Introduction: Addicted to Love
I was twenty-one years old when Robert Palmer took home a Grammy for Addicted to Love, a music video that helped define the MTV era.
This iconic clip featured the British rock star with an abstract band—a group of look-alike female models with pale skin, heavy makeup, and dark hair, hypnotized under his perfect control.
The leading man wore white, his fashion accessories wore black, and behind them a red sky painted a story of danger, seduction, and entanglement.
Every move of the video was perfectly choreographed, from the lingering beat of the snare and cymbals, to the length of each model’s skirt—all designed to entice just long enough to pull you in, tease, and then let go at the precise moment.
The editing was masterful, layering in Palmer’s soulfulness with his sartorial elegance, allowing him to captivate and steal my imagination with complete subtlety, while flaunting words that would someday change my life forever.
You know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to love.
When this video came out, I was a young mom who had married my first love because we gotten pregnant. Robert Palmer’s MTV video left me spellbound—watching something I didn’t quite understand and hearing lyrics that had nowhere to land.
At 49, the words finally made sense.
By then, I had divorced my daughter’s father, been engaged three times, and even called off a wedding a week before the big day.
But when the last engagement took me from the high of a romantic Paris proposal to a painful low I never saw coming, I finally woke up.
The betrayal I felt—not just from him, but from myself—sent me researching, after a stranger on the other end of the line used a word I never knew was real: love addiction.
It was then I realized: The lyrics described someone I didn’t know I’d become.
Smiling. Complying. People-pleasing. Living for someone else’s life—at the expense of my own.
Disconnected from who I really was—because achieving had become more important than being.
A pattern had been running my life—and therapists didn’t name it, coaches didn’t see it, and even a one-on-one with Tony Robbins, in front of thousands, didn’t reveal it.
That’s why I’m telling this story.
And why it starts here.
Copyright © 2025 by Christine Bunnell
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Holly Shoemaker, editing by Christine Bunnell
This work depicts actual events in the life of the author as truthfully as recollection permits. While all persons within are actual individuals, names and identifying characteristics have in some instances been changed to respect their privacy.
For more information, contact the author at www.theBbrand.com