college I got a lot of attention. I was a new pretty handsome, sporty kid and got a lot of attention. For me, the rule, I didn’t lose my virginity until senior year with intention where I was like, “No, I want to be in love when I have sex.” I took that same rule to college where I saw people just hooking up and having fun and I was like, “That doesn’t feed it for me. I need to feel a deep connection. I need to feel a deep love.” I think it’s an important distinction to make because I think they get easily confused.
In order to have a deep connection of love, it takes a lot of time, effort and energy.
You have to feel it from both sides too. It’s you have to feel the love for somebody. Somebody else has to feel that love for you. You have to cultivate it together. It’s often tied up with that magical quality of an experience. Yeah, so point being like, I would say that through college, I had a series of really beautiful, super potent, very committed because I had felt bad about cheating on my girlfriend in high school and making it so difficult on myself. I beat myself up sometimes where I’m like, “Damn, I could have just had so much more fun.”
There were so many times where I could have just had so much more fun. I could have fucked so many more beautiful women. I could have just focused on one instead of having several later in life. I’d say my college years, I was super focused on just trying to be with one person at a time. Often, I’d be like, “I’m calling this off because I found somebody else that I’m interested in.” I really wasn’t trying to overlap. By the end of my college years, it got really fucking messy of a lot of overlap.
When did it change? When did it go from I’m going to be an monogamous, very deep, loving relationship and I’m just filling that void and it’s filling me up.
Keep in mind, I wasn’t aware of the problem at this point. I wasn’t aware that there was an issue.
When did it become, “This is not enough. I need more of this?” I want to understand, given how you felt about the cheating component, how did you rationalize? How did you go from that to, “I’m running five relationships at the same time,” and in your head, “I’m not really cheating over here?”
I think at that point I knew I was doing something very bad.
When did it happen? Not bad enough that it continued for years.
It doesn’t matter. If you’re addicted to something, it doesn’t matter if it’s bad, if it’s making you feel better, if it’s filling that void. The most toxic, gnarly part about it is realizing where you’re like, “Fuck, I’m hurting people,” and I’m definitively hurting myself and my work is suffering and my relationships are suffering. I’ve lost whole groups of friends as a result of some of the dumb ass shit that I did in my 30s in particular where I was engaged with a woman.
That one’s complicated because it was started and it was very serious and had a ton of potential. I had been running game on a bunch of stuff and didn’t properly detangle to actually focus and then actually didn’t disentangle and spent three months very much alone working on myself and then came back together and got engaged. She wasn’t able to get past the fact that I had wronged her earlier on in the relationship. I actually didn’t cheat on her after the first three months of our relationship, but it didn’t matter because that wound, for her, very fairly that she was unable to forgive me and understand. I get that.
How many times have you been engaged?
Just once.
I’ve got so many questions in my head because it’s exhausting even listening to how you even did this for a week or a day, to be honest. The other thing I want to ask is social media.
I was so never was on social. There were no socials, there were no dating apps. This is deep connections. You see somebody from across the “room,” there’s clearly a connection. There is a magic there. There’s a spark that you’re looking for. It’s quite literally, you can almost see a shimmer of rainbow light and that’s what you’re following.
I will say, I don’t know exactly when I realized that it wasn’t enough to have one, but I think there was something that happened in college and I don’t remember what it was, but I just remember being like, “Everybody’s having fun and doing their thing. I get a lot of attention. Why don’t I just have fun? Why don’t I just do this? Everybody else is doing it. Sex doesn’t have to be that big of a deal in a weird way. It’s a very human compulsion.”
I think to answer your question, I’m a super ADHD person that’s pretty high functioning. For me, it led to a lot of mania. Quite literally, when you say mania, I was manic. There were years of my life and really what brought me to getting better was just how destructive that became quite literally for every aspect of my life.
My partner now knows all of this. I’ve shared this with her. I think that was something for us to overcome in becoming more of a committed relationship and something that I was unable to do with my ex-fiancée, that degree of understanding and acceptance. I literally got to the point where I am drugged up on these different relationships. There’s a person in New York, there’s a person in Russia, there’s a person in Bali, there’s a person in Minnesota, and you’re juggling all these things.
How you explain to each one? The mechanics, the logistics.
No, just imagine you’re always on your phone.
When you are with one of them?
You’re texting other people.
Isn’t there incoming messages from other people?
Yeah, totally.
“When are we meeting?” How would you explain, “I’m just got to go here now and then I’m going there and I’m not available right now. I won’t have my phone.” How were you keeping all those stories aligned?
That’s what’s crazy. The ADHD, there’s a high functioning part of my brain that’s able to compartmentalize data, that’s why I’m a good director, from a variety of sources and people. There would definitely come times where it got too crazy and I was like, “Did I do this with that person or did I do that with the other person?” I’d say something they’d be like, “You haven’t told me that before.” I was like, “Fuck. The story.” Started to Venn diagram and get really fucking messy.
Navigating Mania & The Breaking Point
What happened? Were there incidents where you got exposed? You must have.
Definitely. Yeah.
What I want to ask is, while this is happening, I’m assuming you’ve got some good male friends in your life.
They were worried about me.
They are aware of the game you are running. How much did you expose yourself to your mother or your sisters or your close friends? Who was in the inner circle allowed to know what was truly going on or do you cover most of it up?
I think my family was aware because I would always have a different girl back to Minnesota.
Would you tell, “Guys, don’t talk about Mary. I’m bringing Jane and she doesn’t know?”
All those would’ve been done. It’s that relationship’s done. The next summer, I’m bringing somebody else home. I had long-term relationships in there too. There was a partner for several years. Basically, over the course of that period, there were three three-year monogamous relationships that I was fully monogamous. I didn’t cheat on them, I didn’t fuck anything up. I was very committed.
With any other women at the same time?
Not at all. There were periods that was 27 to 30, 31 to 33, 34 to 36.
You swayed in between those gaps.
You have to decide on a path; choose if you're going to go slow or fast. This back and forth will just kill you. Share on XAll the other stuff that happens too where you’re trying to have a long distance relationship with somebody you’re in love with and you find out they’re cheating on you and then you’re like, “I can’t really blame them for doing that because I’ve done that. I understand what that is and I’m heartbroken and I don’t trust them. What do I do with that information because I’ve also done that?”
I think all the normal things that that occur in relationships also concurrently exist. I was happy in those committed relationships. I actually really like being in a committed, healthy relationship more than the drama. I will say when it got really bad, and that was for several years. I was fully certifiably manic man. I was all over the place on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
What does that mean?
Literally mania. Your emotional field is on a wave, dependent upon how these different relationships are going. Nothing matters more than keeping up the game. Completely fucking up big jobs and focused on the drama of a relationship when I should be focused on directing a set or big projects basically just exploding because I’m a complete and total fucking disaster.
To answer your question about friends, there were a bunch of friends that I was very honest like my brothers and a couple of women in my life that I had dated and realized I was struggling with this that I was able to be very candid with. I think it was a mix of, “This isn’t okay and you need to fucking figure it out,” and, “This is human and you’re not alone.”
A lot of several of my best guy buddies also either literally alcohol or drugs or sex and love addiction and most of them were sex addiction instead of love addiction. I think in that commonality also came a lot of healing where it’s, “Yeah, I’m not alone in this. This is something that people are struggling with.” For a decade, my life was crazy. I was a pretty successful dude going between New York and LA, living entirely separate lives. 2 weeks in New York, 2 weeks in LA for years.
You’d have, let’s say, a partner in each place. I always find the world a lot smaller than what you think it is. If you are with your partner in New York, aren’t you going to be bumping into people who know your partner in LA? Surely, you would’ve been looking over your shoulder and saying paranoid and neurotic.
That’s what I mean. That is all happening and it is overlapping. The drama of somebody finding out about somebody through friends and then you’re this horrible fucking asshole that is doing something horrible and asinine and then you’re getting called out on it and then you’re losing those friends and then you’re losing that relationship. That happened many times where I was a fucking piece of shit and then you go down the spiral of being like, “I’m a fucking asshole,” which I really did act, out of integrity like an asshole. The shame spiral. I would say that’s actually a really important aspect to this to mention. The shame spiral that occurs as a result of your behaviors that are tied to this addiction.
When this stuff happens, you’re not an American psycho where you’re like, “Fuck it?” You really feel, “I’ve caused a lot of people a lot of pain here.” You feel terrible about yourself.
There’s a lot of love there too. I think the hard part about any of these things is when you feel deep resonant love, that is a rich and rare thing. When you’ve wounded that, you’ve hurt somebody that you actually really cared about and that had love for you, you’ve lost that love. More importantly, it’s forever tarnished. Even all the beautiful things you shared are still there. All the qualities that you’ve spent so long cultivating are basically dead. They go from alive and vibrant and full of potential to a fucking unconscious, broken vessel. It’s like my ex-fiancée, I spent years dude trying so hard to make up for the stupid mistakes I had made and told her about it.
I was very honest with her. That’s my other problem. I’m obscenely honest despite often acting out of integrity and being dishonest. My compulsion is to be of good nature and yet often acting out of integrity. It became this weird shame spiral of the thing that was making me okay and feeding the wolf is now gone. I need to find a new thing to fill the wolf. This idea of this not being a quality of connection when I would lose the main partner that was a committed awesome thing, which were always heartbreaking. I would be depressed and actually very heartbroken coming out of those big relationships because I really wanted to make them work.
I would then go into the spiral. I’d be in a committed healthy relationship that would fall apart for one reason or another. Not because of me cheating, just because they’d fallen apart. I would go into there’s five things that fill that one person’s void because they’re not as intense of quality. That’s where I started to get into the real messy disaster. I wanted to have kids and I wanted to be in a healthy relationship and I wanted to get married.
You’re still searching and hunting quite literally. I think of it a wolf hunting. For me, the big catalyst, because that just went on for years. I’m manic, I’m a disaster. I had a nervous breakdown. I went and took a sabbatical in New York. I had was with an amazing woman who I’d met right before I went to New York and found myself in the city. In New York, you can have a lot of fun if you want to.
I was super happy being with this amazing woman who I met that I would see every week or two. That was a three-year relationship that also got very messy at the end. For a long time, I was in New York and could have been having a blast and was like, “No, I feel good. I love this person, she loves me. That’s actually all I really want. The sex is epic. Let’s not compromise that.”
However, that got messy at the end because I was a mess, to the point where it was I was in love with two people at the same time. Clearly hooking up with both of them at the same time. They live two blocks away from each other in a super small fucking town. I basically was going to Sundance for my movie and they both wanted to come to Sundance and I was like, “Neither of you guys can come to Sundance.”
One of them was super slow and grounded. The other was all hyper and madness and I couldn’t decide. I literally was like, “I can’t decide between these two.” They knew about each other, oddly enough, because I was still trying to be super honest and forthcoming. It wasn’t like they weren’t aware of each other but I don’t think they were aware of how intense the relationships had gotten.
I went snowboarding early in the morning. I remember the night before I had felt a fucking rockstar. I’m wearing all this just dripping and cool and got all my friends into the hardest party and was like, “Peace, guys. I love you. I’m going to go ski in the morning.” Played it sober, woke up at 8:00 AM with a producer. I’m going down powder. I’ve told you this story but I basically just exactly what I’m talking about.
One person was one track I was taking which was on the corduroy, fast and fearless. The other is in the trees where you shouldn’t be going as fast. I was just going between them and I hit a tree that sent me flying at 30 miles an hour or I hit a limb or something that sent me flying off of a cliff into a tree and I pulverized my pelvis and nearly died.
I spent six months not being able to walk and literally have a titanium core and fully almost passed. I had a near death experience. All of that brought me to this big awareness of, “You have to decide on a path. You have to choose if you’re going to go slow or fast. This back and forth is just going to kill you. Literally going to kill you.” For me, that was the big download from that experience was like, “No, you’ve caused so much pain in the world. You’ve cultivated a lot of love too for all these people. You’ve shown and shared great experiences but they have ended tarnished in pain and now it is your turn.”
Pain and suffering are part of the human condition. So much of my bad behavior stemmed from my fear of wounding someone else. Share on XThe Physical Toll & Brutal Honesty
Basically decided, “I’ve got to let you know what real true physical pain feels like.” Feel to wake up and feel and just like, “Namaste, take a little breather here and rethink what you want to do because you’re going to now need to rebuild yourself physically be also going to need to rebuild yourself emotionally, mentally.” Was that the trigger in seeking therapy? Who made you go and say, “You have got a serious problem?” Did it come from you or did it come from another? “I’m going to go to therapy or I need to go to Love Addicts Anonymous.” I explain how that whole thing. When did you realize, “I do have a problem?”
I’d already done that. I’d already been to Sex and Love Anonymous.
Explain what that is.
It’s literally like AA.
Explain.
You’re going to a gathering of people with a shared experience or ailment to talk about your own struggles with sex and love addiction. They’re actually paired in. For me, I had trouble with it because so much of it was about sex addiction, which isn’t my thing as much but obviously plays in because you’re having sex with people that you love. It is all tied together. I would say it’s not fair to say they’re different but I’d already gone to many of those. That was its own thing. I was aware of the problem. I was able to vocalize the problem.
Did they help you at all?
I think getting a new therapist definitely really helped me in the last probably four years. I think what’s difficult about this and what’s hard to accept and acknowledge is that I was aware of the problem for many years. I was trying to work on it and then I was just falling back into it. That whole time, I’m aware trying to do what is right. I’m literally being very honest. There were so many times where I was in these relationships, it wasn’t like they weren’t aware of what was happening. I was trying to speak my truth to make sure I’m not going to hurt somebody and yet I want the thing I want, which is the connection.
You tell them, “I’m a love addict.”
There were definitely relationships where I did.
You’re starting relationships with women like, “I just need you to know I have a love addiction problem.” How did they respond to that?
I used to date women who had eating disorders and so I can help with that. I can be there for you. I will say I think a lot of the people that are drawn to each other in this intensity have something else that they’re struggling with. Two stable people do not often come together in a super toxic dynamic.
A lot of the partners you had, they are also struggling with their own. Is there a common theme? What were the commonalities?
I think some drug addictions. I think all addictions. I would say addictions because an eating disorders an addiction. Alcohol or drugs are an addiction. Loves an addiction. Sex, I definitely met and didn’t really get too serious with, but sex addicts, all those things are real. I think I actually fell for a couple of love addicts too where we were just in the fucking madness together.
I will say for me, what was interesting was hitting this tree being like, “I actually really have a problem.” Working so hard on myself and that relationship, I chose one of those people. She was super supportive, lovely and amazing and deserved nothing but all of my love and affection. I still went back to being a disaster.
I was like, “Hold on, I’ve already gotten this lesson. This is actually going to kill me.” I remember some of my friends who I would share this stuff with being like, “This will actually kill you. You can’t keep doing it because you’re just spreading disease.” Not literal disease. No sexually transmitted disease. You’re spreading dis-ease. For me, I went through another circle of having two people that were way too close and then another circle of having two and caught.
What are you thinking in this? You actually know how the movie ends. It’s like you’re watching that same movie, just different character. It’s just the same characters. Just different people playing the 2 or 3 characters. You know exactly how the movie ends every time. If you know that, what compels you to go through it again?
Have you ever watched Fight Club, Braveheart or The Matrix? Did you watch them more than once? Did you watch them a couple times? Many times, right? You enjoyed that movie many times. You went back even though you knew it was going to happen. Those performances are awesome. The surprises, the freedom. Yeah, exactly. You see it through a new angle. Even Fight Club, there’s all these little Easter eggs of what’s going to happen. The nuggets.
It’s like you’re going for the nuggets. It doesn’t matter if you know the story, it doesn’t matter if you’ve read it or seen it before. I think that’s when I realized, I was like, “No, this is fucked. This is a real problem.” It happened twice more after the accident with people that again just were rad. It could have been very happy with and being like, “What am I doing? I’m too old to be doing this. I’m too wise to be doing this. I’m not a bad person. Why am I doing things that are ostensibly bad.”
Just be honest, even if it hurts, even if it messes things up, even if you lose me as a result—that's better than living in a weird world of fabricated stories and lies. Share on XAlso, that shame spiral. Just remember. There’s the backstory is the wound that is the shame spiral that is the wound that keeps getting the scab pulled that’s getting deeper because the shame is digging into it. I actually got to a point where I was like, “I have to change my behavior. I’m going to be brutally honest with everybody I meet.” My partner now who I very much adore and we have a beautiful son together and we’re not married but we are very much in love and committed.
I met her and I was like, “I’m a disaster. I am a love addict. I love being single. I want to hook up with a bunch of people. I don’t want to be in a committed relationship.” She was like, “I am in the midst of a divorce. I’m in the same place.” I was like, “Cool. We can be friends. We can see if we want to hook up. If we hook up, we can do it protected so that we know that there’s nothing weird because I’m going to be hooking up with other people.”
We got into the relationship, we were best friends for six months and then we were like, “We’re not hooking up with anybody else. Should we start having unprotected sex?” She was like, “Yes, but only if you tell me if you’re going to have unprotected sex or with anybody else.” I’m like, “Okay, cool.” We did that for a while and then I met this woman who I fell madly in love with and I’d had a crush on for a long time. I told her, I was like, “We need to stop having sex.”
It was hard for me to tell her that, but I was like, “I’m going to hook up with this other person.” Actually, there was some overlap there, to be totally honest. There was the time where I didn’t tell her that I was going to hook up with this other person. I did hook up with the other person, then I came back and told her so that we didn’t hook up after the fact. I was integrity, wellbeing. Out of integrity. That was very hurtful for her because we had a deep connection and loved each other.
However, she got it. It was a struggle. It was very hard to accept. It was very upsetting. Also, I think it helped to explain my irrational behavior. What happened there, which I think was really telling, is I’d been going through this struggle of, “I promised I wouldn’t do this. I’m being honest to everybody.” I’m over communicating where I’m at, what I’m struggling with, what my desires are I’m actually sharing more than you would logically ever share to try and avoid hurting somebody and I’m still hurting this person. Pain suffering is part of the human condition. I think so much of my bad behavior came from my fear of wounding somebody else.
If you think about it, let’s go back full circle to where it started where you talk about the abandonment issues and the trauma that you suffered. The irony of it is that what you experienced as a child, it’s like you’ve put through all these other people through similar hurt and abandonment.
While trying to keep them from it, you’re making it worse.
Inflicting something on them that was inflicted on you. You are coming from a place of, “This is exactly what I don’t want to do,” but effectively, it is what you are doing.
It’s because you’re not being candid. You’re not being in your integrity of your authentic truth. I think that’s what I came to and what Nissa, my partner now, really helped to impart. Just be honest. Even if it’s going to hurt me, even if it’s going to fuck shit up, even if you’re going to lose me as a result, that’s better than living in this weird world that you’re creating where you’re having to keep all the storylines of different lies.
It was just became a bunch of different lies, which is fucking exhausting and horrible. I told her, it was a mess. She was very upset. It was Christmas. We were supposed to spend it together, alone yet again on another Christmas. I’m like, “What am I doing with myself?” She came back and she was like, “You tried this whole time. I know you tried. I saw you try to be super honest to tell me exactly where you were at, to do the hard thing. Even if you failed, which you did, I saw you try over and over again to tell me where you were at to make me aware of what was going on. I don’t know if I want to be with you, but I love you for who you are.”
So much of the affection and care I was getting from women was because they wanted me. The validation part of this was so vital. We talk about the wound, but the wound that was being filled by the validation of being loved by a beautiful, awesome woman. That was what I was searching for that I came to. It was the validation and the acceptance. For me, her accepting and validating me without that fully in my shame spiral, knowing all the things enabled me to love her unconditionally in this way slowly.
It took some time, but it reconfigured and helped to heal the wound. It stitched it up where I was like, “I can be done with this because I can be loved unconditionally.” That unconditional love is I think what a lot of sex and love addicts are looking for. The love addicts, I’ll speak for love addicts, are really looking for. The wound that is being healed is through the validation of unconditional love.
That shifted everything for me. I haven’t cheated. All the relationships that were longstanding weird things that were on the periphery that I could return to that I knew I could text or call and fly somewhere and turn back on, I completely cut ties and blocked. All those things I removed and then I felt more and more in my sacred vessel and in my truth. The therapy helps too and all the rest.
Just how often are you doing therapy?
I was doing it once a week and now I’m doing it once every two weeks. I think it’s been super helpful. Obviously, even just in this conversation, I’m being candid about it because if you don’t share it and people aren’t aware that it’s not necessarily common, but something in us, I don’t think it’s behooving anybody. I think we all make mistakes. I’ve been a very good person in many aspects of my life. I show up a lot and love really hard. I don’t have malicious intent in me despite being a dumb fuck and living out of integrity sometimes.
I think just leaning into and reiterating the healthy habits and behaviors is the thing that’s really, in my new relationship, helped to lock things in but it’s not as sexually vibrant. It’s not maybe as dramatic, but that core love that’s unconditional is enough to make all the rest fall away. I think as humans, what we’re all really striving to create in our lives is just healthy, unconditional love.
Unconditional Love & Healing The Wound
Are you saying you believe in the concept of unconditional love? A lot of people say the only unconditional love is you can guarantee is from a dog, for example.
Also, towards your child. I feel unconditional love, selfless love towards my child as well. I don’t necessarily feel it as much towards animals. I actually feel a lot of unconditional love for humanity. In my core, I think that’s what enabled me to love so much. I am a lover. I don’t actually have a lot of judgment. Usually, I get tired of people being dumb or ineffective. Generally speaking, I love everybody. I think the true nature of love is when it’s unconditional.
It’s like the genesis. The core energy of our universe and life is this unconditional love. Coming back to that and receiving it from a badass, powerful, embodied woman was for me, I broke. I forgot that part of the story here. I don’t think I’ve ever cried harder in my entire life than feeling that unconditional love from her because it broke that child in me that felt so unloved. Those tears were so healing and began the foundation of a new life more than being made of titanium and spinning six months in a fucking chair. More than all the dumb anguish that I’d caused on both sides. It was like, “This is this unconditional love is the life force stuff.”
I think you’ve lived the life of multiple men.
I’ve definitely been the fool enough to fill a cup, for sure.
Thank you. Before we finish, this is a wild story. You’re definitely my first exposure to the space of love addiction. It sent me down the rabbit hole. Very powerful stuff. I asked my guests a set of five questions at the end of every show. I’m going to just jump into that and then we’ll wrap it up. Given your history, who would you to say sorry to, given the chance?
That’s a heavy one. I’ve sat with without a lot in ceremony. I think luckily, I’ve had the chance to say sorry to a bunch of the women in my life that I’ve made the mistake. My ex-fiancée Julia, I was never able to really apologize truly to. I tried but I don’t know if she ever really heard it. Three women in particular that I really truly loved and cared about. You know how you want to be able to say the things or you write them down and you share them, but it’s never really complete because it didn’t come from you directly?
The reason I say that is because all we shared was deep and unconditional love and I got so much experience and healing and reciprocated life force through that relationship. It was such a good healthy thing until it wasn’t. I regret not doing a better job of closing those doors so that they were healed and healthy enough to go find the right partner that they deserve, which I was not able to be.
What are you proud of being or doing in your life?
I’m proud of the ways that I’ve showed up for people in times of struggle or hardship. I’m a quixotic and relatively brave human that will run into the fire. I’m proud of myself for the times I’ve done that. I’m proud of myself for this latest film that I’ve made that you actually helped to create, which is an act of selfless desire to literally just help humanity.
I think there’s a lot of times to be good. There’s this quote in the movie of you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. It’s an old Steinbeck quote from the end of East of Eden. That really resonates with me. I think we get so caught up these days in trying to be perfect or portraying a life that is perfect. I think we give a lot up in that pursuit and in reality, it’s just about being good. It’s about slowing down enough to treat others with care and compassion to doing the thing that’s uncomfortable and difficult because you should and you can. Yeah, the times I’ve done that I would say.
When did you receive kindness while needing it most and expecting at least?
With this latest relationship of being unconditionally loved despite my shitty behaviors and the relationship that came before it with the person who took care of me when I was hurt and just showing up with so much love and compassion. I think when people are really struggling and that selfless act of showing up for each other is a real gift.
What did your mother or father teach you that you frequently remind yourself of?
That’s a funny one because it’s so much of that wound is from what I was taught as a child. It’s okay to be human as long as we’re doing the best we know how. Just keep leaning into to living your truth.
Finally, Raul, what’s your superpower? Besides giving love, what’s your superpower?
I would say I do have an innate ability to deductively reason. I think it’s what makes me a good director and a good problem solver. I think my superpower is literally I’ll get visions of things. I don’t know how to describe them other than visions. I can see a future that then because of my audacity and ridiculous behavior I can create. I think I feel very lucky to have had a human experience wherein what I can imagine, I have the ability to realize them to reality. That vision, that ability to envision feels like a superpower.
Raul, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me. I appreciate so much our connection and friendship and the opportunity to talk about something that’s actually very uncomfortable. I’m glad I didn’t cry or get upset. It felt very grounded.
Important Links
About Raul Gasteazoro
Raul Gasteazoro is the founding director of Black Powder Works and helped to build PopSugar Studios from the ground up. His most recent film- an enviromental action/cli-fi- THE PROTECTOR- is coming out in theatres and online May 23. www.protectwhatisleft.com
He has directed a diverse body of work over the years for countless Fortune 500 companies- including branded documentaries, custom digital content, social campaigns, and traditional TV commercials.
Having risen through the ranks of the commercial world as a DOP, EP, and Production Designer, Raul has a holistic understanding of the industry and knows how to get the most bang for your buck.
He is known for a collaborative and enthusiastic style that helps bring projects of any size to the next level.
